If you’re just starting to build your real estate business and you’re looking for the most effective way to promote your listings and services, social media marketing is one of the best options out there. As of 2020, there are 3.96 billion people connected by social media worldwide. If you’re hoping to grow your business, there is no better outlet for expanding your client base and attracting attention to your listings.
While many realtors are already making use of social media to boost their businesses, it may be hard to wrap your head around the impact that it can have on you, your sales, and your brand development. Since realtors specialize in sales, social media statistics can provide the numbers you need to visualize its marketing potential.
If you’re in need of a crash course on the benefits of social media, a breakdown of the most effective platforms for real estate, and methods for maximizing your profiles’ performances, this guide will provide some useful figures and offer tips for how to translate that information into a stellar social media marketing plan.
Why Should Realtors Be on Social Media?
Traditional marketing methods may still be effective, but social media is changing the game. With the help of new tech and new ways for people to connect, realtors can spread the word about their growing businesses, find new prospects, and stay in touch with existing clients from their very own computers and smartphones.
In a survey from the real estate blog, The Close, 82% of realtors reported that their primary goal for business growth in 2021 was to improve their social media presence. With more ways to network and market online, realtors are updating their strategies and reaping the benefits. To help you understand the growing hype, here are a few of the biggest pros that social media marketing offers.
Exposure for Your Business
According to a study conducted by the National Association of Realtors, or the NAR, 93% of the surveyed home buyers used online resources during their home search. Of those buyers, 42% sought out contact information for realtors on websites and online profiles. Following those cues, it’s clear that boosting your business’s online presence can help you reach new potential clients and land leads simply by posting content and staying active on popular platforms.
If you’ve been relying on print marketing or referrals to build your brand, you may be limited only to your local client base and get less exposure for your listings. If you post online, you can reach a much broader audience and create a buzz around your business with far less effort. Further, posting properties and promoting your current listings can help interested clients find the homes of their dreams and, by extension, hire you to complete the buying process.
Generate More Leads
On that note, The Close also reported that 44% of the surveyed real estate agents gained new clients from social media posts. In addition to the increased exposure provided by popular social media outlets, most platforms make it far easier for potential clients to get in touch with you.
Realtors can identify and connect with leads through comments, private messages, and groups on almost every social media platform. These additional avenues for communication make it far more convenient for realtors to follow up on a lead’s interest and for leads who may not be familiar with realtors’ services to seek more information.
The NAR reports that 93% of the buyers who participated in their survey did online research before deciding on a home. Compared to the 57% of buyers who actually attended an in-person open house, it’s evident that online resources are outperforming traditional real estate marketing methods. To make sure that more leads find and follow through with your business, you have to make sure that your contact information is readily available on the most popular online platforms.
Interact with Your Clients
While social media is useful for landing new leads, it’s also a great resource for interacting with your former and current clients. Maintaining a positive relationship with your clients is a good business practice that every realtor should uphold. With so many means of communicating via social media, it’s easier than ever to stay in touch and stay relevant.
To build your relationships with current clients and ease the buying process along, you can keep up with one another on social media or even create collaborative groups and message boards to share information that is relevant to your project. For instance, you can create a group board on Pinterest that allows you and your client to add inspiration photos and listings that you want to discuss during your next meeting.
If you are looking for ways to keep former clients close, you can regularly send them invites to your events and post broader content that would appeal to homeowners at any stage of the buying process. For instance, you can share tips on how to maintain a new home or personalize a space. You may even want to check in months after a completed sale to see how the transition is going. If you keep them engaged and show that you care, they are more likely to reach out to you again the next time they need to relocate.
Which Platforms are the Most Useful for Realtors?
If you’re hoping to narrow down which social media platforms are the most beneficial for realtors, the answer is complicated. While Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram, and Twitter are some of the top choices, each platform has its own unique benefits that can help you achieve different business goals.
For instance, some platforms are more welcoming to sales-related content than others. Likewise, some are better for networking with other professionals than with leads and clients. Depending on the effects you hope to see from your online involvement, you can choose to put more emphasis on the platforms that better suit your needs.
