All Forum Posts by: Richard D.

Last night I obtained 2 leads in twenty minutes. The problem is people will wait an average of 120 days before they will contact an agent for helping them purchase a home. However, they will discuss the process with their friends from day 1. Customers aren't looking to agents or REIs for answers; they are looking at their friends who have gone through the process for answers. For example, one lady I chatted with last night has a countdown clock on her social media feed for her to buy a new home in a new area. Not a single person had commented on the clock or about her moving. Our conversation started with welcome to Texas...two things you we need; cowboy boots and sunscreen. I did not start with, let me sell you a home. People are tired of being bombarded with let me do this, let me do that, I can help you. No-one is building a raport or value before they say, hey let me help you. So I built a raport, I told the person, I am not a RE agent, but I could recommend one. BOOM they were hooked. I passed them through to a person who will sell them a home. But only after I built the raport, did they asked me if I knew of a good agent to work with. The leads did not generate from Facebook. Remember social media is a place to be social. Believe me, that I will follow up just so they don't think I am an agent also.

The reasons for the odd payments could be caused by a payment plan being set up by the taxpayer. In Texas the tax code allows the tax office to establish payment plans as long as the property has not gone into suit. An alternative is that they could have had their taxes deferred, which allows them to pay whatever whenever. Or finally, tax payments in the state of Texas are considered voluntary payments (even though they aren't really voluntary), and the tax office is required to accept any payment at any time by anyone, if there is a balance due on the property. This however, does not give the payer any rights to the property. The final possibility is that the property owner had exemptions in place that kept the taxes reduced to $276.00, and depending on how long they lived there (without dying), the amount could have lasted 1-30+ years.

Go to the Harris County Tax Assessors office, they will give copies of previous years.

If you do not have enough time to field calls during the day, you may want to hire a virtual assistant to take care of incoming calls on your behalf...

@Chris Jackson you went way to the scope of what I envisioned the responses for my topic to be. You hit some of the key points that I try and make to REIs here on BP. Social media as a platform should be used in context. It shouldn't be avoided as @Jay Hinrichs states or you end up leaving potential clients and referrals to clients for someone else to scoop in and build working relationships with. 

Social media as a whole is the new medium that can be used as a relationship building tool. It is not the end all be all to relationship building, but it gives you a great, easy starting point. Can anyone name another medium to contact people you do not know that will give you a positive return on your contact, without spending a dime?

Chris back to your rant, you are looking at the idea from an investor perspective, which I get and respect. It has a very old school approach. But when you look at the future of marketing and communications over the next 20, 30, even 40 years; the trend is heading digital. Massively digital. If you do not produce content to contact consumers of any product or investment opportunity on a mobile scale, the consumer of those things will begin to ignore you. You will find it more and more difficult to compete. If you are in your 50's 60's or 70's, I wouldn't expect to see much from these generations as a willingness to adapt. But if you are 20's 30's or 40's; you will need to adapt, or your going to get left out.

The two biggest things that you stated in your rant are "...roll social media for brand awareness..." and "...building relationships and actually giving a sh@t about people and their lives..." The biggest plus about social media is that people will freely tell you about their lives on their social media pages, right down to where they buy their underwear.  You want to learn and engage people where they are. If you work your social media correctly, not only do you build that business relationship, you build that lifelong lasting relationship. 

My takeaway is it is going to cost more to target your ads for your investment properties or services. Then the ad is not going to be seen by as many people.

Facebook is moving away from sponsored posts in news feeds order to keep and attract more users. There is an article on CNet about their new algorithms Thoughts?

Social media is exactly what it states, it's social. I was reading another media marketers blog on why real estate posts only receive a 0.45% interaction rate. I find this rate well below the marketing average for all other products of 2%. The authors reasoning for such poor interaction rate is the fact that real estate agents lack the time to respond. Remember that social media is based on being social. So if someone comments on your post, they are expecting a response; soon rather than later. I have some thoughts on paying for Facebook advertising that, shall we say are not nice.

As I kept reading the article, something occurred to me. The writer gave the reason for such a low number on the interaction rate. Ethical standards! Real estate professionals must maintain certain ethical standards that limit some of their content on social media; which is understandable and something I have learned to work with. Just to give a random example:

An agent lists a home on Facebook that is in an old run down part of town. They get a comment/question of "Are there rats in the house?" Ethically, they are required to disclose any known pest issues. Although, if they wait until the problem has been addressed by the seller to respond;, it could be several months before the agent may reply "none that is known." In one fell swoop, the agent avoids having to disclose pest control issues and thinks that the response is ethically acceptable. The reality is that they ignored a request for information about a known problem until it was corrected then responded to a request from a potential buyer. This can be viewed as unethical behavior by the licensing board.

This is why it is important to understand how you need to manage your social media marketing campaigns, or at the very least hire a company that upholds the highest ethical standards to manage them for you. 

What I would suggest @Lissette Deleon is to listen to talk radio in your area and see which agents advertise there. Then go to their Facebook page and review it to see what you like as a home buyer, what you dislike about it (take notes), then drive up to Boston and do the same thing from there. Listen to talk radio, get the name and look up on Facebook again. That way you can compare. Ruth Story and Josh Deshong are agents (Keller Williams) here where I live and I like their pages. Sorry I cannot link to their pages because of forum rules, but you can look for them by name.

After having read a lot of bad and some good advice on social media marketing; I am curious as to how much an average investor spends on advertising on social media and the ROI? If you can list the sites you have marketing campaigns on and how much you may spend in a month or year?

The average realtor's page on Facebook has about 130-140 followers. Rock-star realtor's might have 1000-5000 followers. Most realtors value their time to much to do what is needed to build a modest following. To get the type of ROI's for time spent, most "rock stars" pay either a social media marketing management company to handle their social media posts or they spend 15-18 hours a day posting, responding, and building their image. I really don't think that they will spend the necessary time to for years to build their brand. @Grant Rothenburger nailed a small starting point, you can write some posts, but that only gets you so far...