10 Ways To Get More Out Of Your Facebook Marketing For Real Estate

Facebook offers a lot of marketing advantages for real estate agents. You can use it to promote listings and content, develop a brand or business niche, or connect more personally with your community and leads. But like with most things, it takes planning and effort. In this article we’ll review 10 strategies to get more out of Facebook marketing as a real estate agent.

Remember Most Users Are Mobile

Facebook said in 2016 that more than half of its users accessed the site exclusively from a mobile device. The mobile share has continued to grow since. As a real estate agent, you should take this into account when creating content. For example, square video tends to perform better on Facebook because it is easier to view on a smartphone or tablet. Captions also can help your audience view your content when they do not have headphones.

People Are Not Looking for Your Content

Unlike some other platforms (like YouTube), Facebook users generally do not logon looking for specific content. The Facebook experience is more passive. Users scroll through their feed and click on the content that piques their interest. As a real estate agent on Facebook, you have to be a little more direct in your content. Any video you create needs to hook your audience in the first three seconds. Any photos or charts you use need to grab your lead’s attention.

Define a Narrow Target Audience

Facebook has more than 2 billion active users. That is a lot of different profiles, personalities and characters. As a real estate agent, you should try to market to a super small band of these users. You should define your target audience as narrowly as possible and develop content specifically for them. This will ensure your content and ads are relevant, and it will help maximize conversion rates.

Use Social Proof

Facebook is a network, so communication passes from you to your audience, but also within your audience. In many ways, the latter is more important. If your clients provide positive feedback about you and your business, this carries more weight than if you say it yourself. You can foster audience dialog with social proof. By encouraging and posting reviews and testimonials, you can support your pitch with a demonstrated history of success.

Send Listings to Facebook

Facebook offers dynamic ads. This is a great tool to maintain a connection with your leads even after they leave your site. But to use dynamic ads you need to build a catalog of listings on Facebook. To speed up this process, you can use software to automatically send your IDX listings to Facebook for ads and campaigns.

Improve Your Call to Action

Your call to action is the part of your Facebook marketing that encourages your leads to do something. This phrase has outsized importance because it is closely linked to conversion. A strong call to action is concise and personal. It requests that your leads take an action and conveys a benefit if they do so.

Use the Search Function

Facebook also provides an opportunity for real estate agents to find new leads. By using the search function, agents can look for Facebook posts that match some of their business keywords. Then they can reach out and develop relationships. For example, if you search “moving to” + [your home community], you will find people talking about moving to your market. This is useful information!

Develop a Niche

Facebook also provides strong branding opportunities. If you are having trouble standing out in your market, you can use Facebook to develop a niche. You can post specialized content to Facebook and build an expertize in one segment of the real estate industry. You can corner this sub-market and then branch out.

Release Exclusive Content

As an active marketer on Facebook, you want to generate likes and comments. You want to build a dialog around your content and a community that supports your business. To encourage people to like your Facebook page, you can provide Facebook-exclusive content. This content will lead your web users to your Facebook page where you can interact with them and develop a closer relationship. OSMH

Be Open and Be Yourself

Real estate makes for great content and even as the we buy houses niche has gotten going there’s still great deals to be had. It is a luxurious and fast-paced pursuit that generates a lot of beautiful photos and video. In many ways, the best thing you can do to get more out of Facebook is pull back the curtain. Be yourself. Show your audience the amazing life you live. You’ll be rewarded with a tight community of followers.

Few real estate agents use Facebook to its full potential. With these 10 Facebook marketing tips for real estate you can generate more leads and take your business to the next level

How Real Estate Agents Should Be Using Instagram

Social media has changed real estate marketing- there’s no use in arguing about that. However, what one could argue about is how real estate agents should actually use social media. Should they simply share listing details? Or is there more to it than that?

One specific social media channel that a lot of real estate agents have yet to take advantage of is Instagram. So, how should agents use Instagram to find leads and close more deals?

