Real Estate and Social Media: Paradox and Potential
Social media holds an incongruous position within the real estate profession, being both widely used and yet chronically under-utilized. In the National Association of Realtors’ 2023 Member Profile report (the most recent at the time of writing), 67 percent of respondents reported using Facebook for business purposes, 49 percent used LinkedIn, and 38 percent used Instagram. Just 32 percent reported using no social media at all.
NAR’s 2023 Technology Survey took a deeper dive into realtors’ use of social media. The leading use, reported by 68 percent of respondents who use social media, was to showcase existing listings. Client relationship management was the second-most common use, at 67 percent of respondents, with 53 percent using social media purely “because it was expected of them” and 52 percent treating it as a potential source of leads. That confidence is not unfounded, because 54 percent of respondents reported that social media was their top source of quality leads in the previous year.
Yet, if we turn back to the Member Profile, we find that almost half of realtors (48 percent) generated no new business from social media, and the median was only 2 percent. Fewer than 5 percent of realtors generated even 20 percent of their new business from social media. Given that 52 percent of respondents explicitly cited lead generation as a goal, but the median outcome is just 2 percent of new business, the takeaway is clear: Social media has the potential to be a significant driver of business but real estate agents are not, on the whole, leveraging it effectively.
The Challenge of Real Estate Social Network Prospecting
Real estate professionals wishing to harness social media’s prospecting potential face a number of challenges. These include, but are not limited to:
- The sheer number of social media users and community pages in any given area, and the volume of posts they generate in a day or a week.
- Constraints on realtors’ time. There are only so many hours available for work, and – while prospecting is an essential activity – there must also be time allocated for in-person showings and sales activity, and for their associated administrative overhead.
- The difficulty of identifying suitable prospects from their social media posts. Many accounts, especially those of community leaders and influencers, project a carefully curated image that may be at odds with their actual financial situation.
- Finding which platforms, and which groups or pages within those platforms, where a given target demographic may be found.
None of these are insuperable, and powerful software tools can be called upon to make the process efficient and cost-effective.
A Quick Guide to Efficient Social Media Prospecting
Among respondents to NAR’s Member Profile survey, 22 percent reported using social media management tools daily, and another 16 percent use them multiple times a week. Those tools can help agents quickly identify real estate-related search terms that are trending on a given platform, and target them in a digital marketing campaign.
Yet the Technology survey showed the results of such marketing campaigns lagging well behind social media as a driver of new business. The obvious inference is that in any marketing campaign, however, well-constructed, the real estate professional is simply one more advertiser in a large pool. Effective use of social media can do much better, positioning the agents instead as a familiar and trusted presence. Real estate agents can also mine the rich data available on most social media platforms to put themselves in front of only potential clients matching their desired demographic, as opposed to anyone carrying out real estate-oriented searches.
Let’s look at a few characteristic paths to improved social media prospecting, and the tools and skills needed to pursue them with a high likelihood of success.
Use Your Existing Clients as a Template for Social Media Prospecting
All but the newest realtors probably already have a few clients who represent the desired target demographic. Those clients can serve as a template to help identify additional prospects who can potentially result in more business at the same market level (a key component of circle prospecting).
Agents are privy to much information about their existing clients, but typically that data revolves around their preferences as opposed to broad details of their personal lives. Searching those existing clients using Spokeo for Business can help fill in that missing context. The search results provide, among other things, existing clients’ probable family members, estimated net worth, property holdings, and social media accounts. Spokeo for Business can also be used to help decode obscure usernames on social platforms by connecting that account to a person and their phone number.
Those social media accounts hold the key to more effective prospecting. Visiting existing clients’ profiles usually gives at least some opportunity to assess their friends, family members, and social contacts; as well as any influencers they follow and groups or pages they belong to. All of those are potential sources of new leads, who can then be assessed in turn to determine how closely they match the desired demographic your original client represents.
Choose a Desirable Area for Social Media Prospecting
A second option, available to real estate professionals at any career stage, is choosing a neighborhood or geographic area that is representative of the desired market niche. Choose a number of addresses within that area that appear to have an appropriate set of characteristics – evidence of children, perhaps, for those targeting young families; or visible signs of affluence for those seeking a high-value clientele – and search those addresses using Spokeo for Business.
These search results will provide the names of their current owners, as well as their ages, occupations, and details such as probable family members and the social media platforms they frequent. The current owners may or may not be immediate prospects, depending on their current circumstances and the length of time they’ve owned their current home, but they and those who match them demographically are worth cultivating.
Look for the Commonalities Between Current and Potential Clients
After reviewing a number of existing clients, or residents of desirable areas, some common characteristics should begin to emerge. A local employer’s middle managers might be disproportionately represented in some neighborhoods, for example. In that instance, searching LinkedIn for people in the area who cite the same employer might prove fruitful. Using appropriate social media management tools to monitor LinkedIn and other platforms for those who mention taking or leaving a job at that employer is especially useful, as those are immediate prospects.
