Just like successful local and online businesses, successful realtors understand the importance of social media marketing. We live in a research-driven buying culture, so before homebuyers start seriously looking for housing options or before a seller looks for a realtor, they’re doing their research online. Real estate has a long sales cycle, and prospective clients have to be nurtured. By providing potential clients information and engaging content throughout their research process, you become an invaluable resource, and you stay top of mind when they’re ready to buy or hire.
The 80/20 Rule
Whether you’re on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram or Pinterest, the 80/20 rule should be top of mind when deciding what kind of content to post. It’s simple: 80% of your content should be entertaining, engaging and educational, and only 20% should be promotional. People are on social media to catch up with friends, check out entertaining content and to find useful information, they’ll simply ignore your brand’s social media posts if they’re only full of listings.
“Our success on social media has come from providing helpful content. It’s not about self-promotion–it’s about being a useful resource for our clients online as well as in-person. On social media, we provide articles and information that benefits our audience: answers to commonly asked real estate questions, tips about home ownership, and relevant information about our local Seattle community. Like everything we do, we use social media to build a community, one client at a time.”
Visual Social Media Marketing for Real Estate
Real estate is a highly visual market and that’s great news for your social media marketing efforts. Tools like Stencil make it super simple and fun to create images to complement your content on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Pinterest and more! We’ve put together a list of the types of posts you can add to your social media calendar to increase engagement.
12 Types of Posts to Successfully Engage Your Audience
1. Tips for first time homebuyers
Buying a home for the first time is a daunting task. By providing helpful tips and information to first time homebuyers, you become a go-to resource for potential buyers.
By offering answers to commonly asked real estate questions you can demonstrate your extensive real estate knowledge.
Potential buyers and sellers will be interested in the real estate market. By providing constant updates, you show you’re up-to-date with industry trends.
This lets you highlight the best features of the neighborhoods you have listings in and puts your knowledge about them on display.
By providing home staging tips to potential sellers you show your audience that you’re involved in and on top of all the stages of the selling process.
This is another great way to showcase the neighborhoods you have listings in.
Inspirational quote posts generate high engagement because people can easily relate to them and they’re easily shared.
Information on open houses falls under the 20% promotional content category, but that doesn’t mean you can’t create beautiful images that pique interest.
Humor goes a long way on social media! One Stencil user, Ray Ciampaglia has definitely got the right idea: “Before coming into Real Estate I was a Managing Partner of an online advertising and marketing agency so I know of the importance of online advertising and how imperative social media is to the creation of any brand on any level. Locally or nationally. In real estate, the agent is the brand. Chances are the general public knows of, or has heard of, the agency I work for, so in order for customers to find me as an agent I must do something to stand out. I use social media for just that.
Stencil has allowed me to become much more creative with my posts.
Sometimes I inject humor or some interesting information about the real estate market and sometimes I create motivational quotes. Whatever the type of posting I am creating the goal is always the same. To get my name out there in the public eye and become synonymous with real estate sales.”
Ray created this hilariously engaging post on Stencil:
Another example of a 20% promotional category post, beautiful photos of your listings with information, geotagging and industry hashtags will definitely garner likes and interest.
Testimonials show potential clients what they can expect from you as a realtor. By showcasing successful closings and happy faces, you’re building trust in your brand.
