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The Real Estate Sales Podcast


Jul 30, 2021

In the current market, realtors can utilize multiple different channels to facilitate transactions. One of the most influential and easiest to start is social media. In today’s episode of The Real Estate Sales Podcast, Jimmy is joined by Heidi Harris, an agent who’s used her Instagram page to generate over $10 million in annual sales, to explain how any agent can use the platform to generate sales.

 

Why did Heidi start using social media?

  • Originally from a small town in Maryland, when she moved to North Carolina she had a sphere of influnece of about eight people. 
  • She wanted to find people to share her career with, so she turned to Instagram. 
  • What initially drew her to the platform was lousy advice - somebody in marketing told her to stick to Facebook. But she noticed people in other industries do it, so she tried it out for herself.
  • She doesn’t care about followers, and focuses on long-term growth rather than sepcific results from a particular post.

 

Heidi’s tips for anyone to start a successful account of their own:

  • Instagram has a couple of different account options - personal, business, or creator. She had a business page, but ultimately switched to creator for some of its added benefits. But you can be successful with any account type.
  • Use Linktree to connect your other social media platforms, website, and contact page so prospects can easily find anything they need. Because Instagram limits you to just one link, this is a good solution to contain everything you need.
  • Have an inviting and informational desscription, and make sure you have your entire profile filled out. 

 

Heidi started Instagram from humble beginnings.

  • Check out her first post here. WIth six likes and four hashtags, social media is clearly learned over time.The secret to growth? Hashtags.
  • Hashtags are either micro or macro, with macro being large, broad categories and micro being tags specific to you.
  • Heidi now uses shortcuts to easily include all her contact information and hashtags for every single post, which can be found in “auto-correction” of your iPhone settings.
  • Instagram wants to make caption text one block. To make it easier to read, Heidi uses the free app Spacie to space out her information the way she wants.

 

Maximizing Instagram engagement:

  • People and pets get more engagement on Instagram than other posts.
  • Instagram has features like reels and IGTV that offer different types of content. Having a variety of posts will help you get found by your audience.
  • Cadence and post frequency is hard, especially in real estate. Because (if you’re anything like Heidi’s team), you’ll have nine closings one week and then zero the next.
  • Heidi’s entire team posts on their pages twice per week. However, because they are personal accounts, they don’t post exclusively about real estate. There is a mix of professional and personal.
  • Consider using stories (content available for only a limited time) for more informal posts, and actual timeline posts for the pictures you want at all times.
  • When people get to a place where they’re organized and have consistency, you see dramatic growth.

 

Heidi’s final takeaways? If she knew in 2017 the amount of money she could make with something she considered a distraction in her pocket, for free, she would be mind blown. Ultimately, you can use content to make your business more approachable, and her social media success has given her more confidence in her ability to sell and be succesful.

 

To get in contact with Heidi, find her on Instagram

 

Connect with Jimmy Burgess on LinkedIn and Facebook, as well as his YouTube channel.  

If you like what you heard today, we’d love it if you’d share a rating or review and then subscribe to the podcast and tell others about it as well. You can find The Real Estate Sales Podcast on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify, and Audible, and our website, The Real Estate Sales Podcast.