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Must-Know Social Media Strategies for Real Estate
Social media fits real estate marketing like a glove—but only if it’s done right. These social media strategies for real estate will help you effectively tap into new sources of leads.
Real estate is a people business. That’s why you should leverage a marketing tool that is also all about people: social media.
If you have not begun developing social media strategies for your real estate business, now is the time to get started.
Consider for a minute that in 2017, 81% of Americans had at least one social media profile. And the numbers are projected to continue skyrocketing: by 2020, 200 million people just in the U.S. are estimated to be on social media.
And it’s not just your high school friends, and distant relatives who are all over Facebook—professional marketers are tapping into social media in a big way. A recent survey of marketing professionals found that 41% plan to up their social media marketing budgets “significantly” in 2018.
Social media strategies for real estate make a lot of sense. But that doesn’t mean that all social media use is good for your brand—the key is to use it the right way. As Bubba Mills, chief executive officer of Corcoran Consulting & Coaching, puts it, “Done right, social media can increase your trips to the bank. Done poorly, it can drive you to the poor house.”
These three strategies will help you ensure that social media takes your real estate business to the bank.
1. Know what’s out there
You’ll often hear people talk about “social media” like it’s a monolithic entity. In fact, every social media platform is unique, and comes with its own set of challenges and advantages. As you think about what content to post, consider what platform will best serve your own social media strategies for real estate.
Facebook and Twitter are ever-popular, and nearly any content can be tweaked to make sense on these platforms. More visual platforms, like Instagram and Pinterest, are ideal for showcasing properties or visual content like a before/after feature. To connect with target businesses or other industry professionals, LinkedIn is likely your best bet.
2. Be a resource: a key social media strategy for real estate
We hardly need to tell you social media is a nexus for the best and worst. When your prospects scroll through their newsfeeds, they wade through a tremendous amount of useless information. Your goal should be to grab their attention with a standout topic, and keep that attention and interest by providing value to your audience.
“When you write your social media posts, think of yourself as a teacher, not a salesperson,” says Mills. “Educate with solid facts and materials readers can use.” Establishing yourself as a trusted resource ensures a lasting and fruitful relationship with your audience.
3. Keep your eye on the prize
As with any marketing endeavor, a crucial first step is a strategy. Social media marketing is no different. A clear, documented social media strategy for real estate, with measurable goals and a mechanism for collecting data on its effectiveness is crucial for success. In the end, it’s all about generating leads—but it’s important not to forget all the steps on the way to this overarching goal.
Used wisely, social media can help build your brand, engage your potential buyers and renters, generate leads, and establish your reputation as a trusted resource.
Related posts:
- 10 Social Media Statistics for Real Estate Marketers 2018
- A Visual Guide to Social Media Posting Frequency for Real Estate
- Social Media Can Be a Strategic Weapon in Real Estate Marketing
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Start Your Property’s Social Media Program in 6 Steps
When launching a property’s social media marketing program, make sure you’ve thought through strategy, content, and audience.
Social media marketing for real estate is a must-do. The reality is that’s where the average American is spending his/her free time — nearly 2 hours a day, according to a recent study. Using platforms like Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube to market your property, you can:
- engage potential buyers
- build brand awareness
- elevate brand position within the market
- decrease cost per lead
- increase occupancy or sales
- improve retention
- and more
Sounds great, right? But where do you start? Which platforms should you use? How will you ever convince your boss that this is a valuable use of your time?
Starting your property’s social media program can seem like an intimidating task, especially if company leadership is skeptical of the benefits. Here are six steps to launching a real estate social media program that will grow your business to its full potential.
6 steps to start your property’s social media program
1) Speak in the right terms.
Convincing management that you want your team to spend more time on social media to gain “followers” or get “shares” could be a hard sell — even though that kind of engagement is key in real estate sales and rentals. To win support, focus your argument around the factors that are most important to them. Lead generation, lead nurturing, conversions, sales, ROI, profits: this should be the vocabulary with which you approach this conversation.
