Social media moves as fast as the data getting communicated over the network — what might be hot news on a Friday afternoon might leave your engagement dead in the water.
Here’s what you need to do to make sure you’re tackling your real estate agency’s social media presence the right way:
6 Tips for Staying Ahead in the Lightning-Fast World of Social
Handling this effectively is the key to being a social media hero or a digital marketing zero. Read on.
1) Hashtags, hashtags, hashtags
Just because hashtags make your content more easily discoverable, that doesn’t mean you should be throwing them at everything you do.
Excessive hashtag use is irritating to look at, and it’s only going to serve at making your business look desperate and spammy — especially if the ones you’re using aren’t even related to what you’re posting about.
You need to place your focus on using the right hashtags. A solid rule to rely on is to never use more hashtags than words. This will ensure your followers can focus on what you have to say, instead of an overabundance of hashtags.
2) Don’t jump on every trend that’s out there
It’s common for brands to jump straight on social trends to try and appear trendy. But honestly, it’s probably not worth your effort.
Just because something’s trending, it doesn’t mean your followers want to hear what you have to say about it. And if it isn’t at all related to what you do, then you might end up simply annoying your followers and shrinking your fanbase.
Instead of throwing yourself at these trends, take a step back and ask yourself whether what you’re sharing is relevant to your audience. If the answer is no, delete it from the post box and find something else.
3) Repeating the same message on different platforms
Let’s be honest — it’s the easy thing to do. And unsurprisingly, it’s why so many people do it. But, you guessed it — it’s a social media mistake that you don’t want to be making.
Pushing the same message out on all of your channels is a bad plan, because different channels are used for different things. For example, Facebook, Twitter and Instagram might work fine with hashtags, but LinkedIn doesn’t. And sharing a picture of a cute dog isn’t going to appeal to your professional audience.
You should instead focus on a distributed content strategy, where you publish different content that’s specific to each network and audience.
4) Ignoring your audience
If someone can be bothered to drop you message they definitely care about what you do. So, why ignore them? That’s not even close to what social media is about.
Social media shouldn’t just be used for you to shout a message at your audience. It’s a two-way street and you need to allow people to talk back.
When working on your social schedule, you should include time to chat with your audience. Reply to comments, ask your followers questions and invite them to share feedback on your posts.
5) Keeping your social presence private
This might have been a solid way to secure a username back in 2008, but we’re nearly 10 years on now. And locking down your social channels so your posts can only be seen by your followers is a bad call to make.
Why? Just because someone isn’t following you on social media, that doesn’t mean they aren’t interested in what you have to say, or googling your Facebook page to find out more about you. Social media is an invaluable tool for you to grow an audience, so you should use it to your advantage.
6) Utilising automated messages
Automated messages might have had. Place in the past, but that time has long gone. Where they may have previously made your audience feel special, you’re now just going to leave them disenfranchised.
People simply don’t like communicating with robots. If they did, you wouldn’t be reading this article — you’d have some form of robot handling your social for you. Spend a bit more time digging into who your followers are, and find personalised ways of approaching them.