Succeeding with social media shares many commonalities with succeeding in real estate. To achieve success, you need to find your niche, excel within it, and have a plan for how to reach your target audience. Whether you're working to establish a vibrant social media presence for the first time or looking for ways to take your social game to the next level, a close look at your social media plan is the perfect place to start.
How Your Social Media Plan Makes Life Easier
As a real estate agent, you precisely plan so many aspects of your business. Are you giving the same effort to your social media planning? Your days are busy, but the time that you invest upfront in creating a social media plan ultimately makes your life so much easier in the long run. It's easier to accomplish your goals, build confidence, and use the time that you devote to social much more efficiently when you have a plan.
Ever get to the time you blocked out for social media, started staring at the screen, and sat there wondering what to do next? It's like writer's block, but for social marketing. Well, part of your social media plan is creating a schedule that you can stick to. When you have a schedule and know what you want to accomplish, you don't have to wait around for inspiration.
Your Social Media Plan Is About More Than Saving Time
Of course, saving time and working more efficiently are far from the only benefits of developing your social media plan. We mentioned earlier that social media has some things in common with real estate, and the level of competition is no exception. As a result, it's hard to stand out and have success without investing some time in planning.
Your planning and your social media goals go hand in hand. Do you want to increase your audience, convert more of your social connections to clients, expand your presence to a new social platform, or become the go-to social real estate resource for your market areas? These are all attainable goals when you plan ahead, take advantage of the many resources available to help with social media marketing, and lay out a plan for how to reach them.
Planning also doesn't mean avoiding experimenting with social strategies, not innovating, or not embracing the creative side of things. The best plans are adaptable, social media is constantly evolving, and embracing the integration of new ideas will help you stay relevant with your audience. So your ideal plan will include concrete steps for achieving goals, while also leaving room to adapt to a changing landscape.
How to Start Building Your Social Media Plan
Hopefully, we've convinced you of the value that comes from investing some time and effort into your social media plan. Now let's look at a few key areas that you can focus on while you develop a reliable plan for success.
With the right plan in place, your social media presence can be such an incredible asset to your real estate brand. When you're ready to turn your plan into action, our social media marketing services are here to help you achieve your goals.
It's no secret that nearly every real estate agent would like to improve their social media presence, regardless of how much success they've already had on social platforms. According to a social survey from real estate website "The Close," 88 percent of real estate agents would like to improve their social media, while 44 percent find social media to be one of their best sources of leads. Only referrals ranked higher as a lead generation source. If you're one of many agents who want to improve their social media, we've got some proven tips to help you accomplish your goals.
Know Your Audience
Who are you trying to reach, and what are their real estate goals? It's hard to please everyone, and knowing your audience makes it much easier to tailor your social presence to their needs. Start by looking at who you want to reach with your real estate brand, and the needs of your typical clients. Take some time to engage with your audience directly on social media, encourage conversations, and learn more about them.
Be Authentic and Build Personal Connections
There's no better way to build trust on social media than to be yourself, and try to form genuine connections with your followers. Trying to be someone you're not rarely works out with social media marketing, so authenticity is really important. While you're likely to be posting plenty of content, it's equally important to interact with your followers on an individual level, and in public settings like Facebook groups. Word of mouth spreads quickly on social media, and your engagement with your audience is one of your biggest drivers of lead generation.
Educate Your Audience Rather Than Pitching to Them
Think about all of the people you follow and connect with on your personal social media accounts. How many of them do you follow because of their sales pitches? If you're like most people, you probably connect with social accounts that educate, share interesting content, and engage with their followers. Your real estate knowledge is a huge asset, and sharing it with your audience is a great way to boost your social media.
Create and Share Thoughtful, High-Quality Content
So, what's the best way to educate your audience? Sharing great content that you create and sharing interesting content that you find online are two powerful ways to build your social presence. Content comes in many forms, from blog posts and videos to quick status updates with relevant statistics. Keep track of engagement to see which types of custom content resonate most with your audience, and try to share fresh content as often as you can.
Get Comfortable Behind a Camera
While quality content comes in many forms, there's no denying that video content is one of the biggest drivers of social media engagement. Platforms like TikTok and Instagram Reels allow you to post short, bite-size video content, while longer videos will work on nearly every other major social platform. With a relatively new smartphone and a few accessories like a tripod, you'll have everything you need to start creating video content. Practice makes perfect when creating videos, so dive in, invest some time, build confidence, and reap the rewards.
