How to sell on social media – without sounding ‘salesy’

Social media is a vital tool for today’s loan officers – but most don’t know how to take full advantage of it

How to sell on social media – without sounding ‘salesy’

A social media presence is an absolute necessity for today’s loan officers. Approached correctly, social media can give originators a platform and a reach that’s impossible to get anywhere else. But many originators are unsure about how to make social media sites like Facebook work for them without coming across as “salesy.”

“A lot of times loan officers are a little reluctant to market on Facebook – To their friends, their family, people they’re acquainted with. They don’t feel good about selling to those people,” said Jason Lutz, chief operating officer of The TBWS Group. “They think, ‘I have to pound people over the head that I’m a loan officer so that when they think of buying or refinancing they’ll think of me.’ And because of that, when they do take the plunge and decide to market on social media, they overdo it.”

Lutz said that many loan officers make the mistake of inundating their followers – many of whom are friends and family – with posts most people just aren’t interested in: listings, specific loan products and the like.

“It’s okay to do that now and then – pepper it in – but the reality is, if you have 500 friends and followers and you’re doing very specific posts like that, you’re appealing to no one in your feed,” he said.

The TBWS Group, the creator of products like RateAlert, BuyerZapp and LO SocialBot, has developed strategies for loan officers to get referrals from Facebook without annoying their friends and followers. They’ll be outlining those strategies in a free webinar on Sept. 20 from 2-3 p.m. EST.

One of the main strategies for making your social media presence valuable, Lutz said, is making sure your posts appealed to a broad audience.

“If you’re consistently, in a cool way, providing quality content – and at the same time subtly providing mortgage and real estate stuff – they’re going to think about you when they’re in home-buying or refinancing mode,” he said. “It comes down to appealing to a broad audience. Loan officers and real estate agents often post listings thinking that this is solid marketing for them. Posting listings has a place, but something like that is so specific that it’s annoying to many of their friends and followers because it has zero appeal to most of them. One of the key things a loan officer should do before they post a business-related post is think about what most of their friends and followers would like to see on a regular basis. Use that as a launching pad, rather than cramming today’s interest rate, listing, or a new loan product in their face.”

Lutz said the webinar would give LOs concrete strategies to make their social media presence appealing and effective.

“During the webinar, the loan officer is going to walk away with a definitive way in which they can go about marketing on their social media – and just as important, they’ll learn how to create their profile on LinkedIn and Facebook and other social sites so that it will engender credibility for not only people they know but people they don’t know,” he said. “It’s imperative as a loan officer that you look like you’re in the business and bring value. We’ll show you how to do that.”

To register for the free webinar, click here.


 

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