Using social media to build your real estate business can feel overwhelming when you’re first getting started, but there are a lot of advantages to getting connected. The primary thing to remember about social media is that it’s designed to be interactive – it’s all about conversations, not lectures or monologues. These quick tips can help you get started today:

Promote

When it comes to getting more connected with social media, thinking outside the box yields the biggest benefits. Email past clients and contacts to let them know you’re active on social media (make sure you let them know you want to stay in touch with them, not just that you want them to follow you!).

Include your more popular social media links and profiles everywhere: not just in your email signature and other online locations, but on your business cards, property postcards, and more. Include a specific call to action where possible: “To see more photos, or more listings, visit me at…”

Engage

Social media is inherently social. You can’t just put material out into the world; you have to interact with others as well. Find people in your local market to follow, both in your industry and outside of it. Like and share their content, comment on their posts, and try to build meaningful connections. When it comes to social media, it’s definitely true that the more you give, the more you gain.

Maintain

Social media is constantly changing. In order to be successful with it, you have to be consistent. Fortunately, the bite-size nature of most social media interactions makes it easy to make an impact without spending a ton of time. You can easily plan for five to ten minute blocks throughout your day to share an article on LinkedIn, retweet from a couple of your followers, or update your Facebook with a recent sale.

As with any other marketing endeavor, it’s important to set goals and include specific time in your schedule to follow through. Otherwise it can be very easy to forget to make time for your social media marketing, and end up with an empty profile. Or worse, you can get sucked in to reading random bits here and there, and spend a ton of time without much to show for it.

Once you get the hang of it, making social media a standard part of your marketing plan becomes second nature. Before you know it, adding new listing photos to Instagram will be as commonplace as handing out your real estate business card.