Pinterest Marketing for Real Estate Agents

If you’ve been listening to this podcast for any length of time, then you know that I usually focus on bloggers using Pinterest. But for the past few episodes, I have been looking at how people in other sectors can use Pinterest to build their business. Today’s episode is one I have been interested in learning more about, and that’s Pinterest marketing for real estate agents.

After doing some research on Pinterest, my assistant found our guest, Lynn Pineda. Lynn has been a real estate agent in Coral Springs, Florida for the past 12 years.

Pinterest Marketing for Real Estate Agents

Creating an Online Presence

Although many real estate agents still go the traditional route when it comes to marketing, Lynn was smart from the very beginning and set up a website for her business — Imagine Your House. Once she had her website established, developing her presence on social media was the obvious next step.

Pinterest wasn’t even on the scene when Lynn first started her business. She heard about it when it first came out though and joined the platform early in 2012. She began by using Pinterest in the same way that everyone else used it – for recipes, crafts, etc. One day, she had an epiphany that the platform would be perfect for marketing her real estate business.

Developing a Strategy for Pinterest

Lynn is a self-professed visual learner and self educator. She began her online business by writing articles about real estate and sharing them. Long before creating beautiful Pinterest graphics was standard operating procedure, Lynn was doing it. She knew that combining her articles with stunning graphics would gain the attention of users on Pinterest.

Although Lynn is a visual learner, Lynn admits that she’s not gifted in design. She uses a program called Canva to help her create Pinterest images. She laughs now when looking back at some of those early images, but they served their purpose. They drew people to her Pinterest account, and ultimately, to her website.

“Just like in everything, the more you learn, the more creative you become.” ~Lynn Pineda” 

General and Location-Specific Group Boards

One of Lynn’s largest Pinterest boards is a group board titled Real Estate Advice. She receives email requests from other agents on a regular basis asking to join this board.

As a real estate agent, Lynn’s entire business is dependent on people knowing that she sells homes. And what better way to showcase that than on a visual platform like Pinterest? When people see you actively participating on Pinterest, they begin to recognize your brand, and brand recognition is the first step toward a client or customer developing trust toward you.

Because real estate is a very location specific business, it is important to have Pinterest boards that incorporate those locations. You need to tell people where you are based, in hopes of attracting clients in those areas.

Real Life Results

While Lynn is quick to admit that she has never had anyone call her and say, “I saw your Pinterest page and I want you to sell my house”, she does know from Google analytics that her top source of traffic to her website is Pinterest.

The majority of her clients also tell her that they found her online. So while she can’t say that Pinterest is directly delivering her customers, if you look at her analytics and her real life results, you can see that she is very successful in her online strategy. Having content available demonstrates that Lynn is an expert, which leads people to contact her.

Facing Challenges

One of the challenges of having an extremely active and large Pinterest page is managing your boards. Lynn admits to having let some of her boards suffer simply because she has a lot of them and it takes a lot of work to maintain them.

One of the boards she would like to focus on updating is her customer review board. She creates beautiful testimonial graphics  by combining customer reviews (gathered from her website or social media platforms) with beautiful stock photos. She then pins those to that graphics to her customer review board. Genius!

Advice for Real Estate Agents

Lynn has obviously been super successful in using Pinterest to grow her website and her business. But what if you are a real estate agent and you have never thought about using Pinterest before to grow your own business? I asked Lynn for her top 3 tips to help you get started:

1. Build your boards around your business. Even if you don’t have any articles written, you can still create real estate boards by pinning other people’s information and pins.
2. Join group boards to curate content. This is a great way to find relevant content to share.
3. Start writing articles. You need to be able to educate yourself and get busy writing. Be sure to create high quality graphics to go along with these articles.

Connect with Lynn-

Imagine Your House
Pinterest
Twitter
Google+

2020 UPDATE: I recorded another episode on Pinterest marketing for real estate agents! Give a listen here on how Nicole is connecting with customers and finding great traffic from Pinterest in the real estate/interior design space.

Are you a real estate agent whose had success using Pinterest? We’d love to hear about your best tips in the comments below. 

Time Stamp-
 Intro
 2:30 Creating an Online Presence
 5:55 Developing a Strategy for Pinterest
 9:55 Group and Location Specific Boards
13:10 Real Life Results
16:00 Advice for Other Real Estate Agents
20:30 Facing Challenges