It's hard to believe that 21 years ago, Z57 first opened our doors. It's hard to believe that we are older than Facebook by about 5 years. Being in this business for so long, we certainly understand the journey an internet user takes to get from a browser to a showing. The fault in the approach for some real estate agents is assuming only people ready for a showing are worth spending any time on...and this is where Z57 clients excel at converting Facebook fans to real estate leads to clients...

Instagram Stories is an amazing tool that allows you to connect directly with your audience, without having to worry about messing up the aesthetic of your main feed. Since we last touched on the subject, Instagram has introduced Highlights to your profile. Using Highlights, you can group posts of a similar topic to the top of your profile. This makes it easier for your audience to find what they are looking for.

Here are some fun Instagram hacks we are sure you haven't been told before.

With more than 433 million members across 200 countries, LinkedIn has changed the way real estate agents can do business. LinkedIn was thought to only be used as a job application tool, but now is considered to be an incredible avenue for expanding your network.

According to Twitter, there are 310 million monthly active users. For real estate agents, that’s 310 million possible clients. Twitter is a one stop shop where people can discover what’s going on in the world in seconds, share information instantly, and connect with people and businesses around the globe. See how Twitter can help you build meaningful connections with a relevant and engaging audience who could become potential real estate clients.

Instagram is a magical place where a person can go to find out what their friends are up to - or to do research on local businesses. Did you know people are now using crowd-sourced food photos to look up restaurants on Instagram, instead of going to Yelp now? This is why it is so important for real estate agents to have a presence on Instagram.

Ask any marketer about Instagram, and they'll always tell you "Instagram is the new Facebook". This is true in a sense. Most of your prospects will be on Facebook, and as time moves on, Instagram will be the collective gathering place for the next generation of home buyers and sellers.

In recent times, the term "solopreneur" has come to prominence. It is such a new term that it still gets red squiggly lines in most text composition programs. Most agents are solopreneurs, or at least they start out as an individual agent. Some will go on to find success on their own, some will join teams, start their own team, or leave the business entirely. Here are the pros and cons of going it alone.

If you have been in the real estate industry for more than 2 years, chances are you have a few real estate leads that have not heard from you in that same amount of time. Lucky for you, some leads might take a year or more before they are ready to buy or sell a home. These so called "dead" leads, might actually just be resting. So - how do you proceed?

Maybe you're new in town. Maybe you never made it a point to build a database through networking. Maybe there are other circumstances that prevented you from building a sizable sphere of influence. How can you still be successful as a real estate agent?