How to Real Estate Today
Raw, unfiltered real estate conversations about how to win in real estate today. We're here for real estate agents, investors, flippers, buyers and sellers.
How to Real Estate Today
10: Social Media—Do You Need It In Your Real Estate Business
In this conversation, Rebecca Green and Kim Borcherding discuss the role of social media in real estate, weighing its benefits against the anxiety it can create for agents. They explore how social media can be a powerful marketing tool, the importance of authenticity, and the need for consistency in engagement. The discussion also highlights the necessity of understanding one's market and audience, as well as the potential for alternative marketing strategies outside of social media.
Takeaways
- Social media can be a powerful marketing tool for real estate agents.
- It's essential to enjoy using social media to be effective.
- Not all marketing strategies work for everyone; find what suits you.
- Social media can create anxiety for agents who feel pressured to perform.
- Authenticity is key; agents should showcase their true selves.
- Engagement strategies can help increase visibility and interaction.
- Consistency in posting is crucial for building an audience.
- Understanding your market can guide your social media strategy.
- Analytics are important to track what works and what doesn't.
- It's okay to opt out of social media if it doesn't align with your business goals.
Rebecca Green (00:00.078)
Hi there, welcome to How to Real Estate Today. I am Rebecca Green and I'm here with my friend Kim Borcherding. And today we're going to talk about a hot topic. Should you use social media in your business? Kim, I'm going to turn it over to you and let you start. Because I know that this is a good one for you. Rebecca, I love to discuss this. I know. Mostly for me, I'll just kind of get this out of the way first.
I can debate both sides of it. I can debate absolutely yes, you should do social media and then absolutely no, you should not do social media. But I think ultimately it comes down to each individual person needs to make a decision that's good for them. So let me kind of outline in my opinion, here's how I perceive it. Social media is an amazing marketing tool. It's free, you know, it's free to use.
monetarily. Now you can say there's other classes associated. It's free to use. you really... And again, the whole thing is these tech companies want to keep your eyeballs on the phone. That's what they... So for example, Instagram. Instagram, the company, desires for the end user to watch this as long as possible. So Instagram has the smartest people in the world.
They spend a bazillion dollars making people be glued to this because the more you're glued, the more advertising they can make and the more consumers. So the more hours you watch your phone, the more money they make. So their algorithm is set up in a way to feed you things that you want to watch that you either that are going to be attractive to you or maybe even trigger you, but whatever, keep you watching regardless of what. So you have.
a technology company who's going to do what they can to promote you if you do it well. So it's free to use. Instagram, mean, there's a learning curve, but once you do it and kind of find a rhythm, well, then people kind of find you on there. And you you can just simply use it as a way to stay in flow with your current sphere and your current community. You can also meet new people through Instagram who then
Rebecca Green (02:17.794)
follow you, you can really get to know you. in my real estate is a very personal business. So people could really get to know who you are. And then when they reach out to you, they're already hiring you. They're not interviewing you. They've been watching your Instagram for months. had some clients last year I worked with like an anonymous Instagram user, like barely any profile photo, something random.
And then message me one day, okay, they're ready to sell their they want to sell them by investment property. They've been watching me for years. like, we want to work together. They know me, they trust me. They've been following me Instagram stories. That's my thing. I'm a big Instagram story person. yeah, so it's It's great. So audience, so if you've used it well, and I know lots of successful agents who use it, and it brings in business. And that's amazing. Now,
But in my opinion, you have to want to use it. You have to like to use it. Yes, it's a learning curve. But if you are somebody who you cringe at, hey, you don't use social media yourself. You cringe at the idea. And it's not for you either. mostly if it's in resistance, my opinion is if you have resistance to it and it doesn't sound appealing, then I actually say don't do it. So what are your thoughts? Yeah. And tapping into some of the things that you said, I also have
I mean, actually, two of the past clients were over a million dollar buyers. And it was the same thing. They had been following me. I didn't know who they were. Both of them were from out of the area. It is an awesome marketing tool, right? It is a great opportunity to capture...
you know, larger audience, right, than a lot of other marketing mediums, like, you know, and you can engage in direct conversation. You can say something today and something different tomorrow, whereas a print ad, you put it out there and it's just out there. So from a sheer marketing, putting my marketing hat on, it's amazing. You know, what prompted this conversation for us was I've had two...
