Here’s where to start with real estate social media and how you can stay consistent while growing your reach to make 2021 your best social media year yet.
Realtors, this year try to be more intentional with your social media strategy.
Are you working on your real estate social media game plan for 2021?
Whether you are a real estate agent or broker looking to up your real estate social media game this year this article will touch on a few point that will help you get the most out of Social Media for your real estate business this year.
Real Estate Social Media 2021
Rule #1: Be Intentional
In 2021 your real estate social media strategy should be intentional. Social media often becomes this “bolt on” that agents add to their business. Usually as inconsistent bursts, when they have time.
Be intentional with your strategy!
1. Make time for Social Media activities daily, weekly, monthly and yearly.
- Block out 10-15 minutes a day to “focus on 5.” Scroll through your feed, and connect with at least five people. Elon Musk’s “Time Blocking” Method breaks his day into 5 minute increments. For more on time-management check out this audiobook while you’re driving between listing appointments.
- Don’t be a Social Media Creeper. There’s nuanced social etiquette on all platforms. However, commonly, you should post, like, comment and interact with others. Doing all four is is so crucial because every platform has an algorithm and your engagement will boost your profile’s reach.
- Spend as much time posting as engaging with others.
- Leave meaningful comments. A meaningful comment is at least four words. So, instead of “Congrats!” say “Congrats Laura, I’m so happy for you!”
2. Follow a realistic pillar content plan.
When you think Pillar content – think Vanity Fair cover, WSJ Magazine, NYT Magazine, Tattler, Time – They all have a monthly feature. The big article that everyone wants to read.
We all read the real estate industry publications. Consumers do not. They read the consumer publications. The real estate section of the newspaper, the browse the luxury home magazine. The trending topics there can be quite different than we read as industry insiders.
Creating Pillar content will require your time, perhaps some money and possibly other resources. It’s valuable information in your voice (with your opinion). It’s not canned, boring or automated! For example, it could be recorded video, Facebook Lives, podcasts or blog content – better yet, it can be planned to include all of the above and then spun-out and recycled across multiple Real Estate Social Media platforms and Ads to drive the most traffic and engagement.
Decide what type of content you’d like to create consistently. Pick a day once or twice a month that you will publish — add it to your calendar. Batch create your content once a month — schedule one day a month to create this content.
3. Brainstorm what your brand is all about, and find your voice on social media for your real estate content
Although you are most likely part of a real estate brand with your office or franchise — you are your own brand too.
Here are three questions to ask yourself to help you find your voice for your content:
- What type of clients do you love to work with (or not love)? Why?
- Why do you love what you do?
- What is most important to you professionally? Personally?
These questions will help you with your content, social media and all of your marketing. Remember, we can’t be all things to all people. Lean into who you are, and don’t be vanilla!
4. Think beyond the now
Next, decide on your distribution plan for your pillar content plus the type of content for the rest of your social media posts.
If you decide to publish a video once a week — consider how you can spin off several shorter videos on specific topics; and/or create a teaser/trailer to publish to social media to drive traffic back to your pillar content blog post.
Here’s a sample real estate social media content production schedule:
Tuesday:
- Upload a new video to your Facebook business page
- Publish the same video to your YouTube
- Crop and upload a 1-minute version of the video to Instagram, and add a YouTube link to your IG profile
Friday:
- Reshare the video as a new post on Facebook
- Create an Instagram Story about the video
Sunday:
- Upload the video to IGTV and promote on IG Stories
In the example above — you can see how you can take one video and turn it into multiple posts.
Then, you can fill in your schedule with additional posts such as:
- Monday market update post
- Wednesday wisdom
- Throwback Thursday
- Feature Friday
- Community info
5. Evaluate what has worked in the past (and what has not)
Look at your Facebook, Instagram and YouTube analytics once a quarter or at least twice a year. Determine what content is working and on which platform. You should not be posting the same content to each channel. Each has etiquette and a different audience. Review which posts received the highest level of reach, views and engagement.
Did certain pieces of content perform better on one platform over another? Only by looking at analytics and the data can we get an accurate picture of what’s working and resonating with our audience. From this data you can fine-tune the topics, style, and format of your content for each channel to improve your metrics.
Finally, remember that people do business with people they know, like, trust and relate to. This is the business reason behind social media for real estate agents and brokers.
