Real Estate Social Media Marketing Tips

Posted On: July 30, 2020

As a new real estate agent (or a real estate agent new to social media marketing), diving into a professional social media presence can feel intimidating.

There's also an overwhelming amount of information on how to do it "right" once you start looking.

Below, we've gathered our most practical tips for creating a solid foundation for your social media marketing efforts.

These 12 tips should get you started and set you up for success.

Tip #1: Prioritize Facebook and Instagram

If you practice commercial real estate or work primarily with investor clientele, then LinkedIn is also important.

However, Facebook and Instagram should be staples for most agents. Facebook provides enormous reach, while Instagram helps you tap into a younger demographic.

Conveniently, they have a shared ad interface and features since Facebook bought Instagram in 2012, so it's easy to get a handle on one if you understand the other.

Tip #2: Set Your Accounts Up for Success

You should be thorough and strategic when you set up your social media accounts and fill out your profiles. Optimize for both user interest and SEO, then keep your information up to date.

Check out our step-by-step detailed guide on setting up your professional Facebook page for maximum visibility and conversion. Instagram is similar, though streamlined.

Tip #3: Be Strategic with Your Efforts

Everything you do on your business account should be geared toward your success in selling property.

Depending on where you are in your career, your social media goals and activities will be most productive if they directly address:

Establishing authority and trust with your target market audience
Driving traffic to your website to open opportunities for remarketing
Increasing conversion (turning traffic and engagement into high-quality leads)
Nurturing relationships with past clients for referrals and repeat business

Tip #4: Make Conversion Easy

The ultimate goal for your social media presence is conversion – generating new leads and encouraging referral business. Therefore, it's critical to maximize the opportunities people have to enter your sales funnel.

On Facebook that includes:

Activating and experimenting with the CTA button at the top of your page
Linking to high-conversion landing pages on your website
Using the cover photo banner to drive lead submission to either of the above methods
Setting up Messenger for your business
Running ads that drive leads submission

Speaking of advertising…

Tip #5: Put Your Money Where Your Media Is

Facebook in particular provides an amazing bang for every advertising buck if you do it right. The minimum budget is modest, the targeting potential is insane, and the ROI is one of the best on the web.

We lay out the best practices for advertising real estate business on Facebook in another post, and most of those tips also apply to its younger sibling, Instagram. In fact, you use the same interface to set up ads on both platforms.

Our blog post also explains the importance of remarketing, and how to do it effectively.

Tip #6: Limit Promotional Posts to 1 in 5

We've been focusing on lead generation so far because a lot of real estate agents make the mistake of forgetting to account for it in their social media presence. To make the time you spend on social media productive, you have to understand and deploy strategies for gathering leads.

But most of your posts and interactions on social media will NOT directly promote business. Experts recommend no more than one in 5 – also conceptualized as the 80-20 rule.

That means 80% of your content on social media should be helpful and relevant to your target audience, with no direct benefit to you. You can promote yourself, your services, and your listings in the remaining 20%.

The goal of this strategy is to engage potential clients, build trust, and prove your expertise. It's a long game, so that when people are ready to hire an agent, you're the one they "know."

Tip #7: Sell Your Expertise and Knowledge

In a world where all human knowledge is at your fingertips, a lot of people are wondering whether they need to hire experts at all. This trend is called disintermediation, and one of your social media goals should be to prove that your services are worth having.

The informational posts you share will depend on your specialty and niche. You should brainstorm content that your target audience wants or needs to know. Some time back, we laid out a list of post ideas for engaging residential real estate clients and where to find shareable content.

If you hit a dead end on ideas for new posts, use social listening tools or poll posts to get feedback on what your followers want to see. You can also use polls to learn more about who's following you, which may generate additional ideas.

Tip #8: Sell Social Proof & Success

Property listings are an important part of the promotional 20% of your content (and we have Instagram-specific posting tips here). The listings you promote on social media should be selective. Choose them to be representative to followers of the type of listing they can expect from you.

However, it's just as important (or perhaps even more so) to promote yourself and your success in serving your customers. You can do this with posts like:

Testimonials from happy clients, especially those that reveal specific value propositions
Closing photos or posts to congratulate new homeowners and celebrate successful sales
Sharing clients' posts about their new home (with permission)
Celebrating your milestones, like your 50th closing or 10th year in the business
Celebrating or sharing clients' milestones (with permission)

Tip #9: Bolster Your Network

Real estate agents don't do their jobs in isolation – they're part of a professional ecosystem. Business can and does come from partnerships with other professionals, including home stagers, photographers, mortgage brokers, inspectors, appraisers, and agents in a different niche.

You can nurture these ties by thanking or celebrating them on social media, sharing their content, or creating content and resources together. Like the 80% of posts solely geared towards benefitting potential clients, these posts are best approached as altruistic. Most people will eventually reciprocate.

Tip #10: Making Posts Visual

The fact that visual posts get more engagement is probably not news to you, even if your experience is only through personal use.

Learning how to leverage this concept as a professional – and without breaking the law – can be a little trickier. Here are some tips:

When you post listing photos, make sure they're high-quality and professionally taken.
Source any photos from the internet through a reputable stock site. Look for creative commons or licenses that allow commercial use. Don't just grab something off a website and use it – you may end up with copyright infringement problems.
If you find news articles or resources with interesting data, you can create infographics using a number of online tools. Just remember to credit your original source.
Make real estate quotes and testimonials visual by dressing them up with fonts, colors, and backgrounds. This ability is native to Facebook now, but you can also use online graphics generating tools.
Videos are even better than images. Aside from sharing helpful videos from third parties, consider virtual open houses, live AMA (Ask Me Anything) sessions, and other self-produced video content.
Make videos and images accessible to everyone by using closed captioning and alt-text. In addition to serving anyone with vision or hearing impairment, most people watch videos with the sound offand alt-text can help if images will break or fail to load.

Tip #11: Apply a Little Science

Once you've built up a little steam and experience with social media marketing, you want to drive your decisions for future activity based on data. This will help you target your time and money in the most productive direction.

Business accounts on social media open up all kinds of metrics and analytics. You'll want to examine and adjust your behavior based on data in areas like:

Who your followers are
What types of posts are most popular, and with who
How to improve the effectiveness of your CTAs
What ad types perform the best
What audience parameters produce the best advertising ROI
How to optimize your ad budgets and campaign durations
Which lead magnets perform best
How to make your landing pages more effective
How to make your remarketing campaigns more effective

Learn from your marketing mistakes, experiment with new methods, and have objective measures for determining which strategies work best.

Tip #12: Make the Most of the Leads You Get

This one isn't quite a social media marketing tip, but it's the key to making your social media efforts worthwhile.

Gaining new leads can be one of the most expensive and effort-intensive pieces of your sales funnel. That's why you should do everything you can to convert that lead into a sale once you have it.

Otherwise, you're throwing away the opportunities you worked so hard to find.

Bottom Line

The secret to marketing yourself on social media as a real estate agent is selling yourself and your expertise before you even consider selling a property. Self-education is the key to making your product valuable to clients.

We have over 20 years of experience providing online real estate education, which is a convenient, effective, and efficient way to meet your professional education requirements. Check out our post-license and continuing education courses to learn what's available for your state!