It’s no secret that property is a people business and the value of building a strong personal brand has never been as important for estate agents.
Trust between you and your clients is priceless. Every day, property seekers choose agents based on how secure they make them feel about the process ahead of them. For this reason, giving them an insight into who you are and what you represent can only be beneficial to developing those all-important professional relationships.
Having a social media presence can help with this. By sharing more than just your most recent listings to come to market and providing content that highlights the person behind the properties you represent, you can really set yourself apart from the competition.
When he joined us on our OnTheRecord podcast, Daniel Daggers, Founder of DDRE, explained that, “the first viewing takes place on the mobile phone… it happens digitally.” Daggers highlighted that as information becomes more democratised, the value of that information is greatly reduced because everyone has it. “So where does that value go? It goes to the person who is delivering it to the customer.”
This point is key; there are many agents out there and there’s plenty of information being shared in lots of different places, but what can make you stand out from the crowd? Quite simply, the answer is, you! Your personal brand as a property professional is all about you and the service you provide. By establishing your presence online and sharing great content, you can better the relationships with your current and potential future clients as a result of the added value you bring.
Below, we share some tips on how you can easily build and maintain your personal brand…
Humanise and diversify your social media presence
Once you get into the swing of posting on a particular social media channel, it can be easy to neglect other platforms where there’s potential to tap into a wider audience and more potential clients. Diversifying your content and having a presence across multiple platforms will expand your reach and build awareness with new audiences. Of course, that doesn’t mean you must be on every platform out there, but becoming familiar with at least a couple that work for you is a great place to be. A lot of the time, the same posts you share to Facebook and Twitter can be translated to Instagram and TikTok with just a few simple tweaks. If you’re sharing your new property listings to Twitter and Facebook, why not share them as carousels of images on Instagram and TikTok too? Once you’re comfortable using the platforms that work best for you, you can start to build your personal brand as property professional.
If your agency already has an account with several social platforms, it might be worth having a discussion with your team about starting to launch your own personal brand from these accounts too as a way of diversifying the content. Starting to build your personal brand through the company’s social channels will help build your audience and let potential clients get to know you and help your colleagues build their personal profiles too. Simply sharing staff profiles for each of your team members is a great way to start with this. Whether you want to create an interesting graphic or simply post an image of each team member accompanied by some interesting facts about them and their experience in the caption, you’ll instantly humanise your agency’s profile beyond just the properties you have available.
Of course, building your personal brand as a property professional via your company’s platforms may not always be an option for every agency, so if this is the case you can always create your own professional social media accounts across the platforms you’d like to interact with your clients on. Here, you’ll be able to dive even deeper into your role as an agent to really enhance the connection you have with your followers. For example, if you’ve got a busy day of viewings and valuations ahead, why not document your day on your Instagram story to give your audience an insight into your day to day? This will give your followers, and ultimately your clients, another way to connect and relate to you beyond the standard interactions you might have with them.
Sharing relatable content such as your own experiences when moving and the advice you’d give someone in a similar position is a great way to humanise your role too. Anecdotal advice, coupled with your professional advice, is a relatable way to show you really do understand your clients and the journey they’re on. This kind of content will also appeal to potential clients as people often trust and choose to do business with those they can relate to.
Showcase your expertise
Through your personal brand, you’ll want to set yourself apart from the competition and showcase your expertise as a property professional. Sharing your knowledge in creative ways will help you build trust with potential clients. There are many ways you can do this…
Q&As are a fun way to interact with your followers while also showing them you really know your stuff. If you’re comfortable in front of camera (more on this later!), then sharing video responses to FAQs you receive as an agent is an engaging and personal way of getting information across.
On Instagram, you could post a question box to your story and respond to these questions with short video clips; you could even post a video sharing your top tips for movers to your main feed and repurpose the same video for TikTok. Of course, videos aren’t the only way to respond to FAQs. Why not share a Tweet or a post on Facebook inviting questions from your audience and set some time aside to respond after a few questions have come in? You could even make these Q&A sessions a regular part of your week so that over time, your followers will come to look forward to them and know when to look out for them. Hosting regular Q&As will only take a small amount of time, but they provide a big opportunity to connect and interact with your current and potential clients in a different way to ultimately enhance your position as an expert in your field.
As part of your brand as a property professional, it’s also important to show your audience you know your local area inside out and that you’re up to date with the latest market news. For example, rather than only sharing insights or answers to questions on property matters in general, why not also share specific insights that relate to your local area too? Is there more stock available now than there was just a few months ago? What are prices doing in your area and can you see any trends unfolding in your local market?
There’s also lots of news to keep up with which can impact the property market such as interest rate changes and new buyer support schemes. With this in mind, it might be worth considering sharing these updates as well as your thoughts on how they could impact movers in your local market to solidify yourself as a go-to voice for what market updates might mean for your clients.
Add video content to your strategy
We started this blog by saying property is a people business, so what better way to humanise your brand than by sharing the person behind the profession? By this we don’t mean you have to delve into your personal life or be on camera in every post you share, but presenting your content in a different way by sharing videos where you’re speaking directly to the camera will drastically improve your visibility – after all, what’s a personal brand without a person?
Video content can seem scary if you’ve never shared anything like this before, but it doesn’t have to be daunting. As suggested earlier in this post, a quick and simple way to improve your visibility and give your audience a chance to connect with you is to respond to Q&A questions with short video answers.
While you’re getting started, the content doesn’t need to be too complicated. There are just a few basic things to keep in mind that’ll make your video content look clean and polished without too much editing. Taking a video on your phone will be the simplest way to get started. Understanding the format that works best for each social platform is key. For example, if you’re posting a video to Instagram or TikTok, filming in portrait will be best but if you’re uploading to YouTube, setting your phone up in landscape would be better. Remember to put your best foot forward and present yourself well, speak clearly and most importantly, relax and be yourself!
If you have equipment like a tripod or ring light, that’s great, but if you don’t you can still take great videos if you consider your set up. Try to make sure your videos are well lit by making sure there’s a light source or window in front of you rather than behind you to avoid being back-lit. To really engage with your audience, look into the lens of your camera while recording rather than at the screen you can see yourself on if you’re filming with the front camera on your phone or webcam on your computer.
Once you’re really comfortable, you can start to get creative with the editing and overlay graphics or subtitles (this is really easy to do while editing on many social platforms meaning you won’t need additional software), and you could even consider sharing slightly longer video content on YouTube to really push yourself and your personal brand.
Ultimately, people like to work with people, not just the knowledge and skills they bring to the table. So, by building your personal brand as a property professional, you can stand out from the competition and create a great first impression with potential clients who’ll see you as a trustworthy, knowledgeable and relatable agent to work with.
