REALTOR's Put Community First: Social Media Ideas from a 100-Agent Mastermind

There has never been a better time to be collaborating with other real estate agents. On March 30th, we hosted a Town Hall Meeting on our Facebook group, Real Estate Agent Round Table. Realtors were able to share social media ideas and inspiration for how to keep our industry alive during the Coronavirus crisis.

With one hundred Realtors in attendance, we heard so many great ideas for how to use social media to help our communities. We touched on a few rules at the start of our Town Hall Meeting mastermind:

Be safe. We want to lead generate, but we need to be safe. We must do what is appropriate in our local area, staying in compliance with local/state/federal laws. Above all, stay safe.
Be appropriate. This situation that we find ourselves in is unprecedented. We need to stay professional and we need to think clearly and avoid coming off as angry and upset. No one wants to hear you whine. We need to be leaders. We need to be less critical. Right now we need to be careful not to alienate people. Don’t be political. Everyone is watching you right now. Everyone is on Facebook, triple and quadruple who our audience was before. Be very, very careful what you post.
Be present and consistent. This is not a good or easy time for people who like to be out there shaking hands with people. Face-to-face conversation is uncomfortable right now. We need to get to a place where we are interacting virtually on a regular basis.
Be proactive. Everyone is in a different position right now. Regardless of this, we can all pipeline business for later. What we do today is for our business tomorrow.
Be calm. Don’t go into panic mode. Now is not the time to freak out. We need to generate ideas and stay calm, for ourselves and also for our clients.

Helping our communities through using our SOI contact plan

Before we dive into the great social media ideas generated by the 100 Realtors in attendance at our Town Hall Meeting, let’s talk about laying some of the groundwork. Here at Icenhower Coaching and Consulting, we teach how to stay in contact with our SOI with some sort of contact plan at a rate of 40 contacts per year. That’s a combination of social media, text, phone, events, mailers, etc.

At the end of the year, we expect a 7:1 return on that. (If you have 300 in your database, that means you’ll have 43 closed transactions within a year.) A lot of people have a hard time believing this statistic, and a lot of people have a hard time sticking with the contact plan to get these results.

It’s easy to be sidetracked. Because of the crisis we are faced with, we have a lot of information we can be sharing with our SOI, which makes it easy to come up with reasons to make these contacts. We are adding value to our local community. There is so much helpful content that you could be sharing in your Facebook feed.

The new way of doing business: virtual

We can work virtually. Get the word out! We can do virtual listings, buyer consults, showings, and this is rapidly evolving. This is happening with all of our clients at Icenhower Coaching and Consulting. This is being adapted quickly. This may be the new way of doing things going forward. The idea that we need to not be doing business right now is old-fashioned and simply not true.

In our Town Hall Meeting, we brainstormed ideas that we can use to stay in front of our people. How can we reach out and call our people? What can we do to post on social media? What information should we be emailing to our people? How can we come from contribution to add value? Here are some social media ideas that the Realtors who participated in our Town Hall Meeting brought to the table.

Working with Clients

Virtual Cafe / Happy Hour / Town Hall Meeting – Host a video conference featuring guests from other industries that you think are important for people to know about. CPA, lenders, travel agent, insurance agents, SBA rep, high school counselors, etc. You can record the Zoom call and eventually post it to Facebook.
- Zoom Happy Hours can work for your office, with your friends, for clients, and for client events. Get people face to face virtually.
Seller consultations and buyer consultations via Zoom.
Set up Zoom meetings and sharing screens for auto email prospecting searches live on call.
Virtual client events with giveaways, trivia, and local updates.
Use Cole Information Services (mention Icenhower Coaching for a discount) to export databases, geo-target neighborhoods, harvest the email list, and use that to build a Facebook audience. Use paid ads to target neighborhoods or friend them and segment Facebook lists based on neighborhoods.

Working with Vendors

Zoom/Facebook Live interviews with vendors. Let the vendors talk about their business and how they can help.
- Mortgage officers, health insurance, tax accountants, government officials, etc.
Connect with a local SBA (Small Business Association) agency to have host an online meeting and talk about the local laws and ideas from other local businesses

Community Outreach

Contests and virtual events

Virtual Easter Egg Hunt – Send mailers or kits with branding and crayons to neighborhoods. Provide directions and ask them to have their kids color the eggs brightly, post them in the window so they can be seen from the street. Then at a certain time, kids with parents can take a neighborhood walk and count them, and tag the real estate team on social media and use the hashtag. Winner for most eggs counted, or most liked photo, etc.
Kids Coloring Contest – Image difficulty based on age group. Share with the community, and prizes will be given away with care packages to all the parents that apply for the contest.
Sidewalk Art Contest – Announce on the Nextdoor app. If you don’t have a neighborhood set up on Nextdoor you should start one!
Cool Car Parades – Good for a small town. Include a banner and invite everyone to watch from their front yards and windows. You can organize it through a Facebook group and publicize the route on social media.

Post the contact information for the SBA (Small Business Association) representative for each county office so local businesses can reach out to that contact.
Post which local businesses offer delivery for community members that are at risk.
Classroom Dojo – Help teachers by providing resources for them to provide to parents and help with lesson plans, or offer free tools for parents from websites like https://www.lexialearning.com/, IXL.com (math, science, social studies, etc.), mysterdoug.com, and kids.nationalgeographic.com (science).
Restaurants and bars that don’t deliver can run a “Buy a Gift Card” campaign to help them stay open during this economic downturn. You can promote it with “Buy a Gift Card and get a free appetizer today.”

Give back

Start a scholarship program – Offer levels of awards for ideas and kids that drive community outreach. Have the kids come up with the best ideas to support their community members in need and share those ideas.
Purchase $5000 worth of gift cards and post to Facebook, asking for submissions for businesses that are in need so they can hand them out. Promote small businesses, tag them, get pictures with the business and help those in need at the same time.

Well, you’re in luck. We have a FREE online course you can take, which will also provide you with downloadable resources and templates that you can use right away in your business. Simply click here to enroll in COVID-19 for Realtors.

We get so many great ideas from our Real Estate Agent Round Table community every day. If you have a great social media idea to share with us, join and post to our Facebook group, Real Estate Agent Round Table.