Action Plan for Real Estate Agents During Coronavirus

In the past month, many agents have been forced to move the majority of their business completely online. For an industry that thrives on face-to-face relationships, this can be a tough transition to make. 

One thing that helps? A solid plan to help you stay focused and positive.

Here's our action plan for real estate agents to help you stay focused on what you can do during quarantine:

1. Maintain and Grow You Relationships

Real estate is all about relationships. Now is the time to connect with your network- not in a salesy way, but to check-in and ask how they're doing. Reaching out to your database and showing that you care will not only help spread positivity but also build trust with your network.

✅Clients: call them, and let them know that you're here for them. Be understanding of their needs and decisions right now.

✅Recent leads: call, text, or send a video to your recent leads just checking in. 

✅Database: Call, text, or message 20-30 contacts from your database every day.

✅Follow/friend on social media: do this with all of your current clients, past clients, and sphere of influence to make sure that you are reaching them with your social media posts.

✅Interact with your social media network: responding to comments, shares, and other interactions should be something that you do daily. If you are a PropertySimple user, you can use your Social CRM to follow up with everyone who interacts with your posts and track your progress.

✅Learn how to use a video call platform: this will be your main tool for communicating with clients, so make sure that you are familiar with at least one platform. If you're not already using it, Zoom is a great option for real estate agents. 

2. Revamp your Social Media Profiles

With social media usage up almost 50%, your image on social media is more important than ever. Think of each of your social media profiles as a website. This is where potential clients will turn to find out all about you, and create a first impression of your business. It's important to make sure all your information is present and up-to-date so that anyone who lands on your page will want to do business with you. For a more detailed list, check out our post on how to give yourself a digital makeover.

Facebook

✅Update your "About" info with your description, contact info, and company overview

✅Change your Profile photo and cover photo to match your other social media accounts (if needed)

Instagram

✅Update your profile photo to match your other social media accounts (if needed)

✅Create Instagram Story Highlights Pro tip: create the cover photos for your highlights in Canva so that they are consistent

✅Update your Instagram bio: you should be able to communicate who you are, what you do, and what makes you unique in just a few sentences.

✅Add a link in your bio: Instagram allows you to put one link in your bio. This could be to your website, your PropertySimple profile, or a recent blog post.

Twitter

✅Make sure your profile photo is consistent with your other social channels

✅Update your theme color to match your brand

✅Add a link to your website if you haven't yet

LinkedIn

✅Update your LinkedIn Headline: make sure this is consistent with your other social channels!

✅Write or Update your summary

✅Create a custom LinkedIn URL (check out this post to if you're not sure how to do it!)

3. Organize and Plan your Social Media Content

During this time, we've seen an increase in social media use of up to 50%. Now is the time to dig into your social media strategy and get sharing!

✅Organize your photos and videos: high-quality photo and video content has always been essential for real estate agents, but now this is likely the only way that you have to get your properties in front of potential clients. Take some time to organize all of the photos and videos that you have so you can easily share them on your social media channels.

✅Plan your social media posts: what you post to social media right now will make or break your brand. Show that you're a leader in your community by spreading positivity, sharing information about local business, and be THERE for your network. Live video content will be especially important during this time. 

✅Automate what you can: now is the time to increase your social media activity. While you should be posting personal content, it's important to have a baseline of consistent, branded content as well. Invest in a social media marketing program to help you stay on top of your social media during a time when pretty much everyone is online. 

4. Invest in your Social Media Advertising

Now is not the time to be stingy with your advertising. If anything, it's time to increase your budget. 

✅Solidify your goals: Are you looking to increase traffic, generate leads to add to your funnel or simply increase your exposure?

✅Create your Ads: Run at least one ad that is optimized to meet your goals. If you're new to Facebook advertising, check out our complete guide to running real estate Facebook ads.

✅Measure your results: monitor your ads to make sure they are delivering. If not, make the necessary changes until they are.

✅Explore advertising tools: Look into any advertising platforms that can help you save time and money in the long run.

5. Fine Tune your Follow Up Process

Follow up is arguably one of the most important keys to success for real estate agents. However, few do it. Now is the time to fine-tune your process to increase conversions.

✅Review all of your email drips: even if you have to pause some of them given the current climate, now is the time to set up and organize all of your email campaigns so that they are ready to go when things are back to normal.

✅Organize and update your CRM: make sure all contact information and notes on previous calls/emails are up to date. If you haven't yet, make sure you are following each other on social media!

✅Make a follow-up checklist: write out a follow-up system that you implement with every lead. If you're not sure where to start, check out our guide on how to follow up with real estate leads.

6. Learn Something New!

If you're feeling ambitious, now can be a great time to take the time to learn something new, or fine-tune your skills. Even better is that many companies have opened up free access to normally paid-for classes. Here are just a few:

✅Coursera: the online learning platform has opened up many of their paid courses from top universities for free. Some of our favorites include an Introduction to Personal Branding from the University of Virginia, Converting Challenges into Opportunities from the University of California San Diego, The Science of Success from the University of Michigan. Explore all of the free courses here.

✅PropertySimple: We've opened up our library of tools for free! Download our Ebooks, worksheets, and guides to help jumpstart your social media marketing. Some of our most popular resources include our Instagram Ebook, Free Videos for Social Media, and Free Follow Up Email Templates. We're also offering free time on our Pro account. Book a time to get set up here.

✅Podcasts: there are so many awesome real estate podcasts out there. The best part is that they are completely free! Challenge yourself to listen to one new podcast per day, and write down the top three things that you learned, and how you can implement them. A few of our favorites are the Massive Agent Podcast, GSD Mode Podcast, the LabCoat Agents Podcast, and the Tom Ferry Podcast. 

7. Take Care of Yourself

Most importantly, focus on what you need to stay healthy both mentally and physically. If you don't focus on yourself, your business will ultimately suffer. You've probably seen countless posts on what to do to take care of yourself during quarantine, but we thought we'd throw in a few of our favorites as well 😄

✅Get in some physical activity: support your local fitness instructors by signing up for virtual classes if they are offering them.

✅Call your friends and family: Zoom has removed its 40 minute limit for non-paying users, and Houseparty allows you to play games during your call 🎲

✅Eat well: try to order groceries from local farmers or markets if this is available in your area. Make sure to share your finds with your followers on social media!

What are you doing to cope with COVID-19? We'd love to hear your strategies! Send us a DM on Instagram or a message on Facebook with any ideas, questions, or concerns 🤗