Real estate marketing for introverts // Canadian Real Estate Marketing Podcast #010

Whatever your personality type, it’s generally accepted that that being a real estate agent means meeting new people and making new contacts. It’s a profession that’s synonymous with handshakes, sales presentations, and face-to-face interactions, it’s pretty clear that extroverts have a leg up on their more demur competition.

But just like there are all kinds of buyers and sellers, there’s a need for all types of Realtors. Clients that are themselves reserved can be overwhelmed or intimidated by gregarious real estate agents. In this scenario, an extrovert’s outgoing nature may work against them.

Real estate is an industry that’s going to force introverts to have interactions that drain them. There’s no way around that – if you’re dealing with the public and serving the public, you’re going to need to personally connect with the public on a somewhat regular basis.

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Straying from the topic of marketing for a minute, to be clear, there’s nothing wrong with being an introvert. It’s not a disease that needs to be cured or an illness that needs treatment. Extroverts are energized by social interactions whereas introverts are energized by solitude.

OK, with that out of the way, if you’re firmly in the introvert camp, we have some strategies that can help you keep a low profile while growing a brand that will be the envy of the extroverted agents in your office.

We have three ways to communicate with one another: We connect with other humans by using images, sounds, and the written word. In traditional media, these would take the form of television, billboards, radio, and newspapers and magazines. As our specialty is digital media, we’re going to focus on streaming video, podcasts, and blogging.

Blogging

The medium that’s most aligned with solitude and introversion is blogging. Writing is typically a solitary pursuit. While there can occasionally be some collaboration, outside of a writer’s room on your favourite TV show, there aren’t a lot of instances in which writers will be forced to work together in a group in real time. As a Realtor, blogging will mean writing articles or essays and posting them on your website.

What kinds of things will you write about? The obvious topic is industry related information. This could be a regular market report where you’re outlining the current conditions in your town, city, or region. Or maybe you’ll write a series of blog posts that walks readers through each step of the buying or selling process. Or case studies on how you help your client overcome a specific obstacle. Blogging about real estate related news and topics will present you as a knowledgeable expert with a deep understanding of your profession as it relates to your audience and your market.

Another option is to profile one of your listings. Think more along the lines of a feature article in a glossy magazine and less of a Craigslist ad. Highlight the benefits of living in the home and surrounding neighbourhood. Snap some cell phone pictures or even hire a pro to go in and take photos for you. It could turn into something really special that would differentiate you from other Realtors in your area.

Or you could write about community events, local businesses, and all the things that make your hometown the best place to live. Maybe you’ll write a review of the restaurant you dined at last weekend or an essay about the fuzzy feeling you get when you visit your favourite park. If there’s something you find interesting about your local community, there’s a good chance that readers will feel the same way. If blogging about real estate makes you an industry expert, writing about where you live will turn you into a lifestyle and community expert.

Lastly, you could write about you. Why did you become a Realtor? When did you buy your first home? Why did you choose to live in the neighbourhood you did? You don’t have to reveal your deepest, darkest secrets but sharing little things about yourself helps you to connect with an audience without having to physically interact with them.

Once your article is written and ready to be shared, you can decide whether you want to post it to a blog on your website, an email newsletter, or as a post on Facebook or Instagram. Wherever you decide to share it, it’s a good idea to include at least one image with the post. These don’t have to be fancy photos – they can be something simple that you took with your cell phone. If you wrote a restaurant review, take a picture of your meal or the exterior of the building. If you wrote about your favourite park, include a shot of what you saw during a recent visit. This leads us neatly to your next option – communicating with an image.

Post photos to Instagram

If blogging is too time intensive or just isn’t your thing, get good at snapping photos when you’re out and about. Again, don’t worry about taking incredible, professional-quality photos. You’re just going to focus on sharing something interesting that you saw.

Potential topics are the same as with blogging. Share images that relate to your industry, to your community, or to yourself. Maybe that’s an infographic supplied by your brokerage or real estate board. Maybe it’s a teaser shot of your upcoming listing. Or maybe it’s a picture of a thank you card you sent or received.

Aliese Mackenzie is a local Realtor here on the Sunshine Coast and she does an awesome job of posting the weekly Realtor tour to Instagram Stories each week. Some of her personality comes through and she’s consistently showing herself to be a professional that’s up to date with the newest listings in our area. Visit Aliese’s Instagram account and copy some of her good ideas! https://www.instagram.com/aliesemackenzieremax/

When we think of platforms like Instagram, we immediately imagine this means snapping endless selfies but that doesn’t need to be the case at all. If you want to post selfies or get someone to take a picture of you, that’s great. But if you’re not into that, that’s OK too. Fill your feed with listings and local photos and find your audience that way.

If you’re feeling ambitious, swap out photos for videos but follow the same steps. Snapping a photo and typing a brief description is less daunting than shooting a short cell phone video while narrating a brief description but video is big right now. Maybe you shoot nine photos and on the tenth time, you post a video. Shoot it, look at it, and if it’s terrible, don’t post it.

Podcasting

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xcTtZWrqyzY

We’d talked about blogging and about sharing images and our last idea would be something related to audio. AKA – a podcast.

As with the other types of media, you’ll want to focus on the industry, your community, or yourself when planning your podcast. The topics are interchangeable between all platforms – it’s just the delivery method that will change. In this instance, instead of writing or photographing, you’ll be speaking.

Right now, we’re podcasting as a team but it’s something that’s often done alone. Podcasting can be as simple as combining a quiet space, a microphone, and your thoughts.

You probably already have everything you need to launch a podcast. Anchor.fm is a free app that let’s you record, edit, and upload your podcast right from your phone. You can also use the Anchor.fm desktop site to do those things if you prefer. When your episode is ready to go, Anchor will distribute it to platforms like Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and Google Podcasts.

As with the other mediums, focus on one of the three, broad, already discussed topics when making a list of potential podcast episodes.

If you’re an experienced agent, you likely have lots of personal experience and interesting anecdotes to draw from if you want to your podcast to be about the real estate industry. New agents might choose to create a podcast that deals with their community or their own journey of becoming a Realtor.

Posting a listing to Instagram or a website seems straightforward enough. Is there a way to do this with a podcast?

Sure, why not? You’d want to stay away from simply reading a laundry list of features at the home but each episode of your podcast would focus on a different property for sale in your market. I’d worry less about making an analytical list of things the home has and instead focus on how those things would make a listener feel if they were living in the home. Talk about the about the neighbourhood, nearby amenities, the history of the home, or maybe a profile on the current owners and why they’re selling. I think it’d take more work and planning but is definitely doable.

You do you

This list isn’t exhaustive or all encompassing. These are a few strategies to get you started when marketing your business. Don’t expect too much of yourself when you’re getting started. The important part is that you take action and that you take that action consistently and repeatedly. These ideas aren’t reserved exclusively for introverts. An extrovert working from one of these approaches would end up with a blog post or Instagram feed with a different feel and tone when compared to the work of an introvert but the underlying tactic is the same: share some of your expertise and let some of your personality peak through.

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The Canadian Real Estate Marketing Podcast is a weekly podcast that tackles the best techniques and strategies for Canadian real estate agents that want to grow their business using digital media, specifically digital video.

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