Utilizing Social Media For Real Estate Agent Recruiting

Social media is at the forefront of a new era for real estate agent recruiting. The explosion of social media has ultimately changed the world. You now have the ability to connect with almost anyone in the world on a free platform. As well as having many other capabilities on that platform such as buying or selling items, sharing photos of your last vacation, or even posting a mass life update. It has increasingly become more relevant in the everyday lives of people and now has grown to include their work lives. 

Social media has completely changed the way many brokerages, agents, online letting agents and even clients prefer to do their real estate business. Utilizing social media for real estate agent recruiting purposes is only a plus of these platforms. With everything from real estate recruiting Facebook ads to Instagram marketing, they offer countless new and creative ways to interact with clients. The best part is that seizing these opportunities will not break the bank. 

Take Advantage Of A Golden Opportunity

Utilizing the major social media platforms to your fullest advantage is a golden opportunity. One you want to ensure your brokerage is not missing out on. Before you jump right into posting anything (and everything) to your brokerage social media pages, it is best to devise a plan of action first. You want to present to agents who are looking at your pages a clear message about your brokerage. So what is that message exactly?

Solidify Your Message For Real Estate Agent Recruiting

When engaging in real estate agent recruiting, you want to have a clear and purposeful message. Solidifying this message is of the utmost importance. It will be the basis of what gets agents interested in your brokerage. It creates an initial spark of interest. This convinces agents to reach out and learn more about what your brokerage has to offer them. So the first thing you want to do before you jump into the fun of engaging with social media is to determine what you want to present to agents both explicitly and inexplicitly. 

What Makes Your Brokerage Unique?

This question is a great starting point when trying to cultivate your message while real estate agent recruiting. As a real estate recruiter, think about:

• What do you want to show them that you have to offer them that they can’t get at another brokerage?
• Do you have an amazing mentorship program at your brokerage?
• Maybe you offer amazing commission splits for new agents?
• Do you offer agents the opportunity to hear seminars from some of the top-producing real estate agents in your area?

Don’t make this decision alone though. Go to your current agents and ask them why they love being apart of your brokerage. Determine what elements of your brokerage agents love most, and make those things the center of all your recruitment material. You want to establish a brand and a reputation for your brokerage. Distribute agent recruitment material with a clear message, that is based on the most attractive qualities of your brokerage.

This is a great way to reinforce the brand and reputation you would like to present for your brokerage. Being able to effectively use social media to do this will also say a lot about your brokerage. Many agents in today’s market, especially up and coming millennial agents, want technology trends to be a part of the way they do business. Demonstrate how your brokerage stays up to date and values these trends as well. It will put you on the radar for those agents. 

Emphasize Brokerage Culture 

As well as valuing the use of technology, many successful agents also value a positive brokerage culture. For numerous agents, brokerage culture is even a deal-breaker when considering somewhere to work. Agents want to work in an environment that is inviting, supportive, and motivated. You need to do more than just say or post that your brokerage culture has these qualities though. You need to prove it. There are tons of creative ways to do this during real estate agent recruiting.

Utilize Technology

Create a video compilation of you going around the office and interviewing your agents. Ask them questions like “Why did you choose to work at [Your Brokerage Name]?” or “What is your favorite thing about [Your Brokerage Name]?” A video like this gives people an idea of you, your agents, and your brokerage. Making them feel familiar and comfortable with the atmosphere of your brokerage before they even interview.

Specifically, create content to promote your brokerage culture. You should also remember to post photos or announcements about what your brokerage is doing as a team. For example, say you host a brokerage BBQ every spring, where agents get to bring their families and everyone gets together to have a nice day outside. Post a flyer to your social media account inviting any agents who are interested in joining your brokerage. Thus presenting an opportunity for potential agents to experience your brokerage culture firsthand. After the event is over don’t forget to post pictures to your social media pages. That way if potential agents are stalking your page in the future, they will be able to see that you truly do have a great brokerage culture. 

Your Social Media Pages 

You want your social media pages to look professional, to be frequently updated, and have diverse but focused content. When a potential new agent comes across your profiles you want them to be able to gather a substantial amount of information about your brokerage from a business and cultural standpoint. In an effort to make your profiles look professional you need to have your:

• Business address
• Phone number
• Website
• Any clerical business information is easily seen as soon as someone gets to your page.

Potential new agents, or clients, should be able to quickly record your contact information or know how to contact you easily in the future. You also want to stay cautious of posting, or re-posting about controversial topics when trying to keep your page looking professional. Overall, topics that are far off from your brokerage news and the real estate industry, should be avoided. 

Keep Your Pages Up To Date

You do not want a potential new agent, or client, to land on one of your social media pages to find out nothing new has been posted in three years. This is a waste of your real estate recruiting Facebook ads. Agents will investigate a brokerage’s social media pages to find out more about their options when looking for a place to work. Therefore, you need to ensure you are presenting updated, and accurate information on all your social pages in order for your page to be helpful, and influential to anyone who comes across it.

