Florida Realtor • November/December 2024 • Learn From the Master of the Social Sphere

Writing short, hyperlocal articles and sharing them to various social media sites has helped build this agent’s business from the ground up to 45,000 followers.

When Dick Betts shifted from being a national speaker and continuing education instructor to a full-time Realtor® during the COVID-19 pandemic, he sought a way to rebrand himself. “Fortunately, I’d been teaching real estate professionals about social media, search engine optimization (SEO) and how to create an online presence for more than 15 years,” says the leader of The Dick Betts Team at Touchstone Real Estate in Mount Dora.

Drawing on his own teachings, he built a website and started writing daily articles about his neighborhood, The Villages, and soon grew a following. “I started out with zero sales in 2020, and I’ve done so well that I now have six agents and one full-time administrative person on my team,” he says. “The Villages is a haven for promoting lifestyle.”

There are 3,000 social clubs in The Villages that Betts writes about. “One day, I received an email from a gentleman in Pennsylvania asking for more information about the croquet club,” he says. “I sent him what he asked for, and he responded, ‘I want to come there and buy a house. When and where can I meet you?’ I suggested the croquet court, and when we met him and his wife he gave me their wish list for a house that included a desire to live close to a croquet court. I showed him two out of three croquet courts at The Villages, and he ended up buying a $450,000 house—all because of an article I wrote about the croquet club.”

On another occasion, a woman from Tennessee, who had been following Betts on social media for months, reached out about visiting the area with her husband and wanting to meet him. Betts recalls, “She said, ‘Dick, I like the way you think; I enjoy every article.’ When she and her husband came to The Villages, I sat and talked with them about what they wanted. Then, later that same day, I had a listing appointment for a property that I felt was perfect for them.” Betts called and told the couple about it right away, and after seeing the property they fell in love with it. “This led to an $850,000 sale, and I [handled] both sides of the transaction,” he adds.

Maximum reach, minimum cost: “The beauty here is that my social media strategy is not a big investment [of money],” Betts says. He only pays for his blog site on ActiveRain, which he’s used since 2007 before social media took off. “I post there, and it has conduits that allow me to [distribute] to various other sites including X, Pinterest, Tumblr and WordPress,” he explains. “Every morning at 7 a.m., my posts go out on these sites. They do offer Facebook and LinkedIn, but I don’t like the way they’re posted on those sites.” Instead, for LinkedIn, he manually posts his article each day. He uses two LinkedIn accounts, which have a total of 45,000 followers. “Then, I post on my Facebook pages and Instagram, which I started from zero in September 2022.”

Do it daily: Betts has written 661 articles that have been published across 10 different social media platforms. “It takes dedication; you have to do it every day,” he says. “Over [a recent weekend], I wrote five articles that I spaced out to automatically be posted on my different sites. Some go out at 7 a.m., and others appear at 7:30 a.m. I have people commenting and liking what I wrote that day, and all of a sudden the phone rings, or I get an email or private message from someone saying, ‘Dick, we feel like we know you.’” He recently sold a high-end villa to a couple who follow him on Facebook and 12 investment homes to a group of New York City-based lawyers who found him on social media. “I had a buyer from Minnesota who followed me for months and one day the phone rang and she said, ‘Hey Dick, it’s Jodi.’ She had been a Realtor® back in Minnesota and came here to buy a house. Now she’s on my team.”

Stick to a formula: Betts uses a formula he taught for years as an instructor. “It’s called the 7 to 3 [ratio],” he explains, “where seven posts cover lifestyle or public interest topics and three focus on real estate. Using a newspaper as an example, if you only place advertising on the front page, how much time are people going to spend reading the newspaper? I’ve always used the FORD system—family, organization, recreation and dreams—as my contact management system. No matter where you live, there’s a lifestyle and human interest story to share. I write about the church-run thrift shops, the church that packs meals to feed the children and the Veteran’s Day concert in November. It’s all about sharing what’s going on, and people pick up on that.” Most of Betts’s articles are around 200 words. He also writes stories on practical topics like insurance rates, mortgage rates and housing statistics. “There is no advertising. I don’t even put my open houses or new listings there. I don’t make it all real estate so that people want to follow me for general information and things that will interest them. It’s a passive plan.”

Offer something of value: Betts sees himself as a concierge who handles a variety of needs, and he uses his Facebook page to connect people with local services. He maintains a list that includes contacts for electricians, plumbers, handymen, painters and more. “It’s really handy for newcomers because people move to The Villages from all over the country and might not know where to find reliable local services.”

By offering valuable, relevant content and promoting the lifestyle of The Villages, Betts has built a loyal following that extends far beyond his local area. His success demonstrates the power of consistency, authenticity and relationship-building in growing a real estate business.