Marketing /
10 Min read
7 Social Media Marketing Tips for Real Estate
March 19, 2021
Hardik Makadia
Co-founder & CEO, WotNot
Table of Contents
Did you know that Social Media was the highest lead generator for real estate agents, followed by ILS sites and aggregator sites? According to the National Association of the Realtors, 52% of multifamily home buyers found their homes on the internet.
With the proliferation of digital marketing, real estate agents and developers don’t have a choice but to step out of their comfort of traditional marketing and enter the realm of social media. We know the importance of social media marketing for any business. Still, it’s all the more a non-negotiable strategy for the real estate industry because of the massive number of multifamily & single-family property sales happening on the internet. As a result, 76% of female realtors and 73% of male realtors used Facebook to do their real estate business.
While homebuyers are buying extensively on the internet, real estate agents still find it challenging to embrace this digital switch completely. 48% of the real estate firms mentioned that keeping up with technology will continue to be the biggest hardship for realtors. But this is something that the industry has to overcome to cater to millennials buyers.
Real Estate Marketing on social media for real estate properties front may seem intimidating at first, but it is one of the simplest ways to market your property online. Social media marketing is widely accessible and has a large audience. You, just like all things in marketing, need a strategy.
Choose your Platform
The common denominator in all marketing campaigns is a good ROI. Do your research as to which platform can give you the best return on your investment.
Facebook:
Creating a business account on Facebook can introduce you to the millions of multifamily and single-family home buyers on the internet. Facebook is a realtor favorite because real estate agents can target a niche audience with facebook’s user demographics. Facebook allows you to combine different factors into your real estate social media marketing campaign, like creating a real estate community through Facebook groups, setting up a business page for your real estate business and, listing your properties. It can give you ample opportunity to engage with your target audience. You can also integrate chatbots in your messaging apps to strike a conversation with your visitor on that page itself. This bot can also generate leads, book appointments, and inform about your property in detail to your visitor.
Instagram:
Although Instagram doesn’t share the audience size of Facebook, it is emerging as a top tool to market your multifamily properties visually. Property photos make a big difference in real estate sales. With Instagram, you’re getting a ready-made platform to represent your properties in the best manner possible. Instagram also helps with optimizing your posts through hashtags and stories. Some of the top hashtags used in the real estate industry are
#ForSale
#JustListed
#JustSold
#HouseHunting
Twitter:
Twitter is the best of both Facebook and Instagram where you can post photos and videos of your property but with limited content where you can link your content from an outside source. Just like Instagram, Twitter also needs highly effective hashtags that help people find your posts.
LinkedIn:
Real Estate Agents are using LinkedIn for its strong resources and data to attract potential clients and referrals. You implement all the hygiene activities for social media posting on LinkedIn but one particular activity you can emphasize on this platform is the sharing of information about your experience in the industry, your success stories, your social proof, and your network. It can increase your visibility and your credibility substantially than other platforms.
The decision to choose the right platform of social media for real estate should come after concrete research. Ask yourself,
Where can I reach my core target audience?
What are my client demographics?
What is my budget?
Where are my competitors doing marketing?
Once you answer these questions, you’ll get a much clearer picture of what medium you should use. It can also be a combination of two or more platforms.
Community Building
You need to modify the rules of real estate social media marketing. Remember, you’re not here just to sell. You’re here to create awareness, build a real estate community, and aim for a lasting relationship with customers. This is why you need to use these platforms more wisely. Instead of posting sales ads, put up posts that facilitate two-way communication. Initiate a healthy discussion on comments, enable reviews of your property and services, and initiate two-way conversations using chatbots. Listening to your followers helps you understand their thoughts and guide you in posting in the future. People will want to follow you, not just for your business but for your ability to connect with your target audience on a more personal level.
