Chances are you’ve heard that to be successful on social media you need to create a detailed strategy. The thought of first, finding time, and then sitting down to create one is probably overwhelming.

Luckily, there’s an easy-to-remember formula for success on social media, beginning with three building blocks for your brand: consistency, volume, and content. Here’s how to set your strategy in motion without extra effort on your end:

Consistency

We all know the saying, “showing up is half the battle.” We would suggest it’s closer to one-third, and a very important part of any social media strategy. Consistently posting on your social media channels is key to winning; if you want to succeed, commit to posting on a regular schedule. This way you will be able to build up loyalty with followers habitually through posts, and your presence will be a reliable one.
Consistency means more than posting. You want to remain consistent in voice—how do you speak to your followers? Do you have a “brand tone”? Are you serious or funny? Don’t vary your tone all over to see what sticks, but rather, choose a voice and stay true to it.

Volume

Posting the right amount of content should also be built into your social media strategy.   You want to post enough to be memorable but not so much that people stop following you.
Each social media channel is different; Twitter’s newsfeed shows all followed profiles’ posts in real time. This means you see every post from your network in the newsfeed as it’s posted, which makes the number of posts and their timing very important for visibility. On the other hand, Facebook’s algorithm pushes out a specific amount of well-performing content each day, showing you only posts from your network it thinks will perform well based on your preferences; this makes curation of high-quality, thoughtful, and strategically spaced content important when you’re creating posts.

You’ll want to analyze your posts and availability to see what works best for you. Below is a starter chart to begin to plot out your post volume per channel in order to see the highest amount of success on each:

Use a scheduling tool to effortlessly tackle consistency and volume all at once—in a matter of minutes, you could have this part of your success strategy covered for the week.

Content Quality

The third key component for setting up a winning social strategy is having quality content. You can’t just post anything to your account and hope that followers will appear; you need to be thoughtful about the type of information you post and share. What does this mean exactly? You’ll want to break down the types of posts you create into different categories:

• Local real estate trends and information to show your knowledge of the industry
• Helpful posts that keep your audience informed and engaged such as local event news, information about the hot new restaurant in town, or tips on how to enhance curb appeal
• Open house listings and home information to sell your business
• Entertaining posts that are relevant to your professional work, whether event images, humorous real estate tips or memes or others, to keep audience engaged

You want to be genuine but not overly promotional; occasionally sprinkle in self-promotion. Aim to post a majority of informative articles for your audience to enjoy, in order to build follower interest and retention—always ask yourself if you would enjoy reading this content as a casual viewer. You’ll find that choosing a direction is easier when you stop to ask yourself that question, and use the content categories above, in building your strategy.

To easily help put all of these pieces into play, consider using a time-saving tool like Lumentus Social; technology platforms like this one can help you schedule content consistently to hit your volume goals and also easily find and post the right types of content for your audience without any extra searching. Affiliated Better Homes and Gardens® Real Estate network members have access to special discounts for this tool to aid their social media strategy.

Post the right amount of quality content on a consistent basis and you have all three components needed for social media success!