Categories
Social Media Tips

Instagram Stories and Highlights – How To Leverage Them As A Real Estate Agent

Did you know that more than 300 people engage with Instagram Stories every day?  Without using Instagram Stories, you could be reaching about only 24% of your potential client base and if you do use it you greatly increase your odds to practically 100%.

You might be wondering why and even how this is important as a real estate agent.  Consider this…

  • Stories are more raw and real, bringing a human element to your brand/business.  If you want to grow your brand and stand out, connecting with your audience on a human level is key.
  • Posts can take up to 1 day to shoot, edit, and then publish.  Stories are done in a few minutes and there is no need to worry about lighting, properness, etc.
  • Instagram’s algorithm loves stories.  So much in fact that it favors Instagram Stories.  The more stories you share, the more eyeballs it will bring to your account.

When creating an Instagram story, there’s really only one rule of thumb:  Know your audience and deliver them the right content and message.

If you want to get brownie points from the Instagram story algorithm, use the special features they have such as location tag, poll, question, and the “love meter”.  When you use these features that reward user engagement, Instagram favors your content and will push your story to the front of the line in your followers’ feeds, as well as prioritize your static Instagram posts and allow you to get more eyeballs.  This will also make it more likely for you to show up on the discover page where people can learn about you and you gain more followers.

How To Create An Instagram Story

Haven’t created an Instagram Story yet?   Let’s get you started, ???? click here to get a step-by-step guide from Instagram on how to create your first story.  Even if you have created a story before, you should check out the guide to get additional tips and tricks on how to utilize all the features.

Utilize The Highlight Feature To Save Instagram Stories

The Instagram Highlights feature is a great way to save your story on your profile.  This feature is designed for you to save stories and keep them on your profile after they disappear from your story in 24 hours.

Something to keep in mind when you are creating cover icons for your highlights —  stay on brand and be consistent.

There are plenty of different highlight themes that real estate agents can use on their Instagram profile.  Here’s a handful that we recommend and the kind of Instagram story content that would go with each highlight topic.

Instagram Highlight Theme Examples For Real Estate Agents:

  • Buying Tips – Advice on buying a home.
  • Selling Tips – Advice on selling a home.
  • Client Testimonials – Happy past clients.
  • Support Local – Reasons why it’s important to support local and showcase favorite places in your area and mention what makes them great.
  • Market Updates – Monthly market stats and other hot topics about your area.
  • Design Inspiration – Home designs you love and know help a home sell well.
  • Open House Tips – Advice on getting a home ready to sell.
  • Meet Me – Pictures of you behind the scenes.  Personal content but not too personal.  Keep this in line with your brand image.
  • Listings – Pictures of new homes, digital flyers, listing videos, video walkthroughs.
  • Just For Fun – Real estate memes and jokes that amuse you but also would amuse your audience.

How To Create An Instagram Highlight

Follow the easy tips below to create an Instagram Highlight.  If you want to use icons and keep the cover pic for each clean, you can purchase icons from a stock image service such as Adobe Stock Images or Shutter Stock.  We suggest doing this because it keeps your profile clean and more professional looking.

  1.  Open the Instagram app and then tap on your profile pic in the bottom right corner of your screen.
  2. Tap on the + located under your bio, or if you do not see that, tap Story Highlights.
  3. Tap to select the story or stories you want to add to the highlight, then tap Next.
  4. Choose a cover pic or icon, then tap Add (iPhone) or Done (Android).*You can add additional photos or videos to your highlights when you post them by selecting the ♥︎ on the bottom right and says “Highlight” under it.

Time To Start Posting Instagram Stories!

Now you have the basics.  Time to put this new knowledge into action.  Get started with creating Instagram stories and highlights today!  There’s no time like the present, especially when it comes to social media.  It’s all about the now!

If you have questions about this post you can email support@zentap.com or DM us on Instagram via @zentap.now

Looking to get help with creating branded content and videos?  Check out the branded marketing solutions Zentap offers just for real estate agents!  zentap.com

Categories
Social Media Tips

4 Tips To Help Grow Your Engagement

Real Estate Agents – Grow Your Engagement

If you want to have success with your social media marketing, you need to grow your engagement.  But before you can properly grow engagement, you need to know who your audience is.  Otherwise your efforts will be lost.  With growing an audience being one of the hardest tasks for a business, it only makes sense to do it right.  When you deliver the right content and message to the people you know are your audience, your message will resonate.