2) Create a strategy — and put someone in charge.
Only 11% of companies without a documented content marketing strategy find their efforts to be successful, compared to 60% of companies with a strategy in place. And that number rises to 86% when the company designates someone to lead the strategy.
Develop a content marketing strategy — inclusive of social media — that aligns with your goals for the property (e.g., more visits to the website, increased occupancy, better retention rates). And whether someone on your team heads up execution or you outsource that responsibility, the leader should continually monitor analytics and tweak the strategy accordingly to ensure the property’s social media program is meeting the designated marks.
Which brings me to…
3) Determine which analytics to track.
In real estate social media, shares, likes, and impressions speak to your brand exposure, so they’re important to track. But it’s important that you’re looking at more than just these surface metrics. (Read more about so-called “vanity metrics” here.) Leads generated, conversion rates, sales, and ROI are going to tell you if your efforts are helping your bottom line. If you have a good, flexible strategy in place, these metrics will help you adjust your efforts to ensure you’re achieving your business objectives.
4) Develop quality content.
Twenty-seven million pieces of content are shared every day — and a large portion of it is crap. A social media presence could be pretty pointless unless you’re not using it in a way that your followers find valuable. Good, quality content is the alpha and the omega, the key to engaging your followers.
One of the biggest mistakes real estate marketers make is using social channels to push a blatant sales pitch. You’ll quickly lose your audience that way. Your property’s social media should be about engaging target buyers or tenants, building brand awareness, and offering valuable and interesting information.
5) Decide which channels are right for your business.
Who are you trying to reach, and what are you trying to tell them? These are good questions to ask when trying to determine which platforms will comprise your social media program. You need to know who your target buyer/tenant is, and you need to know what kind of information you’re going to offer them.
There’s a wealth of data out there about who uses which channels and when. Most social media platforms also have their own built-in analytics tools that can help you determine the best time for engagement with your followers.
Another thing to consider: You’ll want to choose channels that you’ll be able to maintain regularly and which play to your strengths. If you don’t have the time, skill, or interest in taking regular photographs of things around your property, for example, Instagram probably isn’t for you. Remember, you’ll likely want to work through several different channels to reach a maximum number of potential customers.
6) Follow your competitors.
Following your competitors is a great way to stay up to date on what they’re doing, especially if you don’t have a ton of time or money for competitive research. And when I say “follow,” I don’t mean “copy or imitate.” I mean subscribe to their blogs, engage with them on social media, and like and share their content that you find meaningful for your audience. This way, you become part of the local conversation happening online, and you know exactly what your potential buyers and tenants are seeing from (and how they’re reacting to) your competitors.
Related posts:
- The Metrics You Should Be Measuring in Real Estate Marketing
- 6 Marketing Tasks Real Estate Marketers Can Outsource
- Social Media Can Be a Strategic Weapon in Real Estate Marketing
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These are the Busiest Day of the Year for Real Estate Searches
Real estate searches peak the weekend after Thanksgiving, December 28, January 1, and July 6, so don’t stop marketing your property during the holidays.
If you’re a marketing professional outside the retail industry, chances are you slow things down during the holidays. But before you settle in for a second helping of leftovers, consider this: according to a study by Realtor.com, December 28 is statistically one of the busiest days for real estate searches.
It makes sense: Potential buyers use their post-holiday downtime to consider real estate investment. Other days when real estate searches spike include:
- the weekend after Thanksgiving
- New Year’s Day
- July 6
It’s important for real estate marketers to be aware of these dates so that you don’t stop all your marketing activities. The good news is that real estate searches are typically lowest on actual holidays, so putting a pause on your pay-per-click advertising, for example, on those days makes sense.
I bring this up because, recently, a client asked to stop all marketing activities between mid-December and New Year’s Day due to “seasonal decline” in sales. While it’s true that December typically sees lower numbers in terms of web traffic, leads, and conversions, that doesn’t mean there is not enormous, largely untapped opportunities for this client — if we are strategic about how we spend marketing dollars over the holidays.
