Convenience with a push of a button. This is where technology has taken us, making tasks simple and the world a smaller place.
Embracing this new paradigm, the real estate industry has taken advantage of the internet phenomenon and most players have been conducting their business affairs largely online. Computer monitors and portable devices have taken over the Sunday papers and yellow pages.
Social media today plays a huge role in helping people establish relationships, generate leads, and develop trust with potential clients. It has also become a very effective tool in building a strong brand, thought leadership, and establishing a social network of clients and influencers.
Unfortunately, very few realtors are taking advantage of the full potential of social media and, in fact, some are still not using it at all.
Here’s a tip. There are very simple ways to create amazing and effective social media marketing strategies for your real estate business. Here are some of the basic steps to help you get started, regardless if you are just starting out or are planning to revisit your existing marketing campaigns.
Setting your goals and expectations
Don’t forget that the market is always evolving and ever-changing, thus, strategies should also be deemed the same. Social media marketing strategies and undertakings should also be considered the same way.
Before you start launching your campaigns, take time to carefully plan it out by considering your expectations and setting goals. Make sure your goals are measured by key performance indicators (KPI) that will help you gauge your campaign performance.
KPI’s may include, but not limited to the following;
- Audience
- Engagement
- Traffic
- Subscriptions
- Lead generation
- Demographics
- Conversion
Identify your goals by setting targets based on your expectations. You can set goals such as a percentage of finding new followers to your pages, an incremental increase in a number of audiences over time, etc. Upon establishing your goals, you develop your metrics to measure your performance to match your campaign efforts.
As you go along, make sure to periodically assess your performance over your goals so you can adjust to enhance strategies that work and eliminate those that don’t.
Focus on local and target-specific content
Having too much on your plate can be very tiring and could often generate fewer results than expected. This means that concentrating your efforts on target-specific content can guarantee you more attention and prevents your audience from getting caught up with too much general information.
In today’s fast-paced era, the market is more interested and engaged with relevant content that is more poignant, concise, and straight to the point.
For your real estate venture, it would be wise to concentrate on keywords that are optimised locally to help narrow down search options from your audience to make their search activities faster and productive.
Here are some ideas of researching for locally-optimised content;
- News about local stories, especially those with impacts on real estate when available
- Community events
- Following and boosting content of other local businesses
- Take advantage of locally-optimised search terms and keywords in your content
- Participate and sponsor local charities and events, which you can share in your social media feeds
- Use hashtags for optimised and relevant keywords to enhance your search potential
- Join real estate social media groups and networks, as well as complementary industries such as manufacturing, banking, insurance, etc.
- Actively participate in social media forums
- Establish thought leadership through blogging and participate in conversations regarding real estate events, news, and topics.
Always remembers to update your information on your social media pages and actively engage your audience through prompt and professional responses to queries regarding your online and social media content.
Take advantage of videos
You don’t want to get left out in the social media scene when you use videos in your content. After all, 87% of all online marketers are using it to their advantage and are those who get quick returns on investment.
Videos provide attractive and animated content that most audiences adore and follow, as well as addressing the needs of clients without spending more time to reach out and ask more questions or images of the property.
- Develop informational or instructional videos about real estate to educate your viewers. You can also provide tips on buying and selling properties.
- Create virtual tours for potential buyers, especially for those leads you are reaching out to overseas.
- Take advantage of video feeds for open houses, walkthroughs, or interactive sessions on your social media pages.
- Showcase properties using videos of the properties in social media.
Don’t underestimate the #hashtag
Hashtags are among the most effective symbols that you can use on social media to make your content more searchable and recognisable.
You can create your branded hashtags to make your brand more visible on the net, which can be used by anyone wanting to easily share or provide access to your brand with their extended networks.
Among the best examples of branded hashtags are #agencyname, #agencylocation, #agencyslogan, #agencycatchterm, etc.
Research as well on industry-relevant hashtags to make you more accessible to other networks and net access.
Another trick that can be worth trying is using hashtags that are linked to trending events, however, don’t abuse it or just use it sparingly to add fun to your campaigns.
Word of mouth or testimonials
It is more credible to let your customers or satisfied clients promote your brand, so making use of user-generated content could help people relate to your brand or products better and more confidently. These come in the form of testimonials, shared images, positive reviews, and videos that help spur greater audience engagement.
Here are some tips on how you can do this;
- Ask customers to provide a quick testimonial
- Offer discounts and incentives
- Hold contests and raffle giveaways
- Organise a hashtag campaign
When you plan to share user-generated images or videos, make sure to ask permission from your client or the source so you can share it on your news feed or pages.