Sales-Friendly Sites
If your main priority is to promote your listings, you should determine where sales-driven content performs the best. For this goal, Facebook is likely your best option. Used by 97% of the NAR’s surveyed realtors, Facebook is a staple for real estate due to its versatility and its sales-friendly sub-platform, Facebook Marketplace.
While Facebook allows you to post links to your listings on your page for your followers to see, that isn’t what makes the platform so useful for marketing homes. Users can sell almost anything on Facebook Marketplace, so it isn’t uncommon at all to see listings for homes and rentals. If you choose to crosspost your listings on Marketplace, you can even hide those posts from your page to prevent cluttering your followers’ feeds. From there, you can just sit back and wait for interested leads to reach out via comments, Facebook Messenger, or your usual channels for communication.
While Facebook may be the most logical choice for promoting sales, Instagram and Pinterest are also great options. Instagram has a heavy emphasis on sales that is reinforced by targeted ads and shopping links, so realtors may be able to take advantage of those features as well. Pinterest is another image-based platform that operates by linking users to other pages, so it may be wise to post links to your listings there and let the striking property photos draw in leads.
Community and Group-Building Platforms
The Close reported that 83% of the realtors they surveyed gained new clients via referrals, which can only be achieved by making positive connections with clients and colleagues. If you’re hoping to use social media for its intended purpose–networking–some platforms may be more effective than others for curating groups and getting in touch with the right people.
Platforms like Facebook and LinkedIn are ideal examples. Both Facebook and LinkedIn emphasize community building and outreach, albeit to different ends. For instance, Facebook allows users to create groups revolving around any topic. They may be public or private, but the latter simply requires new users to be invited to the group before they can view content and interact with other members. There are plenty of real-estate-specific groups on the platform that realtors can join to meet other realtors, but some professionals choose to create their own groups with their followers or get involved with groups that cater to people in their areas to build a stronger local reputation.
While LinkedIn may not be your top guess for an ideal marketing platform, 59% of the realtors surveyed by the NAR rely on the platform to make connections and establish their professional reputations. LinkedIn allows you to maintain relationships with former colleagues and clients, network with new people, and share information about your background and the business you’re building. One of the best features on the platform is the ability for your connections to publicly endorse your skills and services, which is a great way to show leads that you are the real deal.
How Can You Maximize Your Marketing Potential?
Once you get an idea of how each platform functions and how they tie into your business goals, you can start strategizing and determine how to get the most out of your online profiles. Whether you hope to increase engagement on your posts, expand your reach, or simply learn more about your new marketing outlets, the following tips will help you use any platform like a pro.
Make Use of Platform Analytics
While every social media platform is a little bit different, all of the aforementioned sites enable users to view stats and metrics for their business accounts that offer useful insight into their profile’s performance. If you want to see which types of posts gain the most interest from your followers, how many new people have interacted with your page since your advertising project, or gain more information on your followers’ demographics, you can check out analytics reports that offer this information and more.
The ability to access this information may be standard across all platforms, but knowing how to use the information to your benefit will really make your pages take off. If you notice that certain types of content perform really well, post it more often. If you notice that your audience is skewed toward a particular age group, try to cater your content to suit their specific needs and interests. If you take note of changes in your metrics and make appropriate adjustments to your posting strategy, you’re sure to succeed.
Follow Popular Trends
Finally, don’t hesitate to take advantage of platform-specific trends or get involved in bigger conversations. Real-estate-related content may be most relevant to your business, but adapting your posts to reflect trending topics can help you reach a wider audience and get your followers talking.
For instance, you may want to utilize trending tags on platforms like Twitter or Instagram to increase your chances of being noticed by new users. As they are scrolling through tagged posts, your profile could catch their attention and earn you more followers. You may also want to comment on current events and invite discussions on your page to express your personal values and encourage engagement on your posts. While some professionals prefer to keep their business profiles real estate-specific, it doesn’t hurt to diversify your content here and there to create some buzz around your posts.
Conclusion
No matter where you are in your social media marketing journey, these tips and statistics should help you better understand the value of each platform and what they can bring to your business. With so many options and resources available online, you can easily create a marketing strategy that achieves all of your business goals and provides even more opportunities for future growth!