Raising Real Estate Capital on Social Media
By Adam Gower Ph.D.
Looking for investors, there’s a lot of pressure to be in the right place at the right time. Unfortunately, you only have so many hours in the day and you just can’t be in more than one physical location at once to meet and interact with potential real estate investors.
Luckily, social media is now available to help fill the gaps in your physical abilities. While you can’t be around the world all at once, social media platforms like LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook and others are all tools in your arsenal to find investors and raise the capital you need for your developments.
Extending Your Reach
The value to you of social media is not to replace personal interactions with investors. Instead, these platforms are designed to help you extend your reach to places and people you wouldn’t have had access to before.
Think about it: how often do you get the opportunity to meet people from all around the US, and even those outside the US, in one location? Networking conferences and meetings are great, but social media gives you the ability to connect with people everywhere without having to pay to physically go anywhere.
The benefit of social media is its ability to put you in the same space as thousands, if not millions of investors at once. You may not be automatically connected to them, but you do gain direct access to them through messages, posts, content feeds, and more. Your reach has never been as extensive as it is through the top social media platforms.
Creating Your Own Audience
Considering there are millions of users on social media, including a great many of the accredited investor population, how do you actually connect with any of the people who could be interested in your investment projects? This is where your content strategy comes into play. By posting the right types of content and fostering the type of engagement you want, you’ll actively build your own audience and attract the types of prospects you want to attract.
It’s the same kind of strategy you would use for a physical property. If you wanted to renovate a building, you would first want to have an idea of the type of end user you were looking to rent or sell to, then you would renovate based on that. Medical tenants don’t have the same needs as retail tenants, who are also different from industrial tenants, and so on. Build what appeals to the people you’re trying to attract by identifying who your target audience is up front.
On social media that means narrowing down your target audience and creating a content strategy that revolves around them. Find out what topics they like to view, what content types they prefer, when they’re usually online, and more. Use this information to craft content that grabs their attention and makes them aware of what you have to offer. They should want to know more from you because you’re providing them the type of value they’re looking for on social media.
Going from Online to Offline
Real estate investment has a long lead time. As you know, developing relationships with investors is never quick and easy. It takes a lot more than good content and a few online interactions to convince someone to put a significant amount of money into your development.
This is why social media is primarily and introductory tool and ‘top of funnel’ in the investor journey. Through social media you can connect with prospects for the first time and begin new relationships constantly. However, as the relationships grow and people begin to be more trusting and interested in what you’re offering, you can then take your conversations offline and meet up with them in person.
Transitioning to in-person meetings will give you to opportunity to pick up with the closing skills you’ve already built over the years. If you try to do it all online, you’ll have trouble being taken seriously enough for large-scale investments. Smaller crowdfunded projects may be possible through online interactions alone, but you’ll have better luck with larger developments if you take the relationship building offline as things progress forward.
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Social media offers a phenomenal opportunity for developers seeking capital for their projects. If you use your profiles well and post the right kind of content, you can build up a large audience of potential investors to start building relationships with.
Gone are the days of begging for introductions and hoping for Hollywood-esque run-ins with the right people. Add social media to your arsenal as a powerful modern tool for introductions to all the right people all in one place.
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About Dr. Adam Gower
Dr. Adam Gower is the founder of GowerCrowd and a leading authority on real estate syndication and crowdfunding. With 30+ years in real estate and $1.5B in transactions, he helps sponsors build marketing systems that attract high-net-worth investors.
30+ Years Experience | $1.5B In Transactions | 30,000+ CRE Professional Community