Social media is hugely important for success in today’s real estate climate, but which sites should you use? Morris Massre explains.

Your Klout score is indicative of your influence on social media. It determines your score based on your interaction and postings on a range of social media sites, including Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and Google. The question is, how do you, as a real estate professional, harness those sites to work for you and promote your business? The following is my fool-proof advice.

The wonderful thing about social media for advertising is that almost all of it is free. You just have to use it consistently to make it work for you. And while agents are better at, say, Facebook posts than Instagram, that doesn’t mean you should abandon one for the other. On the contrary, find your niche in one and simply link it to the other in order to make the best use of your post. The best way to do this is with a site like HootSuite. It allows you to link up to five websites at once for free.

With Facebook, you should definitely keep your business completely separate from your personal page; for instance, never post a picture of yourself holding a big, red solo cup. You can generate a lot of Klout and customers by signing up for a pay-per-click with this site if you want a faster response, but it is not necessary. Your ultimate goal is ‘likes.’

Twitter, on the other hand, reaches the masses a whole lot faster and is a lot easier to use, especially because it only allows you to post short bursts of information. Instagram, it’s photo counterpart, is essentially the same as Twitter, but with photo or video attachments at the ready. However, it is Instagram that propels your Klout score through use of photos and videos of your listings or open houses. Simply post them live while you are there and always use hash tags on keywords like #realtor, #florida, #realestate, etc.

Google+ is the future. You invariably have to post on this site, as it provides an enormous amount of Google juice, which will send your posts to the top of the search engines. The good news is Google+ is very similar to Facebook, so the transition is simple.

Bringing up the rear are Pinterest, Yelp and Foursquare. All of these are really more for personal use than business, but you can make them work for you. I use Pinterest to post home improvement ideas and pictures of my current and past listings.  All you need to do is create a real estate “board,” for instance. This helps more with listing presentations than anything else. Yelp and Foursquare are extremely similar. With both, you simply write reviews about businesses you have used and the public does the same for you. This helps when buyers are making a move into your area and are seeking help.

When Mark Zuckerberg came up with the idea for Facebook, I am sure he did not intend it to be for business use, but those who caught on to the social media sensation and used it to promote their real estate agenda are reaping the rewards, as should all Realtors. The transition from print and phone to Web and social media is taking place now, and 59 percent of recent homebuyers represent either Generation X (those born between 1965 and 1978) or Generation Y (those born between 1979 and 2000). It is these two groups that are very Internet-savvy and are using the sites I have mentioned almost exclusively to find their homes and/or Realtors.

These groups also believe that homeownership is a key indicator of success. Couple these two factors together and you have recipe for social media success. It would be a mistake to discount social media as a source for your next sale or listing. Use of social media should be an integral part of your everyday prospecting and marketing if you truly intend to reach the Generation X and Y homebuyers of the real estate world. The websites mentioned here are only the very basics. Each has a purpose in the real estate universe. With a little research and practice, you too can be the master of your social media domain.

Morris Massre is a Realtor with Prudential Florida Realty. He can be contacted at:
Phone: 954-214-6014
Email: agentsunstate@gmail.com
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