PINTEREST FOR REALTORS® AND AGENTS

Hello again Realtors! Hope you are having a great and productive day!

Today we should chat about Pinterest! Maybe it’s on your mind lately? Or maybe you didn’t even give it a look for Real Estate…. it’s just recipes and how to’s on that platform!
​
Pinterest is flurry of all sorts of businesses and entrepreneurs with a lot to offer. You can of course look for the next cake to make for your dog, or how to bead your entire wedding dress by yourself.  But, you can also find a lot of great business and marketing tips and information.

So, after you have taken 20 minutes to get lost in your the Pinterest Feed and ooooed and ahhed over those awesome beach pictures - do some searching to see what other businessy type information you can find. What have you been meaning to learn? What have you been stuck on and need help with? You’ll find a lot of great places to find info on running your small business, how to market your business, what to wear and what to bring for lunch!

After that - search for Real Estate Business type ideas: marketing, what to do for an open house, what to bring on your neighborhood walks. Then search for your hometown and community. See…. lots of cool and interesting stuff awaits!

WHY SHOULD REALTORS BE ON PINTEREST?

There are some great reasons you as a Realtor or Agent should be on Pinterest for your business. And, here’s a list of them...

1. It can help boost your SEO. Yep! More online activity can help your Google position. And, everyone is looking for more of that! On top of external SEO considerations, with the Pinterest SEO abilities that the app also offers, if done well, you and your pins will be searchable for many months! Fantastic!

2. People are on Pinterest. So, the people are hanging out there. There are about 200 million people active on Pinterest. 70 million of those people are just in the US. They are on the site often and looking for lots of different types of thing.

While that’s a lot of people, when the right people find you, it’s worth all your efforts! Having your own Pinterest Page with what you have to offer and share is important.

Some examples of what to share: include tips for people buying their first home, or next home. Or behind the scenes and how you spend your day helping your clients other than just putting up a listing. Now, I do absolutely think you should include your listings as well - this will give the potential clients an idea of what you have done in the past and might grab someone’s attention on what you are showing now. Your page can be a very nice promotion of you and your work…. And again, remember…. It’s what you have to offer them!

3. Being on Pinterest will bring more awareness of who you are as a brand and help establish you more as a expert in your field and community. You can be active on this platform, too, and make a name for yourself.

4. Show off your community and maybe your Brokerage. Pinterest is a great place to showcase all those great local area photos in a nice group. People come looking for info on their neighborhoods and surroundings all the time. It can be a great place to search for your the new neighborhood you want to move into as well! If you provide that for them…. They will take note!

NOW, WHAT DOES PINTEREST DO FOR A REAL ESTATE AGENT

So, as a Realtor or Agent, I’m not sure this is such a fantastic place to advertise your current listings for great exposure on a short time span. There, I said it. What I mean by that is - Pinterest isn’t a big collection of houses for sale. There are probably better places for home buyers to go and look. I tend to think of Pinterest as a place for ideas of what to do after you buy the house, or information on how to buy the house, or who is in that community to buy the house from, or the communities I want to move in to.

Now, I could be wrong, but go and look around for yourself. Pinterest shows off the Real Estate industry and actual Realtors really well, but houses for sale seem to get a little lost. Sad? Eh, who knows… there are other places for people to actually look for houses actively. What you want to show off here on Pinterest is you and what you can do for the home owners. Remember that, what can you do for them based around buying and selling a home.

On that note… let’s get started showing your community what you can do for them!

GET STARTED ON PINTEREST!

So, what do you need to do to get started? Of course it’s easy to signup!! Then, yes it can get a little more complicated. Because you want to have a strategy and not get too lost, and outta breath after wandering around looking at more of that stuff we talked about earlier. You need to make a plan and work the plan.

You will need to track what you did in some form or fashion and review it on a regular basis - so you can see what worked for you and what you need to stop doing or change. Yep, no one said this being in biz for yourself was easy. Why didn’t they talk about that part?!

SIGNED UP!

Now, you’re signed up for your account... again with this platform, make it a Pinterest biz account. You’ll be able to track your stats with this type of account.

