People’s attention is shifting and shifting fast. People no longer take the time to look at billboards or direct mail. Therefore, to attract the eyeballs and ears of potential clients, you have to take matters into your own hands, and social media is the best way to do this.
This is the basis behind Gary Vaynerchuk’s recent presentation in Homes.com’s Secrets of Top Selling Agents webinar, “How to Use Social Media the Right Way,” which explained how correctly using social media platforms will increase your business.
Vaynerchuk, a social media expert, is co-founder of VaynerMedia and a New York Times bestselling author. Last week, Homes.com presented some of his best tips from the webinar, including becoming the local newspaper in your town.
This week, Homes.com will review more golden nuggets from Vaynerchuk’s webinar.
A Knockout Punch
Vaynerchuk explains the concept of “Jab, Jab, Jab, Right Hook” (also the name of his best-selling book), which is a blueprint to social media marketing strategies. When managers and marketers outline their social media strategies, they plan for the “right hook,” meaning their next sale or campaign that’s going to knock out the competition.
All real estate pros should think of jabbing as patiently engaging with customers to build the relationships crucial to successful social media campaigns, while a right hook is that one punch that will take down their opponent or their customer’s resistance in a single blow. Vaynerchuk says right hooks convert traffic to sales and easily show results.
“When you jab, make sure you are doing something that provides value—such as infographics, interviews, a fun fact, a ‘Did You Know’—this can be more important than a hook on social media,” Vaynerchuk says. “With the right hook, don’t be afraid to go in for the ask. Get your message across that you are ‘open for new clients’ or ‘looking for business.’”
Facebook Dark Posts
Vaynerchuk stresses the importance of target marketing. Specifically, he places a lot of emphasis on utilizing Facebook Dark Posts, which are posts that do not appear on a timeline but can be accessed by anyone with a direct link or by clicking through from an ad. These should be used extensively by real estate pros to create copy that then appears as a sponsored piece of content.
“Dark posts give you the ability to reach anyone, not just those on your feed,” he says. “You can run a Facebook dark post and target people most likely to move and the harder to find people coming to town.”
Vaynerchuk says you need the attention of the customer to even get a chance, and dark posts are a great way to get in front of people. In fact, whatever money you are currently spending on ads, he suggests 50 percent should now be used on social media as a whole and dark posts specifically.
Improving Reach
A real estate pro should spend approximately two to three hours a day on social media sites to be successful. While this may sound like a lot of time, Vaynerchuk says people are already wasting at least this much time on things that don’t bring results anyway. Therefore, transitioning your time to savvy strategies is key. Plus, the time can be delegated to an office worker or intern.
“In three to four months you will start getting dividends, but you have to do it right,” Vaynerchuk says. “We need to do a better job of taking care of a customer before we have them.”