Characteristics of Successful Agents Show Bent Toward Social Media

With 2012 coming quickly to a close, agents are looking toward next year and its promises. These certainly include financial success with growth in brand recognition. Interestingly, the same old prospecting methods of 2012's highly successful agents will hold true to start out 2013. Of course, we'll see social media cloud based newcomers in 2013, but we can count on the strength of now the familiar avenues to get us moving in the right direction.

A few statistics that Chris Smith of Inman shared at Agent Reboot have stuck in my head. I keep working on how to make these create a return for my business:

• 51% of the people who follow you on Facebook and 64% of those who follow you on Twitter tend to buy from you.
• 65% of bandwidth is used on videos.
• 50% of real estate agents who have more than 500 friends on Facebook make more than $100,000 while only 33% of the agents who make $34,000 have more than 500 friends.
• 75% of real estate agents who make more than $100,000 use an iPad whereas only 50% of agents making less than $100,000 do.
• There are more cell phones in the world than toothbrushes.

If Facebook is Good then Twitter is Great!

• Make sure your Twitter Bio is up to speed - 160 characters that describes you. Jay Thompson, The Phoenix Real Estate Guy @PhxREguy has a great Bio
• Follow local people. Twitter isn't about having a lot of followers. It's about having local followers. Use Twitter.com/search to find what is trending in your area
• Create lists - Local News sources create great local content
• Use Hootsuite.com to manage Twitter and Facebook

Video, Video, Video

• Positioning in a room should be driven by what you want to show
• Go wide for size
• Get in close for detail
• Use a slow pan
• Camera against the window
• Face the light to minimize shadows
• Camera = Blackhole
• Turn up the energy consciously
• Smile BEFORE pressing record and through the stop record button
• Introduce
• End with a call to action
• Economy of Language - 10 seconds per sentence
• One feature per shot
• Don't mimic the shot "Here's the kitchen"
• Use your own voice

In today's market, video drives sales. Consider the following when creating a real estate video:

What to Shoot: If you were looking for a home, what would you look for? When the sellers bought their home, they saw certain features in this home.That's the same thing other buyers are looking for too. Video these features. Watch you lighting. It's tough to shoot towards windows.

What to Say:  Have you ever walked into the kitchen and wondered what room you were in? I'm going out on the limb to say, neither has anyone else! So, focus on the features of the room instead. You've got about 15 seconds in a room to talk about its awesome features.