SamOC on Get Creative With Social Media for Realtors
If you are a real estate agent you may think that your marketing is restricted to your local news papers and more traditional methods of online marketing such as SEO, listing on places such as Zillow or Right Move but there’s a lot you can do with social media.
Lets start with Facebook
It’s no longer just the domain is drunken college students, Facebook is the largest social network in the world and is now used for just about everything imaginable and it’s business implications are growing more and more with each year.
To begin with you will need to setup a Facebook page for your estate agent. Don’t rely on a personal profile as that is not professional enough. You’ll still need a personal account in order to create and manage a business page but it is through the page that you will promote your agency.
So what should you post? You can begin by posting information about the neighbourhood in which you operate. Anything that is of interest to home owners is suitable here. Articles about the local schools, crime rates, community events and so on are all good material.
Make sure you make use of images. When you have new listings make a new post on your Facebook page and include a high quality image which then links back to the listing on either your website or a property site that you use.
This will keep the page updated and provide multiple avenues for your listings to be promoted. And of course, if people comment on your posts, make sure you reply promptly.
Twitter is more difficult to use for some businesses because you are restricted to 140 characters. However this is another great platform to promote your new listings. You can have a new tweet every time you get a new listing and you can include a photo.
This is also a good place to make use of hashtags. For example if there’s a particular suburb or area in your region that is very popular or a particular style of property then include a hashtag and that can draw in extra traffic.
Do be careful though that you don’t only tweet your listings as if there’s nothing else of interest on your feed, people will get bored and will un-follow you. Make sure that you also post interesting stuff about your neighbourhood, property and so on in the same way that you did for Facebook.
Pinterest is awesome for any business that makes use of images which of course you do. You’ll want to begin by setting up a board for your neighbourhood. If you cover several areas perhaps you’ll want to make separate boards for each one.
Now here you don’t need to post images of general lifestyle stuff here – you can use your boards specifically for your listings and once again, you’ll want to make the best use of the photos for each one. You can also use Hashtags here like you can on the other platforms.
If all of this sounds like too much work then you might want to hire a creative agency to do all the heavy lifting for you!.
