Social Media for Real Estate

How buyers search for properties has evolved and changed. Nowadays, most buyers begin their home search online. In today’s technological world, real estate agents need to be able to connect with buyers digitally.

Social media is one of the most influential new technologies of the new millennia. Facebook is the most used social media site, with 2.45 billion monthly users. Facebook real estate marketing has potential to take your real estate business further than it’s ever been.

Getting Started with Facebook Real Estate Marketing

If you are not familiar with Facebook, here are some steps to get your real estate marketing started:

  1. Create an account or use your existing personal account
  2. Create a new business page
  3. Add a profile (professional looking) picture
  4. Update company information
  5. Include quality design, branding, and photography
  6. Fill out the “About” section
  7. Add your call to action (CTA) button
  8. Create custom tabs
  9. Create custom URL (once you’ve gotten 25 followers)

Connecting with customers

Content offers a reason for users to like your page and share it with others. It also demonstrates your expertise. Though it might seem easy, creating and sharing engaging content can be difficult. Keep your content relevant to your audience and they will be more likely to recognize your expertise and share it with their trusted circle. 

An easy way to show your professionalism is incorporating professional real estate photography. They say a picture is worth a thousand words. If so, then choose wisely the real estate photos that you display because they will shape your brand. If you are unsure how to determine high quality photos, simply order a photoshoot of your own residence from OBEO. Our real estate photos are scientifically engineered to meet the highest standards in photography. 

Videos are another great way to display your knowledge and skills. Real estate videos can showcase properties that you’ve successfully sold, interviews with customers who recommend you, or simple instructional videos that give helpful tips (such as “how to prepare your home for sale”)

Seller tips – In today’s world, sellers need to have confidence in the following:  your ability to negotiate for a favorable outcome, your savvy in giving them tips that can generate the best return on investment (ROI), and your ability to generate interest with their property. Within those broad categories are strategies that can help you win more listings and sell more homes, details of which we cover in another blog post. 

Buyer tips – In many brokerages, representing a buyer is often reserved to a specific group of real estate agents, especially if the buyer is purchasing a home or investment property for the first time. But, regardless of how many homes a buyer has purchased, they all need the following: resources to interpret local laws, analysis tools that show the asset’s present and future value, and knowledge of how hungry to negotiate.

Facebook ads

We are sometimes asked if agents and brokers should use Facebook ads for your real estate marketing strategy? There are a few different reasons why you should consider them:

  1. Allows you to create advertisements targeting very specific audiences – Facebook knows its customers…really well (sometimes creepily)!  Using their data to your advantage can help you get in front of the right audience.
  2. Can be used to promote your content – If you have great content, them post it, don’t email it. The data shows that great content is shared far more than forwarded. 
  3. Larger investment cost – Yes, advertising is a financial commitment, but it also is very controlled. Facebook allows you to set a budget so it is much easier for you to regulate your daily, weekly, and monthly spend.

Tips for Facebook real estate marketing

  1. Use a tab to highlight featured listings
  2. Post regularly
  3. Keep your cover photo up to date
  4. Focus the majority of your content on your customers
  5. Always respond to comments
  6. Maintain a connection to local places and events
  7. Use humor where appropriate
  8. Post images and reviews from happy clients, but only with their permission
  9. Pay attention to your Facebook data
  10. Run contests to grow your user base 

The OBEO Marketing Suite

One of the secrets of an effective real estate social media marketing strategy is leveraging automation. Knowing what and when to automate is critical. For example, your content should be original to maintain authenticity. Original content will keep your social circle close to you. If you choose to automate your content, then it will be easier for your social circle to consider you “another news outlet” and ignore your posts.

Pictures and listings can and should be automated. Since pictures reflective your brand image, they should be high quality. Just posting pictures of your listing photos is insufficient, however. To get the most traction with your audience, the user experience should be simple and clean. You can achieve this experience by leveraging OBEO’s marketing suite, which automatically creates a property website of your OBEO real estate listing photos.

With OBEO’s marketing suite, not only do you receive a customized and brandable property website automatically for every photoshoot, you also can connect your social media accounts to your OBEO account and automatically share your listings to your business Facebook page. When users see the listing, they will notice the main image’s quality and it’s subtitle and brief description. Clicking on the link will open a new tab in their browser (mobile or desktop compatible) where they will see a beautifully designed website with your branding that allows them to explore the property as they choose.

Your customers can see the gallery of images (in thumbnail or full screen), see the YouTube video (which is also automatically created with OBEO’s marketing suite), explore the 3D model (if applicable), and receive relevant property information (bedroom, bath, sqft, etc).  They can also easily share this website with others and anyone they share this website with can easily connect to you.

OBEO knows that technology is constantly evolving. Our marketing suite allows you to interact with your audience in a effective, yet automated, way.

Conclusion

Because most buyers begin their home search online, in today’s technological world real estate agents need to be able to connect with buyers digitally. Facebook is the dominant channel to leverage for real estate marketing. An effective social media strategy for real estate marketing includes original/relevant content combined with automation. One of the best automations to leverage are your high quality images from OBEO.