A comprehensive real estate social media marketing strategy is one that’s well-planned, organized, and incorporates lots of informative content. Once you’ve fleshed out your real estate website and created a significant amount of content, it’s time to schedule your social media posts around those marketing resources and establish a plan of action for activity on each major social network.
The great news is you don’t need to spend dozens of hours weekly to see substantial results from social media. All it takes to succeed with social media marketing for real estate is knowing what to post, when to publish, and the right tools to use. Discover how to flesh out your posting plan below and download our customizable social media activity calendar spreadsheet to organize your social media scheduling tasks. Our spreadsheet makes recommendations for the types of content to share and specific days and times to post, but feel free to make it your own.
Facebook
What to Share: Listings, blog posts, website landing pages with forms, external content, Instagram photos/videos
When to Post: Early-to-mid afternoon every day of the week
How Often to Post: At least two posts per day, but no more than five daily
Real estate agent websites and listing portals remain two of the top options for prospective home buyers, but Facebook continues to grow in popularity as a place to find local real estate agents and learn about their listings.
Create photo albums featuring the best photos of your current and past listings and try to post at least one current listing to your timeline daily featuring an appealing photo of the home and a link to its page on your website.
Since Instagram is now owned by Facebook, it’s easy to integrate Instagram posts with Facebook. Snap shots of happy home buyers you worked with, your local neighborhood, new and noteworthy businesses, and the top amenities and features of your listings and ensure those posts go straight to Facebook in addition to Instagram.
Once you’ve automated listing-related status updates and photos and videos from Instagram, post your blog posts and articles from other blogs, publications, and brands that would interest your audience on Facebook. You can post local housing market stats once a week, for example, and find content from sites featuring homeowner, buyer, and seller tips to share.
For more information on ideal posting practices for Facebook, check out these resources:
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Twitter
What to Share: Listings, blog posts, website landing pages with forms, external content, Instagram photos/videos
When to Post: Late morning, early afternoon, and early evening every day of the week
How Often to Post: Start tweeting 12–15 times daily and add/reduce tweets based on your account’s activity
The half-life of a tweet isn’t very long — in fact, it’s considerably shorter than that of posts on just about any other social media platform. Thus, it’s important to tweet more often than you would post on other channels. The trick to Twitter success is varying the types of content you share.
A few Facebook status updates featuring your listings, for instance, will likely prove valuable to your audience. Tweeting links to your listings 15 to 20 times daily, however, may annoy your following and lead to low engagement, and possibly even unfollows.
On top of sharing your listings on Twitter, tweet links to blog posts — both yours and others’. Bookmark a list of publications, blogs, brands, and influencers that post content home buyers and sellers would find informative and follow them on Twitter. Then, use a social media automation tool to schedule tweets from them throughout each week.
Sharing a mix of others’ tweets along with your own can prevent you from coming across as overly promotional and show you actually want to provide your followers with helpful information.
Other unique types of engagement for Twitter include conducting Twitter chats, where you ask questions and respond to tweets your followers share, and tweeting random thoughts and recommendations about the local real estate market, great restaurants nearby, news about the local government and schools, and other info about your community. For instance, you could share Twitter handles of area businesses you think would interest your audience. This post from Adweek offers several more interesting tweets you can add to your daily and weekly schedules.
After developing a list of the various types of tweets you can send out into the Twitterverse, schedule them evenly throughout the week and plan to manually tweet at key followers. If you automate the majority of your tweets, you shouldn’t have an issue finding time to personally engage with prospective clients on the network.
To learn more about when and how often to tweet, take a look at these expert resources:
What to Share: Blog posts, website landing pages with forms, general thoughts on housing market/conditions, answers to common buyer/seller questions
When to Post: Late morning and early afternoon every day of the week
How Often to Post: Post at least a couple times daily, but also engage in groups regularly
Though still perceived as not on the same level as Facebook and Twitter when it comes to audience engagement, Google+ still offers value for brands and professionals.
Google+ claims it’s monthly active user total exceeds half a billion, and given that the overwhelming majority of home searchers start looking for listings on Google, it makes sense for agents to utilize the company’s social network.
