Crafting Your Personal Brand in the Real Estate Industry
Personal branding is frequently associated with influencers and celebrities. However, it is an important tool that everyone should explore. It involves being intentional and consistent in your efforts to engage with potential consumers and inspire loyalty. A well-managed personal brand will help you gain trust and authority as a realtor over time.
Agents in the real estate market are self-employed professionals who must work under a broker's license. That's why agents use a brokerage or team.
Real estate firms build brand standards that individual agents can or must use. Even if your brokerage requires agents to promote their brand, you need to build a personal brand.
In this article, we define personal branding and its importance and explain how real estate agents can build their brand.
What Is Personal Branding?
Your personal brand as a real estate agent determines your chances. When someone searches your name online, the first few seconds they spend scrolling through the results solidify their first impression of you. Negative search results may drive them to your rivals, but favorable search results will drive them to your brand.
Here are some tips to help you build your own brand:
- Be clear about your actions
- Establish your goals and message
- Maintain a positive reputation
- Market your best skills and attributes
- Engage with your target audience on social media
- Create helpful content
- Differentiate yourself from competitors
A Personal Brand Isn't the Same as Your Brokerage's Brand
If you don't have a broker's license, it is critical that you partner with an established firm. Some brokerages mandate that agents use their marketing materials, logo, and terminology. These companies have a high-value message to convey, such as global reach, target convenience, or boutique services. Their brand messaging is more broad and general.
The issue is, regardless of the real estate agency, most clients consider realtors as doing the same job. They are more concerned with the attributes of the individual agent than with the company's emblem or name.
Personal brands may be developed by real estate brokers in order to target certain consumers. Fine-tuning your brand messaging might help you attract the right clientele, one that'll be more focused on the individual agent's qualities than the company's logo or name.
Real estate agents can build personal brands to target specific audiences. Fine-tuning your brand messaging can help attract the type of clients you're looking for.
Why Is Personal Branding Important?
In today's competitive real estate world, personal branding isn't optional — it's a necessity. Individuals are searching your name on Google and formulating quick impressions based on the information and results they discover about you.
Branding isn't reserved for influencers or celebrities alone. As a real estate professional, you should be making efforts to develop your personal brand. Personal branding can help you secure investment funding, attract reputable brokerages, grow your audience, and close deals.
Regardless of your position, someone is checking you up online. If you're a real estate agent, it might be potential buyers. If you're a brokerage manager, it could be job seekers, your employees, or competitors.
Dedicating more time to building your personal brand can make you outstanding, especially in regards to reaching your personal and career goals. But if you don't spend enough time developing your personal brand, you might lose out to competitors.
Remember, personal branding isn't necessarily about how many likes and followers you have. If you're looking for clients, your appearance is important. While followers and likes will increase your influence, your personal brand ultimately refers to how people perceive you.
How to Build a Personal Brand
Developing your personal brand may seem initially overwhelming, especially if you're just starting. But you can start by breaking the task into smaller, easier steps. That way, your brand will gradually progress and yield proceeds over time.
Also, clarity is vital. Don't leave individuals guessing about who you are or what you do. If you're a real estate agent, make it clear. Let your target audience know the services you offer and how you can make their dream home search a reality.
Even if you already have an established personal brand, you can still revisit the initial stages of personal brand development to make sure your brand still reflects your values.
Audit Search Results About You
Before you come up with any personal branding strategy, ensure to check the already existing information about you online. Have you been indicted in a company scandal? Can you find any negative search results? Has someone else with a similar name dominated your search results?
Conduct thorough research on the search results and remove irrelevant or negative content. Here are some types of particularly damaging content you should be wary of:
- Reference to weapons
- Bad grammar and spelling
- Documented alcohol consumption
- False or untrue information
- Potentially provocative or offensive statements or photos
- Mugshots
- Usage of profanity
- Illegal drug consumption
- Violence with customers
Search your personal brand to see what people are saying
Claim Your Space
After cleaning your search results to ensure a good online reputation, it's time to get a personal website and establish a social media presence. While it's not imperative to have social media accounts on all platforms, you'll want to sign up on the relevant websites.
If you don't own a personal website, it's time to get one. It's a vital tool for your personal branding strategy and a great way to publish content that relays your message and brand. You can design a free site on Squarespace, Wix, or WordPress, and we recommend buying a domain.
Choose a domain/username that's similar or matches what individuals will most likely type when they're searching for details about you online. Although you can use words or phrases related to your self or personal brand, don't choose something unprofessional or irrelevant.
In addition, ensure that the names or handles you pick don't contain hard-to-remember spellings or extra characters. For instance, if your name is unavailable as a handle or domain, don't add strange underscores or an extra letter. You want everyone to always remember your details. Ensure also that you don't mimic popular names.
Here are some of the most popular social media platforms. You can create social accounts on any of these platforms.
