In this video, I want to share with you just three simple tips for how to create a simple and smart social media strategy, especially if you’re in real estate.
Tip #1, remember it takes time. It takes time and I think this is one of the things that’s hardest for a lot of agents and brokers with your social media strategy. You go to an event, you listen to a video, you get really fired up, you start posting, maybe do a Facebook live and then you don’t get traction from it. And maybe you’re even someone who has a really consistent plan together and you’re posting each and every week and you’ve got some great quality content and maybe you’re still not seeing the results, and that can be really frustrating.
The thing to keep in mind is this, social media is a marathon and not a sprint and just like any other marketing, it takes time. I know for a lot of you, you’ve done traditional marketing over the years. Maybe you’re someone who’s done door knocking, or farming, you’ve been sending postcards and you know, it takes time. Sometimes it takes six, 12, 18 months, 24 months sometimes years to get traction.
There’s a great book I want to recommend, the book is called Known. Some of you have heard me talk about this before. It’s written by Mark Schaefer who’s an amazing speaker. This book talks about how long does it take to get known, in any industry. And the thing is for most people to get known, it takes eight, 12 months, sometimes 18 months, sometimes a little bit longer. So just understand that. It does take patience and it does take time. That’s #1.
#2, quality versus quantity. If you want to create a smart and simple social media plan here’s the good news. You don’t have to post 27 times a day each and every day. It truly is about quality not quantity and so often I see agents and brokers who are just sharing posts from somebody else, but they’re not creating their own content and this day in age one of the best and fastest ways to get traction on social media is to invest time, money and resources in putting out quality pieces of content.
So what’s a quality piece of content? Quality piece of content is something like this. Video content or Facebook live content, it could be graphics that you create. But typically it’s something that’s unique to you. So of course you could share maybe an article that somebody else wrote, but how about instead of just sharing a link to an article that you read, how about if you do a video about it and you can say hey I just read this great article in the Wall Street Journal about x, y and z, and here’s my opinion about it. And that’s the difference between just putting out content for the sake of content and actually putting out content that has a voice.
What we’ve found from the agents and brokers that we’ve worked with are the agents and brokers that are consistently putting out quality content that’s in their voice, that has their opinion, they’re helping to attract the people they want to work with, because at the end of the day that’s what it’s all about. Attracting clients versus chasing leads.
My third tip is you have to actually have a plan. You have to actually physically have a plan and I know that sounds really simple. We talk a lot about that when it comes to goal setting, you might have a business plan, we think about planning in all different types of our business. I don’t mean just a plan in your head. I mean really taking the time to write out a plan and as much as I love my phone and all the digital tools, there is truly something magical about writing it down and starting to put pen to paper. A lot of times we don’t start a plan because we think, well I don’t have all the pieces in place. I’m not quite sure how I’m going to do the plan so then we never do a plan.
So start small. I doesn’t have to be overly complicated. Start with a notepad and a pen, start by brainstorming topics you get asked all the time. I bet you if you sat down and thought about all the questions you get asked all the time, all the conversations that you have with clients, you could probably come up with dozens upon dozens of content ideas. I would say look at your life as content and then start to put pen to paper and really start to create a plan.
I want to give you a free resource that we love to use. There’s a free website called calendarlabs.com. Calendarlabs.com is an awesome free resource where you can go in and download free calendar templates weekly or monthly or even daily, and that’s a great place to start as you start to think about your system and your strategy. I’d also recommend when you think about a plan, is create a plan that is simple for you to move forward with. Create something that is easy for you to move foreword with each and every day because when you make something a habit it just becomes integrated into what you do.
So what I would recommend is instead of thinking about the next 12 months, which can feel a little daunting, think about a weekly schedule. What is a weekly schedule you could commit to? Maybe it’s every Monday you’re going to do Monday market updating. Maybe every Tuesday is tip Tuesday. Maybe every Thursday is throwback Thursday. Pick a couple days, get into a routine, put it in your calendar and then start to make it happen.
So all of those things can make a big difference. Be patient, create unique content, focus on that quality versus quantity and then create that plan. Now if you’ve felt stuck at all when it comes to a plan, or you felt stuck at all when it comes to content, I encourage you to download our free content grid. We have literally had tens of thousands of agents and brokers over the years download our content grid and if you’ve not had a chance to download it, or maybe you downloaded it a long time ago but you lost it somewhere in the shuffle, just to to katielance.com/contentgrid, put your name and email in and we will email you our content grid which you can print out and when you’re sitting down to create your content and create your plan, you’ve got more than 30 content ideas and some great resources for putting that plan together.
I’d love to hear from you. What struggles are you having with social media? What’s your number one struggle with social media? Put those in the comments of the video!
