Social media marketing can be a great tool to promote yourself and get more referral business.

In part three of our series on “Everyone Should Know What You Do,” we acknowledge that seeking referral business alone isn’t always enough to augment a real estate career.  Social media marketing can be a great tool to promote ourselves, but it needs to be used wisely to get maximum benefit.

Social media has transformed marketing. The connected real estate agent will use Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, Pinterest, will have a website, and possibly a blog.

• Consider featuring your listings or those of colleagues in your brokerage on Facebook, Twitter, your site, etc.
• Always tweet and post when you close a deal. Got the sellers above asking price? Tell the world! Worked an amazing deal for your buyers? You have every right to brag a little.
• Pin photos of great houses you encounter in your business: great kitchens, pools, amazing bathrooms, etc. This could be a regular feature potentially drawing limitless audiences.
• Tweet to your community when you have a buyer looking for something specific. A fellow agent may have a matching listing.
• Use a blog to post things relevant to your local community and beyond. You could update readers on lending laws, interest rates on loans, new construction projects, etc. You could solicit input from members of your professional community and link back to them when you share their insights, thereby referring business to them. They in turn are motivated to refer business back to you.
• Ask former clients to write testimonials for you, which you use on your site and post to your various social pages. Referrals like these carry a lot of weight with today’s Internet shopping generation, even when shopping for a real estate agent.
• Update your website and blog regularly as this draws attention from search engines. Use keywords like “homes for sale” and “fixer-upper,” categories buyers and sellers may be searching for.  Be sure to include your location so the leads are relevant.
• Develop ways to refer business when you get leads out of your location or area of expertise.

For more ideas on developing your business and making sure that everyone knows you are a Realtor, see part 1 and part 2 of this series.