You can’t avoid hearing all the buzz about social media these days. Many, many agents are jumping on the low- or no-cost opportunities available with social media—much to their early-adopter benefit. If you are a broker, cheering on your cutting-edge agents from the sidelines on isn’t enough.

The successful office needs to get and stay ahead in this exciting and new field. As the leader of your organization, you should care about social media—and need to lead the charge of educating your agents and helping them use it. Why?

1. Lead generation – The fact is, 9 out of 10 buyers search for homes online according to NAR. Today’s consumers increasingly use social media as the start to a real business relationship. Are they viable leads? Yes—as long as you build the relationship and use lead capture best practices on your website.

2. Relationship building – When your agents are at the forefront of social media, they are representing you—in a space where many brokerages still fear to tread—and building the relationship where consumers are, where they spend the most time thinking and acting on the early stages of their home search.

3. High ROI – The cost of Twitter, a blog, a Facebook page: nothing but a little bit of time. With upside like that, why not get your agents to do it?

4. Market share – It used to be that brokerage market share was determined block by block, “sold” sign by “sold” sign. Now brokerage territories are being carved out virtually via consumer mindshare. It’s the new frontier for competition, so by starting now you will be able to stake the biggest claim.

5. Pipeline – In real estate, it’s a numbers game, and s/he who has the most leads wins. Anything that helps grow your agents’ pipeline is valuable for your brokerage.

These are only the top five reasons—there are plenty of others. What are yours?