That’s why we put together this guide on how Real Estate Agents can grow their engagement on their social media platforms.  Success with these efforts will not happen overnight.  Which is why it is important to keep consistent with your efforts and be patient.  Think of it like taking care of a plant.  You water it on a schedule, give it proper light, and over time it grows and grows and grows…  Social media engagement and getting a return on that investment is the same!

Engage Your Audience | Grow Engagement | Zentap

Reach The Right Audience And Deliver The Right Content

Know Your Niche

It’s important to know what your real estate brand is all about and how you want to communicate to your niche audience.  Your audience should be the people you want to target for the type of real estate you deal directly with.  Think about the price range, sellers, buyers, and the interests of these people that fall into this niche.  Do they fall within a certain demographic, socio-economic status, etc…You don’t want to be overly specific, but you should explore who you are and what you stand for.  If you don’t already have a mission statement, this would be a good way to solidify this.  If you do have a mission statement, does this correlate with your niche?

Be Consistent With Content

This is a crucial step in growing your engagement.  Not only do you want to be consistent with content, you also want to make sure it is quality content.

When you share things on social media, before you hit post think to yourself “Does this properly represent your brand?” and “Is this delivering the right message to my niche audience?”.  Most importantly, “Does this provide my users with some value?”.  Not every post needs to do this.  But you want your followers to trust you and take you seriously.

Which is why you should provide them with valuable data on the real estate market.  So they can then in turn see you as the expert when the time comes for them to need an agent.  Market snapshots and updates are an excellent way to do this as they are very informative and lead to high engagement with followers and give people a reason to want to follow you.

To help you keep consistent and produce quality content we strongly suggest using a social media content calendar. You can create one yourself in a spreadsheet, or if you can use one of the many social media planning tools that are available on the internet.

You should use a variation of types of content to grow your engagement. With all of it you want to make sure you are also 100% consistent with your branding.  Doing this will keep your audience from getting bored with your content which in return will boost engagement on your posts.  More engagement means that you will grow your organic reach as social media platforms base their algorithms on this factor. Your content schedule should alternate between all of the following.

  • Images of homes, nice interior decorating, you in action, clients in front of sold signs, etc.  Examples of Social Media Images For Real Estate Agents | Zentap

  • Infographics that inform your audience,  like “How To Prepare To Buy A Home” or, “Top Repairs That Help Your Home Sell”.

    Real Estate Agent Infographics | Zentap

  • Video of Local Market Reports, Listings, Customer Testimonials, General Marketing Videos and behind the scene style videos. *Click highlighted links to see live examples.

    Listing Video Template | Zentap

  • Data Snapshots to raise awareness about the areas you focus on. “Are sales up, down? What about listings?”

    Real Estate Local Market Single Data Snap Shot | Zentap

  • New Listing and Open House Flyers to showcase the properties you have on the market.

    Real Estate Listing And Open House Flyer Examples | Zentap

  • Customer Testimonial images are a great way to showcase positive reviews from past clients and influence others to choose you as their agent.

    Customer Review Social Flyer | Zentap

  • Memes and Quotes about real estate to showcase a bit of humor and keep your audience engaged.

    Real Estate Memes And Quotes | Zentap

Connect With Your Audience

No matter how many followers you have, it is important to engage with them in order to grow your engagement.  With our lives revolving around so many scrolling screens, diverting attention, it’s important to connect with your audience so you don’t get lost in the noise.  If your audience is small, don’t think you should wait to do this when it becomes larger.  Learning who is listening will help you better connect and help you become really good at this as your audience does grow.

Here are ways you should connect with your audience, starting today if you are not already doing so.

Respond to all your message comments, this shows you care and are responsive.  When people are looking for a real estate agent, being responsive is a quality that will help you win everytime.  Share stories, show behind the scenes of open houses you might be doing along with other things that are relevant to your brand that your niche audience would find interesting.

Don’t be afraid to be yourself, your personality is part of your brand.  Be sure you don’t have a constant sales approach and are providing your followers with valuable information.  You can also run polls using the story feature on social media to grow your engagement.  This is a fun way to engage with your audience and also learn more about what their interests are.  You can ask questions like “What color should a garage door be?”  “What is the #1 thing you are looking for in a new home?”.  Avoid questions that are irrelevant to your brand.