Lastly, it is crucial that you monitor your content and post intentionally. Avoid topics not related to your brokerage, or real estate industry news. You should be posting content that spreads your real estate agent recruiting campaign and further instills your brand. Examples of good quality content to frequently post to your pages:

• Link to any blog articles that your agents have written
• Listing of any properties your agents are representing
• Announcements about new technology your brokerage is incorporating into your business to make your agents more efficient

Now that we have established some basic rules when using any social media platform, it is time to go into some specifics when using Facebook or LinkedIn. Facebook and LinkedIn are two major social media platforms along with Twitter and Instagram. Our focus will be on Facebook and LinkedIn because they offer more opportunities for businesses specifically. You still want to be on every major social media platform though, so you have a comprehensive image on the internet. You want to reach and influence the most people possible. 

Facebook

Facebook is an amazing platform that allows people to easily connect for business purposes. There are many outlets on the platform for business communications to take place including everything from real estate recruiting Facebook ads to specialized groups. Utilize as many of them as possible. 

Facebook Groups 

Facebook groups are public or private group pages that allow people of common interests to openly post and talk about the interest they share. Countless groups surrounding the real estate industry are established on Facebook, with hundreds of agents in each group. There are even some groups where the entrance is restricted by the area you live in. Thus if you only wanted to focus on real estate agent recruiting in the area your brokerage serves, you have that option. Use these groups to your advantage. You, or your agents, should join these groups. Post your recruitment material in them, or be creative with posting interactive posts. 

Interactive Posts

An interactive post is a post asks people who see it to comment on it, repost it, or interact with what you have posted in some way. If you wanted to use an interactive post to attract potential new agents you could make a post saying “Are you looking for a mentorship program that will help you become the most successful agent you could be? If so, comment on your email below.” A post like this would enforce your message and brand. It also gives you an email list of people to send more in-depth recruitment material to. Facebook groups allow you to further spread your message and brand, as well as the specific recruitment material you want to promote. Making them a free tool that could help your business exponentially.  

Job Board

While this is a newer addition to Facebook, it can still be very effective in real estate agent recruiting. The Facebook Job Board allows you to post a job listing with various information about your company and the role you are looking to fill. What is really great about posting on Facebook’s Job Board, is that it does not cost money to make an initial post. If you want that post to get better viewing space, or reach more valuable candidates for the job, that will end up costing you some money.

Facebook Ads 

Facebook ads are a paid agent recruiting method. This is very cost-effective compared to other advertising platforms. However, at the end of the day, it is still going to cost you money. These ads will allow you to reach your intended audience directly. They ensure that they see the content you want to promote to them. 

Paid advertising methods are great for recruitment purposes and can prove to be quite effective. It is important, however, that your entire recruitment campaign is not based on paid methods. You want to have a recruitment plan that is diverse in the methods you use to promote your content. This ensures that the greatest number of agents possible is reached. Using diverse recruitment methods, even if most of them are based on social media, will only help your business grow.

Event Hosting 

When engaging in real estate agent recruiting, you to want to make sure you are not only using online, non-personal forms of communication. Although interestingly enough Facebook can help you accomplish this as well.  Hosting an in-person event when agent recruiting is always a good idea. It gives potential new agents the opportunity to experience the culture and atmosphere of your brokerage first hand. This experience has the potential to be very impactful for agents, and ultimately be the final push they need to officially join your brokerage. Therefore you want as many agents to know about these types of events as possible. 

So to really get the word out you are able to make postings, virtual flyers, or video announcements that contain information about your event. Then post them to your page as an advertisement for the event. Even if an agent is not able to attend the event at the time, they will see that by making a public post about the event your brokerage is inviting, and very welcoming to new agents joining the team.

LinkedIn

LinkedIn is solely a business platform that allows people to put their career achievements and qualifications at the forefront of their profile. This is by far the most professional major social media platform. Therefore it is a good time investment to upkeep a business profile on this platform. Also, use it for real estate agent recruiting. After all, the platform was invented to help people find jobs, and help businesses find employees. You may as well utilize it to its fullest advantage. 

Post a Job 

Creating a job posting on LinkedIn is very similar to creating one on Facebook as we previously discussed. The advantage of LinkedIn is that connecting people to job opportunities was the reason the platform was created. Therefore more people are likely to be active in a business sense when on LinkedIn, as opposed to Facebook. 

That does not mean you should not make a job posting to Facebook though. An amazing candidate may have missed your job posting on LinkedIn, but was able to still see it because it was on Facebook as well. Besides you already created the job posting anyway so may as well just post it to two platforms. 

The Disadvantage

The disadvantage of a job posting on LinkedIn though is that you have to pay money when a job candidate sees or interacts with your job posting. This has the potential to become costly. However, you can always put a cap on how much you are willing to pay on a job posting, and the platform will honor that.

Opportunity to Poach from Competitors 

LinkedIn also offers an option to message people on the platform directly. This allows you to investigate an agent and their qualifications. Message them about a job opportunity all on the same platform. If you happen to discover an agent you know would be an asset to your company, but they work for another brokerage, you are still able to contact them about a job on LinkedIn. This may not be a preferred method for some brokers, but it definitely has the potential to be effective in some cases. If you are having difficulty finding your preferred candidate with these real estate agent recruiting methods, or have trouble solidifying your recruitment campaign in any way, remember there are demos and real estate agent retention software available to help you amp up your agent recruitment campaign, and help it to evolve into exactly what you want it to be.