Be Consistent and Stay on Schedule
Perhaps the biggest secret to social media success is that it takes time and effort to build the type of meaningful connections that will earn you business. Blocking out time each day for social media activities and sticking to your schedule will help you build a successful, reliable social routine. With DeltaNET®6, you can save time on social media marketing by easily automating posts, including listings, blog posts, open houses, client reviews, and more. When you automate routine tasks, you can dedicate more of your social time to engaging with your audience.
Integrate Social Media Into Your Real Estate Website and Marketing
As you build your audience, your social media pages should help drive plenty of fresh traffic to your real estate website. But your website and other marketing materials can also help drive interest in your social media. Make sure that you have social sharing buttons on your website content and that your social accounts are integrated seamlessly into your website. Our custom real estate websites make it easy to integrate social, share your content, and generate leads.
Choose the Right Tools for Social Media Success
If your real estate CRM doesn't provide all of the tools that you need to improve your social media, perhaps it's time for an upgrade. With DeltaNET®6, you can easily manage all of your real estate marketing in one place, including your social media, AI-driven email marketing, online ads, content, and so much more.
Instagram is one of the most popular social media platforms for real estate agents.
At first, it might seem very similar to Facebook. In fact, Facebook owns the platform and has tweaked it for ease of use. Dig a little deeper, and you'll start to see many ways it offers unique value to real estate professionals ... and lets them do the same for their customers.
Social media is a double-edged sword, as any platform can be a time sink. But real estate agents coast to coast have found creative ways to get results from it. According to the National Association of Realtors, social media is the #1 source of high-quality real estate leads. And Instagram helps you find them.
How Instagram Can Help You Build the Real Estate Practice You Want
There are two main uses for Instagram in your digital marketing strategy:
Instagram is most effective when you do both. Few people follow a feed of just listings. Sprinkling other forms of content into the mix will help you take advantage of the network's impressive engagement rate, estimated at 15x more than Facebook and 20x more than Twitter.
Here are some ways to use Instagram to make real connections:
Get Social Media Credibility Without the Headache Using DeltaNET 6
Instagram is just one of the many social media platforms you can use to bring a steady stream of warm leads into your business. Social media marketing with DeltaNET 6, the all-in-one real estate solution, gets you there faster by leveraging the power of AI-driven automation.
Not only can you get more done in less time, but you'll be able to scale up social media communication no matter how large your audience grows. All along the way, it's easier than ever to maintain the speed, relevance, authenticity, and personalization your audience expects from a trusted real estate expert. Contact us to find out more or get started.
Social media is one of the most potent marketing, relationship-building, and lead generation tools for any real estate agent. Or at least, it should be. While social media is a powerful tool, success isn't automatic. It's easy to fall into common social media mistakes that detract from the value of your social presence, especially when you have so many other priorities in your busy day. With the right strategy, you can maximize the potential of your social presence. Start by taking a look at these common social media mistakes that every agent should try to avoid.
Failing to Fill Out Your Profile Completely
Engagement and content are so important to social media success that sometimes it's easy to overlook the things that you need to do before you share your social presence with the world. One of the most common mistakes that agents make is not taking advantage of all of the features available when filling out a social media profile.
In addition to being a great place to let people know what you're all about and tell them more about your brand, many social media sites allow you to link out to the rest of your online presence from your profile. This makes it so much easier for your social connections to find your website, your blog, and anywhere else that you showcase your business online.
Too Many Listings, Not Enough Variety
The simple fact is that if all you post to social media are listings, it will be very difficult to attract, retain, and engage with followers. While it's fine to mix in some listings on occasion, your primary focus should be on sharing a variety of content that informs and excites your audience. The best real estate content helps educate your audience and builds trust.
Share content that helps followers with the details of buying and selling homes, informs them about the markets where you do business, keeps them up to date on the latest real estate trends, and takes them behind the scenes of what it's like to be an agent. Ideally, some of those content links will lead to the blog on your own real estate website, where your audience can easily find your listings in a more organic way.
Not Planning Ahead for Social Posts
While there's no getting around the fact that social success requires an investment of time, it takes a lot more time when you don't have a coherent social plan for each week. Rather than scrambling to decide how to invest your limited social time each day, a clear strategy allows you to plan ahead, seamlessly schedule social posts in advance, and leave more time to engage with your audience. Planning ahead also removes much of the stress from organizing your social presence.
Posting Only Unoriginal Content
Sharing third-party content from trusted sources is a great way to educate your audience and generate engagement, but you're missing out on a big opportunity if you're not also sharing your own original content. Sharing original content allows you to showcase your real estate expertise, answer questions from your audience, and drive traffic to your blog/real estate website. Don't like writing blog posts, or looking for ways to mix up the original content you share? Remember that video content is also one of the most powerful marketing tools in any agent's toolbox.