Real Estate Agent Social Media Polls | Zentap
Image credit TomFerry.com

Show Up In Searches

This part is the secret sauce for growing your engagement.  You want to make sure you show up as much as you can on the discovery page and hashtags that are relevant to content that your niche audience is looking for.

Use of geotags for Instagram is a great way to grow your following and boost your interactions. Adding a geotag to a new listing post will pin that location and anytime a user searches that location your photo will come up in the search results.

Use hashtags and make sure they are relevant to the post you are using them with.  Examples of proper hashtags would be #newlistinglosangeles #homebuyingtips #bestrealestateagentLA. Below is an example of a post using proper geotagging and relevant hashtags. Make sure you are not always using the same hashtags and are incorporating new ones so you can grow your following as people use hashtags of a way of searching for information.

Geo Tagging And Hastags | Zentap
Example of Proper Geotag Use and Hashtags For Growing Engagement

We understand that this all can seem a bit overwhelming at first.  It is indeed time consuming and to those who are new to the social media game, this can be complicated.  Which is why more and more agents are choosing Zentap for a solution to create content and grow engagement.  We provide our users with access to a multitude of branded content.  Such as Local market data, unlimited video templates and all the types of content mentioned above.

If you have questions about this blog or want to find out more about Zentap and how you can leverage our products and services for your content creation we encourage you to email sales@zentap.com or checkout zentap.com/real-estate-marketing-pro and start getting zen with your real estate marketing.

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Real Estate Marketing Tips

Marketing Your Real Estate Business During the Holidays

Holidays create a unique opportunity for marketing yourself and your listings to prospective buyers. In this article, we will show you why it is essential to increase your marketing budget or efforts during the holidays.

Real Estate Advertising Costs Decline During Holidays

Holidays give you a chance to level up your game in real estate. Since most agents decrease their advertising budget during holidays, it is your chance to stand out from the competition by increasing your budget and being seen. During this time, you can get more bang for your buck and get much more exposure since most agents decrease their spending and are on vacation mode.

Optimizing Ad Campaigns is a Process 

It generally takes three to six months to raise brand awareness and optimize an ad campaign.  When starting out, you need to test different creative and copy to see what performs better and this may take up to three months. Waiting until January 2020 will result in getting the results around March 2020. Why waste valuable months at the start of 2020 when you can a head start and see the results in January by starting today!  At Zentap, we offer holiday-themed videos and content to give you a kick start in marketing your real estate business so you can hit the ground running in 2020.

People Spend More Time On Their Devices During the Holidays

Holidays provide a unique opportunity to connect with customers. That is because buyers spend more time at home than they do at work and have more time to surf online and see your ads. This is true especially during Christmas, due to the cold weather in many states, people stay indoors more and are on their devices. This creates a great opportunity for you to increase marketing yourself and your listings to capture buyers’ attention during this valuable time. At Zentap, we have powerful tools to create all of the video content and infographics for you and post it to your social media pages. We also offer customizable holiday content that will give you great visibility in the eyes of prospective buyers and sellers.

Taking Advantage of the New Years’ Resolutions

Many aspiring homeowners have New Years resolutions that include buying a bigger home, selling their home, or moving to a location by the sea. These New Years’ resolutions are a great opportunity for you to capitalize as a real estate agent and grow your business. In order to leverage these opportunities, you need to start your campaigns now so you can be the agent of choice when they are ready to make a move and fulfill their New Year’s Resolutions.

 

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Real Estate Marketing Tips

5 Tips for Real Estate Digital Media Marketing

1- Master the Art of Branding

As a realtor, there is nothing more important than your branding. You should brand yourself as a successful realtor in social media to get new clients and keep your current customers. It is essential to send consistent messages across different social media platforms. Building a consistent brand name for yourself in real estate is a must for growing your real estate business. In today’s information and social media age, people search for realtors on Google and social media platforms before they become a customer. They also would like to be connected to their realtor’s social media pages as existing customers. As Zentap, we can help you manage your social media profiles professionally.

