Hey real estate agents/realtors. You already know the importance of marketing a property to attract the right buyer. But what about marketing your own personal brand? And are you utilizing social media marketing to the best of your ability to help market both your property listings AND yourself? If not, you’re missing out!
Contrary to popular belief, your buyers and vendors are most definitely hanging out on social media. It’s a great avenue to not only build your personal brand and promote your listings, but also to connect with and engage potential buyer/seller leads and nurture these relationships online.
But where do you start with social media? What channels should you be on? What should you even post?
Yes, you can push the obvious links to your property listings. But we can’t do this all day, every day (do you want to engage your audience, or make them tune out?!). We need to mix it up on social media and bring value to your audience, in order to foster connections and build your brand. We want YOU to be the approachable, “go-to” agent in your area and dominate the market!
I understand that the life of an agent is a busy one (I know, I work with some!). So here are 5 top social media tips and content ideas to help get you started with building your social media presence.
(and note that these are tips that could work for both residential and commercial real estate agents).
1. The right channels. Firstly, we need to address what social media channels you should be utilising. The main 3 I recommend for real estate agents are Facebook, Instagram and LinkedIn (personal profile). I feel that LinkedIn in particular can be overlooked by real estate agents but it can be a very important lead generator in front of the professional and B2B audience that hangs out on LinkedIn. It’s also a good place to network with other professionals, and people in the industry – like mortgage brokers or even home staging companies.
2. Video. I’m not talking about promotional videos of your property listings here (although these help). I’m talking about videos to promote your own personal brand. It’s no secret that video is the most engaging type of content (more so than static imagery), so invest in some personal brand videos that you can distribute over your different channels. These will also work well when you decide to delve into Facebook Advertising.
What’s more, you don’t need to have expensive professional videos all the time – take some videos with your phone and upload them to your channels (you could make some engaging Instagram Stories with these!). So what topics could you cover in these videos, I hear you ask? Well, you could address questions that potential buyers/vendors may have: Who are you? Why should vendors/buyers approach you, and not your competition? What makes you the authority on the area/suburbs you operate in? Any questions that are popping up around specific properties? Anything that helps your audience could make great video content.
Better yet – try some Facebook Lives! (e.g. have you got an open home starting in half an hour? Let your audience know!)
3. Successes. A great way to stake your claim as the “go-to” real estate agent is to show off your success on social media. Do you have any awards? Does the company you operate under have any awards? What are your recently sold or leased properties? For my real estate agent clients, I like to create SOLD (and LEASED, if commercial) Instagram Story highlights on their profiles. You can get creative with how to promote your successes on social media! Make sure your about sections/bios cover these successes, too.
4. “Day in the life” content. So aside from putting together deals, what do you do as a real estate agent? Let your audience in on your day to day life and tasks. For example, are you attending a workshop or conference? Are you at an open home? Are you meeting a client? Are you putting up a sign? Are you raising funds for a charity? Getting involved in a community initiative? These activities make you personable, and thus help build a connection with your audience (and will stand out from the usual “for sale” property listing posts). Utilise both imagery and videos for these (including Stories!)
5. Market updates/ inside knowledge. Go above and beyond and show your knowledge / expertise by posting valuable content – like “market updates”. For example: what’s happening in your area right now, the newest updates in the real estate world, new legislations coming through, trends in presenting property, the latest statistics around auction clearance rates, economy updates and interest rate updates. Even community updates that aren’t necessarily property-orientated – but show that you’re an engaged community member!
Better yet – turn these into blog posts and share them on your social media channels. You can also make the most of these blog posts by creating smaller ‘snips’ of content or graphics, from the info within these blog posts (aka making your content go further).
So those were 5 key tips to help get you started and inspired to build a thriving and engaging social media presence.
You can seriously get creative when it comes to your social media marketing as a real estate agent. The main takeaway is to be personable, post engaging content and show yourself to be an active community member who knows the areas you operate in, inside and out!
___
Feeling excited about the possibly for your social media? Or maybe a little overwhelmed? As a Social Media Manager, I help you save hours of time and stress by offering full social media management services. Rest easy knowing your social media marketing is “on point” every single week! Contact me today to chat and see what I could do for you.