Top 5 Social Media Digital Marketing
Tips for Real Estate Professionals- PART 2
Let know more about how useful social media is for communicating, but how can real estate professionals take it to another level so it can also be a source of sales and business opportunities?
Post Strategy
Your social media feed should not be sold, sell, sell. People want to know about you, your brand, and what you stand for. In order to stand out from other Realtors, think about your USPs – that stands for Unique Service Proposition – as in, what makes you the best person or company to use compared to your competition? It may be that you have years of experience, loads of choice, or a specialist of a certain area or property type. It could be that you include a free survey or a fixed fee. Create some posts about how you personally and/or your company, are the best realtor for the job and why! Provide a link through to your website on the post and even ask them to follow, like, and share.
Planning your posts
People tend to post at the moment when they have something to sell, promote where they’ve been, or had a ‘win’ they want to show off about! However, it’s the posts in between these reactive ones – the pro-active posts, or planned posts – which are the most important ones, as they explain your real estate business and what it does.
Take some time out each month to plan, write and schedule your posts for the month ahead. Software such as Hootsuite, Buffer, and Facebook’s own free business suite can be used to schedule your posts, saving you the effort of posting one at a time. Often these programs tell you the optimal time to post to reach your audience too!
What topic is relevant at that time of year to your audience (Bob!)? Think about ‘seasonality’, which means how and when buyers behave. The property market tends to come alive in Spring and tail off towards Christmas holidays. Also consider the impact of seasons, weather, climate change, global and local news, and what your audience may need from your service or property at this particular time.
‘It’s so hot today – we’d love to dive into the gorgeous swimming pool at this property!’
‘With winter approaching you may be looking for a warm home to save on increasing energy bills. Take a look at this property, which has an A rating for energy efficiency!’
‘Looking for a large garden to enjoy time in nature with your family? Check out these 5 properties!’
What topics will your posts be about next month?
Content
Create a balance with your post topics. This is easier when you plan ahead. So, thinking about the month to come, you may want to create 3-5 posts per week, averaging at 15 posts per month. This could be broken down to:
3 about your company; news, wins, history, case studies, testimonials.
3 about you personally; experience, family situation, a lesson you learned.
3 about education; links to blogs on your website or explain property topics to your audience.
6 (or more) about your properties (remember to think about what is relevant right now – ‘seasonality’).
Of course, you can do more, this is just an example to explain the post balance and give you enough to start being noticed by the platform algorithms and your audience.
You can boost the reach (how many people the post is seen by) of your posts by using hashtags for your industry. If you type these into the Instagram search bar it will show you how many other people are using that hashtag, e.g. #realestate #property. You can also look at Twitter trends.
You can also use well-known hashtags such as #MondayMotivation, #TuesdayTips or #TestimonialTuesday, #WednesdayWisdom, #ThursdayThoughts, or #ThrowbackThursday (where people reuse an older post or talk about something from the past), and #FridayFun or #FridayFact to create a theme on that day.
Consistency
Don’t post for a week and then give up! Social media is a long-term digital marketing strategy. Your expectations should be around building a following and communicating your offering. It may take time before you have leads or see direct real estate sales from your social media.
Like anything worthwhile, it works best to make it a part of your routine so it becomes a habit. Schedule in 10 minutes every morning to check your accounts, reply to messages and like and comment on your target audience’s posts (there’s Bob again!) so that they notice you.
Remember to schedule a half-day per fortnight to write your next month’s posts and think about the strategies discussed above. Or maybe you want to write a post each morning over a coffee, at the moment.
On the first of each month, note your follower number and any other metrics you are measuring, so that you can see your progression over time.
Often the people who buy are the ones who don’t like or comment, but they are watching and reading… these people are sometimes called ‘lurkers’. They will suddenly contact you and say they’ve been looking for ages, are very impressed and can’t wait for a chat about a property – fantastic!
So, get started, keep at it, and make social media a key part of your real estate digital marketing strategy today!
To learn more tips like these, you can enroll for REMI’s real estate digital marketing online program.
Author:
Amanda Evans
Head of Marketing – Retransform