2- Provide a Virtual Tour of the Properties

Providing a virtual tour of the home is a surefire way to get the attention of the buyers. For example, you can use your phone and record room by room to show what the unit has to offer. A video of the house helps buyers visualize themselves inside the home. Making sure the video is compatible to watch on different devices such as laptops, phones, and tablets is essential not to lose any customers due to device differences.

3- Make Sure to Share Personal Posts

Sharing personal posts will make you seem relatable. Being seen as an authentic and relatable realtor will help you establish a connection between you and the potential buyers that will increase your sales. In addition, using aspirational stories is a great way to build a relationship with your customers. It is essential to post on Instagram at different times of the day to be seen by most buyers. You can link your posts to your real estate website. We can create a professional real estate website for you at Zentap. Linking your webpage to your post will increase the traffic to your website and increase your leads.

4- Share the Events in the Neighborhood on Social Media

Share great events that are going on around your neighborhood. Sharing events will both create engagement, and it will help buyers to understand how amazing it would be to live in that neighborhood and attending those events. In addition, it is a great way to convince buyers that the location of the house is lively, and the neighborhood is active with exciting events and gatherings. Also, share the events that you will join and invite them to create more engagement and connection.

5- Monitor the Competitive Landscape

Make sure to keep an eye on other realtors to assess the competitive landscape on social media. By keeping an eye on the competitors, you can avoid their mistakes and learn from their successes. In conclusion, knowing the competition will help you greatly to grow your business. Zentap provides valuable marketing material that will help you to brand your real estate business and help you stand out from the competition.

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Social Media Tips

This Type of Content Gets 10 Times Higher Reach Than Other Social Posts

There’s one type of content that real estate agents can’t afford to ignore.

According to digital marketing powerhouses Hubspot and G2, it gets 1,200% more engagement and 87% of people say they wish more brands and businesses would use it. Do you know what it is?

It’s video!

Our powerful real estate marketing tool features a treasure trove of scroll-stopping videos to post to your Facebook business page and allows you to customize captions to better connect with your prospects in just minutes, without breaking the bank!

Bonus: You can also send video listings and custom video market reports in your email campaigns for maximum click-through potential and branding exposure!

The demand for more video content is based on the high conversion rates for video, which are through the roof right now. Hubspot’s stats show that adding a video to marketing emails can boost click-through rates by 200-300%, while embedding videos on landing pages can increase conversion rates by 80%.

 
 

What does that mean for you?

  1. It means that social media posts that include video make you more visible to your target market
  2. Sellers are looking for real estate agents who use video marketing to market their listings
  3. And finally, that if you’re not using video content yet… it’s time to start ASAP.


Click here for a FREE 20-minute demo and 14-day trial and watch the engagement roll in!

Whether our product is the right fit for you or not, you get to keep all of the customized videos you make during the 14-day trial period – no obligation or hassle!

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Real Estate Marketing Tips

Are you making these real estate marketing mistakes?

Real estate marketing is all about building trust with your community and providing them with valuable content.

When you’re inconsistent, it sends the wrong message. That means…

 

  • Going days, weeks, or months without posting on your social media accounts
  • Having a different headshot or contact info for each social account or on your website
  • And not being clear about your expertise (are you a luxury specialist? A condo expert? An ally for first-time homebuyers?)


The name of the game is consistency and taking every opportunity to connect with the right clients and prospects.

That’s why we’re giving you a FREE social media strategy call. No strings, all support.

There’s just a few months left in the year (and the decade!), and we want to help you go out with a bang… and make 2020 the most effective year of real estate marketing you’ve ever had.

Cheers to your success!

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Real Estate Marketing Tips

3 ways to get the most out of your real estate brand

Branding can be hard for anyone , especially if you were not educated or spent at least over a few days researching these key elements that have shown to take businesses over the top. As an agency to continually set the bar for industry disrupting game changers we want to present you with 3 key insights to help you get the most out of your brand. 

Find a niche

Getting a niche is the most profitable strategy behind any brand. It allows you to hyper focus your services around a market that really need your services the most. This benefits you in a plethora of ways: 

  • Consolidate and consistently maintains your value proposition
  • Creates better leads 
  • Generates the referrals you want
  • Enables you to work with the market you work best with
 

If you are new to the business developing a niche may seem overwhelming, but it is actually very easy. It is as easy as knowing what people you want to work with or work best with. 

