Gen Z Luxury Agent’s #1 Lead Source: Collabs With Tiktok Superstars

In 2021, Frankie Barone had a problem. Freshly laid off from a job in fashion — a dream job no less  — he found himself sitting alone in his New York City apartment, bored and broke. The sourdough starters and Netflix binges wearing thin, he decided to take a friend’s advice and enroll in real estate classes. It was another universe from the glamorous fashion industry life he was pursuing, but the classes were only $200. What did he have to lose?

His first deal came quickly: a $1,300 rental with the Corcoran Group. A paltry sum in a city where the average one-bedroom rents for an eye-watering $4,037, but Barone was hooked. He quickly decided to turn his pandemic side hustle into his full-time career.

He did well enough on leads from his network, primarily through SoulCycle classes. Still, it wasn’t until he started a “collab” (collaboration) with an Instagram influencer that his career took off. We recently sat down with Barone to find out how he did it. He revealed the strategy he used to woo influencers, and how you can too — even if you only have a few dozen followers.

Frankie Barone: By the numbers

• Market: Manhattan and Brooklyn
• Niche: Luxury rentals and sales
• 2024 personal sales volume: $8.9 million
• 2024 team volume: Eklund|Gomes Team, $4 billion
• Primary lead generation strategy: Collaborating with social media influencers 
• Highest ROI software in 2025: Microsoft Excel(!)
• Real estate coach: Fredrik Eklund and John Gomes

Why influencer collabs are the ideal social media lead strategy for 2025

Generating leads from social media has never been easy, but most agents who have tried will admit that the days of scaling accounts fast enough to make your phone ring are long gone. There’s just too much competition in most markets. Sure, new accounts occasionally break out and rack up followers quickly, but for the most part, Instagram is a dead end for many Realtors.

Influencer collabs give you an instant exposure boost, even if the only people following you are your Uncle Jimmy and your college roommate. Like a sphere of influence (SOI) referral, influencers give you a shortcut to building your know, like and trust factor.

Here’s Barone on why influencer collabs are even better for lead generation than amassing thousands of followers:

“Engagement, not follower count, matters most for generating leads on social media. Influencers with strong engagement bring high-quality leads. Even if you have more followers, odds are an influencer’s followers know, like and trust them more since they’re primarily providing entertainment. This makes leads from influencer collabs almost like SOI referrals. The trust is already there. That’s why I treat influencer leads personally, building relationships as if they were direct referrals.”

Frankie Barone’s influencer workflow

Working with influencers is not a silver bullet for generating online leads. Building relationships with influencers takes time, skill and more than a bit of luck. But for Gen Z agents like Barone, networking on social media comes naturally. Here’s how he does it:

Step 1: Start with your SOI

Barone’s first contact with an influencer came through a friend. Scan your sphere on social media to find connections to local influencers. It’s okay to start small. You don’t need a celebrity influencer with millions of followers for your collaboration to generate leads.

Step 2: Network with influencers outside your SOI

If you’re struggling to find connections to local influencers in your SOI, pound the digital pavement to find them outside your sphere.

Start by searching for influencers by location on Instagram and follow every one you find in your city. This trains your algorithm to show you more in relevant results. Next, start a spreadsheet where you rank them by engagement. You can manually find out how many likes and comments they have, or use a tool such as Collabstr for a more efficient approach.

If your pockets are a bit deeper, skip the line and join an influencer marketing platform such as Shopmy. It offers influencer collabs at flat rates for brands. 

Step 3: Make influencers an offer to collab

While personal connections work best, almost all influencers will be willing to work with you if you offer them something of value. It might be a good idea for a video; you can help them create one in exchange for promoting your brand, or offer your services at a discount to appear in the video.

Barone’s collab arose organically. The influencer he worked with wanted to do a Q&A with a local agent, and eventually decided to document her apartment hunt, million-dollar listing style, with Barone as her co-star. He waived his commission for the deal and ended up with over 40 warm leads. Your results may vary outside of major cities, but the strategy remains effective. 

Step 4: Work your leads

Barone advises agents to treat their influencer leads as if they were direct referrals. As a result, his closing ratio was far higher than it was with other online leads. As former clients, they are also far more likely to refer him to even more people.

Here are the results from Barone’s first influencer collaboration. This single post garnered over 20,000 likes and generated 40 new leads for Barone.

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