Humans are social beings. Even with technology automating our lives we still thrive off of being connected on social media. While platforms like Facebook, Twitter and Instagram are becoming standard for businesses, most are finding engagement, activity and clicks at an all time low. The best way to turn this around is to start becoming social on your social media. Sounds like a ‘duh’ concept, but let me dive further into why you aren’t doing this: Find out what people are caring about: Read the news! Find out what’s trending. Read other people’s posts, press releases. Know what’s going on and have an opinion. The best way to start a conversation over social media is to take a trending topic, whether it be Trulia signing a deal or thieves at a local open house, and inform your audience by asking questions. ‘Hey did you guys see this? I wonder how this will effect the blah blah.’ Give your readers context and a reason to care. Social media is a delicate and wonderful thing. You have a way to directly reach your targeted audience and even build a relationship with them, but you can so easily become one of the hundreds of business pages that gets ignored or “hidden” from your fans’ feeds.
Let your profile be a reflection of who you are
Every time you post, people will see your face next to it (because your headshot belongs ONLY as your profile picture), see your name and begin to associate the two. Don’t forget to fill out your bio either! Keep them short, sweet and to the point. It lets people know who you are, what you love and what’s important to you. This is how people get an idea of who YOU are. Keep the mix of work, play and passions going here.
If you log into your social media account with business in mind, you are probably going to filter your posts and interactions through that thought and may come off overbearing. Your website, your leads, other websites like Zillow and Trulia are dedicated to Real Estate. Facebook, Twitter and Pinterest are where people go to get an idea of who you are. Would they want to spend the whole process of home buying with you?
Think of it like this, when you go into a department store just to browse and out of the corner of your eye you see a sales woman coming straight for you. She asks if she can help, what you are looking for and when you tell her you are just browsing she goes on to list all of the sales going on, shoves a few coupons in your hand and tries to get you to sign up for a credit card.
Next time you really need to buy a new pair of jeans, is this the first place you are going to go? Probably not! Same goes for real estate. When you meet someone who’s not necessarily looking to buy or sell right at the moment, building a relationship for the future is far more valuable than telling them their house is depreciating value and their kids need to grow up in another neighborhood.
As we are intertwined with technology, we can often forget about sharing our personalities. How do you make sure that prospective clients are seeing the real you on social media?