Maintain brand consistency and cohesiveness

Small things always make a big dent in the long run…

That is why we at Zentap Stress a cohesive and consistent brand. Not on the maintains your value proposition but something more surface level than that. 

Have the same name, address, website, email and phone number throughout all your directory listings and website. 

Google and other search engines scan every 24 hours to see if your brand name and address across all channels (and there are a lot of them are consistent) and if something turns out incorrect this can have a huge impact on your SEO

Get a Free audit here to see what your rank on your Brand cohesiveness.

Leverage video in 2019

Not all trends are worth following, unless it aligns with your brand and/or there is a major shift in the industry. 

We always hear about sociological trends that humans have a lower attention span than ever before. 

YES, social media has had a huge play in this but nothing will change this going forward. It’s not as easy just to make a great status or post an awesome picture because algorithms just do not support that anymore. Huge factor being this decreased attention span. 

What studies have shown is that people watch video, and social media algorithms like facebook are more willing to show this content because people use their platform. 

We know this is costly, like about $300 per video, but we have a solution for you to create these videos at a fraction of the price. Click here to get your free samples, and see what the possibilities are to get ahead of your competition today!

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Real Estate Marketing Tips

How To Market Yourself Online

The internet is filled with many different marketing options, and often times people are overwhelmed by the obstacle of choice.

With Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, Twitter, Youtube, and Google, it’s very easy to lose touch when building a brand for your business.

Here are some 5 easy steps to Market yourself online.

1. Stick with the dominant online platforms

To get the most ROI it is always best to stick with the big brands and branch outwards. Google and Facebook are the big players in the online marketing and advertising space that give you behind the scene rewards for using their platform. If you are not tech savvy whatsoever start with Facebook, Your Facebook page is like an online business card for your prospects, make sure it is looking sharp!

2. Leverage your network

After your page is set up, ask all your past clients, business network and friends to follow your page. The bigger network you have the more trustworthy your brand will be when prospects find you.. Reminding clients that reviews are appreciated always helps your business as well, and you’d be surprised how many people would be happy to help you! Social Media Marketing really is word of mouth on a digital platform, so be sure to use the same tactics you utilize offline, online.

3. Use Videos to expand your reach

Algorithms are ever-shifting and what keeps people online these days is video content. Facebook recently shifted its algorithms to show more video content than just statuses or photo posts. Utilizing informative content is the best way to display your brand and position yourself as a market expert. Prospects definitely keep this in mind when ready to buy down the line. Get a Free Piece of Video Content for your brand here.

4. Have Clear and Simple Call to Actions

One of the biggest marketing mistakes brands make is that they do not clearly define what they want prospects to do. Business is like dating – how are you going to have a successful relationship if you do not ask?

5. Engage with your audience

Remember that social media marketing is really just accelerated word of mouth marketing. Even if someone is not physically with that person, they can still get a recommendation or see the great work you do online. Being as helpful or friendly as possible will ensure that you have brand evangelists, Willing to show you off anytime!

These are 5 beginner steps to start marketing yourself or your brand online to get more customers. Just like working out, the results are never achieved overnight. It takes discipline and routine to reap the benefits of digital marketing. We can’t stress enough the benefits on using educational video content to position yourself as an industry expert in your field. Find out here how you can get qualified leads from your local area to your brand today!

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Social Media Tips

Is Facebook Dead for Realtors in 2019?

Facebook has created some issues in ad targeting in 2019. Facebook recently stopped ad targeting for zipcodes, age and sex for the housing, employment and credit businesses. This is an effort by Facebook to aid in discrimination in those industries. Though as a good deed for society as a whole, how does this affect your initial advertising strategy?

Well an easy way to generate viable leads in your local area was to target age ranges in your zipcodes looking to buy or sell a home. This worked but it will not work any longer. As a digital marketer you need to take a deeper approach into advertising to this group. There are two workarounds that are actually more beneficial than the easy strategy before. First one being Custom Audiences and the second Lookalike Audiences.

Custom Audiences

A custom audience is an audience created in facebook using data from your personal data. This can mean many things but for example you can take the audience of people who follow your facebook page and run ads to those people. That group of people is called a custom audience. A custom audience can also be derived from your website, video views and even an email list. The email list is where you will get the quickest fix. Using an email list from an open house, or from a list aggregated over time or in your CRM will allow you to run ads to those people specifically. This is great for Hyper Targeting messages or properties.