Rebecca Green (04:33.39)
Top producing agents come to me over the last couple of weeks for coaching consultations and social media is creating a ton of anxiety for them. And they're doing this great book of business, but they're feeling like, this something I have to do in my business? And so, yeah, I agree with everything he was saying. So creating anxiety, are they doing social media now or are they not doing social media? Not at all. Like having an account, not really doing much with it.
spending ridiculous amounts of time scrolling, watching other people, looking at other people, trying to figure it out. Yeah, right? So it is, you know, it's a great marketing tool and you know, but like everything, not all marketing is great marketing. That's one thing. And not all marketing is something you have to take on in your business to succeed, right? So, you know, I'm torn in a way like,
I love social media, but I also hate it. So I have a love hate relationship with it. I've seen it be create success for me and my own business. It's something I'm gonna continue to try and get better at. But I am also coaching agents to leave it alone. Not everything there, you you've heard me say it before, there are a million ways to succeed in this business. And one shoe, you one size doesn't fit all. And it's certainly...
isn't a business that you have to do every single thing everyone else is doing in order to succeed. And in fact, as you mentioned, if it's creating anxiety and pain points, leave it alone. You should you should just not engage at all. Because I think doing it and doing it without consistency and vigor. You should just not do it at all. If it's going to be you're trying to use it for your business, if it's for personal
you know, and you're casually on it, then just check it off your list and know that that's what it's for, right? It's just for your own personal use and it's not to seek business. you know, unfortunately I get the anxiety that it's creating for people because, you know, it's pretty curated and pretty scripted all of the successes that all these other people are having. Not everyone's is very curated. You know what I mean? You're so real and so authentic.
Rebecca Green (06:57.568)
on your stories and on your Instagram, really admire that. But for a lot of agents, they're seeing maybe a lot of stuff that's not true or bloviated or over curated, packaged, maybe is a good word. And so they're like, whoa, like if I'm going to do it, I certainly can't do it like that. And I don't have those success stories. So I understand the anxiety.
I also say to be honest, like I'm actually on a social media break right now. And they started a few months ago. Because I have a love hate and I've done a social media break in the past. Yeah. And it's just that time like I'm someone's like, I don't want to be on because again, when I'm on my Instagram stories, like, I'm engaging people know and I know people like I hear lots of positive feedback, which makes me feel good because I like I do it and I like sharing. like sharing about things but
I like, knew myself like, I just need a break. I need to not to share. just have a lot of things in my personal life I'm trying to get in order and I don't want to talk about it. And I just knew that I needed a break. But also I do know agents who do social media, they have anxiety. It's super stressful. the pressure to constantly be
Creating content is very high. Once people get accustomed to expecting you or to see you in that bubble or to see what you're going to share, it's really high. And I've talked candidly with agents that I know of, they spend a ton of time, like hours, hours on it, which is totally fine. if that's your business and that works great and you're enjoying it, great. But I was just like, I don't...
If it's for you and I also tell people, again, I'm like, if you're going to do it, fine, give it a run. But there's a few different ways you can do it. you can have, like, I know an agent, should put her on the podcast here soon, where she just reposts typically other pictures of other beautiful houses. And she writes, she's a beautiful writer. And so she does storytelling in like in her copy in the caption. Yeah, I know another agent who very
Rebecca Green (09:12.478)
very rarely puts her face on it, but just as reels of different, different beautiful houses. She also writes, I have other ones who do like just really funny reels, like there's a lot or just post like beautiful house, like there's a lot of different ways you can do it, but you do have to do it consistently. And I go, sometimes it takes a while to figure out what you enjoy doing and kind of what's, what's your flow. But also if you do it consistently for a while.
and it's not leading to even more awareness. I I would say that was something I did hear people, people ate like I didn't really use it to try to track more. I want to stay in flow with the people's already. Right. So you are using to attract new business that was not that intentional. I would have to really be more disciplined and more consistent. It was really my goal was simply is to remind the people who already knew me.
or had some acquaintance that are ready, that I'm here in real estate and I'm still doing it. And then I personally enjoy sharing on Instagram stories on a bunch of topics. I know, because I talk about different, you follow my Instagram, I'm going to talk about health, I'm going to talk about real estate, I'm going talk about family, I'm talk about relationships, I'm going talk about something I'm doing. I know if you're trying to grow your stuff, you should not be talking about all this stuff. You should be actually really consistent. wait a second. wait a second.