Leveraging the post-holiday uptick in real estate searches
While spending the holidays relaxing with family and friends is something we all deserve, keeping a few strategic marketing activities going can mean big wins for your property/properties. Here are a few things I recommend, and why.
1) Publish blog posts on a normal schedule.
Blog posts are the gifts that keep on giving, meaning the majority of traffic will visit your posts months after they’re published. In fact, 80% of our page views occur on blog posts published at least 6 months prior. It’s a great time to write about trends or happenings in the coming year in an effort to capture future searches.
Search engines value consistency in your publishing schedule, so keeping up your normal posting frequency will help your rankings. If you have the resources to post on schedule, it would benefit you to do so.
2) Be strategic about social media.
Social media management can be time-consuming, so you should dial back your posting on the days you know prospects won’t be spending much time online (e.g. December 25). That being said, you should plan to post on days when you know real estate searches peak (e.g. December 28). Chances are, many of your competitors will be shut down for the holiday, and your posts will be front and center in your prospects’ newsfeeds.
3) Be strategic about digital advertising.
The same goes for digital advertising. Knowing that post-holiday real estate searches peak on December 28, you should budget your pay-per-click and social advertising dollars to spend more on this day. Particularly focus on your Google AdWords spend because that will capture prospects using search engines to find information about potential real estate investments — as opposed to sponsored social posts, which display your ads in the newsfeed of a prospect who may or may not be ready to buy.
Related posts:
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4 Tools for Determining the Best Time to Post on Social Media for Your Property
-
Peak Season Demands Real-Time Analytics for Perfect Fulfillment
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5 (More) TED Talks for Real Estate Marketers
Need some new digital marketing ideas? Check out our new favorite TED Talks for real estate marketers.
One of our most popular posts focused on the success of TED Talks for real estate marketers. As many of you know, the lecture series has published more than 100,000 talks on YouTube with over 2 billion views.
From technology and analytics to home design and child-care tips, TED Talks cover an array of topics, hence the astonishing number of views. For our real estate marketers, we’ve pulled together 5 new TED Talks since our last post to keep you inspired and create innovative ways to market your brand’s properties.
5 TED Talks for real estate marketers
1. Barbara Corcoran:Rethinking Failure
Founder of The Corcoran Group & Shark on ABC’s “Shark Tank,” Corcoran is responsible for building the largest and best-known brand in the brokerage business. In her talk, Rethinking Failure, she discusses her personal, firsthand experience of embracing failure and re-imagining what it has meant for her own path to success. This is a must–watch for any real estate marketers who are just starting out or savvy marketers looking to refresh their strategies.
2. Dan Pink: The Puzzle of Motivation
Career analyst Dan Pink examines the Puzzle of Motivation, starting with a fact that social scientists know but most managers don’t: Traditional rewards aren’t always as effective as we think. His illuminating stories will leave viewers ready to abandon old ways of motivating your marketing team and jump into innovative methods to reach your potential.
3. Ernesto Sirolli: Want to help someone? Shut up and listen!
When most well-intentioned people hear of a problem that they think they can fix, they go to work. This, Ernesto Sirolli suggests, is naïve. In this funny and impassioned talk, he proposes that the first step is to listen to the people who you’re trying to help. This lively TED Talk tells real estate marketers how to actively listen to help build their brand and, ultimately, sell properties.
4. Angela Duckworth: How Grit Can Transform Your Attitude and Real Estate Career
Looking for inspiration backed by science? Angela Duckworth’s talk on grit takes an in–depth look at what motivates people to succeed, against all odds. What Barbara Corcoran discovered through trial and error, Duckworth explains through a scientific lens.
5. Ben Miller: The Real Estate Deal that Could Change the Future of Everything
Ben Miller, co-founder of the real estate investing platform Fundrise, covers technology’s place in the world of real estate in this TED Talk. His insight into how technology will shape the future of real estate marketing will leave you contemplating the role of AI, 3D technology, and other innovative marketing solutions in your digital marketing strategy.
