Showcase your listings on your Facebook page by setting up a Facebook shop. Social Estate makes it simple to have all your listings available form your Facebook page for sharing and creating promotions and the best part is that it’s a native Facebook integration so unlike third party solutions it works on both mobiles and desktop.
Use Facebook’s new dynamic real estate Ads to promote relevant listings to holidaymakers, tenants and buyers without having to create hundreds of Ads. Start leveraging the power of Advanced A.I in your real estate marketing now.
Creating your own personal website for just $25 a month is easier than you think.
We’ve created a step by step guide to help any real estate agent get up and running with a personal website fast.
Facebook gives advertisers a near-infinite number of ways to reach potential customers. But while layered targeting can introduce your brand to total strangers and re-marketing is the perfect way to push prospects further down your marketing funnel, sometimes you need something in between these two options.
One of the biggest mistakes people make is not blogging. Blogging is one of the purest forms of social media, but it is currently neglected by so many agents. The biggest issues that agents face when it comes to blogging, is 'what to write about?' Here are some sure fired ways to get you blogging and sharing your opinions.
Start with what you know.
You should be blogging about things that you know well, really well. Start by working general and then become super specific. The best way to look at that is to start with the suburbs you service, and then drill down to the streets that you sell homes in. You may think that people don't really want to know about the streets that you have listings in, but you are wrong. People value hyper-local data more than you can imagine, especially when you can provide insights that no-one else has. Commence blogging about these locations to build your brand up.
Expand to what people, somewhat know.
You know that new cafe that opened up recently that people have heard about but maybe have not been? Blog about it! People value hyper local information, especially from trusted sources. If you can generate your content around topics that are trending, you already know there is a large audience that is keen to hear what you have to say. You should be writing reviews on new amenities that come to your area, such as new cafes, new gyms and other destinations, as these are what people want to know about, but lack a centralised hub of content.
Push further in to providing advice.
Once you have begun generally, you need to start adding value. You should be writing about topics that provides advice for people who are looking at investing in property. Your blog content should ALWAYS be about your target market. There is no point writing blogs about buying your first home, if you are entrenched in an established market where people are spending four or five million dollars per home. You just won't be speaking their language. Find your niche and write content around it.
If you are selling home to people in an established market, ideas such as, 'How to use your superannuation to invest in property' or case studies from established property investors and the key points they look for in making any investment, are good ideas, as they will generate a captive audience and demonstrate you understand their market.
So, that's great, but now what?
The biggest issues that people have when blogging is finding what to write about, therefore we have put together 10 topics that you as agents, can use to start writing blogs. These are just guides, but they are in incredibly valuable topics that people desperately want to know about.
Commence with writing content around this. It is a good way to build your brand, and the best part is, you can't go wrong. You will underestimate how much you actually know about your suburb, and the value you can provide to locals.
Lots of clients ask us to handle their social media. Whilst we are flattered, we feel we need to get one thing straight. Marketing on social media should be looked at like a stream of water, you will put content in to the stream, and unless you put some really strong rocks to stop the flow of water, the tide will just wash it away and it will fall in to oblivion.
It amazes us how many clients put up great content, but don't allocated the budget to get it seen. Facebook is a business, and it rewards people that spend money with their business. You could have the best content in the world, but if you aren't ensuring that it is getting 'stalled' in the stream, and getting eyeballs on the page, you are wasting your time.
Enter....... Boosted Posts.
A boosted post is a post from your business Page that, for a fee, can appear higher up on your audience’s News Feeds. The fee depends on how many people you want the post to reach—the payment depends on the number of impressions the post gets with time.
When setting up a boosted post, you can set specific demographic constraints to drill down who sees your content. When starting to grow your audience, the main focus is on bringing in new users, boosted posts can be set to people that we target (who don't currently follow you)
We will be looking to engage people that live in the localities that you service, as they are the most valuable customer to you. When setting our parameters we can select their location, age, gender and up to 10 interests. Imagine how specific this can be for you as an agent. We can target your listing content to people who live in your area, are members of the local school and are involved in parenting groups. These kind of people are great prospects as their living arrangements change constantly, and thus their housing requirements change as well.
When boosted posts are implemented, we run more detailed reports and watch the performance, coming back to you with the results for your analysis. Whilst you'd like to believe that having gorgeous homes, posting interesting articles and being informative will grow your Facebook audience, we are here to say it won't! (Well, most likely not to the standards you require/ or deserve!)
