While social media sites like Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter/X are powerful assets for any industry, this is especially true in real estate. Social media is all about connections – the same type of connections that a real estate entrepreneur can use to get their traditional or wholesale real estate career off the ground.
To start building your network, you must first raise as much awareness as possible. What could be more invaluable than a tool that gives you access to an estimated 4.8 billion people as of 2023? But at the same time, simply having a Facebook page isn’t enough to complete the job. To truly make the most out of the new digital frontier that we’re now a part of, there are several key steps you’ll want to embrace.
1. Craft Engaging Property Showcases
Social media is nothing if not a visual medium. If you log onto Twitter/X, and it feels like your feed is filled less with text and more with images, Infographics, videos, and similar visual content, that’s because it is. This is most likely to be shared on these platforms and thus is more likely to be seen.
As a real estate entrepreneur, you need to play into that, and creating engaging property showcases is how you do it. Don’t just take standard listing photos – invest in professional photography and make that house come alive. Go out of your way to help people envision themselves in a space. Then, share those compelling property showcases on social media as much as possible.
Give people a little bit of a tease – lead with your best photo and maybe a sentence or two about the property itself. It’s the perfect chance to capture their attention and motivate them to click through to the listing.
2. Master the Art of Audience Targeting
Another best practice for social media success involves taking advantage of all the audience targeting tools available to you. Yes, social networking sites indeed connect you with literally billions of people all over the world. But that ultimately means little if the people are not seeing you in the limited geographic area you’re working in.
So whenever you post new content (especially if you buy paid ads), limit the reach to just those within a specific radius of the property you’re trying to sell. If someone in Cleveland sees a compelling listing you’ve posted for a house in Baltimore, they might be impressed. But it probably isn’t going to lead to a sale, as the chances are slim that this person was looking for a house in Baltimore in the first place.
Thankfully, social media lets you target audiences by virtually every metric you can think of, from age range to where they live to education level, income level, and more. Use this to narrow down the people most likely to become your ideal “customer” in the first place.
3. Use Social Media Ad Campaigns
As a real estate professional, the most important thing to do when conducting paid social media ad campaigns is to set measurable goals for yourself. Each ad should have a specific purpose – whether that is to drive traffic to your website, draw attention to a particular listing, or something else entirely.
The only way you’ll be able to improve is if you’re measuring what you’re already trying. That way, you’ll have verifiable analytics that tell you what is working and what isn’t.
You should also try to match the ads you’re running to the funnel stage someone might be in. What does someone want to see or hear when they’re ready to buy a property today versus when they’re warming up to the idea of looking for a house six months from now? Ensure you have content ready for both stages to secure the broadest reach.
4. Craft Compelling Content
Another of the best ways to successfully market yourself on social media involves creating and posting relevant, helpful content as much as possible. There will be times when you don’t necessarily have a property that you want to showcase online. That doesn’t mean you shouldn’t still be posting.
Is there a real estate topic that you can shed insight on in your unique way? Write a blog post about it, put it on your website, and link to it on Facebook. Is there a real estate-related event coming up? Social media is the best place to promote it.
The more you post, the more visible you are. The more people read, the more trust and authority you build. You can work on that 365 days a year, whether you have a live listing or not.
5. Provide Value Regardless of the Return
Finally, understand that building trust is one of your most essential jobs in real estate social media marketing. Do you see a lot of the same questions coming up over and over again on Facebook? Record a video to answer them. Did something happen in your area that people need to know about? Create content that provides that insight.
The key is that you should do all this without expecting anything in return. If everything you post on social media is from a quid pro quo perspective, it will quickly start to feel like cynical marketing. But if you’re putting value out into the world for the sake of it, people will notice that as well. It will also help further your brand and reputation as a real estate entrepreneur.
Use Social Media Strategically to Build Your Brand
Utilizing social media as a real estate entrepreneur is more than just “getting your name out there.” It’s a powerful way to build your brand using a decidedly modern-day communications medium. It helps connect with potential clients, establish trust, and more – all while pushing your real estate business to new heights where it belongs.
Platforms like Twitter/X, Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, and others can and will help you achieve success through effective social media marketing, quickly becoming an investment in your time and effort that will continue to pay dividends for years.
Featured image provided by Pixabay Pexels; Thanks!