What TED Talks for real estate do you recommend?
Related posts:
- 5 TED Talks for Real Estate Marketers
- 4 Real Estate Marketing Trends 2018
- Top 5 Real Estate Marketing Influencers
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4 SEO Tips to Improve Your Real Estate Website Ranking
Search engines are constantly changing, but these 4 SEO tips will ensure marketers can improve their real estate website ranking.
Highlights:
- Google’s primary focus is delivering the most accurate information to meet user’s searches.
- You should start thinking about the major themes of your content (your property!) and then build posts and website pages to support them.
- Reviews are an easy (and free!) way to help boost your real estate website ranking.
More and more marketers believe that SEO is dead. So much so that 210 people search “is SEO dead” every day. But we do not subscribe to this mentality.
93% of all online experiences begin with a search. And why shouldn’t they? The internet is full of useful information. So there’s no reason that your website shouldn’t be at the top of the search results. But as the enormous amount of content being published daily continues to grow, it has become harder and harder to rank on search engines.
Google’s algorithm to rank websites is constantly changing. And for good reason — people are changing, too. As the needs of users evolve, so does Google’s need to stay ahead of the curve. As the leading search engine in the world, Google’s primary focus is delivering the most accurate information to meet user’s searches.
So how do you improve real estate website ranking? In other words, how do you get your real estate website, and more importantly, your properties, to the top of the search results page? How do you deliver accurate, informative content that Google deems worthy? Here are four tips to help boost your SEO ranking.
4 SEO tips to improve your real estate website ranking
1. Keyword research
People are now searching with a phrase or question rather than a single term. In response, search engine development has focused on natural language processing — meaning search engines now analyze phrases as a whole rather than a single keyword. That essentially means they evaluate a site’s content regarding an entire topic rather than its use of a particular word in order to deliver the best answers to users’ queries.
To improve your SEO ranking, stop trying to rank for a small set of keywords. What’s important is broad visibility across a topic. You should start thinking about the major themes of your content (your property!) and then build posts and website pages to support them.
2. Optimize for mobile
In 2019, mobile traffic accounted for more than half of internet traffic, and that percentage is growing. Google reported that more searches take place on mobile devices than on desktops. In response to this trend, Google’s algorithms rank mobile-friendly web pages higher in search results than desktop pages.
93% of home buyers start their search online. And since we know mobile traffic is growing at a rapid pace, it’s imperative your website be optimized for mobile use. Some easy ways to optimize for mobile include:
- Utilize website design specific to mobile
- Make sure pages are high speed
- Minimize pop ups
- Don’t block CSS, JavaScript, or images
3. Review management
90% of consumers read reviews before contacting a business and 72% of consumers will take action only after reading a positive review. If you’re trying to gain exposure for your property, start by using the positive reviews of other residents and clients.
Late last year, Darren Shaw of Whitespark released the findings from his annual Google Local Rankings Survey. The survey found that reviews accounted for 15.44% of how Google ranks a local business.
Missing an abundance of reviews? Just ask! If clients have expressed their appreciation for your services, don’t be afraid to ask them for a positive review on Google. These reviews are an easy (and free!) way to help boost your real estate website ranking.
4. Video
We’ve been talking about the benefits of video for a while now. Having video on your landing page will robustly improve your SEO. Video increases conversion rates, improves bounce rates, and boosts overall time on sites.
Search engines use bounce rates to rank pages — a low bounce rate and high user retention rate are indicators of strong content and high relevance to your perspective buyers. Consequently, Google is strongly emphasizing these metrics in its ranking algorithm. Video keeps users on your site better than just about anything else and is therefore one of the most effective ways to boost SEO.
Need more tips to boost your real estate website ranking. We can help! In fact, we’d be happy to do it all for you.
Related posts:
- The Role of Social Media in Luxury Real Estate Marketing
- 4 Real Estate Blogging Tools You Should be Using
- Infographic: Statistics that Prove Why Your Real Estate Marketing Needs to Include a Blog
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