The Real Estate Agent’s Guide to Social Media Branding

Since real estate agents essentially run their own businesses, they need to market themselves—their abilities, their expertise, their trustworthiness. That means carefully developing a personal brand, especially on social media. Not only is social media one of the first places a new lead will go for information about your real estate business, it’s also designed to share carefully crafted personal information. It’s the perfect platform for personal branding.

What is Personal Branding?

It’s the process of creating and managing the personal image you present to others. It’s your chance to shape what leads, clients, and strangers associate with your name, face, and business. It’s a powerful marketing tool.

Why is Social Media the Best Place to Do It?

Because social media is optimized for displaying carefully crafted personal information. Everyone on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and the rest are already curating their personal brands. Think about your Facebook friends or celebrities you follow. They all share tidbits that feel personal but that support the public persona they’re crafting: doting mother, dedicated humanitarian, talented athlete, armature cook.

Social media is a consistent and casual way to stay top-of-mind with your sphere of influence and spread awareness of your personal brand to new people.

How to Build Your Personal Brand On Social Media—5 Steps

1. Pick Your Focus. Choose one to three things you want your personal brand to communicate to your followers. Try to format them as either adjectives or descriptive phrases. Here are some examples: Dedicated, knowledgeable about local real estate, involved in the local community, tech savvy, detail-oriented. These are the qualities you want viewers and followers to associate with you, your brand, and your business.
2. Update Your Profile Consistently. First, make sure all your information and images are current. Then start posting every day on the platforms that are most suitable for your business.
3. Stay Consistent in What You Share. Maybe you post a new listing every day or always post a recipe on Fridays. The goal of personal online branding is to become recognizable, so choose a few kinds of things to share and stick to that pattern.
4. Stay Consistent in Your Look. Use the same name and profile picture across all your social media channels; you want to be recognizable. It’s okay to switch up the language in your bio or your cover photo, if that’s an option, to suit the platform. Consider using more formal language in your LinkedIn bio and less formal language in your Twitter bio. Twitter is less formal than LinkedIn in general, and it’s also focused on shorter posts; you can reflect those changes in tone in your profiles.

What Should I Leave Out?

Underneath this whole discussion is the fact that a successful personal brand leaves out a lot of real information about who you are. That doesn’t mean your brand is inauthentic. On the contrary, good personal branding is effective because it’s rooted in your real interests and talents. But that doesn’t mean you should include everything.

If you’re unsure whether or not to include a piece of personal information in your social media brand, ask yourself these three questions:

1. Does it support your focus?
2. Would I share this information with a work colleague I don’t know well?

These simple tips are a great way to build a personal brand that supports and grows your business. Time to log in and get started!

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Stay tuned to the ZipperAgent blog for more tips and advice about building your real estate business.