From Facebook to Twitter, Instagram to YouTube, Pinterest and beyond, if there’s content to share, there’s a platform designed specifically with it in mind.
And you know what they say – if you build it, they will come. People all over the world turn to social media for updates on friends and family, breaking news, and posts from various businesses about their product or service.
But how can you be expected to keep up with something as trivial as social media when you have numbers to crunch, phone calls to make, and loans to close? It can be a tall order. After all, not only do you have to remember to post, you need content to share. A tool you may not have thought about using to up your social media game is your CRM.
More than a contact database, your CRM can (and should) be used to manage relationships with customers. Yes, this is commonly done through emails and phone calls, but there are also several ways in which you can utilize this powerful tool to master your workflow and improve the way you do business, including managing your social profiles.
Set daily reminders
The struggle many mortgage professionals face is finding the time to spend on social media. When you’ve got so much on your plate, it can be difficult to prioritize tasks like Facebook and Twitter posts. However, like any other aspect of business, the key to getting more done during the day often boils down to being organized.
This is where your CRM comes in. You aren’t limited to simple reminders to make phone calls or otherwise contact your clients. Start to think outside the box and utilize your system as a total workflow assistant.
One way you can do this is set up notifications within your CRM to remind you to post on your profiles. That way, when you’re in the office, you’ll already have part of your day set aside to dedicate to social posting.
The timing, frequency, and content you share are all up to you. As a mortgage professional, your goal should be to show interested potential borrowers in your community you are an expert in your field. You don’t have to post multiple times a day. You don’t even have to post once a day. Just make sure you’re keeping up with your profile(s) to the point where, when potential customers visit your page, they see recent, relevant, helpful activity.
Utilize and repurpose content
Deciding what to share is the most difficult part of maintaining an active business social media account. We’ve all been there – full of motivation and willpower to put out content only to immediately hit a roadblock when it’s time to create a post.
Luckily, your CRM should be able to help you past these temporary lapses in creativity. The key to taking advantage of this piece of advice is to first utilize a CRM with the ability to pull in content from the Internet for you to share.
Great CRMs can craft pre-written newsletters auto-populated with headlines and stories relevant to your client base. And while this is generally designed with email in mind, you can also repurpose the content that has been compiled for you by sharing it on your social media pages.
First, determine if your CRM has this feature. After all, not all systems are created equal. If yours does, experiment with adding various news sources (if it doesn’t, consider looking into a new, more comprehensive system). Essentially, you can turn your CRM into a virtual one-stop-shop for shareable, relevant content your customers and potential customers will enjoy reading.
Then, when your system prompts you to make a post (because you’ve followed the previous advice and set up reminders), you can quickly and easily switch over to your feed(s), pull a few interesting headlines, and share the stories across different platforms.
Feel free to add your own commentary or opinions to make the posts more personal. You can even invite discussion and ask for others to comment with their thoughts. That way you’re encouraging interaction with your followers and allowing for a more personal relationship to form.
Ask your contacts for content
Turning to news feeds within your CRM is not the only way to outsource inspiration for your social posts. You can also glean valuable, shareable content from your contacts just by asking.
One way to do this is by crafting an email campaign within your CRM that is filled with occasional messages asking for such material. One email may prompt them to provide you with a testimonial. Another may ask for a picture of the borrower and their family from closing day. You can ask for success stories or even supply them with a Q&A form to fill out.
Whatever type of content you want to see, you can write up a quick email asking for it. Certain CRMs even have some pre-written for you, out-of-the-box.
Sharing this type of past client content is great for two reasons – it gives you something to keep your accounts active with and shows interested potential borrowers you have a history of doing your job well.
Build custom audiences
A major part of using social media for business purposes is taking advantage of the paid advertising options within the platforms themselves. While the specifics of creating social ads could fill an entirely new article, there is one aspect in particular that can be implemented now based on the data you’re probably already housing within your CRM.
Advanced targeting for Facebook can be done in two ways (that closely relate to your CRM): Custom Audiences and Lookalike Audiences.
Say, for example, you want to run a campaign that re-engages past customers to try and get them to consider refinancing. From your CRM, you can download a CSV or TXT file of past borrower names and email addresses, upload them to Facebook, and advertise your refinancing options to just this group. This is a Custom Audience.
A Lookalike Audience allows you to create new audiences based on traits from your Custom Audience. This way, you can expand on the advertising you’re doing to your current contacts in order to bring in new ones. The goal is to be smart with your marketing and spend your money targeting the best prospects possible to increase your ROI.
In marketing, it’s important to reach your prospects where they are. According to Statista, in 2017, 81 percent of people in the US have at least one social media profile. Suffice it to say, it’s a pretty safe bet the customers and potential customers you want to reach are online. And if they log on to their platform of choice and see one of your competitors but don’t see you, you’re already a step behind when it comes to winning their business.
If you’re not active on social media, do yourself and your mortgage business a favor and get involved. Even if you just choose one to begin with (Facebook is a good place to start), the goal is simply to have an active presence so interested borrowers can easily find you when they start doing their research and learn about who you are.
It only makes sense to utilize a tool you already have to increase your marketing. Your CRM should be working for you, and this is a great way to expand its reach. Remember, a great CRM is more than a contact database. It’s there to help you to improve your customer relationships. And, since your customers are more than likely on social media, they’ll notice and appreciate the new, more social, you.
