The social media is in full bloom now that every real estate agent seems to own a Facebook account. After a few months experience being "social" on the social media, most real estate agents eventually wonder how the social activity translates into new business. Business in practice demands efficient messaging that brings in clients. Chatting on Facebook seems too indirect an approach for many agents.

We're now seeing a palpable shift towards using the social media as an advertising platform solely used for branding and messaging. The key idea behind this movement is to set up two types of social networking accounts - one personal and one strictly business on Twitter and Facebook. The personal account, based on your name, is used for personal branding, as you've been doing up to now.

For real estate, the business account is used strictly for discussing real estate - market trends, breaking news in the neighborhood, etc. Chats and other personal broadcasts should be limited so the content remains relevant to the opt-in subscriber / "friend". These Twitter feeds also become positioned as a proxy blog themselves and can be re-broadcast on other sites. For example, on the Breaking News sites like http://breakingsfnews.com/real-estate, we add those undiluted Twitter feeds within the Real Estate section.

@CindeeLean provides good examples on how to use multiple Twitter accounts for business:


(Personal)                                                                   (Business)



(Business)                                                                  (New business)

Related article: Using social media as a business, not a social tool