When using social media for your business, there are a lot of how-to’s and lengthy guides to help you get started. You may find yourself bogged down by smaller details and overwhelmed by the latest and greatest strategies, rather than empowered and ready to take on the digital marketing world. Fortunately, if you keep these key tips in mind, you’ll be able to conquer your social media marketing fears, and look like a pro doing it!
Here are the four key methods to building your successful social media presence:
1. Define your target market
You may think that you will want to reach as many connections as possible on social media to get the best effect from your activity. However, when it comes to social media, this can make too broad of a marketing campaign, diluting your message’s impact by reaching less ideal people in the first crucial hours when the message is shown to the most individuals. Instead, start by defining what demographics you should be targeting. As an example, you could create a campaign to target to home sellers that are ready to downsize, within your area’s zip codes. This helps give the campaign a focus point, and provides an identity to your real estate company.
2. Use good photos with detailed captions
Everyone knows that good photos and details help sell a listing in conventional channels, but perhaps you didn’t know that the same is true when using social media to market a real estate company. According to Business Insider, there are 350 million new photos uploaded to Facebook each day. Everyone loves appealing visuals, and posts with images are proven to receive more engagement – so you’ll want great images, and you’ll also want them to stand out.
Don’t just post photos to social media platforms. Use a good photo, caption it well and descriptively to market your brand and make those images stand out for your followers:
- If you are showcasing homes for sale, make sure you hire a professional photographer or take very high-quality photos yourself (check out some tips on that here).
- Consider posting team photos, behind-the-scenes glimpses into your work days, client homes (if approved by the client), and fun, relevant, shareable images to go along with each update you post.
When you choose an image to go with your posts, ask yourself: would I share this if I saw it?
3. #Hashtags are the thing
A hashtag is a pound sign (#) often used before a phrase or word to help followers keep up with a specific topic. While they once primarily appeared on Twitter, now Facebook, Google+, and Instagram all allow posts with hashtags, and posts that contain them have a higher chance of being seen by new people if the hashtag is being searched for any reason.
Hashtags are useful when writing about a specific geographic location or when we want to refer to the real estate industry itself: #realestate or #homesforsale. You can also find trending hashtags and use them when applicable to spread your posts’ reach even further. The best way to find trending hashtags is to visit the homepage on Twitter.com and scan the trending hashtag list on the left-hand side of your screen (note: if you do not have a Twitter account, you can visit a third-party site, like Hashtagify).
By attaching a relevant tag to your post copy, you increase the opportunity for visibility, awareness, and growth.
4. Remember the golden rule
Although social media is a great tool to promote a business, it can actually alienate potential clients if you promote your business too much. Social media strategists suggest using the golden rule of 80/20, or rather, that 80 percent of social media content should focus on client interests, lifestyles or other types of updates that can help to engage followers. The remaining 20 percent can then be used to promote your business. This keeps content social and engaging and keeps followers invested in you as a thought leader.
