Social Media for Estate Agents
Now I keep hearing estate agency clients say ‘do I need to be on social media?’
The answer is a resounding YES and the reason you need to have an agency page on social media is that you are trying to attract people to your brand who don’t know you and the quickest way to do this is to post interesting articles or photos on your Facebook, Linkedin, Twitter or Instagram Pages.
Firstly your potential clients are all on social media!
Using this platform you can get to reach those people, and start to build a relationship before they have even decided to sell, buy or rent. You need to get people who know you or your brand to like your Facebook page (eg. your customers, your friends or your staff, or their family) to SHARE / COMMENT or LIKE your posts (this is called ENGAGEMENT) because then your post will show on their newsfeed and be seen by all of the hundreds of people they know!
Once one person has liked your page, you now have access to ‘market’ to them AND their friends. Potentially some of those friends may live local to your business, and if you post something interesting, the hope is that they will also share the post with their friends (this is called REACH).
Now imagine that one of those people needs to use the services of an Estate Agent, and they have seen interesting, newsworthy articles coming from your page…? I wonder who might spring to the top of their mind first? Your estate agency!
This type of marketing is so quick and so fast and it’s relatively inexpensive (especially compared to advertising on property portals), so why would you not be doing it? Facebook allows you to target an audience to minute detail, not only age, sex, demographic but also interests, behaviours and if you get your Facebook Pixel sorted, a mirror audience of the people who visit your own website. You can ‘boost’ posts you have made on your newsfeed, you can also post specific ads to an audience of specific people, not your friends or their friends, but people you want to target. If you have a job ad, post to people who are ‘job hunting’ ‘looking for a job’ ‘attending job fairs’ etc. You really can make the audience quite specific (provided it is big enough for Facebook guidelines). If you are showcasing a property suitable for first-time buyers, you can target a ‘first-time buyer’ audience, it’s simple to do! You can also set up different audiences, so that next time around you have them ready to go!
Social media sends traffic to your website and you can track it easily. If you put ‘links’ into your social posts to drive people back to your website you can shorten these (ideal for Twitter with its character limit) and track them using programs such as bit.ly or owl.ly. These backlinks are really important for your website ranking and Google will start to push your brand up the search pages so that when someone searches for an estate agent, not only will they see your website listed, but your Facebook or social media platforms too. By the way, Facebook is a huge website, for Google, it will be considered one of the highest websites for having backlinks to your own website, so you really do need to be posting on it. If you have a great website framework (such as WordPress) you can easily add a “landing page’ so that your specific Facebook ads take people to a perfectly designed page to capture their interest and their details.
Social media is instant so utilise it for urgent news. If you have a brand new property listing that you want to let or sell and you know it will be popular, share it immediately. If you don’t have the details prepared, you could do a quick video on your phone and explain about the property and direct your audience to get in quick before it goes on the ‘open market’. This is going to be far more successful than waiting for the details to be prepared and just linking a property to your page. If you are posting properties it is prudent to have a good angle, rather than just filling up your page with listing after listing because the majority of your audience is unlikely to be ‘searching’ for a property at the moment, but they will be at some point. If you can find a great angle to grab everyone’s attention, a beautiful view, an amazing kitchen, a roaring fire or somewhere where a celebrity has lived, it works well, along with the ‘get in quick before it goes’ angle. It is also great to talk about the overall property market, as that has an appeal to people who are moving but also those who aren’t moving. Explain about the most popular roads or developments, where’s good to buy! Can you join forces with the local schools and run a competition with them, or participate in an event, such as their Easter Fete or Summer Fayre? That way you will have lots of interesting local news to talk about, and a lot of local people who will be interested in what you have to say. There is a good reason why local resident Facebook groups have large followings; because local people are interested in local news. You should aim to make yourselves known as the local experts, the property people, the ones with their fingers on the pulse of local news. That is how you build engagement and how you get your brand out into the community.
You can find out what is happening in the world in the fastest time on social media. People will post on social media the moment something happens, so you can find out everything you wish to know, and what people think about it. Remember that it is the place where people ‘talk’ and if you have done a good deed or a great job, people will talk about it. Likewise, if you have done a bad job, they will be on it in a shot. It is important to voice your opinion too, but it’s a company page so be professional and keep arguments ‘off-line’ wherever possible. If you genuinely want to hear what your audience wants, get on social media and start listening. And to be really “avant-guarde” how about asking your actual clients to like your social pages? The number of agents I chat to who never even mention social media to their customers is astounding!
It is a ‘social’ platform and Facebook is about ‘people’. Please make sure that you are actually engaging and having conversations with your audience. People will be delighted to think a company is listening to them and if you actually engage with them and talk about what they want to talk about, you will quickly start to develop a relationship. Be the person behind the brand and not just a brand. Companies who try to use social media as a brand platform will fail. Show people’s faces, your face, not your logo or dull commercial adverts. Facebook works particularly well if you showcase people, your team, your customers, pets, babies etc. Just make sure that you are using social media as though you are having a friendly conversation with your audience, use emoji’s and gif’s and be human. If you can do this well, the results will be huge.
At JP Gardner & Associates, we work very hard to ensure our client’s social media platforms resonate with the local people and we measure and monitor the post engagements so that we are always learning and improving for you. Our service is bespoke, to each individual client, we do not post articles across a variety of clients, everything we do is based on your specific audience needs and wants, to make you stand out from the crowd. You will not be disappointed!
Check out our packages here or contact me for a chat on 01923 627777.
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Jane Gardner
I work all over the UK with various business owners, dedicating my creative and expert property knowledge from 35 years in the industry. I am a Level 4 ARLA Propertymark examiner, I sit on the board of Agents Giving Charity and I love everything property related! I can be contacted on 01923 627777 or by email to jane@social-angels.co.uk