You know, actually, I think to your point earlier, there are all of these different ways to do it. And that is so authentic to you. And I think you actually should do that if it's authentic to you, right? If you're a person who's comfortable with those things, it really is a window into who you are as a person, right? So I actually think that you should do that only if it feels right, only if you're comfortable with it. Whereas you had mentioned like you have.
And I also know folks that have a great following and they are very rarely on screen. Very rarely with their face on screen. They're showing houses, they're doing walkthrough tours of houses. You know, it's really focused on the local market that they're in and it's focused on homes, right? So I think to lessen the anxiety of it, I think there's something to be said about
Rebecca Green (11:32.526)
also recognizing there are a million different ways to do it and utilize it and have it create new business and or success for you. My best advice though is to kind of stop the scroll. The scroll is the anxiety inducing part, right? When you are yo-yoing between all these different other, you know, content producers, right? They might be real estate agents, but a lot of them are just heavy.
producers, right? When you're yo-yoing between all of these different ways of tackling social media, it's noise, right? It becomes hard to decide like, which way should I go? Which way should I go? So you're bouncing back and forth and back and forth. you know, sticking with being authentic, first and foremost, always, I think is what you should lead with, regardless of what you're considering adding to your business, right?
Absolutely. And I would say back to the scrolling, in my opinion, if somebody came to me said, I want to do social media, what should I do? I said, here's the thing. I'd be like, here's like, do you have a vision of what you want to do? I'd be like, no, I don't know. Like, okay, here's a few different accounts that I think that do a good job in different ways. If you hate to write, you're not going to be write good copy. Like if you're like, I like writing, but if you don't like to write, don't do that.
But figure out your different ways. And then I personally think that you should hire a coach. There are now real estate agents who have found success on social media and you should pay them. I know you could pay them to coach you and teach you the formula because you will spend a stupid amount of time wasting away trying to do all throwing spaghetti against the wall.
to seeing what work where there's a very specific way. There is an agent that I know she taught in my group a few months ago, Mariah, she's out of Salt Lake and she is just super like in the box how she does it every time consistent in a worksheet. And again, like for her, and again, this is I think an important piece. So like, you can pay her to teach it and I'm like, just do just do what Mariah says. Do not cry.
Rebecca Green (13:50.414)
to do all these crazy things or coming up with your own formula. Find a formula that an agent has done, coach with them, have them do it and just do that and just do that. And then do it consistently for one year. And then you say, this working or not? mean, and I'd say after three months, if you like hate it and you like despise doing it, then don't do it. But it's going to take a while to see results. You need to pay attention to your analytics. You need to see what people are paying attention, what people are starting to do. That's something else I've noticed.
that people don't look at their analytics. So which is kind of silly, like, see when you're posting different things, what is what is resonating with people. And then whatever that is, do more of that, but use a formula coach with somebody. Also, this is something that's not really talked about, but I think is super critical. Like, should you do social media? I don't know what is your market? Let me tell you, if you have a market that has inbound relocating, of course,
Mariah is in Salt Lake. moved from San Diego to Salt Lake. Salt Lake is a big inbound market. There are people moving there, lot from California, who have no contacts here, no resource, no referral. don't, you know, so they're going to look at all of all the amenities. I don't know. There's a billion things to know about Salt Lake and I know nothing. So they're going to look hashtag
Salt Lake realtor and so their relocation. if you live in a place that has big inbound movement of people coming from other places who know nothing about the area and you are highlighting about living in Salt Lake, well that is great for you. And that's his agent. That's what for her, she grew her account and not that long into, I mean, I'd lost again a few months ago, was like 170,000 followers.
through just kind of talking about living in Salt Lake and that's where most of her business. And for her, she didn't have a sphere there. She's not from there. And that's the other thing. Like, okay, do you have another option? She didn't have any other options. Like she was new. She moved to a new development in a place that she didn't really know anybody. So that I think is a tremendous opportunity. It's a great vehicle, like I was saying, for capturing a very large audience quickly.