Here are 6 ways:

Use an Instagram Business Profile

You may enjoy posting your vacation photos and morning lattes on your personal Instagram profile and you may even have a decent following on there. However, avoid combining personal and professional life on social media. This is a common real estate marketing tip for sure, but it’s an important one that many agents don’t think twice about. When leads are looking for real estate agents to work with or houses for sale to buy, it’s best they stumble across a professional profile on Instagram that is the best representation of yourself and your real estate business- plain and simple.

There’s another advantage to using an Instagram Business Profile and that’s the access to in-depth statistics. While you may closely track likes and followers on your personal profile, there is a lot more to track when it comes to social media marketing. For instance, Instagram Insights will provide you with demographic data to help you identify real estate lead groups. You can also learn which posts get the most engagement from leads beyond just likes. This will help you figure out what posts are best for your real estate marketing strategy on Instagram.

Don’t Avoid Instagram Stories

At the end of the day, leads want to know who you are as a real estate agent (especially buyer leads). They want someone they can trust who has a personality that fits theirs. While sharing listings or property images on your Instagram story is a good idea, put yourself in front of the camera once in a while, too. Do a house tour, announce an upcoming open house, and provide a few real estate tips once a week to encourage followers to watch out for your stories. You can even do an AMA (ask me anything) when you have a few followers. The questions they ask will take only moments to answer and you may even qualify a few leads right then and there!

Use Aesthetically Pleasing Images

By now, you probably know how important a good photo is for a property listing. However, there is a difference between a “good quality photo” and an “aesthetically pleasing photo.” One makes you look professional, while the other does that in addition to garnering interest on Instagram.

Take a look at this example. It’s the same beautiful home and both images below are of high quality. But a simple shift of angle that shows the Instagram-worthy landscape is sure to grab attention as people scroll by.

Don’t Forget to Add Your Real Estate Branding

Photos are shared around on Instagram all the time. Unfortunately, owners are not always credited especially when it comes to #Dreamhome. Meaning, you may be taking the time to beautifully photograph your properties and others may be taking the images and repurposing them for their own profiles. Be sure to get your name out there by branding your images. Whether it’s a watermark or an obvious logo, if your photos do end up making the rounds, real estate leads will find their way back to you. Just make sure whatever you add to the image, it doesn’t take focus away from the property for sale in the photo.

You Can Add a “Personal Touch”

While it’s advised to keep your personal photos off your Instagram real estate business profile, there are other ways to get personal. Leads don’t just want to see property photos; they’d like to know the area as well. You can follow up a listing with a few pretty photos of a local shop or two of your favorite spots in the neighborhood. This not only lets you share the things you love, showing off some of your personality, but it also provides meaningful purpose to your real estate leads. When they know an antique shop or vintage bookstore is two blocks away from your most recent listing (don’t forget to link to it!), they’re sure to convert.

You can share text posts as well. Inspiring quotes or house hunting tips for homebuyers and real estate investors can sometimes be effective even when posted on Instagram in plain text. This will keep your audience engaged even when you don’t have a listing to share at the moment. Think of this as a form of lead nurturing. It’s simple and easy, but can have an impact.

Don’t Randomly Use Hashtags

You might think all you need to do is add #houseforsale or #realestate. But since marketing experts discovered Instagram’s potential, real estate hashtags have been dragged into the SEO game. Do a little research on which hashtags work best for which posts. Which ones will help ensure your posts are seen by more Instagram users?

A few important real estate hashtags include:

  • Househunting
  • Realestateagent
  • Openhouse
  • Newlisting

Also, be sure to incorporate hashtags that are important for local (something specific about the neighborhood or area) as well as global (more broad, like the city or state) audiences. A few minutes of research can really up this aspect of your Instagram marketing.

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There are a few rights and wrongs when it comes to Instagram marketing for real estate agents and it’s best to learn them early on. You don’t want to set up a profile with your image and name and end up making a bad first impression even on a handful of leads.

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