There’s so much that’s been written on the internet about how to schedule social content, and there’s so much that can be said, it can get pretty overwhelming. It would be great if someone could just tell us what we need to post (and we can do that, hit us up!) but if you’re doing your social media in-house and want to plan your own content, then where do you start?
The most important thing, is to consider who you’re marketing to. The easy thing is to say ‘everyone’, but take a second and have a think. Do you mostly sell or let homes to young families buying their first home in a good catchment area for the local primary school? Great! Start there! That doesn’t mean you can’t ever do a post about retirement properties, but it does give you a bit more focus, and helps you zone in on the kind of content you want to be creating.
Once you’ve defined one or two key audiences you’re looking to interact with, then you need to think about how to schedule social content that will drive engagement!
The four content pillars
You might also hear these called things like ‘themes’ or ‘buckets’, but really what they are is a series of broad, very generic categories that all of your content fits into so you can easily ensure that you’re posting a variety of content that’ll keep people interested.
The easiest trap you can fall into, is only posting things you want to say. Only writing posts when you win an award, or there’s a property you want to talk about. Think about the business social media pages you’re likely to follow yourself, and think about why? Because you get something out of them. Whether that’s entertainment, knowledge or because you get a buzz out of supporting a local business. That’s the kind of engagement you’re looking to inspire yourself, and in the nicest possible way without any kind of meaningful engagement, you’re going to be the only person liking the post about that award.
There’s no right answer, and you’ll see lots of people using different headings, but the four content pillars we like to use are:
- Educational
- Promotion
- Community
- Entertaining
For the purpose of this blog article, we’re going to be running with the young family example. Here’s what some of the content for an estate agent might look like under those headings, looking to engage with young families.
Educational
- Post about the route to the best hidden playpark locally someone new might not know about
- Share blog post about buying process aimed at first time buyers
- Live video ‘Grill an estate agent’ Q&A outside of business hours when people home from work
Promotion
- Property highlight on a property that has something interesting about it. Big garden? Member of the Beatles used to live next door? People love a good story.
- Photo of the team pointing to a shortlisted badge photoshopped into the corner for an award.
Community
- Share causes close to your team/ charity things you’re involved in
- Post photos from a local litter pick
- Engage with other posts about local issues.
Entertaining
- Office spot the difference
- A property-themed joke
- A dog sat in the boss’ chair, taking over for the day
When to use each pillar
Basically, the aim is to create as eclectic a mix of posts as possible. A really easy way to do this is assign each pillar to a particular day of the week and then have the fifth day as a wildcard for anything that crops up.
How to schedule social content on different platforms
We’ve already looked at the kind of content the main platforms like, so if you have a Facebook and an Instagram account, list out your pillars and list out the content for each one. Beautiful property photos are order of the day on Instagram, so you might want to focus on entertainment (beautiful images to inspire) and education (post renovation tips, or engage with the renovation community that’s on there).
There’s infinite possibility, and it really is up to you, but it’ll give you a great starting point.
Scheduling tools
Once you have your content ideas, create the imagery and text for each post and then use a content scheduler like Hootsuite or Buffer to schedule them up to post automatically. In pro versions, you can set them to post at a time when your followers are most engaged – which is a great way to dive right in! This will take a little bit of practice, but by doing it this way you’ll save a lot of time. Trying to think of what to post each day while trying to keep it different an exciting is really difficult, but by using your social content pillars you can really hit scheduling on the ground running!
Want to share ideas?
We’re here to help! Pop over to Facebook and join our group solely for Estate and Letting Agents to learn about social media and digital marketing. Write a post to let us know what you’re thinking, and one of us will hop on to help you.
Come and join us!
Katie Gillingham
Katie is a Freelance Copywriter living in rural Dorset with her daft old Labrador. She first started writing content for the property industry back in 2015, and loves nothing more than bringing brand voices to life!
