The best real estate social media ideas to try

When it comes to advertising your own personal real estate brand, or real estate business, social media is steadily on the rise as one of the best social platforms to invest in. We’re living in a digital world, and it appears we’re finding property there as well.

According to a Facebook report, 79% of homebuyers use online resources, including mobile, at some point in their property search. At the same time, a study by the National Association of Realtorsclaims that of all the tech tools, social media delivers the highest quality leads. So it’s worth investing your time in social media.

Table of Contents

• Why social media is important
• What social media platforms to invest in
• What type of content should I be posting?
• How often should I be posting?
• How do I get more followers?
• Tips and tricks

For realtors, it appears social media is the perfect medium. Here’s why:

• It enables localization. With social media marketing, you are able to precisely target the right audience, ensuring that you can perfectly craft and distribute your message.
• The focus is on imagery. Beautiful spaces are at the heart of real estate, and they serve as the perfect photography subject for all your marketing and advertising.
• It makes direct communication easy. With 77% of realtors actively using social media for real estate in some way, social media allows you to instantly connect with new and existing clients. It also allows you to build your brand while you're on the move.

Read more: Your ultimate guide to real estate marketing

There are plenty of platforms out there, but it’s important to understand where your customers are and what they want from you. To begin, focus on just two or three platforms to avoid spreading yourself too thin. Remember, you can always add more later as you get more comfortable. For this article, we’ll focus on the following three:

1. Facebook

For many of us, it’s hard to imagine life without Facebook. As the go-to social platform for up to 2.8 billion monthly active users, it’s morphed into much more than a social platform, but also a source of information. On top of the usual social ads, it also provides some of the most powerful ad-targeting features available, enabling agents to tailor their reach to the right buyers, sellers, and investors. This also includes narrowing down audiences right down to the country and city location. There’s also the ability to target the group size for your ad and restrict it to even more local viewers and capture them based on their lifestyle or home buying interests.

Other fantastic features Facebook gives you includes the ability to:

• Publish listings, seeing what people comment or like.
• Create dynamic ads, great if you want to target or re-target specific customers.
• Book appointments where clients can simply click to connect.
• Share and set up events to promote open houses, or bring valuable experiences and information to your audiences
• Post videos or live tours to make any listing more authentic and to showcase the property as if you’re visiting it in person
• Convert likes into leads whether it’s through sharing links, downloading forms or exclusive access to content

2. LinkedIn

As the social media platform used by all types of professionals and businesses, LinkedIn brings a higher degree of professionalism and presentation compared to other social networking sites. Great for self promotion, building your profile, showcasing your expertise, and growing your business network.

But it’s not just about building and crafting your profile, in fact according to new data from Hubspot, LinkedIn is 277% more effective for lead generation than Facebook and Twitter. New and potential homebuyers, sellers, and investors use LinkedIn to learn about agents, vet their skills, experience, and qualifications, and check out their network with other professionals. And for agents it’s where you can discover people who might be looking for a new home.

Some of the benefits of Linkedin include:

• A place to demonstrate experience and provide professional details of your network.
• Build credibility allowing customers to verify you through testimonials.
• Network one-on-one with other realtors and also potential customers.
• Ideal place to showcase professional profile and services
• Building a SEO optimized LinkedIn page for your company to attract new clients and connections whilst creating online presence
• Post different content types including forms to increase leads and conversions

3. Instagram

A picture tells a thousand words, especially when it comes to real estate. Instagram is great as it allows you to:

• Focus on images of exteriors, interiors, lifestyle shots, and local neighborhoods.
• Tell stories with short narratives that paint a more detailed picture.
• Be easily discovered by using the right hashtags.

Aside from having a presence, the most important part of having an active social media presence is being able to connect with your community. With the right content, you can get your name out there, establish a following, and reach more people.

New Listings

In real estate, photography is everything, and a picture really does tell a thousand words. Posting your listings is a great place to start as you should already have the photos ready to go. However, for other content, such as stories or advice, it’s good to have a library of high-quality photos you can use for any situation.

Expert advice

Buying or selling a property can be daunting. For many people, it only happens once or twice in their lifetime, so any information or expertise you can provide will be welcomed. Infographics are a great way to communicate information quickly, and being visual, they work particularly well on platforms such as Facebook and Instagram. Even better, you can brand them with your colors and add your logo. Longer content, such as articles on market predictions, will work better on LinkedIn.

Read more: How to build your real estate brand

Share stories

Facebook or Instagram Stories are a great way to celebrate a sale, show off the neighborhood, or feature a home walkthrough, and with the right templates, they’re easy to create. Capture the moment, then add some captions to better help the narrative. Where possible, try to incorporate emotion or personality to make the story even more memorable.

Local interviews and industry news

Social video continues to grow in popularity, and for a good reason. Oberlo claims video marketers get 66% more qualified leads a year, so it's a media worth testing it out. You don’t need a big budget, simply capture the footage with your phone and make it look amazing by editing your video or you can browse editable real estate video templates. You can create anything from an interview with a local business or colleague, offer professional advice, or create a community video about your local area. The key is keeping it short – a 30-second clip should do it.

Customer reviews

Reviews are powerful for influencing customers and building credibility. According to Hosting Tribunal, reviews are the most crucial part of the purchase decision for 90% of US customers.

Plus, they look excellent when appearing as a direct quote in your brand colors and font. Peppering your posts with the occasional post is a great way to reach new clients. You can either request reviews from customers directly or via your Google My Business account.

When it comes to frequency, the internet offers plenty of opinions on the matter, but what’s right for one business might not be suitable for you. Our recommendation? Test it for yourself. Start with a post a day, and you’ll soon see how people are engaging with your posts and what’s working best. Then you can increase or decrease as you see fit.

Consistency is often more important than frequency, but even with a hectic schedule, it’s easy to stay on top of your posts. With Canva’s Content Planner, you can design stunning posts and automatically share them across your favorite platforms at the exact time you want across Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram, and more. This can be done weeks in advance or at times when engagement is high.

Once you start consistently posting a range of engaging content, the next step is getting even more people to see it. So here are three ways to boost your followers:

Think like a customer

This may seem obvious, but many businesses fall into the trap of broadcasting rather than communicating. While it’s tempting to just post about your achievements, try to understand what your customers want to see or, better yet, ask them. Alternatively, start looking at what other agents or real estate businesses are posting to see what customers respond to.

Try paid advertisements

Once you get your social moving, you may want to invest in paid ads. Social platforms make it easy to do, and you can usually set the amount you want to spend so you don’t blow your budget. And so you don’t waste money advertising to the wrong people, get tight on who your audience is and what you want to say. If you’re unsure, consider creating ads for a small test group so you can adjust your audience or message as needed.

Use hashtags

Hashtags are a great way to align with your audience. There are generic hashtags such as #househunting, #realestate, or #homesforsale, but localization will be far more effective. Hashtag your neighborhood, city, local events, or even see what is trending among your followers.

To learn more about growing your franchise and building a lasting franchise brand, download Canva's free Ebook, Harness the future of real estate today.