Chris Smith has a passion for technology, social media and all things Apple; and a mission to help Real Estate Agents become more “at home” with some of the tools available to them. The result so far has been a significant Social Media following on Twitter and Facebook, a widely read blog, and he is now a highly sought after speaker and coach, not just in the US, but worldwide.
Recently, Chris spoke to Sold Magazine’s new editor, Samantha McLean, about what types of technology Real Estate Agents should be focusing on, how to get the most out of them, and where it’s all heading.
In Part one of this two part series, Chris discusses how Tech Savvy Agent started and grew to where it is today and how the Tech Savvy Agent “concept” became a blueprint for the technology and social media strategies now employed by some “savvy” Realtors in the US. He also provides us with some insight as to how Real Estate Agents can make more effective use of the Social Media Tools available today.
How did “Tech Savvy Agent” start?
My background is more sales and technology than Real Estate. I’m not a Realtor; but have had a lot of experience in the mortgage industry. I also spent time working for “Move, Inc”, the public company that owns Realtor.com (the most visited website in the world for Real Estate, and the official site of the National Association of Realtors (NAR) in the US.
For the first year and a half when I started with Move, I went to two different offices a day every day and I was showcasing the latest and greatest technologies sometimes – sometimes to two people, sometimes to between fifteen and twenty people. I can remember my first appointment, I was so nervous; I had a great presentation prepared and as soon as I was about five minutes into it they all stopped me and said “Chris everything you are showing looks great… in fact there was a guy here a month ago who showed us the same stuff…and we bought all of it — but we need help with it. Even though you’re doing great, we didn’t think that you were coming here to present the products, we thought you were coming here to teach us!”
From that day forward, I just took the mentality of “helping” these Realtors to learn to use what they already have access to. This was back in 2008, where the market was really tough, probably the worst year in our history; it was when everything started to plummet. So, actually, the only way I could get anyone to buy anything from me was if was to offer to help them set it up and implement it, not just purchase it.
I started helping people by doing a two hour “one to one” webinar for every single person like this that made a purchase, and it worked really well; people appreciated the help. But for me, it didn’t scale very well, because I could only help one person at a time! After about six months, I started using Facebook, Twitter and blogging as a method of helping people on a national level, and that’s how Tech Savvy Agent was born.
You now have almost 17,000 fans on Facebook, how did you grow this so quickly?
When we first created the Facebook page, there was no blog, no Twitter, no YouTube. I started running some Facebook advertisements, which are great because you can target to specific market segments and demographics; including “by Employer”. So I started targeting the larger Real Estate franchises, running ads basically saying “Who is Tech Savvy Agent?”, with some simple copy that went along the lines of “…Are you a Realtor who loves technology? If so, there is a new community on Facebook, come join us.” Facebook advertising is relatively in expensive and within about 30 days we had over 1,000 people join us so there was definitely a demand for this type of resource. We just grew from there by people writing on our wall, engaging with us, commenting on posts and asking questions.
How do Real Estate Agents in the US view Social Media?
Social media has been presented as this great new opportunity to broadcast your message, and there are a lot of agents who don’t use it to the greatest advantage. And by that, I mean you should use social media to build relationships in the online world the same way that you would build relationships in the normal offline world.
Without the tools, before the tools, before social, before Twitter, people historically are going to buy things from people that they like and trust. And you are never going to get anyone to want to buy a home from you unless they like you and trust you, and broadcasting your listings on social media is not the way to do that.
I always say to Agents when I am coaching them: “Imagine if you got invited to a cocktail party where everybody had a high IQ, and everybody was there to network; but you were the one that had to get up on stage and do a sales presentation while everyone else just wanted to have a drink?”
Part of the problem, really is going back to the “age” issue. The average age of a Realtor in the US is 51. Facebook and Twitter were adopted earlier on by the younger generation, that is, it all started with college kids. Demographically the age range is now growing and you have the 50+ 65+ joining. I always try to tell Realtors that “there is a party that has been happening for over 7 years; you’re getting there very very late; and not only are you getting there late, as soon as you get there you are trying to sell people stuff!”
