Real Estate and Social Media
Real Estate and Social Media
How do you find a good real estate agent? Are real estate and social media now permanently joined at the hip? Do facebook, twitter, pinterest, instagram and snap chat now hold the authority in making decisions about hiring a real estate agent?
10 years ago people found real estate agents through direct conversations with friends and family. Friends and family who had direct experience with a real estate agent they liked would recommend a real estate agent to home sellers. If there were no friends and family with direct experience the sphere was enlarged to include business associates, hair dressers, bartenders or whoever crossed paths with the home seller in the weeks prior to hiring a real estate agent. Word of mouth was the dominant factor in choosing who was most qualified to sell your home.
Yesterday I watched a conversation unfold on facebook where someone who has an urgent and real need to sell her home asked for recommendations to sell her home. Almost instantly dozens of people in the neighborhood put forth recommendations for this home seller to consider. I was pleased to the point of jumping up and down to see Sally English and The English Team mentioned early in the replies. One of my former clients even posted a link to my website englishteam.com.
What amazed me was that the recommendations kept coming (now at 25 and growing). There were recommendations for several agents in my office – all competent and capable. But there were also recommendations for some agents who are almost inactive in the market and a couple of recommendations for agents who are not going to be the best choice for this home seller.
Are Reviews Useful in Hiring a Real Estate Agent?
Lately we real estate agents have been struggling with published reviews. There are a lot of Internet websites screaming for Realtor Reviews including Zillow, Trulia, Realtor.com, Yelp, Google, Kudzu, facebook, LinkedIn and more. All of these portals want real estate agents to ask their clients to post a public review on the Internet. Why? – because the reviews drive traffic to the website and traffic on the Internet equates to more revenue for the Internet portal. Most of my clients will help out if the review mechanism is convenient. But no one is inclined to post a review on every portal. I am still trying to figure out how one agent who sells maybe 10 houses a year can have 75 reviews on Zillow! But there is a place for reviews in making buying decisions. I even use them when buying shoes now.
Combo Platter May be the Best Choice
The way is not clear on the best way to identify a good real estate agent in today’s world. It is probably more of a triangulation of factors that helps identify the best real estate agents in a given market. Some combo platter of Social media recommendations, Reviews on real estate portals like Zillow and looking for an agent’s activity in your specific neighborhood are probably all required to find the best agent to sell your home. By the way – word of mouth still works if you actually have a real conversation with someone.
