A part of your online presence (and a huge part), is conveying your life throughout different social media platforms.
You need to let your clients and prospects see what your personal life is like, and what you are all about. A good way to do it is to have your personal account and then your business page. But it's important to share details and other events from your personal life with your clients and prospective clients as well.
Here are some tips on how to navigate those waters.
Make Good Use of Your Privacy Settings
This is for you if you choose to only have one account. You can customize your friends into groups. Then when you post something, you can segregate which lists of your friends can see the post. This lets you target specific groups for anything you post.
Complex Passwords are a Must
People use complex passwords for a reason. Getting directly hacked isn't super likely, but getting hacked and liking spam pages and having those post to your page happens routinely. Each of your social media accounts should have a unique password with a mix of characters.
Use Identity Protection
If you are really depending on this for leads (which you should be), then this is a valuable tool you need to make sure is going to bring in prospects. A big step is to get identity protection, Lifelock or a similar program.
This way there is basically no risk and you only will need to worry about your ads and posts.
Google Your Clients Like They Google You
Each client or lead probably looks you up online, so just do the same to them. Make sure they are legitimate.
Learning a bit about the client may help you with your sales approach. You can make your pitch much more specific if you find out enough.
Before Meeting an Online Lead Have Them Fill A "Prospect Identification Form"
Getting a lead from social media is great, but it does open up a few opportunities that may leave you or your business vulnerable. Send them this form and use it as a type of background check. Consider having all of your meetings in your office rather than alone at a property.
This is also great for record keeping and storage, not to mention it's not that much of a hassle.
Share Personal Posts Less Than Usual (Or Only Let Certain Groups See Them)
Don't bombard your business partner's timelines with a lot of stuff. It also should go without saying, don't post anything that will hamper your page's security.
Don't Import Your Contacts To Any Platform
Many social media sites offer to import your contacts from another platform. This will lead to that site sending offers and other things that your contacts didn't sign up for. Worst of all the clients and prospects will usually be able to track it back to you.
Read the site’s privacy and sharing policies first and proceed with caution but it's safer overall not to go that route.
Don't Share Clients Information or Anything About Commissions
This is another obvious tip, but a lot of agents post or brag about a commission. Aside from it being in poor taste, you might be revealing confidential financial details about your client if you speak in too much detail about a commission.
Joe Nickelson is a real estate professional dedicated to helping home buyers and sellers achieve their dreams of owning property, and helping real estate agents stop using the sometimes-vicious tactics that weigh on their consciences. He believes that the Smart Agents books will, quite literally, change people’s lives for the better. Check out his full bio here!