Lookalike Audiences

A lookalike audience is a brand new set of prospects that have the same behavioral patterns and demographics from the audience you create it from. That might of been a mouthful, but simply using that custom audience with your email list before. Once you create a lookalike audience from that custom audience Facebook will find the same number of people that are like those people in your email list. This is a powerful tool can take your marketing game up to the next level.

These two key strategies will save you from the “real estate facebooking marketing Armageddon” and actually step up your marketing game a few notches. It is important to know that you need to have a custom audience before you make a lookalike audience.

Talk to one of our experts to take advantage of these keys strategies in your business

Categories
Real Estate Marketing Tips

Real Estate Agent Marketing and Technology Trends 2019





If you don’t have a strong digital presence and visibility, you might as well abandon the idea of staying in the business of real estate.

Sounds harsh? We believe it does, but this is the reality.

Every customer checks you out on the Internet to learn more about you. 

Some may google you, but most of them will log on to their favourite social media platform to check you out.

For example, you have just had a chat with a prospective client who is interested in buying a property that you are representing.

Immediately after talking to you, the prospective client is going to log onto, let’s say LinkedIn, and search for your name.

Whoa! 

She doesn’t find you there.

But in the process, she comes across other real estate agents who have maintained an active presence on the platform and ends up contacting one of them.

There goes your business.

A hot lead wasted just because you haven’t created a profile on LinkedIn or, even if you have created a profile, you are not active on LinkedIn.

What if you are active on Facebook and not LinkedIn? What about a good Website? Instagram?

Your prospective client is not going to make extra effort to find you. If her preferred social media platform is LinkedIn, she’s going to look you up in LinkedIn.

If she doesn’t find you on LinkedIn, she’s not going to think, “Well, he is not on LinkedIn, but maybe he’s on Facebook.”

No. Once she doesn’t find you on her preferred social networking platform, she’s going to get disenchanted.



Why is it not possible to operate a successful real estate business without a vibrant social media presence?

Buying and selling real estate property is a high-stakes decision, so people want to be comfortable with your online precense before committing themselves. 

So, if you have just had a meeting with the new prospect, there is a near certainty that she is going to log onto her preferred social networking platform to have a look at your profile, and even to check what the others are saying about you.

There was a time when having an online presence as a business was an exception. Nowadays, not having an online presence as a business is an exception.

In 2019, social interactions are more effective than traditional advertising and marketing. Social validation is a more effective form of online marketing compared to off-the-cuff advertising which is mostly one-way. 

People believe more in peer-to-peer recommendations.

More than your conventional marketing campaign, people trust in what you share as a person through your social networking platform. They trust the comments that people leave in the wake of your various updates.

And if they cannot find you there, or, if they feel that you are not active on their preferred social media platform, they will be less inclined to do business with you.

Social media presence and social media activity is reassuring to your customers.

Why is it important to have your presence on multiple social media and social networking platforms?

As explained above, if your prospect doesn’t find you on LinkedIn, she’s not going to check Facebook or Instagram or Twitter. When she doesn’t find you on LinkedIn, she assumes you don’t maintain an online presence.

Similarly, if she checks you on Instagram and doesn’t find you, she’s going to assume that you don’t have an online presence.

For an average prospective client, if you are not on a particular platform, you are nowhere.

But how do you maintain presence on different social media platforms? Not just maintain presence, but active, engaging presence?

Frankly, it is not possible to be on every social media platform and post high-quality content on an ongoing basis by yourself. Unless you have a dedicated time, the time commitment is too significant

It is not possible, as the sole real estate agent, to track every conversation and then respond to every conversation.

Instead of doing business, you will be doing social networking all the time.

This would be counter-productive.

You can either run your real estate agent business, or you can maintain an active social presence. You cannot do both.

The problem is, you can neglect neither.

The solution is, Zentap, a beautifully simple digital advertising solution for real estate and local businesses.

Zentap is one-of-its-kind social media marketing automated software that you can control with intuitive online forms. Enter the relevant information and it automatically generates high-quality content that goes directly to all social platforms. 

In the subsequent posts, we will be covering stellar features of Zentap, so stay tuned.


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