Rebecca Green (16:11.182)
And like I said, I have a love-hate relationship with social media. I love it because I know the power of it and also the value because it is essentially free. You can spend way too much time on it, but it's essentially free, right? Yeah. So, I talk a lot about a return on your investment. You made a really valid point that I just want to tap into about
you know, putting the effort in, being consistent in giving it a shot for a period of time. I think another thing that happens is agents who have trepidation about starting social media, they do a little bit, they don't see any results, no one responds, no one, you know, and then they walk away and they stop. There are a couple of tips that I know I implemented with my team a couple of years ago that actually really made a difference. If you can find five or six people
make sure there five or six people in the business, right, that you are, you know, partnered up with. And you all comment, like, and share posts of each other. It will train the algorithm for you. And it will really start to increase your engagement if you're all very consistent. That's one thing that I learned a bunch of years ago. The other thing as a quick tip is when
when you are trying to make your Instagram, for example, part of your business strategy, you may very well be searching for things on that Instagram account that have nothing to do with your business, right? So like I love to cook and we own a farm. So I'm constantly like looking at things about chicken coops because I wanna, I, know.
I don't want my chicken coop to be Pinterest worthy and Instagram worthy. So like I'm always searching things like I want a mini cow. They're really cute, right? And I'm searching goats and you know, very farm centric stuff. And I'm always looking at recipes. Well, that's telling Instagram something very specific about me. And so not only is it delivering content like that to me, it's delivering my content, unfortunately, to other people that are looking
Rebecca Green (18:34.956)
mini cows and that's not going to help me sell real estate in Portland, Oregon. So here's the tip. You go into your settings on Instagram, scroll down to history and clear your history. Really? Clear your history to reboot it. Then go into Instagram and go to search. And when you go to search, all those different suggested for you things come up. If you open them and click on the three dots, you can actually
Okay.
Rebecca Green (19:08.238)
Okay, so I don't know if we're going to edit this out, but basically my camera lets you do hand gestures and it zooms in and that was weird. So hopefully our editors cut that out. They might not. I'm not sure this will make a good blooper, but I'll just give my hands to myself. Okay, back to that comment. So I'm going to start over. So here's a tip. Go into your settings, scroll down to history and clear your history. Right? That's one thing.
The other tip is go into search and all of those suggested for you posts will come up. If there are things that aren't relevant for your business or that you don't necessarily want there to be focus on your content being delivered or that kind of content coming to you, you can tap on the three dots once you open it and you can something like, you know, not interested, I believe is what comes up. That's a really good way to reset.
the algorithm so that it's delivering your content to like-minded people. Make sure that you're not even like-minded, but people who are interested in the same thing. So make sure you're actually commenting on local businesses. Make sure you're engaging on local businesses. I do think that a lot of folks who come back and say, I don't get any engagement. Well, who are you engaging with? I don't engage. I just scroll. So it is a social.
Right? It's social media. when you go to a party, you're not sitting in the corner. Right. That would be creepy. That would make you a creep, right? When you're just a lurker. You don't want to be the lurker. You actually want to be the life of the party and you want to be social. you know, partnering up and actually like making a concentrated effort for a small group of people to start commenting and engaging is super helpful. And again, I did do a test with my team and we all saw immediate responses.
increase in followers and that was pretty cool to see. That's awesome. I will say there's you know and I guess my opinion like real estate agents should feel if you want to use social media you're pretty lucky because at least you do a job that's somewhat interesting to a lot of people. Like again there's TV shows about real estate because it is interesting.
