Networking is fundamental in the real estate business. If you are having trouble attracting real estate leads, take a look at your real estate network. Read on for tips and tricks on how to build a strong network.
Here’s how you can build a strong network as a real estate agent.
Improve Your Social Media Presence
Social media has made it easier for professionals to share their knowledge and insights with their potential customers in a format that they can easily understand and share with their own networks. If your social media presence is poor, you’re missing out on a lot of potential leads and brand recognition opportunities.
Over 77% of real estate agents use social media to boost their business and build strong meaningful relationships with people in their community.
Use platforms like Facebook and Instagram to share your listings and sales. With proper social media marketing strategies, you will soon cut out a niche for yourself in the real estate industry.
It’s just as important to interact with users, answer their questions, and engage them in the comment section of your social media posts.
Make sure you sign up on multiple social media channels and stay active on all of them. Check your messages regularly and respond to customers’ queries in good time.
Facebook, LinkedIn, and Instagram are the top three social media platforms that real estate agents use the most. LinkedIn is especially useful for building up a network of connections, that can be used for a multitude of purposes later on.
Consistent communication will make potential customers trust your brand and keep them running to you for their real estate needs.
Join Local Networking Groups and Organizations
Local professional organizations are also great places to build your real estate network. Through these organizations, you will get to meet other professionals and business owners just like you.
This is particularly important if you are a new player in the industry. You will be in a position to build a strong relationship with people from whom you can learn the ins and outs of the business.
You will also be able to build a network of other professionals whose services complement yours. For instance, a real estate attorney will come in handy during closing and home inspectors can help when your clients need an inspection of their property.
You can attend Chamber of Commerce Group meetings, real estate auctions, home/trade shows, or Real Estate Investor Association meetings. These are all amazing places to start networking and build relationships with people in your community.
Create A Professional Real Estate Website
Nearly every business these days has a website to promote their business. Creating a professional website and blog can dramatically increase your engagement with potential customers, creating a real estate family out of your online community.
Demonstrate your professional ability across your blog, showcasing your knowledge and providing useful information to your potential clients. If you have been creating listing videos to share on social media, post them up on your website as well.
Gone are the days when potential buyers would have their first impression of a piece of property from a physical home tour; first impressions are increasingly being made on computer screens.
Take high-resolution photos of the properties you have on sale and publish them on your website. Showcase the best qualities of the properties and the area in which they are located.
“When I had my website redesigned and started focusing on increasing my organic rankings on Google, we were able to increase traffic by 7,116% and reduced our bounce rates by 15%. I highly recommend investing in your website as your ROI can come back tenfold.” – Derek Timmons, CIR Realty, Maverick Group
You can go 10 steps further than your MLS system, and start spicing up your listings on your site even further. Provide as much information as you can for your visitors so that they trust your expertise and eventually trust you with the sale or purchase of their home.
Keep your readers and potential clients well-informed by producing original, consistent, and high-quality content on a regular basis. People would like to engage with blogs that help answer their questions and provide solutions to their problems.
You will soon have regular readers who look forward to receiving your property agency services when the need arises.
Develop A Great Team
Develop close working relationships with competent and trustworthy people. As a real estate agent, you will often find yourself collaborating with many other professionals, both internally and externally. Develop a good relationship with your internal team and other individuals and firms that exist within the community you operate in.
As you refer your clients to other real estate vendors and professionals with whom you don’t directly compete, make sure these individuals and firms are competent enough to carry out their mandate. Having a strong relationship with these complementary businesses is a very powerful networking tool.
The Zillow Group Consumer Housing Report indicated that 28% of an agent’s clients are drawn from referrals. Whenever the professionals in your team encounter clients who need your services, they will not hesitate to refer them to you.
Surrounding yourself with a great team allows you to develop a symbiotic business environment that gears you up for greater success in your real estate business.
The professionals you may have to work with on a referral basis include home inspectors, real estate attorneys, and mortgage lenders. Your team is a reflection of you and your business. Therefore, select dependable professionals.
If you haven’t yet, start networking and do it right. If you are thinking of going it alone, you’re setting up your real estate business for failure.
By creating a strong relationship with other players in the industry, you will build a real estate network that produces leads.
Networking helps you build a strong client base as well as an authentic relationship with local professionals to whom you can refer your clients and vice versa. Fused with a strong online presence and membership to relevant local professional organizations, cementing these business aspects will soon make your business the talk of the town.
