Welcome back, everyone! I am happy to have Jeff Pfitzer join me today for this session of Brilliant Talks, our free coaching program for real estate agents. We will be talking about social media. As we welcome 2023, no matter where the market is heading, how can we agents utilize social media to shift into and thrive in any kind of market that we will face? 

Let’s talk about some social media plans and strategies that you could implement for your business this coming year, 2023.

As real estate agents who are looking to utilize social media to make a quick and long-term impact on our business, where should we start? Jeff imparts some advice for us.

 1. Commit to the process

Around this time, a lot of us are busy setting goals for the next year. You might have some financial goals or unit and volume goals for your business. Or you might even have some personal goals in mind for 2023. Take this time to add social media goals to your year-end planning.

For social media, set some granular metrics of what you want to achieve, set the cadence as far as how often you will post, and commit to the process.

Don’t worry about how many followers you have or how many subs you have—that comes as a by-product of your consistency.

Focus on setting goals and being consistent, because what most agents suck at is the consistency piece.

 2. Consistency

Depending on what stage you are in your social media journey, how you show up consistently could look a bit different.

The most important piece of advice from Jeff is to choose your platform.  

His personal recommendation for those who are starting out is Instagram because it is a good platform to test the waters, train your skills as a content creator, and get acquainted with how to utilize the features of a social media app. 

YouTube might be the best, but it is far more demanding in terms of production efforts than Instagram. It is also convenient that you can link your Instagram posts to Facebook, allowing you to hit two birds with one stone.

After picking your platform, set your goal metrics and cadence.

• For beginners, a good cadence for posting content, using Instagram as the example, would be one (1) Story per day and one (1) Reel a week.
• If you are somewhat in the middle level, and you have been posting here and there but want to level it up and show up more, two (2) Reels a week and multiple Stories a day (around 2-5) is a good baseline. For Instagram, especially, posting multiple Stories a day is a great way to show up on the algorithm because having active Stories help keep you visible and top-of-mind to your followers.
• For those who are already all-in on social and want to sustain that or gain more momentum, set some goals to challenge you to show up more, or how to make your content better, and work on achieving those goals.

The key is to stay committed to the process, regardless of what stage you might be at. The problem that most content creators face is that they come in strong in January but fall off the wagon by the next month.

Figure out a cadence that will not stress your system and stay consistent. If you keep at it for 6-18 months, you will see the results, and it will help you achieve a system that is sustainable and scalable in the long term.

 3. Tell a Story

Our audience responds best to good storytelling. In the book, How to Tell a Story, here’s an excerpt that I believe sums up what storytelling means, why people connect to stories, and why we need to focus on telling a great story on social media:

“Our stories tell us who we are, who we were, and who we hope to be.”

Our audience feels a connection to us when they find pieces of who they were, who they are, and who they hope to be in the stories we share.

When you think of what we do in real estate, I believe that the American dream is still to own a home. Our audience is people whose “hope to be” is to become homeowners. Tell your story about how who you are today can help them achieve who they hope to be. 

Your challenge, as a business owner and content creator on social media, is to figure out how you can tell that story better.

How long does it take to see the results?

There’s no direct answer to this question, nor are there right or wrong answers. What it boils down to is trusting the process, focusing on building relationships online, and keeping your audience top-of-mind through your content on social media so that when the need arises for them, they will think of you first: because they already know you, have become fans of you, and like and trust you.

That’s why Jeff recommends going 80/20 for the personal/business post ratio on social media.

There are stats saying that around 90% of consumers would have opted to use their RealtorsⓇ for another transaction but only 13% do, because we suck at follow-up, or because our follow-up tends to be spam-y.

That’s the advantage that social media provides. Aside from being a prospecting arm for your business, it provides real estate agents with a platform to stay close to their audience and build personal relationships, establish trust, and stay connected without blasting them with business stuff. It helps you change the narrative of how we do business.

The goal is to make your audience become your fans, so that when their need for your business arises, they will think of you first and be more confident to transact with you because they already have a relationship with you.

People like doing business with people they already know, trust, and love. Use social media to your advantage.

There are so many things to unpack about social media for our business, and it is always a good idea to learn from others who share their experiences, success stories, and journeys to get there. 

Join us on January 23rd and 24th at SocialCon 2023. We invited some awesome people to come and share their expertise when it comes to social media marketing.

We also do one-on-one and group coaching for those who need help with their social media strategies and how they can tweak their strategies to gain success for their businesses. If you are interested in coaching with us, feel free to send me a message.

Our January 2023 social media calendar is also out! You know the drill. Reach out to me if you want a copy. Have an awesome day!