Start with your Pinterest About Section and your Profile. Make sure to fill these areas out fully. This helps with your SEO and it’s just good business sense. Connect up all your social networks and address the security and other settings that are there at this time. It’s much smaller than some other social media platforms. You should be able to do it rather quickly.

From here you are going to want to start up some of your own Pinterest Boards to feature a number of great images and concepts. The Boards are the sections where you pin information to for later and so other people can see it all in one spot. It can be pretty helpful.

SOME IDEAS FOR YOUR PINTEREST BOARDS COULD BE:

• Key West Homes for Sale
• Great Farm Kitchens
• Pretty Grey Houses
• Realtor Daily Tasks
• Real Estate Questions
• Things to do in (your farmed area)
• Visiting Miami
• Realtor Miami - Include stuff about you and your daily doings. You can include these pins in other boards as well to get more traction from people looking for other types of topics.

The names should be short and to the point. Not fluffy and cutsie, but topics people would actually type in and look for help with.

And, the above list is a small group of what you could pin. I recommend you create many many boards to supply your page.

THE PINNING!

From here you want to start pinning (saving) some great pins of other peoples boards from Pinterest and from blogs you read. Pinning them to the appropriate board.

And, make sure to pin your own stuff, of course! Post about 80% of your own stuff and 20% from others.
When you write a blog post make sure to include an image in your post that can be pinned from your readers. Pining from your blog is an important way to get your message out!

ENGAGING WITH PINNERS

Engage with people in your Real Estate community and other types of home related communities. Connect and comment like you do on other social media platforms. Think of it as networking and mingling. Your just touching base with other people… chatting it up. You never know who is looking for a home…. could be anybody right?!

You’ll want to build on your boards and connections as time moves forward. But, don’t just build it and forget it. Schedule it when you do other types of marketing and make it a routine.
Again, it’s going to take some doing to get everything set up and turned into a habit. (remember your timer) But, once you are up and running, you can spend your time just maintaining it… and having some Pinterest fun!

CREATING PINABLE IMAGES

When you post on your blog, make sure to include a Pinable image in each post so your readers have something to share to their Pinterest feed.

A relatively easy program to build your pin in is something like Canva. It offers an easy template just for Pinterest. Make the images nice and easy to read. Make sure they tie in with your theme colors and styles, but try to make them bold so they stand out in the busy Pinterest feed. Look around your current feed and see what stands out to you… bright colors? What types of images draw you in?

"When you post on your blog, make sure to include a
Pinable image in each post so your readers have
​something to share to their Pinterest feed."

YOUR PINTEREST SEO - HOW ARE PEOPLE GOING TO FIND YOUR PINS!?

You are probably familiar with SEO for google and other search engines. But, Pinterest is really it’s own search engine, too. And, thusly it uses SEO and keyword searching to catalog pins. So, when you do a search for Pecan Pie, if a bunch of people have posted pics without including good text along with it, you might not ever get to see it. So, remember to include the keywords we have talked about a number of times already, in your image tags and in your pin itself. Instead of your Logo, include your website address and everyone can locate you from that, too!

YOUR PINTEREST

While I mentioned above, that Pinterest might not be the greatest place to show off current listings, if you’re looking to gain authority in your market, build community and brand recognition, then Pinterest is a sure bet to include in your marketing plan. 

NEED SOME EXAMPLES?

There are many great Realtors and Agents on Pinterest showing off their stuff!
Here are a few samples of some that I find have exceptional boards and layouts:

1. The Boutique Real Estate Group
2. Hawaii Life Real Estate Brokers
3. Bill Gassett - RE/MAX Executive Realty

You can also search for other Realtors and see what comes up. Vary it and check out Realtors and Agents in certain cities to get an idea of what other locations are up to.

YOU CAN DO THIS!

You are smart enough to do this. You probably just don’t have the time or think it’s mind numbingly boring. Just like you don’t have the time or interest to clean your own house or install your own…...
Just like you do with traditional marketing, it’s certainly ok to hire someone to help you with your digital marketing. I think most successful people have a team behind them. You can do it!

AND, WHEN YOU ARE READY!

Ready to get some help with your business content writing? Reach out and say hi!

---