Quality Content
Using social media for real estate properties really gives you space to be creative with your content. Just like you, there are many other real estate agents marketing their multifamily and single-family homes on social media. Your content is the only thing that can help you stand out. This includes all types of content like images, videos, blogs, client testimonials, captions, etc. You can create these content types using customizable free templates. The following post shows a perfect example of how to describe your property as spacious, big enough for everyone to fit in, and an ideal place for get-togethers.
Source: Adespresso
To ensure success on your social media posts, you need to get professional photographers to take pictures of your single-family property, create informative and entertaining videos, create property tour videos, write inspiring customer stories, and quirky and engaging captions. It’s the combination of all of these that will determine customer engagement on your posts and improve your single-family leads.
Social Media advertising
Sponsored ads on social media let you directly pitch your target audience, and you can use this real estate social media marketing strategy to increase your website traffic as well. When you’re on a budget, you need to ensure that you target sufficient leads for a good ROI. So, narrow your target audience, make it local-focused, understand your target audience’s preferences, simply your message, use the right imagery and videos, and give the right call to action. Your job isn’t over once your prospect clicks on the CTA. Once your visitor lands on your landing page, you need to engage them to get a lead. Some of the ways through which you can do that are website forms and real estate chatbots.
Strategic Posting
The most prominent dilemma while using social media for real estate is the frequency of the posts. How do you post enough to generate awareness but also not overwhelm your readers with too much posting? Maintaining this balance is a challenge. But one of the techniques real estate agents can use is to figure out your agency’s awareness level. Are you new in the real estate market, or do you have substantial experience? Do you want to market a property or tell a story? Are your posts for an open house or sustainable living?
The next thing you can check is your engagement on previous posts. How well did that work out? How many followers did you gain or lose? How many likes and shares did you get? It will help you in figuring out a better strategy to post in the future. Most of the brands also take advantage of the meme trends to resonate with the audience. Your end goal in online real estate social media marketing is to keep your followers coming back for more and enhancing your lead generation chances.
Make the most of social media marketing tools
Social media marketing is necessary but also time-consuming. Fortunately, there are various tools that can completely automate your social media posting and advertising. Some of these are:
Free Stock Photos for Real Estate:
You do not always have the resources to set up a photoshoot for your properties and get professional photographs taken. It takes time and is also an additional burden for your marketing team. Instead, you can just surf for free real estate photos on sites such as Freepik, Unsplash, Stocksnap, and Burst. You can just pick an image and add captions to post on your social media.
Real Estate Infographics:
Infographics are the best way to get creative with your content. Since our brain grasps visual content faster than written, timeline infographic is the best way to represent complex information in a readable form. Infographics are also liked and shared 3x times more than regular posts.
Chatbots:
Real Estate Chatbots completely automate the lead generation and qualification process for real estate on the internet. Once your posts get clicked, you need to strike a conversation immediately to ensure your leads are captured. Your chatbots can ask the visitor’s name, contact information, email address, schedule property visits, and provide property information. These chatbots are easy to build and deploy and can
Source: WotNot
Scheduling Tools:
Using social media for real estate can be hectic, considering your busy schedule. You don’t have the time to post consistently. To solve this problem, you can get your content ready in advance and schedule your social media marketing posts, so you don’t have to post them yourself every day. Tools like Buffer and Hootsuite are some top social media scheduling tools that can be very helpful for social media real estate marketing.
Measure your performance
Keep track of your social media posting and figure out how well social media is working out for you. Are people giving a response? Are you creating value through your posts? How many likes are you getting? With posting, you also need to measure your social media performance and determine the number of leads you generate from your social media presence.
The whole world using social media extensively as the medium effectively reaches out to your target audience. But unlike other marketing activities, you don’t have to invest a lot of time with social media since you have so many automation tools. While it’s true that anyone can create an account on social media, how to best utilize it to scale your business is not something everyone is an expert at. Using these seven tips, you can ace your social media performance and stay at the top of your game.
ABOUT AUTHOR
Hardik Makadia
Co-founder & CEO, WotNot
His leadership, pioneering vision, and relentless drive to innovate and disrupt has made WotNot a major player in the industry.