By VIKTOR CHONG

THE current borderless world is a fast-paced environment, filled with opportunities for the opportunistic. As a prospective real estate agent, create a profile or platform that maximises the amount of traffic towards your listing.

From a statistical perspective, the NAR Profile of Home Buyers & Sellers stated that 90% of home buyers searched online at some point during their home buying process. More than half of Gen Y and Gen X buyers used a mobile device for their home search. Among those who did, 31% of Gen Y and 26% of Gen X found the home they ultimately purchased via a mobile device. Millennials, who are the most active Facebook users, also happen to be the largest group of home buyers.,

This article addresses on how to leverage on social media to aid your business. The focus will mostly be on Facebook as it has the necessary functions to help you in your business.

It’s free

As a property agent, there is little excuse not to set up a social media account for your business listing as it is free-of-charge. Take Facebook for example; it is not advisable to use your private profile as a business platform as it does not have access to specific features that a business page is capable of.

Secondly, a Facebook personal profile also looks unprofessional from a business point of view. The presentation is psychological, and you get or lose selling points based on such small details.

Know your target audience

With the inception of Gen Y into the real estate business as well as their current ripe age of starting a family, it is important to start speaking their language. For real estate agents, starting a family means the need for housing and rental. It is common knowledge that they spend most of their waking hours on their smartphones. Hence, your website and social media platforms should be mobile-friendly as well.

Fortunately, Facebook, Twitter and Pinterest are quick to capitalise on this knowledge. For those users who are more interested in visual and photography, you can engage Pinterest to appeal to this audience.

Engaging audience

Understand that your platform as a real estate agent does not mean spamming your followers with advertisements about your listings. This is one mistake you do not want to make. Your followers do not want their social media feed to be fed with unnecessary information about houses and prices.

They will leave your page in droves if the only thing you are capable of is spamming them with advertisements. Any seasoned property investor could have gotten a much more important feed on house listings by hooking up with the state’s auction house.

The 80/20 rule

Most times, followers of your page are maintained by giving them quality content. A real estate agent’s platform could provide something that is entirely distinct from the business. For example, posting an article about how to decorate the yard with ten cheap ways will give value to the audience. How about an article to efficiently paint the house or some new homemade solution that removes fungus and dirt from the wall quickly?

Articles such as these will give people a reason to stop by and scroll down to read the posts. By chance, their eyes will catch a few advertisements regarding your listing. Keep advertising to a minimum with the 80/20 rule. This formula follows the principle that ads are kept to the bare minimum of 20%, and the remainder is composed of content such as posts, events and activities for audience interaction.

Contest and games

Make a shout out from the social media platform with a competition that will indirectly attract publicity to your listing. For example, a competition like “The Most Beautiful House Contest” provides your followers with the chance of posting a photo of their own houses. A winner is decided by the total number of likes or votes from the audience. This winner will then receive a prize or something of value from the host. A Facebook page is specially designed for this process, allowing you to create contests and send notifications to all your followers.

Get those comments and ask questions

Ask burning questions that matter to the audience. If the listing is located in a specific

area in Kuala Lumpur, for example, ask if it’s a flood-prone area. You can run a poll to get your follows to interact with your posts. Facebook’s algorithms will allow friends of your followers to see the post if the follower has frequently been engaging with the contents.

Local happenings

You can also talk about events that connect your community in meaningful ways. For example, provide value to the society by promoting charity events or do mention if there is a famous restaurant nearby that provides authentic Peranakan cuisine.

A social media platform shouldn’t operate entirely from a business point of view. You should also offer information on many exciting events that are going on in the places of your listing. This is a subtle way of reinforcing the advertisements to the buyers. Any unusual places that are within walking distance from your listing will garner additional points.

A picture speaks a thousand words

Capture the attention of the audience with beautiful HDR images of your listing. Provide descriptions and details that are necessary for these posts to give potential buyers the ability to make an informed decision. Provide links that lead to your business website.

Facebook advertising

Thankfully, Facebook allows you to target the audience you want by ticking through a detailed list of criteria. You decide the target audience and determine the attributes that these leads have in general. Facebook will then make sure that this advertisement will be seen on the feed of the said leads, for a small fee. This is much cheaper compared to the conventional approach of putting your listing in a newspaper.

Schedule content

The Facebook page comes with the added benefit of allowing you to schedule the time for the post to appear on your followers feed. A scheduled feed will enable them to know when to come back for more. This automatic function also frees up your hand, removing the tedious need to be present for a specified period to make a posting.

Videos

Video content goes a long way towards gaining credibility. With Facebook and Youtube, followers no longer need to be physically present to be at a house viewing. You could just shoot a slow video of the house with a minimum duration of five to 10 minutes. Show off the exterior and interior of the property. Customers will enjoy the benefit of viewing your listing without the need to be physically present.

Tweeting and hashtags

Maximise exposure by attaching a clever hashtag to the tweets. A nice hashtag can be catchy and straightforward. For example #KLGreatProperties

Progress check

Social media allows you to measure progress through audience engagement or with the number of followers you have on the page. With Facebook, you can know the new followers received over a period. Facebook also provides information regarding the effectiveness of each post. The number of likes, comments and shares on each post is calculated and tabulated so that you know the topics that best interest your followers. From a motivational perspective, you also get to know the effects of your efforts on your audience.