Top Tips For Social Media Marketing – Part 1

by Steph Rady

Social media has moved on from being a “nice to have” to a necessity for most businesses, but how do you make the most of this completely free form of marketing?

In this article, we uncover some of our top tips for managing social media marketing for estate agents, how to grow organically, what types of content you should be posting and the importance of strategy.

Quality over quantity

Posting on social media 20 times per week isn’t going to grow your business. In fact, some platforms will penalise you for over-posting or spamming the feed, especially if no one engages with your posts.

You are however rewarded for consistent content and content that generates engagement from your followers, so it’s much better to post valuable content 3 times per week for example than posting excessively for the sake of it.

Likewise with social media platforms – it can be tempting to create a presence everywhere so that your business is easier to find, but if you don’t have the capacity to post consistently across all channels, it is far better to pick 1-2 and grow later. The top performing platforms for estate agents at present are Facebook and Instagram.

LinkedIn can also be great for reaching landlords and property investors, or contractors but is more valuable as a person to person platform, so make sure your negotiators are active on LinkedIn!

Strategy for maximising organic reach

There’s much more to social media marketing than scheduling posts – the best social media managers have a specific strategy for posting content to maximise web traffic, impressions and engagement, as well as a separate strategy for additional areas such as reels and stories to maximise their organic reach and audience growth.

And we cannot overlook fast responses to messages and comments – if your audience is engaging with you, you need to offer the same level of customer service on social media that you would for an office walk in.

Reels and stories are specific to Facebook and Instagram and businesses are rewarded by creating content specifically for these avenues with more organic impressions.

The main reason for this is that Facebook and Instagram are in huge competition with TikTok and YouTube, so video content is massively rewarded with more eyes on your content and the ability to reach a much wider audience for free.

Once you have a strategy for stories and reels, stick to it. There are plenty of content creation platforms that have specific templates you can build for stories – we’re a big fan of Canva. Make sure you personalise the content where possible and add an easy-to-follow call to action such as a link or ability to DM. You can even interact with potential clients within stories by including links, polls and questions to drive engagement.

Video and Personal Content

For estate agents, there are endless opportunities to create amazing and engaging video content, whether that is by showcasing properties, sneak peaks into new properties coming to market, tips for sellers, buyers and landlords, or even property market updates for your area.

Another content type which cannot be overlooked is personal content. People buy from people, and as estate agents you need to build a “know, like, trust” relationship with prospective clients. You’re not going to achieve that by only posting generic property news and links to your website, or shouting about how great you are.

Make sure the team is bought into making your social media presence sing and incentivise them to help create content.

Here are some ideas for personal content that we know works well:

• Photos of gifts from happy clients
• Photos of tenants/buyers collecting keys
• Case studies – video, image or text to showcase a real example of how you surpassed expectations e.g. if a property sold or let particularly fast, no. of viewings/offers, achieving market rate or above, how you helped a landlord prepare their property for rent etc. The list is endless!
• Photos/videos of local businesses you often visit or work with to show how community involved you are
• Competitions designed to engage with local residents
• Sponsorships/charity work

 

Hopefully this article has given you a few insights into how you can get started with social media marketing. Stay tuned for part two where we will discuss hashtags, staying on top of trends, generating business through social media and how to monitor success.

 

If you’d like to speak to our team of social media experts about assisting with your marketing, please get in touch: steph.rady@angelsmedia.co.uk or call 0208 663 4940.