A real estate agent has 2 property listings. Now add 11 more. What does the agent have now? HAPPINESS. That agent has happiness.
-Tim Dulany
With each passing day, social media marketing for realtors is transforming from a mere option to a must-have in your business plan. Do you seek to build your brand online to reach more clients and surpass your current marketing goals? In this blog post, we’ll cover everything you need to know regarding social media marketing tools for realtors, and we’ll even cover some available options for those seeking to improve their online presence who may have little to no marketing experience. Regardless of where you stand, social media marketing has proven to be effective for all sorts of industries, and real estate is no different.
So What Is a Social Media Marketing Plan?
A social media marketing plan is the specific strategy your business puts into place that it will follow in order to reach its business goals through the use of social media. An effective plan will contain information regarding your target audience, which platforms you’ll be using, what type of content you will favor, and how much money you plan on spending.
According to a study done by the National Association of Realtors, roughly 77% of real estate professionals actively use social media marketing. With around 44% of home buyers using the internet to search for properties, it’s easy to see why: potential clients are already online, so you should be too.
With so many potential buyers online, if your real estate business is not, you’re making it easy for your competitors to get ahead of you. While traditional forms of marketing will always work, advancements in technology have made social media marketing much more effective, and have shortened the amount of time it takes to begin seeing results.
Why Do Realtors Need a Social Media Marketing Plan?
Much like you plan ahead before taking a road trip, planning your social media marketing methods ahead of time will make the journey easier to navigate and control. Here are just a few reasons why realtors should have a plan in place for their social media marketing before they get started:
- If you plan your social media marketing audience ahead of time, you’ll know the exact type of content you’ll need to produce.
- If you know which social media sites your business will be using, it’ll be easier to craft your messages to tailor toward the site’s preferred content.
- You’ll have a clear goal in mind, which will prevent ineffective ads.
- You will have a structured approach to communicating with your audience.
A Step-by-Step Guide to Creating a Real Estate Social Media Marketing Plan
With millennials making up 66% of the market for first-time homebuyers, your real estate agent must be using marketing tactics that best help you reach and connect with this population group. Because millennials tend to have an active presence online, using online-based marketing methods like social media will benefit your marketing efforts and help to ensure your business isn’t spending money on ads that don’t work.
Follow these steps to craft your social media marketing plan and begin improving your online presence:
1. Identify Your Social Media Marketing Goals For Your Real Estate Agency
To begin, ask yourself what your realtor goals are. Do you want to increase your reach and show your properties to a larger client base? Do you want to grow your realtor agency through online marketing? Or do you want to provide easier lines of communication between yourself and future clients? Whether your business wants some, or all, of these realtor goals, knowing what your specific goals are will make it easier for you to determine the type of content your agency should be producing. Identifying your social media marketing goals will help you craft a more focused approach that is needed to achieve your target goals.
2. Understand Your Audience
Establishing your realtor goals will not do your agency any good if your posts aren’t being crafted to be seen by the right audience. Knowing who your ideal client is will enable your agency to craft its messages in a way that best resonates with them, making it easier to grab and maintain their attention.
The biggest mistake many businesses make when implementing social media marketing is targeting everyone. While you may believe that targeting everyone is the most effective way to obtain new clients, in reality, targeting everyone only causes you to spend money advertising toward people who have no interest in purchasing from you. Instead of wasting money targeting people who aren’t interested, focus all your attention on those who are in order to get the most out of your social media marketing.
Understand your ideal audience by identifying vital demographics such as age, city location, life events, and income. Understanding these demographics will make it easier for your agency to choose important messaging aspects such as your post’s tone and visual components.
3. Find Your Brand’s Voice
Once you understand who your target audience is, the next step will be crafting your brand’s voice. Your brand’s voice reflects the way your agency communicates and crafts the messages you share with your clients. Your voice is also a way for your agency to add a personal touch to all of its communications. Using fun, friendly messaging can really shine through to your clients and can help make them feel more comfortable with you.
Your brand’s voice is another way in which your business can truly showcase its expertise and knowledge of the industry. Be sure that when developing your brand’s voice, your agency ensures it reflects your core values and mission.
