It’s Time to Take Another Look at Pinterest for Real Estate Agents

Mar 22, 2021

Last year, the folks at Chicago Agent Magazine conducted their annual survey, “Truth about Agents.”

When asked which business activities they planned on doing more of, the number one response was “Making better use of social media.” It’s a goal worthy of pursuing, but only if you plan on working on it consistently and intelligently.

Although there is no mention of which platform these agents hope to devote more time to, we think Facebook is a safe bet.

Maybe 2020 will be the year you widen your social media horizons? If so, consider Pinterest.

Why Pinterest?

Women truly do make the world go ‘round.

“As a market, women represent an opportunity bigger than China and India combined,” according to Michael J. Silverstein and Kate Sayre at Harvard Business Review.

“They control $20 trillion in consumer spending, and that figure could reach $28 trillion in the next five years. Women drive the world economy, in fact,” they continue.

Silverstein and Sayre call this “The Female Economy” while the folks at Pinterest refer to the women in the U.S. as “Deciders.”

Any agent who has carted buyers around to view homes for sale understands just how much power women have in the decision of which home to buy.

This makes Pinterest a social media platform ideal for agents.

Nearly 75% of Pinterest users are female (ominicoreagency.com)
The median age of Pinterest users is 40 (business.pinterest.com)
More than 40% of American females on Pinterest say they plan on purchasing a home in the next five years

Getting started is easy

The steps to get set up on Pinterest are easy:

Create a business account. It’s free. You can do so at business.pinterest.com. Click on the red “Sign up” button.
Upload your profile picture. Ensure that the photo you choose is “… something that catches people’s attention, clearly demonstrates who you are, and stands out in the visual realm that is Pinterest,” cautions Ryan Pinkham at constantcontact.com. He goes on to recommend that, to avoid the photo becoming distorted, keep to 165×165 pixels.

Create your profile. The trick with your profile is to make it catchy without being salesy. Ensure that your website URL is in there, preferably first. Here’s Massachusetts agent Bill Gassett’s profile:

Notice that he gets a link to his website in there first, which is perfect. We like everything about this except the last sentence. He won that award three years ago. Readers may wonder if, perhaps, his success is waning.

If you have something impressive and current to say, by all means, add it here. Ensure you also add your location somewhere in your profile.

Finally, you’ll want to “claim” your website or landing page on Pinterest. You’ll find an easy tutorial on Pinterest.

There’s more to learn about using Pinterest for your real estate business, but this should get you started. Happy pinning!

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Please reach out to our support team at 866.405.3638 with questions or if there is anything we can do to help you with your success.

PLUS: When you have time…here are some helpful resources we’ve made available to support your success.

1. The Free 12 Month Done-For-You Strategic Marketing Plan

The Real Estate Marketing Planner is a powerful 12-Month-Guide that strategically defines what marketing to do when. Four key market segments are included, Niche Marketing, Get More Listings, Geographic Farming, and Sphere of Influence. –Click Here

2. The Free Interactive Real Estate Business Plan

The Free Interactive Real Estate Business Plan allows you to enter your business goals for this year and get a breakdown of how many prospects, listings, closing, and so on are needed to reach your goals. – Click Here

3. Become a Neighborhood Brand

Become branded in a specific neighborhood with a 12X15 marketing piece sent automatically each month to an exclusive carrier route. Watch this video to learn more or Click Here.

4. The Free Real Estate Mailing List Guide

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The Real Estate Mailing List Guide outlines the top tools for generating targeted prospecting lists including Baby Boomers, Empty Nesters, Investors, Lifestyle Interests, High-Income Renters, Move-Up Markets, and more. The Guide also defines done-for-you marketing campaigns to match these markets. –Click Here

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Ready to take a vertical leap in your real estate career? If you’re looking for inspiration…and the tools and methods to dominate a market and go to the top in real estate…you’ll find them in this free book. – Click Here

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7. The Free Real Estate Marketing Guide “CRUSH IT”

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The “Crush It” Guide includes easy steps to launching an effective direct mail marketing campaign, how to create a targeted prospect list, the perfect way to layout marketing materials for success, seven opportunities available to target in your area right now. –Click Here

Which Social Media Platforms to Focus on and Which to Avoid for the Best ROI

Apr 2, 2020

A few months ago, we began to sift through the various social media platforms and whittle down which were most worthy of a real estate agent’s time. At that time we compared Instagram and Facebook.

We promised to continue this quest in a “part two” article down the road.

And, right now, with stay-at-home orders in place, and many agents focusing on social media, we decided there was no better time than the present to complete this topic.

The following statistics define what additional social media platforms to focus on and what to avoid to ensure the best ROI.

Always start with the demographics

In their attempts to pitch their services to real estate agents, social media marketing companies are notorious for using vague statistics.

For instance, one company gives agents “10 Reasons Why Every Realtor Needs An Awesome Instagram Account.” Reason number one is that Instagram

“… boasts over one billion active monthly users and over 500 million daily users.”

