Social Media for Estate Agents

It’s no secret – here at Social Bods, we love all things home. What better way to spend all day than nosying around other people’s houses? If you know an estate agency who are looking for a bijou, low-maintenance team to look after their social media marketing, then please send them our way!

Social Media for Estate Agents

If you’re an estate agent, you may be thinking about how best to utilise social media to reach both prospective buyers and also sellers of homes on your patch. Social media is a way of extending your reach, and also showing your expertise in your field. You can show you not only find buyers for homes but also that you are a fount of knowledge on homes and home moving.

Here are some ways you can use social media as an estate agent to improve your online profile

1…..Share your current portfolio. Want more people to see what houses you have for sale right now? Share them! There’s no point in being considered a local property guru, and then not promoting your wares. Sellers can help you by retweeting your tweets, and liking your updates as this will get them seen by more people, but they can’t if they don’t exist! You could think about having a ‘Home of the Week’ on Facebook. or pinning homes in a specific area to themed Pinterest boards. You should certainly hashtag tweets with the location to gain extra exposure in your area.

2…. Think local! As an estate agent, it’s likely that all your custom is conducted in the local area. Not only should you use local hashtags, but you should also consider joining in local Twitter hours, such as #LeedsHour or #HampshireHour. Local hour tweets can outperform other tweets significantly and are a great way of being found by people interested in your area. If you can’t join in on the night (which is the ideal), then you should at least schedule some of these tweets to go at the right time to maximise exposure. Also, following others who use the same hashtag is a good idea, which leads me on to…..

3…… Follow, follow, follow. The biggest mistake that local businesses make, particularly on Twitter, is getting into the mentality of “If you build it, they will come”. Wrong. The best strategy for growing an account, apart from sharing amazing content, is following others where you can. Following alerts others to your presence and gives them the opportunity to follow back. Try it. It works.

4….. Share third-party articles. As an estate agent, it’s a good idea to share other people’s content, such as articles on house-moving tips, or a feature about a local celebrity’s home. It shows that you are ‘out there’ and have your finger on the property pulse. But don’t just share it, put your opinion to it, and make sure your content passes the ‘so what?’ test – if your content (or angle on that content) doesn’t have a point to it, then it’s pretty much ineffective. Ask yourself what are you trying to say about yourself or your expertise by sharing this particular piece of content, and this will help you think of the right words.

5…….Tailor your content to your prospective buyers. If you are trying to shift a one-bedroomed city pad, then you need to be targetting younger buyers, who are likely on Instagram. Trying to shift a five-bedroomed executive family home? Then look at getting yourself on LinkedIn. Targetting your content towards your desired demographic on the right network will mean your audience getting the content which is relevant to them on whichever network is their favourite.

6………Make use of scheduling tools. I get it, you’re busy. You’re out and about all the time and are not necessarily in front of a computer when your audience is. Make use of tools such as Hootsuite or Buffer to get your content out there at the right time. You can schedule within Facebook itself, or use Tailwind to spread out your pinning on Pinterest. Some networks, such as Instagram, you can update on the move using your smartphone. If you use a tool such as IFTTT, you can use Instagram to also update your Twitter feed. You can also cross-post your Insta pics to your Facebook page using the Instagram app, which will help your reach on Facebook. You may want to ask permission from the home owner if you’re sharing pics of their home on social media. A verbal ‘yes’ will be enough, and I can’t imagine that a home-owner wanting to sell their home would have good reason to say no. But better safe than sorry.

There’s a lot more you could do with social media as an estate agents, but this will come with time as you get more familiar with each network. Do you know an estate agency who are good at social media? What do they do that you could be doing too?

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