Social Media for Real Estate, Part 1: Engagement

Real Estate is an exciting industry to be in. It’s also quite demanding. Many agents start off thinking, “Okay, I’m basically a property salesperson, right? Let’s do this!”

As they get further into it, they realize they also need to be an admin expert, an advertising executive, a marketing maven, an interior decorator, a neighborhood know-it-all … so on and so forth. The life of a successful real estate agent involves wearing many hats.

Today, I aim to help with wearing the Social Marketing Guru hat. Social media has become a primary avenue for real estate marketing, and it’s no surprise why. It’s personal, affordable, and scalable. Whether real estate is your bread and butter or your part-time job, you’ll want to know how to leverage these powerful digital platforms to enhance and grow your business.

Terms to Know

If Content is King, then Engagement is Queen

Long ago in a social landscape far far away… you’d log into Facebook and see your newsfeed with all your friends’ posts in chronological order. From the most recent posts to the oldest, you could scroll through your feed for hours viewing status updates. Things have changed a lot since then – and for good reason! I have over 1,000 friends on Facebook, and I couldn’t care less about what 950 of them have to say. Why would I want to scroll through hundreds of posts just to see the few I care about?

Today, Facebook and Instagram have algorithms that curate content specific to each user’s interests. So if you’ve engaged with a post, that informs their algorithms that you’re interested in that content. The result? You’ll be shown more content from that person, that brand, or of that type. Hence why my newsfeed is chock-full of memes 😅

So, why should you care?

How does this relate to leveraging social media for your business? Put simply: it’s everything. The more people engage with content from your business page, the more it will appear:

• in their feeds
• higher up in their feeds
• and in other people’s feeds who follow your brand

We already discussed how engaging content gets pushed higher up in people’s newsfeeds over whatever is most recent. However, many forget that just as important as posting engaging content is not posting un-engaging content. This is a common pitfall. And, it’s quite literally what separates socially relevant brands from those that aren’t.

In short, content that users don’t engage with doesn’t get attention. Every time your post is passed up by one of your followers, Facebook’s all-knowing algorithm gets a notification: This content stinks! Don’t keep showing it! So, the more sub-par content you post, the less your brand ends up in front of your followers’ eyeballs. Need I say more? All hail The Queen.

Best Practices for Engagement

Fear not! There is more. Far be it from me to leave you without any practical advice! After all, you want to start getting more engagement TODAY, right? Well load your Facebook business pages, and let’s get engaged!

Take Inventory, Gain Insight

Go through past posts, and learn what drives engagement. What type of content gets the most reactions, comments, and shares? Who are your most loyal followers? How often should you be posting?

Odds are, if you only post when you have a listing, your followers are not engaging with your content. Wonder why? Because (I guarantee you) most of them aren’t looking to buy a home right now. So why should they care? Dig deeper and learn how to make your business page a resource for your followers. Post about community events in the neighborhoods you do business in, make a day-in-the-life video showing people what your job is like, or even create a poll asking followers which is the best coffee shop in town.

Cross-Promote

Cross-promoting is an undervalued marketing tactic in my opinion. Word of mouth is such a powerful way to spread a message, and with social media, it’s right at our fingertips. Reach out to friends, other business pages, even other agents if you dare, and start sharing each other’s content. It immediately expands your audience network and gives you added credibility.

Keep it Short, Sweet, and Visual

Confession time. Before we end, I must confess that I see so many agents post NOVELS to their Facebook pages. I must also confess that I never read them, and I bet no one else does either. My bottom lip is quivering just thinking about how sad this is 😥 Just kidding 😅 But really, ask yourself, “If I wasn’t me, would I read this?” Brevity is key.

Also, let your visuals do the talking. If you are posting a listing, write a two-liner, and let your VHT Studios Photographs do the rest. If it’s a community event, make sure you have a graphic or high-quality photo to go along with your post. As a rule, I never post from a business page without an image or video. Remember, image is everything!

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That’s it for Part 1! Comment below what you found insightful, questions you have, and what you’d like to see in future posts about social media for real estate. Talk soon!

As the leading provider of real estate photography and visual marketing services, VHT Studios® equips clients with the best tools for selling listings. Visit VHT.com to order and learn more about the latest in real estate marketing.