Should You Hire a Social Media Manager for Your Real Estate Agency?

Marketing your real estate agency on social media can be a full-time job, but does that mean it should be?

Benefits of Social Media Management for Realtors

The potential gains from real estate social media marketing are no secret. By this point in the tech revolution, you should at least be sharing your listings and connecting with potential clients on Facebook or LinkedIn.

But keeping track of communications and listings while trying to share content and build your brand image leaves you little time to sell. That's why many agencies have turned to using social media managers or management companies to handle their posts for them.

You can hire out just about any part of your social media, anything from writing blog posts to creating and buying ads to monitoring and tracking engagement and other metrics. As a result, you can focus your time on connecting with clients and showing properties rather than spending the day at the computer marketing your agency.

As an added bonus, partnering with someone who knows social media gives you better leverage of the various platforms. They already know how to help you benefit from social marketing, which means you don't have to take the time to learn (if you don't already know).

But the time savings aren't necessarily worth it, especially in the long-term.

The Downsides of Hiring a Social Media Manager for Your Agency

Part of the appeal of using social media for real estate marketing is the "social" element. That is, you are able to connect directly to your audience on a personal level and bring the human element to your agency.

If someone else is handling this for you, they're the ones essentially making these connections, not you.

Removing yourself from your social media presence may not help you reach your goals as effectively as managing it yourself. The most successful brands on social channels are the ones their audience feels are genuine, not formulated.

Though your viewers may never know you're not the one behind the keyboard while they read your posts, they may notice the difference between your social media interactions and other ways they connect with you. Any slight variations in tone, style, and branding can deal damage to your agency's image.

Granted, hiring a social media manager for your real estate agency isn't an automatic that branding will be an issue, but it's too great a possibility to ignore. Saving a few hours a week simply isn't a substitute for risking the other benefits social media offers.

In Closing

Before you hire someone to take over your social media strategy, remember that the community connections you stand to lose may far outweigh any gains. However, that doesn't mean that you have to do all the work yourself.

Outsourcing things like content creation can take a heaping helping off your plate without sacrificing the personal element. See where you can strike a balance, then worry about striking the right price to make it all worthwhile.