Social media continues to be one of the best ways to find new business. Creating your social footprint is a great first step, but having someone who knows how to run those accounts and platforms to optimize your results is the best way to ensure the success of your business through these social channels.
Most large companies have a social media expert working around the clock, monitoring social media for new trends and opportunities. As a real estate professional running your own business, you need to ask yourself if this is something you can do yourself, or if you would be better served finding someone to help. Here are a few things that your social media manager should be able to handle, whether that is you or someone else:
Posting Content
Posting engaging content for social media channels can be difficult, and getting your audience to engage, and ensuring they keep interacting with your content, can be challenging.
Having a good writing style is important for your brand, because the better you write and the easier your message is to digest, the more engagement you will get. The more engagement you get, the greater chance you have to grow your following. So ask yourself: Have you been posting engaging content on your social channels? Is this an area you could use some help in?
Customer Service
Your social media manager can also handle any complaints or praise posted on your social media pages. Your social media manager can respond to these comments to show that your company cares about your clients and customers, whether the comment is good or bad.
When responding to the comments, timeliness is everything; in fact, Facebook even scores you on your response rate. Having someone there to respond to comments as they come up will greatly assist your brand. A personal response thanking those who post good comments shows that your company is paying attention to their followers and that they are a priority. Responding to the negative comments is the first step to finding a solution for any issues that may arise.
Having a social media manager to provide customer service on your social channels is one of the best ways to help your business build a great reputation among your customers. So ask yourself: Do you have time to respond to comments? Is this an area you could use some help in?
Video Creation
Currently, video is still one of the most engaging types of content within social media. Most social media users love to see videos that are tailored to them. A social media manager should be able to create and edit videos. Being that each social platform has its own format for video, your social media manager will also need to know how to make videos and promote them on each channel. So ask yourself: Do you feel comfortable creating and posting videos? Is this an area you could use some help in?
Analytics
Analytics are everything when trying to build a successful business. Unless you understand where you are and how you got your results, you won’t know how to improve and continue growing. A social media manager can help you understand how well your company is doing on social media.
A couple key performance indicators to track are reach, which is how far your message has spread, and impressions, which is how many times your post has been seen. So ask yourself: Do you have time to analyze the performance of your social channels? Is this an area you could use some help in?
If you need help in at least three of the items listed above, it’s time to start considering hiring a social media manager. It can take a lot of work on your part to achieve the results you want from your social media channels. Having a social media manager to handle that will ensure that the business is running smoothly while you focus on selling homes.
Managing social media is tough. If you need help getting managing and creating engaging content for your social channels, Homes.com Social Fuel can help. Click here to learn more.
Patty McNease is director of Marketing at Homes.com. For more information, please visit marketing.homes.com.