The publication schedule should be similar to that of Facebook: two or three posts each day to begin. However, it’s more about selecting the best content to share and optimizing those posts than worrying about frequency or time of day. For example, using lots of hashtags is okay on Google+, so find popular ones pertaining to your local market and home buying and selling (use services like Tagboard and Hashtagify to identify these) and implement roughly a dozen or so.
Get more Google+ insights for your social media for real estate strategy from these resources:
What to Share: Blog posts, photos of beautiful/notable listings, home buyer/seller resources (yours and others’)
When to Post: Morning or late at night every day of the week are optimal periods
How Often to Post: Pin content at least 5 times daily (most pins don’t have to be your content)
You may already use Pinterest to save recipe pins or comb over boards looking for real estate marketing ideas, but don’t forget the social platform is also valuable for sharing information with your audience.
Start following Pinterest accounts that provide tips and tricks for home buyers and sellers and pin your own content to inform them as well. Moreover, share photos of interesting properties — both ones in your market (even ones you’ve sold) and general ones from across the globe.
Enticing imagery — and a lot of it — is the secret to success on Pinterest, so provide alluring photos and graphics with relevant, keyword-rich copy and watch the followers pour in. Just remember to keep creating content to share on the site to ensure you drive traffic from your Pinterest page to your site.
A very popular type of resource on Pinterest is the infographic, so learn how to put together comprehensive real estate reports and graphics featuring quotes and advice to share and, in turn, provide meaningful value for your fellow pinners out there.
Take a look at these in-depth resources to learn more about best practices for Pinterest posting:
What to Share: Blog posts, external content, company updates, hiring announcements, answers to common buyer/seller questions
What to Post: Late morning and early afternoon during weekdays only
How Often to Post: One or two updates per day is ideal, but also monitor conversations in real estate- and local community-related Groups
Don’t doubt the power of LinkedIn, as it can be quite the real estate lead generation tool. All it takes to accomplish lead gen on the channel is to flesh out your presence on the site — meaning creating a fully detailed Company Page — and taking advantage of bonus features like Groups.
Pinpoint Groups that are either related to your local market or specifically for buyers and sellers in your area. Even if you don’t answer questions directly related to real estate, you can still make a name for yourself as a thoughtful local professional who wants to help fellow community members. Regularly published blog posts to your Company Page are a must, but it’s engagement in Groups that can really distinguish you from other agents.
Also look into Showcase Pages, which allow brands to highlight specific products and services: In your case, this means specific listings and neighborhoods (think of these as cloned versions of your landing pages already on your site). Create multiple Showcase Pages for neighborhoods, and routinely switch out ones for listings once they’re sold.
If you find activity on your Company Page is low, use LinkedIn’s advanced search feature to find specific individuals in your market to connect with. As with all of the social media outlets mentioned, it’s important to steadily grow your LinkedIn network so your content can reach their news feed.
Learn more about ideal times and days to post on LinkedIn and other info in these resources:
What to Share: Photos and videos of listings, neighborhoods, local businesses, clients, and the office
When to Post: Afternoon every day of the week
How Often to Post: A few times daily is best (just be sure to mix up video and photo publication)
Arguably the most fun social networks of those listed here, Instagram is as simple as point, shoot, and share. This is a wonderful tool that allows you to snap beautiful shots of your listings, community, and yourself on the job. There is no one correct posting frequency for the photo- and video-sharing network, but as long as you publish at least a few photos and videos each day, you’re in good shape.
Originality is a must with Instagramming, though, so keep your recordings and images fresh. In other words, don’t simply take photos of the front of all of your listings and call it a day. Use Hyperlapse to get fun clips of you roaming through your homes for sale. Take shots from unique angles, like on a balcony or atop a staircase. Show off cool amenities nearby. In short, implement best practices when using Instagram to get plenty of users favoriting your content.
Your best bet for Instagram success is to gradually secure photos and videos over time so you have a well-stocked library on your smartphone and don’t have to worry about taking shots and immediately posting every time. Social Media Examiner highlights some Instagram automation tools that even make it simple to schedule photos, thus saving you hours each week using the app.
Discover more tips and tricks for publishing photos and videos to Instagram from these resources:
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