Lack of Social Media Engagement
Social media helps you accomplish a wide variety of marketing goals, but at its core, it's a tool for building relationships with your audience. That's why engagement is ultimately one of the most crucial steps for social success. If you're not responding to every comment, answering every DM, following other accounts, sharing other people's content, and commenting on posts from your audience, then you're missing out on some of the biggest benefits of social media marketing.
Ignoring Analytics That Can Help You Improve Your Social Presence
Analytics can tell you so much about what's working well with your social presence, what could be improved, and how to best invest your time to maximize ROI. But analytics only have value if you pay attention to them over time. Invest some time in learning about and tracking the analytics offered by your favorite social sites.
Not Having the Right Tools for the Job
Your work as a real estate agent keeps you busy throughout the day, and some of the most common social media mistakes stem from not having enough time to invest in the task. That's why it's so important to have the right social media marketing tools, and access to the dependable, automated, AI-driven tools that can make your life so much easier. Maximizing your social media ROI starts with having a strategy, then utilizing the right tools for the job.
Instagram, now owned by Facebook, has enjoyed a steady rise to prominence over the last few years.
While most people might not think of Instagram first when they list the top social media networks, now is a good time to reassess that opinion. In fact, Instagram IS one of the biggest: since January of 2020, it consistently logs 1 billion monthly active users. This makes it around three times larger than Twitter.
Facebook is still the largest at 2.8 billion. When you dig deeper and look only at users in the United States and Canada, however, Facebook comes to around 259 million compared to 120 million for Instagram. In short, the audience most U.S.-based real estate agents need is right here on these two platforms.
If you are using Facebook now, it only makes sense to extend your efforts to Instagram.
In fact, there are clear similarities between the two. If you know how to use, optimize, and market from your Facebook account, virtually all the lessons you've learned will also apply to Instagram. Plus, there are special features that make Instagram especially valuable in the real estate world.
Why So Many Real Estate Agents Swear by Instagram for Lead Generation
An increasing number of real estate agents are turning time and attention toward Instagram.
Unlike all the other social media networks, Instagram was built to be highly visual. That makes it one of the best places to showcase all your breathtaking real estate photography. On top of that, its streamlined interfaces and interactions mean it is much friendlier to new users than some other platforms.
Just as crucial, Instagram offers far more user engagement — some sources have estimated it as high as 15x the engagement of Facebook and 20x the engagement of Twitter. Many platforms are designed to limit the reach of businesses unless they pay for advertising, but Instagram hasn't developed in that direction (yet).
Getting followers on Instagram tends to be easier, too. While it may take months to reach your first 1,000, a consistent schedule of compelling content can accelerate your gains, so you'll add 1,000 in weeks or even days.
Top 6 Tips for Getting Bottom Line Real Estate Value from Your Instagram
Getting started with any new social media can seem daunting. The most important thing is to approach it in a way that allows you to generate leads without needing to scroll your feed for hours every day. Luckily, it's very easy to put Instagram to work for you once you've invested the initial time to set it up.
Let's look at some pointers that smooth the path to success:
To learn more about social media marketing in real estate, contact us.
Social media is one of the best tools for real estate agents to build a stand-out digital brand. Research shows real estate professionals are some of the most active voices on social media. Some acquire 30% of their online leads or even more from social channels.
Of course, some haven't seen the results they want just yet.
When you're new to social media, it can be tough to see the connection between a tweet or hashtag and a client meeting on your calendar. But that doesn't mean the potential isn't there, hidden just under the surface.
With the right methods, you can make social media work for you.
Social Media Automation Makes it Easier to Achieve Real Business Value
There's a simple formula for deciding what should be automated.
If something is important, but low-yield . . . automate it!
The more you can automate basic processes that underlie your business, the easier it will be to scale and grow in the future. Real estate marketing is the most natural place to enjoy all the benefits of automation — and because social media can consume so much time, it just may be the prime candidate.
It's easy to get off on the wrong foot with social media when you feel you need to watch it like a hawk.
Social media platforms encourage this level of reactivity. After all, for every minute you spend scrolling your social media feed, advertisers on the platform have the opportunity to sell something to you. Social media automation helps uncouple the bottom-line benefits from the "Fear of Missing Out."
Here are some ways to manage your social media more effectively:
Contact us to learn more about using social media automation to help your business thrive.
Social media marketing is a key part of online visibility for real estate agents, brokers, and firms.
In fact, real estate experts are among the most active professionals on social media. That may mean there's plenty of competition for an audience's limited time, but it also means many of your peers are seeing great results. Platforms like Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram can be powerful lead engines if you use them right.
The challenge to social media newcomers is twofold:
Publishing content that captures attention and adds value for your target real estate prospects.