While that’s impressive, unless you sell real estate internationally, this number is completely useless to you. Why pay to advertise to someone who lives on the other side of the globe?

What you need to know is how many Americans use a platform. In Instagram’s case, it’s 116 million, which is only 11 percent of the total active monthly users.

Then, you should find out the primary age groups that use the platform. Instagram’s largest user group (64 percent of all users) is between the ages of 18 and 34 (Gen Z and younger millennials).

Remember, NAR’s studies show that the largest group of homebuyers are those between the ages of 25 and 43 (millennials) and baby boomers (age 56 to 74) make up the largest group of sellers.

Realtor marketing postcards for neighborhood updates — The Neighborhood Update postcard is available in the Neighborhood Update Series under Postcards

The average age of each, however, is 47 and 57, respectively.

Thinking of Pinterest?

Pinterest is wildly popular with American women, or “deciders” as the folks at Pinterest call them. Here are the details you need to know to determine if it’s a platform you want to spend time on:

83 percent of American women between the ages of 24 and 54 use Pinterest (Pinterest.com)
43 percent of these users say they’ll buy a house sometime between now and 2025. (Pinterest.com)
When looking for information on buying a home, 21 percent of Millennials use Pinterest (Better Homes & Gardens survey of homebuyers)

You may want to do a cost-benefit analysis before you jump on the Pinterest bandwagon. It’s quite time-consuming so unless you have a dedicated marketing person or social media manager on the team, it could end up eating much of your valuable time.

When your pins and boards are optimized, however, Pinterest can be a powerful way to steer traffic to your website.

How is Twitter for real estate agents?

Because it’s in the media so often, Twitter seems a lot more popular than it is – at least with adults.

Nearly 80 percent of all Twitter users live outside the U.S. (Omnicore Agency)
More than 65 percent of Twitter users are males
Nearly 40 percent of users are between the ages of 18 and 29

Real estate agents should look long and hard at the first and third Twitter facts in the above list. The U.S. audience is small and it’s composed largely of people outside the home buying and selling age range.

The Looking For Expert Advice postcard is from the Get More Listings Series under the postcard section

If you love Twitter, there’s certainly nothing wrong with using it for personal stuff, however.

TikTok

Just what every real estate agent needs: yet another social media/video app to consider as a marketing tool.

Since the majority of real estate agents aren’t in Gen Z and aren’t even Millennials, an explanation is probably in order here.

TikTok is “The app where Gen Z vies for 15 seconds of fame,” according to Slate.com’s Heather Schwedel. She goes on to describe it “as a social network for amateur music videos.”

This newcomer to the “Oh-my-God-you-need-to-be-using-this” video-sharing platform has become an obsession with teens. In fact, half of TikTok’s users (globally) are under the age of 34, with the vast majority of them between 16 and 24.

When was the last time you had a 16, 17,18 or even 20-year-old real estate client?

Then, 80 percent of the app’s most frequent users reside in China, but India accounts for nearly half of all new users.

Are you licensed to sell real estate in China or India?

What you’ll hear from marketers trying to get your business:

Users spend about 52 minutes each day on the app
The app is the most downloaded from the Apple App Store
“One of the great reasons why it’s so great for real estate is because, simply, not many people in real estate are using it”
“You see a lot of people like Gary Vee . . . talking about how TikTok is something you need to be going all-in on.”

We had to laugh at that last one, since Gary Vee sells, among other things, sneakers. TikTok supplies the ideal targeted audience for that product.

You, on the other hand, hopefully, sell HOMES. TikTok, at least right now, is an utter waste of time for real estate agents.

What’s not a waste of time? Facebook, whom we highlighted in our last article on social media marketing and LinkedIn.

The Neighborhood Update Free Offer postcard is available in the Neighborhood Update Free Offer Series under Postcards.

For buying ads, we would seriously consider NextDoor.

Send the Neighborhood Update Free Offer postcard from the Neighborhood Update Free Offer Series to your Farm or an area where you want more listings.

Keep them informed about what’s going on right now in their marketplace.

Need help targeting a specific niche of buyers or sellers? Use our mailing list tool to create the ideal list (it’s easy) or call our support team for assistance at 866.405.3638!

PLUS: When you have time…here are some Free resources we’ve made available to support your success.

1. The 12 Month Done-For-You Strategic Marketing Plan

2. The Free One-Page Real Estate Business Plan

Treat your business like a business it is vital to long-term success in this industry. Some agents may put together elaborate business plans, yet there’s something powerful about keeping it simple. Check out our one page Online Real Estate Business Plan. – Click Here

4. Become a Listing Legend Free eBook

5. The Free Online ROI Calculator

3. The Real Estate Marketing Guide “CRUSH IT”

The “Crush It” Guide includes easy steps to launching an effective direct mail marketing campaign, how to create a targeted mailing list, the perfect way to layout marketing materials for success, seven opportunities available to target in your area right now. –Click Here

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