How Realtors Turn Social Media Into Real Estate Leads

Key takeaways

1. Year one may pay nothing. Roman’s first year on social media brought in $0 from social media leads. It was still the year he invested in.
2. Trust comes before listings. Agents who only post what they listed and sold skip the part where people get to know them.
3. Post who you are. Food, local businesses, town guides, sports and family gave people a reason to follow a realtor and remember him.
4. Volume beats perfection. Once Roman took over his own posting, he went from twice a week to at least once a day.
5. Build the backend before the leads arrive. A CRM, automated follow-up and an instant reply to every new follower are what turn attention into clients.

Every realtor is taught the same playbook: sphere of influence, cold calls, door knocking, mailers, flyers and networking events. Social media is the piece that tends to get forgotten. When we first met Roman Vladimirsky, a local real estate agent who had come to real estate from ESPN, he was skeptical too. Why would he need it? Why not just pick up the phone, knock on doors and go network?

Five years later, his social media leads alone had brought in a million dollars in income. This is how that happened, year by year, and what any agent can take from it.

That’s not a million dollars in real estate sold. That’s a million dollars of income.

Year one made $0

In the first year, from 2020 to 2021, we did everything. We shot the content, edited it, posted it, ran outbound and ran ads for him. Roman wanted no involvement, which is a common belief: bring on a marketing team and you do nothing.

That year, his income from social media leads was zero dollars. It was the year of skepticism.

The second year changed the split. Roman took on part of the work himself: engagement, commenting on other people’s posts, messages to people in his area, and his own posting. In 2021 he brought in $63,000 from social media leads. That may not sound like much next to where it ended up, but making money because of social media at all is a big step.

From the team page to a personal brand

For two or three years, Roman leaned on his team’s page rather than his own. He didn’t know how to brand himself personally, and like almost everyone, there was the fear of criticism that comes with putting yourself out there.

You can see the change in the photos. At his first shoot he wore a suit and a buttoned-up shirt with a big smile. Today he is the real Roman: backwards hat, hoodie, jeans, sports fanatic, someone who loves helping small business. That gap between the buttoned-up agent and the real person closed slowly, and closing it was a large part of the journey.

Be the mayor of your town

There’s a saying: “Be the mayor of your town.” And a lot of real estate agents get stuck on the just listed, just sold, in contract, whatever. But they forget that there’s a trust factor that needs to be incorporated.

Selling a lot builds some trust, but it doesn’t mean someone trusts you right away. People want to know who you are. Are you a family man or a family woman? Do you have kids, pets, a team you root for? That layer is what gets a stranger to want to meet you.

You do want to work with someone you like, know, and trust. No matter what industry you’re in.

It also makes the first meeting easier. If someone walks in already referencing something they know about you, there’s no cold feel between you. You start with a little rapport.

Show what you actually love

The turning point was a phone call. Roman told us: “Guys, I’m a foodie.” So we pushed him to showcase restaurants: eat the food, talk to the owner, get to know them, and show people that he is a local authority who actually knows the people running these businesses.

It does two things. A client who wants to move to a town can ask Roman where to eat, shop or find a daycare, because he has shown them. And someone already researching the area sees their realtor recommend the same places, which validates his expertise. It all still counts as real estate education, because he is educating people about the place they might buy a home.

Over time those interests became a set of content pillars he pulls from:

1. Real estate educationThe foundational content: buying, selling and investing, and showing in a strategic way what he has listed and sold.
2. A voice for small businessNot just food. Roman features local owners and speaks for them.
3. Town videosEducating people about the towns he works in, from Scarsdale to New Rochelle.
4. SportsAnother reason to follow: the Yankees, the Jets, the Giants, anything NFL.
5. Being a dadHe shows that he is a proud father and husband, which people miss the mark on.

There is no fixed percentage for each one. He knows his foundation and mixes the rest in, and together they read like one story.

None of it is manufactured. This is who Roman is, so when you meet him online or offline, it’s the same person. The way he dresses online is the way he dresses when he meets you. Francis puts it this way: Roman has become a marketer who happens to be a real estate agent.

From doing it for him to advising him

By 2023, Roman had asked us to teach him how to shoot and edit properly. He was shooting, editing and posting his own content, and our role turned into advising: breaking down everything he was doing and how to make it better, from the hook on each video to the style of videos, YouTube, optimizing every platform and automating parts of his ideation. He leans on us as the unemotional, unbiased voice in his business.

One of the first things we pushed was volume. With the capacity we had at the time, we posted for him twice a week. When the responsibility moved to him, we told him this was his chance to lean into volume and test new things at his own pace. He now posts at least once a day.

His distribution grew too: TikTok, Facebook, Instagram and YouTube, plus LinkedIn. The thinking behind it is a funnel: attract, nurture, position, convert. In 2023, his social media leads brought in $312,000.

The backend: when the ads broke the CRM

At the time, Roman was on a CRM provided by his brokerage, and it wasn’t connected to anything. When we started running ads for him, any new lead had to be entered by hand. It broke within the first two weeks, because the lead flow was more than it could handle.

We helped him find a new one. With Follow Up Boss, every lead from his website or social media is entered automatically or by Roman, then put on an automated workflow of texts and emails written the way he talks to his customers.

It isn’t only marketing. Getting things like signatures automated, with no more printing and signing, is part of helping him run the business more efficiently so he can keep working on bringing in more leads.

A brand protects you during the lows

Something that doesn’t get talked about enough is the fact that a brand protects you during lows.

In 2024, Roman doubled down on content, and his social media leads brought in $346,000. That figure doesn’t include his cold calling, his networking or his sphere of influence. Some of those clients were people he had never done a transaction with. Others had worked with him years earlier and came back because they kept seeing him.

In 2025, with the economy and spending down, he did $305,000. There was a drop, but he stayed in the $300,000 range.

Every new follower is a lead

The newest piece is ManyChat. Every new follower gets an automatic message: thank you for the follow, an introduction, and a question about buying, selling or investing. If they’re interested, they click a link, ask a question, and Roman takes the conversation from there. He says that tool alone has helped him enormously with prospecting.

When someone follows you and you get an instant message, they’re already a hot lead.

If they follow and scroll away for eight or ten hours, they may have followed someone else, or forgotten your video entirely. And if they aren’t ready yet, the content keeps nurturing them until they are.

We have nightmare stories about the other side of this: businesses leaving money sitting in their DMs because nobody answers. Here, the point is that no lead goes untouched.

Delayed gratification

As far as Roman’s journey, you really do have to believe that it is delayed gratification.

A full year at zero dollars wasn’t zero. It was Roman investing in himself. Six years in, he follows his pillars and his cadence, uses our advice to stay on brand, and develops his own ideas. Whatever industry you are in, the same strategy transfers: consistency and execution, over and over, until it pays you back.