Therefore, have your account manager start implementing some tested Facebook posts, we can't think of one agent that wouldn't be happy with local users, being targeted their listings for an incredibly small cost. In many cases, boosted posts have been the most cost-effective form of online advertising, a recent experiment we ran found that Facebook boosted posts generated just under 4% of clicks upon impression, the highest other is nowhere near with Google adwords getting a click 2.5% of the time. A boosted post on Facebook cost in this campaign 0.18c and on Google Adwords cost $1.80 per click. That is ten times more!
Do the math!
The bad news I’m about to tell you is going to HELP you in the long run. If your company is using social media to propel your business to the next level, there’s an 88% chance that the people behind that push have no idea what they are doing. That’s a tough thing to hear for a couple of reasons. First, it’s a fairly large percentage. Secondly, paying social media gurus can be expensive, so you expect them to know what they are doing.
Social media is the future of marketing, networking, and getting businesses seen, so when we see companies that are all over Facebook and Twitter, they must have vast amounts of social media genius behind them, right? Surely they all have some sort of data to scientifically tell them what’s working and what is absolutely NOT working, right? WRONG.
The truth is that, according to the Harvard Business Review, only 12% of companies feel that they are using social media effectively to reach their online audiences. That means that 88% know they are not doing a good job of effectively harnessing the power of social media and using it to positively impact their brand.
Hope Is Not a Strategy
Many businesses today are using hope as a strategy for success, and successful businessmen and women everywhere will tell you that hope is NOT a strategy. It’s time to get smart about social media. If your company is flinging things onto your social platform and relying on the “fingers-crossed” method, it’s likely you won’t see a lot of success. While social media may seem like a daunting mountain for those who have not attempted it or for those who are only used to the bunny slopes, it’s time to gear up and tackle the tougher runs.
Now that I've given you the bad news, it’s time for a little good news. If 88% of companies truly don’t know what they are doing when it comes to social media, it means this is your chance! By jumping in and learning everything you can about how to make your business and your brand successful with social media, you will be well on your way to joining the 12% that are already leveraging the power of social media. You’ll be ahead of the game and ahead of all the others who are still hanging out in the 88%.
Get in the game and learn about the tools that can help your business as you start to use social media to its fullest. Check out a few of the common best practices below:
Choose your playground. There is an abundance of social media sites out there, and you can’t be in all of them at once—not effectively anyway. Choose the places where you are going to play, and post regularly.
Plan your posts. Don’t just post randomly, but think things through and engage your consumers in relevant ways.
Use analytics and data. These tools are available to you, so take a look at who is checking out your posts, when they are looking, and what they like.
Interact with your followers. Ask questions, throw out a fun quiz or survey every now and then, ask for funny pics or captions…you get the idea. Your followers will enjoy knowing you are available to interact with them.
Visual media rules. Your followers will enjoy videos and pictures more than just words. Entertain with a variety of mediums.
It’s not all about selling. Let your followers get to know you, and post relevant and timely updates.
Do your research. Social media changes as fast as you can blink, so stay up-to-date with what’s going on. (Here’s a hint: let Google be your best friend.)
Bad news is no fun, but luckily this time it comes with good news, too. Many companies find themselves lost in the 88% that don’t know what they are doing, so make sure you are using social media to your best advantage. It’s a powerful tool that can set you miles ahead of your competition if used correctly. It’s much better to hang out with the 12% of social media gurus who are making social work wonders for their brands!
Instagram is your most underutilised platform, plain and simple. It is one of the most rapidly growing platforms, and unlike the other social platforms, easily syndicates content to the other social sites without needing any visual change. When you send out a tweet, it doesn't look great on Facebook and can’t be viewed on Twitter, when you send out a Facebook post, it gets truncated at 140 characters on Twitter and can’t be sent out to Facebook.
Use Instagram as your primary platform.
To commence in building your strategy we will focus on two things: Your audience and your content. There is no point having great content but not targeting the right audience or having content that is average and sending it to the people you want to engage. Therefore, after a market analysis, we will be able to target your ideal user base, and give them content they want.
To get started we need to know who your audience is, and what content you have access to that is personal and relevant to your brand. Once we know this, we will develop a strategy based around attracting your ideal users and making sure the posts go out at the time they are likely to use the channel. We will also do this, whilst staying in conversations that you NEED to know about. There are conversations on Instagram about anything and everything in your local area. It’s our job to get you apart of these conversations, provide an opinion, and offer a solution if it is anything property related.
