Real Estate Agent Social Media Marketing Compliance

If you are a real estate agent or broker, you need to read about Real Estate Agent Social Media Marketing Compliance.

Is Your Real Estate Social Media Marketing Breaking the Law?

 

As a social media manager, Internet marketing, and social media compliance trainer for real estate agents and brokers, I want to share this information. 

The last thing a Broker wants is the Real Estate Board, commission, or governing agencies to notify them of violations with social media marketing and digital advertising.

As more and more heavily regulated industries use social media for marketing without using an experienced marketer or researching the regulations. Real Estate Agents and Brokers do not know how to sit for hours and train their social media poster or manager on the regulations about real estate and social media.  They simply hire and put their trust in someone they hardly know. Many Agents and Brokers are not fully aware of every social media marketing detail themselves.

Across the US more and more Real Estate Brokers / Companies are getting hit with fines and lawsuits for violating policies. Every Broker should have their own in-house detailed policy and training for all agents. They should also make certain their social media manager is knowledgeable in all codes, Trademark law, State Real Estate Association policies, National Real Estate code and policies as well as each major real estate company policies.

The most neglected policy that is violated every day by 90% of real estate agents is the broker identification policy.  They say
Ignorance is no excuse”  and that is certainly true in this case. One thing we are very adamant about is keeping every post that is representing the property for sale, lease, sold, under contract, or posts that promote the agent for self-promotion services for helping buyers, sellers, rentals, etc., such advertising on social posts (each individual post) must adhere to the broker identification regulations as set forth by the NAR and most all State and local association regulations.

Are you hiding or omitting your brokerage name on social media posts?

Broker Beware: More than 27% of the respondents admit that they are not including their brokerage name in their marketing. This is a direct violation of the REALTOR® Code of Ethics (see article 12) and likely a violation of your state’s laws and regulations, depending on where you live. Agents should review social media ads and posts to ensure all necessary information is included. You may want to consider sharing tips about what’s required under your state’s laws in an email to your team. Source (https://magazine.realtor/for-brokers/network/article/2019/09/are-your-agents-social-media-ads-breaking-the-law) 

 

For agents in the State of Florida here are the most recent regulations. Internet sites include social media platforms.

Websites and online ads

Internet ads and websites must display the brokerage company’s licensed name above, below or adjacent to the point of contact information. Point of contact information could be a brokerage or licensee’s mailing and/or physical addresses, email addresses and telephone, cell phone or fax numbers or any other means by which an individual would contact the brokerage or individual licensee. (Section 61J2-10.025(3)(a), Florida Administrative Code). https://www.floridarealtors.org/law-ethics/library/realtor-advertising-rules-florida

You may contact us to sit with your company director or broker for a consultation and we will write your social media policy for you.

Phone numbers and contact information is listed at the bottom of this page.

That is a lot, but it means a lot. It is your future business. 

Here are the 15 best social media practices for real estate agents and brokers.