Building out a list of similar employers in your area, and following the same procedure to identify their employees, should also result in a pool of useful prospects. Finally, searching those names in Spokeo for Business will provide the real estate agent with an overview of each individual’s circumstances and social media presence.
Be In the Spaces Where Your Potential Clients Gather
Building out a social media presence that promotes prospecting requires conscious effort. It should be regarded as a real estate social network and approached in the same light as networking opportunities with other agents or real estate-adjacent professionals in related fields.
Having analyzed enough current or prospective clients to be informed about their online habits, agents can then make a practice of being where those prospects are. This includes being present on the same platforms, following the same influencers, and joining the same groups and community pages.
Being part of the discourse on those pages makes real estate professionals visible in the places where these prospects congregate, and builds familiarity. Other participants in these pages, or commenters on those influencers’ posts, will very often share demographic and financial similarities with the already-known clients or prospects. Searching those individuals using Spokeo for Business can identify them in turn as potential prospects if they meet the desired profile.
Play the Long Game
There are some scenarios in which it may be appropriate to make a direct and immediate approach to a potential prospect, such as a post on LinkedIn announcing a new job and a move to the local area. In that instance, a congratulatory “You’ll love it here!” response and an offer of assistance is appropriate.
A selling-first orientation is appropriate for a professional website, but social media requires more patience. Aside from LinkedIn, with its explicit business orientation, the primary function of a social media platform is to socialize. Attempting to bring every interaction toward a discussion of real estate is likely to be perceived as insincere and manipulative. A more appropriate goal is to be recognized as a member of the community, in both the geographic and the online sense. A real estate agent should aim to be recognized as “one of us,” within that circle.
This doesn’t preclude being recognized as an authoritative voice in the area of real estate, and sharing or linking to your own informational content on social media can help do that. It’s more important, however, to be involved. Real estate agents – or those who manage their social media accounts – should participate in the online conversation, and be neighborly and helpful. The pool of potential prospects will continue to grow as new voices enter the conversation, and agentss who are valued members of the community are well-positioned to capitalize on that positioning with a steady stream of referrals and new business.
Be Mindful of Ethical and Privacy Considerations
Utilizing social media for prospecting, especially in conjunction with a search tool as powerful as Spokeo for Business, introduces a number of potential ethical and legal concerns. Some are derived from the NAR’s Code of Ethics, such as the necessity of seeking another real estate agent’s explicit permission before sharing one of their listings.
A few other notable concerns include:
- Setting out usage policies and accountability for any agency or brokerage staff who have access to business social media accounts or to research tools such as Spokeo for Business.
- Vetting any information posted on social media, whether on the agency or brokerage page or that of an individual agent or broker. Staffers or freelancers may not have the necessary industry knowledge to avoid errors of fact or violations of the NAR Code of Ethics, so having posts reviewed prior to publication is crucial to avoid professional sanctions or the possibility of criminal or civil liability.
- Respecting your clients’ and prospects’ privacy. This includes not repeating or sharing anything posted on a private account or within a non-public group, without the express permission of the account’s or group’s owner. Similarly, while sharing photos of happy homebuyers is tempting and is good marketing, the buyer’s permission should always be explicitly granted and the images should be scrutinized for any personally identifiable information.
Choosing the Right Tool for the Job
Having the correct digital tools available makes an agent’s work more efficient. Customer relationship management (CRM) tools can automate much of the routine work of maintaining contact with clients over the long term. Generative AI services can help with the creation of form letters and blog posts, mailing-list managers can get them in front of your clients and prospects, and social media management tools can help with marketing and reputation management.
Social media prospecting requires what are traditionally thought of as skip tracing techniques, paired with powerful data collection and analysis capabilities. Spokeo for Business is the ideal tool for that task. The company was founded initially as a social media aggregator, and at the time of writing draws information from 129 social media platforms, integrating them with thousands of other data sources to compile an unmatched “360-degree view” of each prospect. The tool itself can be used in a few ways to make prospecting for real estate agents more efficient, including:
- Providing data agents and their teams need to help connect a prospect found on social media — where many people’s user names may not align with their actual contact information — with an actual name, address, and phone number.
- Providing intelligence on leads generated by social media, that can help agents more efficiently turn them into prospects and listings or buyers.
To arrange a demonstration of Spokeo for Business’s capabilities, or a free trial of the product, reach out to our team through the contact information found on our Real Estate page.
Fred Decker is a prolific freelance writer based in Atlantic Canada, with articles appearing in print and online since 2007. He writes primarily on technology, personal finance, and food and food service, drawing on previous careers in those industries. He was educated at Memorial University of Newfoundland, Nova Scotia Community College, and the Northern Alberta Institute of Technology.
Sources
National Association of Realtors: Highlights of the 2023 Member Profile Report
National Association of Realtors: 2023 Technology Survey
National Association of Realtors: Associations and Social Media: Managing the Risks and Liabilities
National Association of Realtors: Create a Social Media Usage Policy