How Community Involvement Can Help Your Real Estate Business

This post comes to us from the Market Leader blog:

There are two types of community involvement that real estate agents typically gravitate toward. First, there are the agencies and individual agents that give money to a cause and consider it "community involvement." Their websites typically boast that they'll give "$100 from every home sale to the Breast Cancer Foundation!" or "Fifteen percent of my commission to the local humane society!"

That sort of giving is admirable, and a boon to the charity recipient, but although the agents like to call it "community involvement," it isn't. Cutting a check to a charity, again while laudable, takes five minutes of one's time and is more appropriately called "community giving."

The type of community involvement that other agents gravitate toward is hands-on volunteerism: the boots-on-the-ground, belly-to-belly, nitty-gritty of community involvement.

While neither of these types of giving back to the community is necessarily "better' in the main, the latter is hands down better for your real estate business. Quite frankly, the type of giving back that puts you face-to-face with groups of people who may turn into clients is good for business.

Gasp! Community giving in the real estate world isn't completely altruistic?

Well, not completely.

Sure, it may start out as a selfless desire to give to others, but side benefits of community involvement include the fact that it's an awesome way to generate leads, get your name linked to the community, and increase your brand and public persona.

But that side of the coin is a dirty little secret that agents don't typically talk about.