1. Refrain from hiring inexperienced social media posters or auto systems and take caution when paying for duplicated content online or automated content distribution services. Most systems distribute duplicated non-compliant real estate content in an automated system to reach the masses. 
2. Brokers and Agents should take responsibility for their business by approving or supplying approved content that is put out on social media sites representing your brokerage or business. If you are hiring an outsourced social media manager that does not have extensive knowledge of real estate policy and regulation as it pertains to real estate, then you must hire someone to approve all their content before it is released. Once it is out you can’t retract it.
3. If you choose to hire a general social media marketing company, then gather legal policy and industry regulation information and provide it to your social media poster to study before they start distributing or writing content. Make sure you test their knowledge after they have studied the laws and policies.
4. Give clear instructions to your social media company or marketer on how to legally post or advertise real estate services or various types of property listings.
5. Discuss copyright and content alteration laws as it pertains to images, videos, and property descriptions from other sites across the Internet. As an agent or broker provide your social media manager with approved photos taken by you or your broker, or from the photographer you hired. Let them know it is not approved to use any data from Zillow, Realtor. com or any other site hosting images or data.
6. Discuss your broker identification and how it must be displayed on every post that pertains to buying, selling renting or managing real estate.
7. Discuss how your specific real estate company uses their brand name in copywriting. Your social media posting company should have a copy of your company’s policy regarding the usage of their names and trademarks.
8. If your social media company is utilizing online photo editing services make sure they understand how they are and are not permitted to photoshop or change the way a home looks in a photo, thus, giving a false impression of the property.
9. Embellishing property description or changing the copy of the description in the MLS.  Explain that certain words, phrases or statements could violate the Fair Housing Act. It is important that descriptive writing is carefully managed.
10. It is the responsibility of the Real Estate Broker to go over all of this when you hire a social media agency. When you get a notice of violation from Federal, National, State, or local governing agencies that a violation has occurred, the broker will be the responsible party.
11. Archive all of your social media activity.  Facebook provides instructions to download a backup copy of data and send it to the page Admin in a zip folder. Find instructions here. For Twitter, they have their own tool for users. Downloading your Twitter archive allows you to browse a snapshot of your Twitter information, starting with your first Tweet. Find instructions here. 
    As for Linkedin, they too have provided a backup of your data for archiving. How to Backup your LinkedIn Account in the New User Interface You can manually copy and paste all of your text into a separate text file, or you can take screenshots of your pages. Or go the easy way! As LinkedIn also offers us the ability to create a free backup at any time of all of our LinkedIn data, posts, and connections; you save this backup file to your own hard drive. Simply go to request a data archive: Find instructions here.  

    How to Back Up Your Instagram Account with the Data Download Tool- Click here.

    Here is a YouTube video to watch. 

12. Is your social media marketing person using photos from the MLS? This is not legal unless the broker paid for those photos and you have permission to use. In most cases, the MLS service has all images watermarked. This is a copyright violation to use the images, videos, and in social media posts. 
13. Is your social media marketing person a good copywriter? Are you approving them to copy and paste property descriptions from the Internet from sites like Zillow, the MLS, and other places the description might have previously appeared? This is a copyright infringement. When an agent acquires a new listing or expired listing it is important to write your own original descriptions and make sure the equal housing discrimination act is not violated.

 

Finally, the National Association of Realtors provides a comprehensive social media policy that every member should abide by and make it your company policy.

When writing your own company social media policy, provide language to provide a take-down policy in the event any such materials are posted to the site. The identification of the brokerage should be clear to avoid violating the FTC rules.  There are hundreds of providers of social media services that are not fully educated on all of this. 

QUOTE FROM THIS SITE: (National Association of Realtors)

“There are hundreds of providers of social media services in which real estate agents may participate. The purpose of this policy is to provide guidelines intended to provide both agents and the brokerage with legal liability risk management and to protect the brokerage’s reputation and goodwill in the community. “

Here is the complete NAR Internet Advertising Policy.

Here is a guideline to create a social media policy for your real estate company. http://www.realtor.org/ae/manage-your-association/association-policy/create-a-social-media-usage-policy

For Real Estate professionals in the State of Florida, you may reference online advertising laws here.

Please note: While some regulations may slightly differ from state to state or region with your Association of Realtors, The NAR Code of Ethics remains the same.

 

Shelley Costello Trains Real Estate Agents on Social Media Marketing and Compliance to any audience upon request.

Are you looking to rise above your competition using the latest most effective real estate tactics on social media?

Our company, led by Shelley Costello, handles social media marketing for real estate agents across the US. We train brokerages on topics of Internet advertising compliance for online advertising for large real estate brokerages. Hire our CEO to come to your office and train your agents.

Shelley Costello is a #1 Best Selling Author, a Freelance writer for many National real estate online publications. She is also a Fox News social media strategist with 15 years in real estate marketing and compliance.  

We teach Real Estate Social Media Code of Ethics, Social Media, and Technology Training. In this class we will review the Code of Ethics and compliance in your social media marketing strategy. We will look at state regulations and teach you how to manage your online reputation.

Outsourcing to an inexperienced person can result in license violations and fines if the wrong posts are put on social media. We offer this free intensive two-hour training to protect agents and brokers from violations of codes and laws.

If you would like to receive this training for your brokerage or for your own knowledge, please contact us.

Click here for the contact form

For more information about real estate social media compliance marketing check the link out below.

Real Estate, Mortgage, Social Media Marketing