How to Ensure Social Media Success for Real Estate (Part 2)
Reach a Wider Audience with Targeted Public Relations
Exclusive Insight into Industry Strategies and Trends
Solving the “How & When” of posting on social media for real estate
Timing is everything
When it comes to social media for real estate, you want to tailor your post schedule to when your followers are the most active. If you have a business account (which you should!) then most platforms allow for you to check this statistic. As a general rule of thumb, people tend to check their social media at a few different points during the day: when they wake up/during breakfast, during a lunch break, right after work, and before bed. That gives you a general idea of what time to post. You can tailor it for your time zone or preferred followers. Most real estate listings have an open house on Sundays, so that may also be a good time to showcase some of your properties in a “virtual open house.”
Once you have posted to social media, you can analyze what time of day your posts get the most engagement. That can guide you for future posts.
Scheduling Posts
There are a lot of programs out there that can help you to schedule posts in advance. This is useful because you won’t have to physically post at breakfast time and again at bedtime or even on the weekends. If you schedule ahead, then you can be present at your open house while your social media does all the work for you. And if you want real-time coverage of an event then you can go live or post to your story (on Instagram or Facebook).
For Instagram, the best posting tool is Planoly because it allows you to lay out all of your photos and content before you make it live on your feed. For this particular platform the aesthetics of the entire page is crucial. Planoly allows you to see the full landscape of your Instagram in order to get it right. It will also automatically post for you if you schedule a post or story in advance.
For other platforms, mention.com or Hootsuite are great tools for planning ahead. You can put together your posts for the week ahead of time, and then watch as all of your social channels populate on their own. Another fabulous feature is that you can manage more than one account at once if you need to post on your personal page and your business page.
Here is an example of what Planoly looks like:
Social Media Marketing and Seeing Results
If you want to broaden your reach on social media you should consider spending a little money on your posts. Different platforms have various ways to get more people to like your photos or click a link. Sponsored or boosted posts take what you already have on social media and broadens the reach. You can spend a couple dollars or a couple hundred dollars – either way it will increase the visibility and the engagement.
Targeting your audience
The best part about sponsoring or boosting posts is that you can target who you want to see the post. From age group and geographic location, to hobbies and job title, each platform allows you to be specific with who is shown the boosted posts. This can work to your advantage. For residential real estate, you can target people who work in the area of your listing and the right age group for homeowners (aka 15-year-olds won’t be peppered with housing posts). For CRE, you can target companies you think would work well in the space you are leasing or people who would be interested in investing in a multifamily complex. You can even promote events on Facebook to increase attendees at open houses or grand openings, for instance.
Advertising
Beyond just sponsoring posts, you can also run ads on Facebook, Instagram and LinkedIn when considering how to best utilize social media for real estate. Think of it as the real estate bus bench in the digital era. You can create an ad that you want to run on all of the platforms and simply optimize the sizing for each. This essentially means resizing the image to fit the proportions of the different platforms. Additionally, try to make your ads engaging and interesting. This is again where quality is key. You want to make sure the photos and messaging are up to par. Video can also entice people, especially with the invention of the drone. You can market certain properties with a drone tour instead of the typical video tour. It all boils down to being creative and doing things right the first time, especially since you are spending money for these ads to run on different platforms.
This is part two in a three-part series on how to ensure social media success for real estate. Keep an eye out for the third installment shortly!
Founder and President at The Hoyt Organization
With over 25 years of experience, Leeza’s campaigns have garnered over 150 awards from top public relations organizations nationwide. Additionally, THO serves as the Los Angeles area partner of the Public Relations Global Network, granting clients access to over 50 global markets. The agency was also named to one of the top 200 firms in the country by Forbes magazine in 2021, and she has been named by Globest.com as a Woman of Influence and a Woman to Watch, among other designations.
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