Make More Money By Connecting With Millennials Through Social Media
Staying busy and connected.
Meet Connie Sheppard. She started in the real estate industry part-time 14 years ago and shifted to working full time around 6 years ago. She is not from the city, but she has made a good life for herself here. This is Connie’s second career, first hailing from the Financial District in a major urban center and brings an entrepreneurial mindset to her business model as a real estate agent.
The foundation of her business model?
“My people. I meet approximately 30 people a month for casual pop-bys or follow-ups. I generally meet up with people, we do lunches, I love doing face-to-face time and I generally don’t have a lot of time to sit down in front of a computer.”
Connie is a people person. She loves interacting and seeing her clients.
With more people online, how does Connie stay connected?
When Connie first started full time as a real estate agent she noticed a shift in the way people were looking for houses. More and more people were turning to their computers when looking to buy a home. She says she didn’t notice a specific demographic that was on the internet more looking for houses but she knew having a presence online was something she needed.
“Keeping up with technology is so important to help my business, being able to reply and respond to clients,” she says. “It’s no longer phoning them or even text messaging them. I had to start instant messaging them on Facebook.”
Facebook has always been a part of Connie’s business model. She found she got immediate responses to messages. She looked into why this wave of potential homeowners were so responsive and she found that people are spending more time on Facebook than any other social media. She knew that Facebook was the perfect way for her to connect to this new wave of homebuyers, she didn’t want to spend too much of her spare time on Facebook. She wanted to be out in the world networking with potential clients face-to-face and meeting up with current clients for follow ups.
The other challenge was her social media presence and how to engage potential clients online without having to spend too much time online. Connie researched blogs, real estate publications and other pages trying to find information that she could post. It was difficult and time consuming finding the right information and further turning it into something worth talking about.
“CityBlast fixed the worries,” says Connie.
Connie chose her market and how often she wanted posts on her Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn, then she let it go. “Sometimes I don’t even look at it,” she smiles.
Now she could stay connected through her Facebook network and maintains an engaging online presence without having to do all the menial work, all for a fraction of the cost of an assistant.
CityBlast not only keeps Connie connected, it helps expand her business.
The posts started working within a day. The content ranged from local real estate news to architecture and design. Connie would randomly check her Facebook to see that people were actively engaged with the content.
“People comment on [the posts] online and in person – you know they’ve seen it!”
She also uploads her listings and has the chance to showcase other agents’ listings in the same city. In one instance she was hosting an open house that she had uploaded to CityBlast . People were showing up to the open house claiming they had seen it around on social media. These were people that weren’t even her contacts. This was not only a chance to show off her listing, but to make great connections for future business.
In another instance, a Facebook connection shared a listing that was on Connie’s wall, but not her listing. The sister of the contact saw the listing and immediately got in touch. They didn’t choose the listing that they saw, although did continue to work with Connie and eventually bought a condo downtown. She has also received other referrals from those new clients.
Connie just made another connection. Her business was growing and CityBlast helped her with that.
Maintaining a level of professionalism is hard as your business expands.
Now that Connie is running a thriving real estate business, she has even less time to spend online. At this point in her career, maintaining a level of professionalism is more important than ever. She needs to keep her image as a real estate expert, yet still keep connected with her existing and potential clients.
“Consistency is key, being there, being present. People know what to expect. It keeps it professional,” Connie explains.
How does Connie find the time to manage even more clients? Well, CityBlast is still posting for her. It doesn’t skip a beat while Connie is away meeting clients and growing her business. She says that if CityBlast didn’t exist, she would have been looking for the same service elsewhere. It gives her peace of mind knowing that a real social expert is researching content and posting on her behalf. She spends very little of her own time on social media.
“I don’t have to think about it, it just happens”
Connie is a smart business woman who knows she needs to allocate her time effectively. She is a people person who has a lot of clients to see and only so many hours in the day. Some of the biggest challenges to running her own business as a real estate agent were getting connected, expanding her reach and maintaining a higher level of professionalism. CityBlast helped her overcome these big obstacles in a matter of minutes.