Doing so in a way that doesn't require you to spend all day scrolling through your social feed.
Social media is a notorious time sink, so it's important to have clear goals and focused execution. Yes, it can be fun to spread your wings as a thought leader in your community — but it's crucial to connect those activities to concrete business results. This is what many real estate pros overlook, and that can lead to disappointment.
Luckily, social media best practices for real estate are easy to work out with a little research. Here's how to use social media to really connect:
Social media is easy to learn but challenging to master. Contact us to find out more about it from the leaders in real estate digital marketing.
Experts estimate an astonishing 87.1% of marketers in the U.S. used Facebook marketing features in 2020.
Facebook has 2.4 billion monthly active users, including some 255 million in the United States and Canada. As Facebook loses its cachet among the college students it was originally created for, it's still growing among the under-36 cohort most likely to be active homebuyers.
No matter who your target demographic is, Facebook has them. And the most vital resource for reaching those potential leads is your Facebook business page. Even if you already have one, there are exciting ways to make it more effective.
Real Estate Agents, It's Time to Renovate Your Facebook Business Page
If you've been in the real estate industry more than a month, odds are you have a Facebook business page for your practice. But Facebook is constantly providing new tools to apply to your lead generation efforts. Just like an old home, your page may need a fresh coat of paint.
Luckily, your business page is under your control. It's up to you to make the most of it. By keeping your Facebook page modern, you're adding extra authority and interest to your posts. That helps you stand out from the crowd and get recognized as an authentic local real estate expert.
Here are four ways to do it:
1. Update Your Facebook Cover Image With a Call to Action
You already know your cover image is the most important visual element on your Facebook page, right?
It serves as the masthead, taking up more space than anything else. A good cover is 820x360 pixels, so it shows up brilliantly on both smartphones and desktops. Text is kept to the middle, where it can't be cut off. The image shows a compelling real estate photo, your face, or both. And, of course, it includes your brand name or logo!
But did you know you can add interactivity to your cover?
One of the more recent quirks of business pages is the "call to action" button. Just like a CTA on your blog posts, this tells visitors what to do next — a step they often won't take unless it's made explicit. The CTA appears in a prominent position on your cover, and it can be styled in many different ways.
Some relevant options for real estate include:
Here's how to set one up.
2. Add Property Search to Your Facebook Page
Although you can't display MLS listings directly on your Facebook page without using third-party software, there's another way to give your properties more reach. Submit your listings to Facebook Marketplace in the Real Estate category, and you'll have many more options for promoting them, such as using Facebook Ads or sharing them with your active Groups. You can also communicate with prospective buyers right on Facebook.
3. Encourage Former Clients to Visit Your Review Section
When your business page is filled out with your website URL and address, Facebook reviews can boost your local SEO — getting you more traffic from searches relevant to your business within 20 miles of you. That means even if you already showcase reviews on your website, Facebook still has something to offer.
To get more reviews, follow up with satisfied clients within a week of closing day. Also, reach out to clients who've already submitted positive reviews on Google My Business or Yelp. 81% of 12,000 respondents said their friends' recommendations influenced their buying behavior, so this can create a snowball effect.
4. Set Up Facebook Messenger to Communicate with Contacts
Facebook has big plans to expand Facebook Messenger and make it the customer service solution of choice for as many businesses as possible. In this case, however, they're simply responding to how people are using the software already. This ubiquitous app makes it easier than ever to start a conversation at any time. Real estate is all about relationships, so it's a natural fit.
To get all the benefits of Facebook Messenger, you need to be set up. On your page's General Settings, be sure "People can contact my page privately" is enabled. Verify your Messenger username, also under General Settings. The username is automatically generated based on your page name and can be changed. Next, consider updating your page's call to action to the "Send Message" button.
As you get more comfortable with Messenger, you can use its automation features to provide seamless service for common customer needs. Write a greeting for Facebook Messenger to introduce yourself and use Instant Reply to send an automatic response to each user's first message to you.
DeltaNET customers can take Facebook to the next level with automatic social media updates, including new listings, closings, and open house announcements. To see it for yourself, contact us at Delta Media Group.
Social media marketing is one of the leading ways to connect with your community as a sales associate. Studies have shown that experts in real estate are consistently among the most active professionals on most social media platforms.
Used correctly, social media is an unbeatable tool for driving traffic to your website and turning those visitors into leads. It also helps you cultivate long-term relationships with current clients, past clients, and future referrals within their network.
The right social media can show people to your website right when they need you.
That said, social media can be intimidating at first. It requires a fresh perspective on your key relationships and how to build them. Of all those real estate firms and sales associates out on social media, many aren't seeing the results they want.