4. Use A Multi-Platform Approach
Another common mistake made by many agencies is not incorporating a multi-platform approach. If your real estate agent has multiple social accounts, each with its own following, it will benefit your agency to post content on all your sites to maximize each post’s reach.
The three most popular social media platforms are Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter. To effectively market on social media, it will be important for your business to have an active account on each of these platforms. While each platform favors certain types of content over others, be sure to upload new content to as many sites as possible when appropriate. However, managing all these accounts can be a tedious task. Software-based services like Practina, easily schedule and upload posts to all of your social networks for you, and simplify your digital marketing by automating the process.
5. Create Perfect Posts
Your audience will be more likely to engage with your content on social media if you create posts that resonate with them. So, when crafting your posts, put yourself in the shoes of your target audience to help you generate ideas on what to create.
Studies show that people are more drawn toward informative and educational posts on social media. So, consider crafting informative messages that also aid in showing your expertise in real estate. Also, don’t forget to add hashtags to your social media posts. Hashtags are a great way to expand the reach of your post by connecting it with others who also uploaded a post with the same hashtags.
Different platforms host specific types of content better than others. When crafting content, be sure to consider where you plan to upload it. If your agency is creating a new video, it will do best on a video platform like YouTube. If your post is just a simple graphic, Instagram will be your best option.
6. Schedule Your Posts
When you upload is as important as the content you are uploading. Creating a beautiful image will do your agency no good if it uploads the post at a time when your audience is most likely asleep. When first beginning your social media marketing journey, keep tabs on what time of day your posts perform the best. Once you’ve established a time window where you obtain the most engagement, center all future posts to be uploaded at that same time. Consider using social media scheduling tools to maximize your efficiency and plan posts out days in advance.
7. Encourage Two-way Conversations
An easy practice your business can incorporate into its social media marketing that will increase engagement is to encourage two-way communication between your agency and its clients. Ending posts with engaging questions, responding quickly to questions in the comments, and interacting with your clients online are all ways in which your agency can encourage two-way communication with its clients. Doing so will increase your level of engagement, which can aid in client retention.
Positive communication helps you deliver a customer-friendly experience. Also, it fosters stronger relationships with your customer base. After all, people love when companies emphasize empathy and talk to them as individuals and not merely a number.
8. Evaluate And Improve Your Performance
Your real estate agent’s social media marketing plan is a forever-evolving concept. If your agency isn’t taking the steps needed to improve upon and build its social media marketing plan, it won’t be putting in the work needed to effectively grow.
The key to social media marketing is consistency. Constantly working on improving aspects such as your messaging and image quality are small steps that will benefit your agency immensely. If something is not working the way you planned, go back and change it. If you find something is showing great results, add more of it to your posts. No marketing plan is the same, and only your agency knows what’s best for itself.
However, you may find yourself too busy to put in the time required to effectively market on social media. If you don’t have the time to interact with your clients online, consider adopting digital marketing services that simplify the process for you.
Services like Practina automatically create schedules, and publish posts to all your social media platforms, ultimately saving you time that would be spent building your online presence.
How Can Practina Help Improve Social Media Marketing For Realtors?
Practina is the leading social media marketing tool that removes the hassle of social media marketing for realtors. Using artificial intelligence, Practina automates your agency’s social media posts, eliminating the time-consuming process of manually conceptualizing, creating, and uploading a post to each of your social networks. Practina operates at a fraction of the cost of a traditional marketing specialist, helping you save money while improving your digital marketing.
With Practina, simply let the system know what your property’s MLS number is, and Practina will automatically begin creating and publishing content relating to your property across all your social networks each time there is a status change — it’s that simple. Practina’s intelligent system learns the best time to post to each social platform, so you’ll always reach the most amount of people.
Unlock the power of social media marketing with Practina and take your real estate agent’s social media marketing to the next level. Create your free account today.
Going Forward
Effective use of social media provides realtors endless opportunities for growth. Realtors should use social media as a tool for engaging with their clients and increasing their client base. For those who may find themselves too busy to become an expert at social media marketing, services like Practina are available that simplify the process for you with the ease of automation.