- Snapchat
- Youtube
- CrunchBase
- BrandYourself
- TikTok
- Vimeo
- Quora
- Tumblr
- SlideShare
- About.me
- Medium
Ensure to update your biography when necessary, and include relevant (active and correct) links to your sites.
Define Your Brand
As soon as you've cleaned up unwanted search results and created social accounts and a website, it's time to visualize your personal brand. Brainstorm every aspect of your personal brand, including how you hope to stand out in the real estate industry and what you wish to stand for.
Ask yourself relevant questions like:
- What's your vision for this personal brand?
- What will you offer? What makes you unique?
- What do you want to achieve with your personal brand?
- Why are you developing your personal brand now?
- Who is your target audience? And what are their interests and demographics?
- What are your professional goals? Can your personal brand help you reach these goals?
- Why would anyone come to you for advice, recommendations, or news, instead of another professional?
- What problems are you looking to solve? How will you solve them?
Once you've considered the essence of personal branding, take some time to collect evidence of those things you already have that support it.
Itemize your:
- Business and personal accomplishments
- Awards and recognitions you've received
- Existing content
- Failures and successes (focus on the lessons gained from your failures)
- Unique skills and talents
- Customer reviews and testimonials
Develop Your Personal Brand
As soon as you understand the essence of your brand and what you hope to achieve through it, you can begin promoting the brand online. The key to successful personal branding is to create unique, quality content that ranks high in search results.
Here are some ways to establish your brand using content
Use Different Features
Ensure to use social media features, including reels and stories. These will put your content and brand in front of different audiences.
Publish Unique Content
You can increase your chances of ranking in search results by publishing unique content. It's not just about uploading inspirational posts and fun pictures. Consider creating content that establishes your authority as a real estate professional.
Cultivate Your Contacts
Ensure to follow people (friends, colleagues, etc.) on different platforms. It will help create a base to start your growth. Check your contact lists across different platforms and suggestions offered to you. You could even ask your current contacts to introduce other people on a social media platform to you. Make sure they can be relevant to developing your personal brand and advancing your career goals.
Maintain Consistency
Create your content in advance, and schedule time every day to publish at least one piece of content about your brand. You can use scheduling software like Hootsuite. It allows you to create and publish content across different social media platforms. Some websites also allow automatic reposts on different platforms.
Always Be Positive
Most individuals aren't interested in content about negativity, especially if they're your prospective customers. Plus, they'll mostly respond to inspirational and positive posts. Everyone likes success stories!
Connect with Influencers
It's essential to connect with other professionals and leaders in your industry, especially if they are social media influencers. Apart from learning from them, if you're able to build a relationship with some influencers, they might share your content on their timeline. However, be respectful and don't stalk them. If you interact with or tag them, make sure it's organic.
Advantages of Personal Branding in Real Estate
Personal branding portrays you as an authority and leader in the real estate world. Your efforts to build a personal brand will be beneficial in several ways. Here are some advantages of personal branding.
Greater Trust
It's easy for people to trust you more when they know you and the values you offer through your brand. It leads to career advancements, increased sales, and referrals. Consider personal branding examples like your favorite celebrity's online presence. Their huge success is partly due to the way they portray themselves, giving people insight — their fans feel like they know so much about the celebrity.
You Write Your Story
If you don't take personal branding seriously, anyone with a phone and an Internet connection can come up with their opinion about you — good or bad. Defining your personal brand will help determine every existing information about the brand, and you can influence how individuals perceive your brand. Create your narrative!
Your Network Grows
Personal branding can help connect you to great places and bigger clients that would have been hard to reach. Your social circle will expand, and you'll receive opportunities that would have otherwise been inaccessible. It's the online version of attending a real estate networking event and distributing your business cards.
Higher Perceived Value
Personal branding is directly connected to credibility. If you establish yourself as a real estate expert, it becomes easier to charge more for consultancy and other services you provide.
Personal Branding FAQs
As a real estate agent, your personal brand refers to what you're known for. It is the impression people form when they come across your name based on past experiences, public opinion, reputation, personality, prior knowledge, and interactions.
You can create your narrative and develop your personal brand using a great content marketing strategy. Publish unique and relevant content, always be positive, and maintain consistency. Take advantage of several social media platforms. Be strategic about posting where your audience visits the most. Connect with influencers.
Parting Shot
Real estate professionals have no excuse for ignoring personal branding in 2023. Building a personal brand can open doors to personal development, and social, and business opportunities.
Personal branding requires consistency and dedication but will bring long-term results. This article explains how personal branding defines success for real estate agents and the essential steps to help you build a successful brand.
You like solving complex problems and helping others — that's why you joined the real estate business. You didn't necessarily enter the industry because you're a professional marketer.
That's why you need to leverage other resources to help develop your brand. You don't have to learn web development, content writing, and graphic design. As your brand improves, you'll want to focus on your current and potential clients. Visit Icons of Real Estate for more tips on how to leverage other service providers while you keep delivering outstanding customer service.