Social media has made, and continues to make, an indelible impact across all industries. Low barriers to entry, cost-effectiveness, and multiple paths to desired audiences are only a few of the factors that have transformed a once complex and intimidating experience into an approachable, engaging, and irreplaceable business and networking resource. The questions real estate professionals typically have when using social media to their advantage are how to begin, how to build, and where to focus. Better Homes and Gardens Real Estate and its partner Lumentus Social teamed up to discover more, creating a survey of over 300 real estate professionals, The Impact of Social Media in Real Estate. The survey revealed that more than 87 percent of respondents are using social media for their businesses, and for a variety of different purposes: Despite the fact that a majority of survey respondents reported they understand social media opportunities, a review of over 100 social profiles indicates that many fail to consistently deliver on the fundamental steps needed to harness social media’s full potential. While this appears to leave a gap in the amount of successful agent social endeavors, The Real Estate Agent’s Guide to Social Media whitepaper, available for download at the link below, will lay out reasons, examples, and guidelines needed to reach that potential. To help guide you on your path to empowerment, we have created a social media approach and identified top-line success strategies that offer: A mechanism to assess your current social media capabilities; Recommendations that improve social media results at your specific user level, and allow your progression to a more advanced level; Typical time and financial resource allocations required at each user level, and the results you can expect to receive at each level. Social Media as a Pillar of Your Marketing Strategy Social media is more than a one-dimensional feature of your marketing strategy. It is a multi-platform marketing resource. To understand social media’s influential role as a marketing strategy, you need to look no further than the agendas of some of the country’s most highly acclaimed and widely attended conferences and training centers, including Icon, the national small business conference. Additionally, a 2015 review of real estate industry news outlets RISMedia and Inman News reveals that nearly 20 percent of all content—from client relations and business planning to recruitment and self-promotion—was focused on social media marketing. When you review the cross-section of industry conferences, you can see now that social media is infused throughout into every section of education, from lead generation to digital strategy to networking, accounting, and beyond. In fact, every major conference now includes social media as a backbone to its agenda, including South by Southwest and Better Homes and Gardens Real Estates’ own annual Agent Retreats and Fusion conferences. Why is social media such a recognized mainstay? The benefits are wide, powerful, and not likely to fade soon. Learn about these key real estate social media whitepaper insights in Better Homes and Gardens Real Estate’s Clean Slate blog post. You may also download the full whitepaper here. For more from Better Homes and Gardens® Real Estate, take a moment to like All Things Real Estate on Facebook, follow @AllThingsBHGRE on Twitter, and follow its company page on LinkedIn. For more information, please visit www.BHGRE.com. For the latest real estate news and trends, bookmark RISMedia.com. The post The Current State of Social Media Marketing in Real Estate appeared first on RISMedia. Latest News | RISMedia