When COVID-19 first took hold of the United States in Spring 2020, Madison Reeves, a Realtor with Keller Williams Realty in Black Hills, South Dakota, had been licensed less than one year. While she could have backed down from her new path and declared it not the ideal time for a drastic career change, she instead rose to the occasion and embraced the challenges head on.
We recently featured Madison on an episode of our podcast. Here are some tidbits from our interview about how she managed to power through the pandemic and how she’s built a strategic connection with her online followers.
“It’s been crazy, but I can’t complain. [COVID] definitely affected how we run things a little bit. Virtually, my life has not been much different. I worked out of the office and from home for about two months. Then we were back in it full-swing by June. We show houses like normal. We do open houses like normal. We wear masks when people ask us to, and wash our hands and use hand sanitizer. I definitely have a lot more virtual business than I did before.”
“There's a difference between being an influencer and being influential. An influencer is someone that is portraying their life, but not a lot of people can relate to them. They're saying ‘Follow me because I'm not like you,’ whereas an influential person is sharing their story, sharing their content and saying, ‘Follow me because I am like you.’ So, there's a difference there. Who do you really want to work with? You're going to be attracting people because, like I said, they know you; they trust you; they like you. They can relate to you, versus someone who spends half a year across the world.”
“When you're a first-year real estate agent or new to the business, you try to go around and absorb everything that anyone has to say to see what's going to work for you. And [Ricky Carruth] has always been one that I really related to. He said since 2007 — I think 2007 or 2008 — he’s sent out a weekly email every Wednesday to his list of people. So when I took his training, I of course started that with my business.
“I've been doing a weekly email ever since. It's original content, and I'm pretty community focused, so it's about small businesses, but it also has information about my listings and things that always direct them back to my websites. They sign up, and I can collect their information. But that's been huge. I think last week's email had a 51% open rate, which is a lot. In a year and a half of being a real estate agent, I have about 800 people in my email list from meeting people, social media, calling, you know — [it’s] whoever is in your sphere of influence, then adding them to your database and email list.”
“It's just about being authentic. People care what you're doing every day. I mean, we all go on YouTube and watch videos of people vlogging or whatever that looks like. They really just want to see what a day in your life looks like. So that's a lot of what my content looks like. I try to educate, but my education is definitely in very specific platforms. A Facebook audience is going to be different than Instagram. So, Facebook might be better to be a little bit more educational, to share the market's statistics, et cetera. Whereas Instagram is definitely going to be attracting more of the younger generation, and they want to see what you are really doing every day. What does it look like in your office? What are you doing at appointments? I definitely try to stay away from repurposing content from other real estate agents. Your content should really be your specific message, delivered in a consistent and original way.”
“I'm very, very into time blocking. It's just like a big part of being a real estate agent, I feel. I probably spend about an hour a week really planning my content, probably 30 minutes sending out my weekly email and then 30 minutes [on social platforms] every day, and honestly, that could just be scrolling and engaging with people.”
“I use the Facebook scheduling built into the platform, but other than that, I really like to be authentic and just post, you know, in the moment. And I know that's not always the best way and the best use of my time…I do think it's a little bit more authentic, but, that being said, I'm a big believer in leverage. …. So, in the future, I would love to leverage social media and branding or public relations, all of that. I would love to leverage that out to someone who can do a better job than I can and who is smarter than me. But for now, you know, I do think it works for me because it's me who is posting. It's me who is engaging with [my followers], and it's very authentic.”