Social Media Management Services. Worth it?

Question

I'm considering using a social media management service. I love the idea because I don't really like social media and don't want to spend the time to manage it.  I feel like a few hundred dollars for the year, which is tax deductible, may be worth it.  I'm curious if anyone has had success utilizing one of these services or could provide some feedback on their experience.  Thanks, Mark

Dev Horn · Answer

Let's get specific here as "social media" can mean a lot of things...

The most useful social platform is probably FACEBOOK.  Just create a FB page for your real estate business and start reaching out for friends and family to Like it.   Then create posts about houses you list (with pic of house) or buyers that you helped (with pic of family), etc. and BOOST those posts.  Boosting posts is inexpensive and a powerful way to get awareness in your personal network and beyond.

Also set yourself up a Google business listing (See Google My Business).  Once "verified", this puts you on the Google Map.  You also get a Google+ page - we post the same things to it as FB but of course no one uses Google+  =)  But GOOGLE likes if you use it!

Also consider making videos and creating a YouTube channel for your REI business - here again, Google owns YouTube so they give you a lot of "SEO" credit if you use it.

If you're a listing agent, you might feature pics of houses on Instagram or Pinterest.

You might also create a BLOG and write about real estate and work on developing a following there.

Then there are the RE-specific social sites: BiggerPockets, Trulia, Zillow (you can create blogs and post articles and comments on those sites).

I've never found much use for Twitter, myself.

Point is, it's not hard - you're already doing social media here in BP!  Just work a plan to develop a presence on those other sites.  I would not spend $$ on someone to do this at a small scale.

Best of luck to you!

"Intelligence is the ability to adapt to change." ~ Stephen Hawking

John Steele · Answer

Just an FYI with connecting different social media accounts, this is not always a good practice. Different social media platforms display information differently, thus having one post spit out to all your channels will most likely result in certain channels looking messy.

Twitter is a prime example of this with its character limitation. If you post something to say, Facebook or Instagram, and it has a long description or a lot of hashtags, Your twitter post will effectively just get cut off at the character limit. In my experience links and pictures can also get botched when everything is connected.

Different platforms also have different generally accepted practices. On Facebook it is not beneficial to use hashtags, on Twitter you want to use 1-3, on Instagram go crazy and have like 8-12. You can see that if you were to link these all together that it can actually be more detrimental than beneficial.

It can be tedious obviously to go this route, but the results will be much cleaner and make your different channels look more professional. There are tools like Hootsuite, Sproutsocial, and a bunch of others than can help to manage multiple accounts from one platform.

Bryan Gamble · Answer

I agree with Derek totally. Social media when used correctly, can have a huge affect on any business these days.  Too many realtors and investors are too easily sucked into an advertising mindset instead of a promoters mindset. The difference in the two is that an advertiser creates a budget and then looks to high traffic revenues to throw dollars towards advertising. While a promoter more often than not creates or finds a specific venue and promotes a service i.e. party promoters/planners. Anywho...what im trying to say is don't just rely on Trulia etc. Develop your own platform via social media and promote it in your local market. Hope my social media pep talk was helpful :)

John Steele · Answer

@Shane Willcox If your looking for examples you should be able to find most of the accounts I work on under the handle cthomesllc (ex: twitter.com/cthomesllc; instagram.com/cthomesllc).

Replied to your message.

For anyone else, feel free to reach out to me with questions.

Shane W. · Answer

Good to know @John Steele

Seeing your profile it looks like you're the man to know with social media.

I'll be sure to hit you up with more advice down the road if you don't mind.

Shane W. · Answer

Just to add to this.

It's very easy to link these accounts together so that the same things appear over the different platforms, but you only have to post it on the one site/platform. Not all allow this cross posting (due to obvious reasons), but it's easy to do.

Also remember Instagram is owned by Facebook so linking those together will help the SEO within Facebook.

Mark D'Angelo · Answer

Wow, thanks a lot for your replies. I'm very impressed with you gentlemen's willingness to share your knowledge and experience with me.  I really like to promoter angle.  It makes a lot of sense.  I am just going to do it myself taking everything here into account.  Why pay?  I can invest a small amount of time and do it without additional monitary investment.  Thanks again for your time and information.

Mark D'Angelo · Answer

I'm going to take that advice.  Thank you for your time. Mark

Social Media Management Services. Worth it?

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