Rebecca Green (21:30.99)
Yeah, and you have so much great content that you can share. people are interested in it. Again, if you're like a plumber, don't know, like, or like, maybe I I don't know, whatever. But there are so many jobs, you're an accountant, not that interesting, you know, yeah, we are so fortunate, to be honest, to have a job that is every day so different every day you're showing
Look at houses, good people like beautiful houses. They like it all. That can be done. That's what I do think that there's so much opportunity because you're kind of have the same thing you can choose. I don't want to do talk. I'm like, like every day your job is interesting. I know your job. And every day there is something going on. And there is an agent here in the local market that I kind of I helped encourage to try social media.
she tells me like, she just started not that long ago and people are calling her her audience, like people in her community are paying attention, they see her and I was like, you were interesting person, like, and kind of like how we interviewed Tony, who's anonymous, like this other agent, if you knew her in person, but online, was kind of anonymous. Yeah. But you know, it's nice that people get to see who you are and what you do. And I do know that people are responding well. And she's not
You know, that's a good point about our jobs being interested. You know, here's a couple of things that you could try if you weren't comfortable face forward, right? You could really try doing tours of homes every day, posting, you know, every day. Every time you're showing a buyer, it's an opportunity to even just shoot a picture of a great piece of art, an amazing thing, beautiful flooring, you know.
Portland is filled with gorgeous front doors. That's one thing I love so much about our market, like amazing, you know, front doors from all different periods. Take pictures of the doors, post the doors, gardens. I mean, you're right, there are so many things. Neighborhoods, if you're showing, you know, houses in a particular neighborhood, hit the neighborhood 15 minutes before.
Rebecca Green (23:45.026)
just walk down the street and showcase the restaurants, the coffee shops. There's so many businesses and what I find anytime I post about a business, they then repost that. So like, here's this cute little wine bar that I went to. They be shared to their audience and that's a way to get introduced to new people as well. all great ideas.
I still want to go back to if you don't want to do it, it's okay. Leave it behind and don't spend any more time stressing about it because there are other things that you could spend that time doing like really tapping into your sphere, getting really good at your email marketing. I think it's okay to say out loud that social media is an amazing opportunity from an advertising standpoint, but it's okay also not to do it.
It's not that you don't have to participate. Totally. There's an agent in like us we go who I have so much respect for. He's a great agent. a ton of business. And over the last year when I've talked with him and trying to get him like, don't you try social media? Like he's so, I mean, he's great personality. Well, no. Yes, well, no. And he's like, no. And he's like, I'm just, he's like, no, it's not for me. I'm not gonna stay consistent with it.
to make a movie, and I have so much respect for them. Like, that's awesome. Like, he just knows it. And it's fun. He gets to do his other ways. And I really respect that. And that's one of the things that, again, is so interesting about real estate. You can, there are a million different ways to succeed, right? I've already said that once today. I say it all the time. And, you know, authenticity reigns, you know, wins, I think, over and over and over again.
Yeah, I'm going back to Tony Michael, the agent that we've interviewed on the podcast. Check back in the past podcast to hear from her. She has run an amazing business for many, many years and social media has never been a part of her strategy, yet she continues to excel and succeed in her business. So that might be an interesting one for people to listen in on. I actually shared that podcast episode with the two
Rebecca Green (26:07.694)
brokers that reached out to me about coaching recently and top of their list. I always ask the question, you know, what are you struggling with the most and both of them social media was at the top of the list for both of those agents. You know, so that was a great podcast episode for them to listen to and they both actually knew Tony, but hadn't done deals with her for quite some time. that's interesting. Yeah, mean, that's ultimately my advice is if you're interested in doing it.
fine, do it, but hire somebody to teach you how to do it well, figure out what you think, and do it consistently, a minimum six months to a year, and then you can evaluate. And if it gives you anxiety, then don't do it. And have peace with that, give yourself permission to be okay with that and have peace with it, and move on. I love it, I love it. All right, everyone, thanks for joining. Super glad to have you, and let us know how you're doing with social media.
We'd love your comments if you're a yay or nay on the social media front. I love hearing from people who actually aren't using it at all. And we love to find new people to follow and watch on our own social media. So we will see you next time. Thanks so much.
