If you?re a real estate professional, you know that keeping up with the competition means inserting yourself into every possible niche and utilizing every available soapbox in order to get your name, brand and offerings out to potential buyers and sellers. With the rapidly changing face of media and marketing in today?s technologically savvy world, this means making an advertising jump from bus stop benches to far-reaching social media platforms.
Whether you?re an old hand when it comes to social marketing or you?re looking to get started leveraging these goldmines of people for your business, it helps to know what the competition has been up to. Following the included social media infographic, here are some pre-crunched numbers concerning the use of social media by real estate professionals to help keep you in the loop!
Agents Online: Real Estate and Social Media Usage
In combining an old profession with a new media platform, real estate agents have lead the way in adopting new technology with a full 84% of agents polled revealing that they are utilizing social media in an effort to further their business and increase their sales. Of the major popular social networks, Facebook takes the cake among among those in the real estate industry, an unsurprising fact given its wild popularity and slew of features for businesses; Twitter runs a distant second.
The Importance of Video: Time to Visit YouTube
In a poll of homeowners considering selling their property, 73% stated that they would be more likely to list their property with an agent who offered to create a video tour of their home, proving that the effect of video and popularity of sites like YouTube is not lost on the populace. Despite this revealing statistic, however, only about 12% of real estate agents have a YouTube account attached to their professional efforts. These wildly varying numbers outline an obvious hole in the tactics used by many agents and an area of huge potential for early adopters.
The Realtor.com App: A Game Changer
Apps for smartphones, tablets and other connected mobile devices are all the rage, helping to push the sales of millions of iPhones, iPads and Android smartphones each year. Realtor.com, a popular online listing service, took note and launched its Realtor.com app, a piece of mobile software intended to allow potential buyers to view listings while on the go. The app?s success is undeniable: users spend an average of 16 minutes using it, more than four times the average of other apps, with more than 20,000 property listings viewed per hour.
The Results: Actions Taken Following an Online Search
Proving that potential property buyers are highly active once their search begins, results from the same poll reveal that nearly 50% of internet searchers completing their quest with an online tour of a home that interested them; this also stresses the importance of video tours as we mentioned above. With 29% of searchers locating a local agent and a full 21% visiting the property in person, the potential benefits of a strong online presence for real estate agents are made very clear.
Real Estate and Social Media: An Industry Comparison
Given the statistics we?ve discussed above, it should come as no surprise that the real estate industry leads in small business usage of almost all popular networks, holding comfortable leads on Facebook, YouTube and email use while making gains on Twitter, WordPress.com and Flickr.
Conclusion
There is no question that real estate agents and their associates are faced with a gold mine of leads where social media platforms are concerned and it?s obvious that this is a recognized fact in the industry. Ask yourself what efforts you?ve made to leverage social media into more business and, whether you?re neck-deep in social accounts or are only considering getting started, make a plan to get online and spread the word about your expertise and what you have to offer to potential property buyers and sellers.
Kate is the social media strategies and professional blogger for VIP Reality Info, the Dallas real estate covering the large range of areas including Fort Worth real estate.
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