Brand consistency as a real estate agent is key to marketing your value and standing out from your competitors. One of the most effective ways to do this is by managing your online reputation and ensuring and keeping daily tabs on your internet footprint beyond your website. By mastering a bit of the strategy behind online reputation management and making use of the tools and resources available, you won’t have to break the bank or sacrifice all of your personal time.
Part of being a successful real estate agent is building trust with clients and focusing on marketing to your targeted customers. There are a variety of ways to do this, but behind the success of these methods is having sound management of your online reputation.
The following tips and tricks will help you streamline your online reputation management and strengthen your business brand.
Be Aware of Your Online Footprint
Have you ever taken the time to put your name or business in an online search engine? If not, this is a good starting point to figure out exactly where you are showing up online. This is particularly important if you happen to be on any site that offers real estate agent reviews such as Yelp or Zillow. Online reviews are an extremely strong indicator of your reputation and how your brand is perceived, and can also be the starting point for many potential customers who are looking to rent or buy.
As for online reviews, if you’re able to respond to them on the review webpage, definitely take the opportunity to do so especially if it’s to address any concerns or issues that your clients had. Response to reviews is a great way to show that you care about the business experience you provide and that you personally go out of your way to seek solutions and resolve any problems that may have occurred. If a response format isn’t available, then it’s likely you already have the contact information of the reviewer if they were your previous client and you’d be able to contact them directly.
Build Your Brand on Social Media
Other strong factors that contribute to your digital footprint and online reputation are your social media platforms and if you maintain a blog for your industry.
What you post on your social media accounts and the aspects of your lifestyle that you choose to share will be taken as a representation of who you are and if you are the type of real estate agent someone wants to do business with.
Make sure that anything you post or re-post is in line with your brand and the image that you want to put out. As with any business, you should strive to be authentic and an expert in your niche.
As a real estate agent you are helping people make extremely important decisions about where they are going to live. Clients will want to work with someone who they find engaging and are drawn to in wanting to help them take the significant steps necessary towards home ownership or renting.
Be Proactive in Business Listings
Whether you are independent or part of a real estate team, you can make sure that you’re listed in the top business listing website and keep your information across all the different sites.
If you aren’t already, you should make sure to secure and claim your listing on Yelp, Google, Zillow, LinkedIn, and of course your own brokerage page.
Optimizing your profile information can increase how high up you appear in search engine listings and create more leads if you’re able to add photos and call to action options. Think of optimizing each online listing or profile as a way to drive traffic to your business simply by linking your website or industry blog posts that you’ve written.
Not only are you ensuring your information is consistent across each site, but you’re also creating more channels for people to find you.
Time is Money and you Shouldn’t Waste Either
As critical as your online reputation is in the business of real estate, you can’t afford to not take online reputation management seriously. The way we can control our public image and reputation has greatly evolved with the internet, but rather then letting this make things seem daunting, you should see it as a way to empower your brand across wider audience more than ever before.
You have to assume that potential clients are researching you long before they make their first call or email to your business. As people continue to leverage the internet, optimizing your own visibility and ensuring your profile information is accurate and consistent in addition to interacting with your clients and industry online as often as possible, is imperative in this day and age.
A great way to help you master your online reputation management strategy is to rely on the expertise of the resources and services available to support your needs. These services do the heavy work for you to make sure you’re achieving and effecting online reputation and attracting more potential clients to your website. They can also alert you when a new review or comment is posted so that you can quickly address it if necessary ensuring that your clients are receiving optimal customer service.
Online reputation has become a necessity for any business professional, but it doesn’t have to overwhelm you. Part of the reputation management process is knowing where you can go for help to keep you focused on the other parts of your business that help drive your success.
