The real estate marketer’s guide to:
SOCIAL MEDIA
Table of contents What’s in this guide? ����������Page 3
Instagram ������������� Page 31
Some do’s and don’ts for social media ���Page 4
Google + �������������� Page 35
Facebook �������������� Page 5
Image dimension cheat sheet ����� Page 37
LinkedIn �������������� Page 13
Tools and links ������������ Page 38
Twitter ��������������� Page 20
100 free social posts ��������� Page 39
Pinterest �������������� Page 27
What’s in this guide? 1 out of every 4 people in the world uses social media to communicate, share, and get information about the world around them. It’s safe to say social media is here to stay, and if you’re not using it to promote your brand to potential customers, you’re missing out. But where do you start? Every social network is different. Some are completely visual, while others promote conversation between users. It can be overwhelming to learn the differences between them all, let alone plan out your marketing strategy and find time to actually implement it. We’ve put together a complete guide to the major social networks real estate professionals should be using: Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, Pinterest, Google+, and Instagram. This will give you an overview of each network, a game plan for optimizing your profile and posting content, and some quick tips for getting the most out of each network in the least amount of time.
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Some do’s and don’ts for social media Post varied content. If your Twitter feed is nothing but listings, you’re using it wrong. Use a social media management system. This will help you post around the clock. Be a real person! People want to work with other people, and social media is the perfect avenue for connecting on a personal level. Reach out to others. Engaging with potential clients and other pros helps build valuable
Don’t only post your listings. If that’s all followers wanted to see, they would go to your website. Don’t let your account go stagnant. If you only tweet once a month, people will unfollow you. Don’t overshare. Resist the urge to post anything spiteful or controversial to your page. Don’t quit. Building your social media presence is a process. But we’re here to give you some tips that will speed it up.
connections beyond a “follow” or a “like.”
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Overview The big kahuna of all current social media, Facebook boasts more users than any other networking site. About 1 in 6 people on the planet use it! Facebook is built on conversations. Liking, sharing, and commenting on posts ignites engagement between you and your friends.
1.28 billion monthly active users 72% of online adults use it at least once a month
It’s important to realize you’ll have a personal “profile,” but you can also
You should post 5-10
have a company/business “page.” A company Facebook page is one of the
times per week
easiest ways to connect yourself to your local community, and is a little more professional than trying to become “Facebook friends” with every single person in your area.
Photos get 53% more likes and 104% more comments
Like every social network, Facebook is highly visual, so posts with pictures or videos will get the most engagement. Posts with questions also see more interaction, with 100% more comments than the average text-only post. If you’ve used this site before, you know: people like to express their opinion on Facebook.
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What to do First, you have to decide if you’ll be primarily using your personal profile or your company business page to connect with people on Facebook. Some people prefer using their personal profile mostly for family and close friends, and leave the business and client connections to their company page. However, some agents use their personal profile to make business connections. If you decide to do this, you should make extra effort to keep it professional. You should be sure to: • Use a professional looking headshot • Make your contact information easy to find • Mix up your posts – don’t just post listings • Avoid posting on controversial topics that might offend others • Make updates often to reach more of your contacts
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What to do Company page Your company’s page is your professional representation on Facebook. To see your content on this page, a user simply has to “like” the page, instead of sending a friend request. This page represents your brand, and is a great marketing tool for showing your company’s knowledge and personality through quality content. A company page should be a balance between sales-related posts like listings, and other content that draws engagement. So what else should you post? • Company parties
• Local shops
• Real life pictures
• Eye-catching interiors
• Holiday festivities
• Before and afters
• Great home pools
• Featured listings
• Local news
• Home improvement
• Market conditions
• Funny pictures
• Local restaurants
• Open houses
• Home decor
• Snazzy exteriors
• Home renovations
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What to do Community engagement page In addition to a company page, many brokers choose to have a second Facebook page that targets those in the local community who may not be looking to immediately buy or sell a house. This page could be titled “365 Things to do in [Your City]” or “Living in [Your City]”. This type of page takes an indirect approach to marketing your brand to the local community by showing you’re the local expert through quality content. This page should focus on local events, attractions, restaurant reviews and specials, businesses, and news. For a broker, it could be beneficial to have a page like this that all agents can contribute to by sharing links and posting photos from the community. This divides up the responsibility and helps add a variety of content. You’ll also be casting a much wider net than you would with just a page dedicated specifically to your company.
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Quick tips Once your company page reaches 30 likes, you’ll have access to Facebook Insights. These data and charts provide information about your page’s performance. These are the two most important areas to pay attention to that can really impact your content and engagement. Posts This area will show you your best performing posts by tracking the amount of engagement each one received by most likes, comments, and clicks. By tracking this, you’ll see what types of posts your audience responds to best, and which they didn’t interact with as much. Once you find this out, you’ll be able to turn out the best content to your fans. Under the Posts tab, you’re also able to see when your fans are online. You want to know when your fans are online to know the optimal time to post to receive the most engagement. People The purpose of this tab is to break down the demographics of your fans. This will let you tailor your marketing campaign to the right age, gender, and location. You can view this as your fans, people reached, and people engaged. You should be most concerned with the people engaged as they are the most likely to turn into leads.
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More quick tips Utilize the scheduling tool. When you write a new post, there will be a small clock icon in the lower left corner of the status box. Click this to schedule posts in advance and stay on top of your updates.
Share posts from local businesses. Facebook is great for engaging with local restaurants and shops. If they offer a coupon or discount, share it to your fans. This will help build your reputation in the community, and they will appreciate the publicity to a wider audience.
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More quick tips Consider “boosting” important posts. Without tons of constant engagement on your Facebook page, your posts aren’t going to actually reach a high percentage of the people who have “liked” your page. Unfortunately, the quickest, most effective way to get more eyes on an important post is to use Facebook’s paid method of “boosting” a post. You can target it however you’d like, and decide what kind of budget you’re willing to put towards it. It’s important to remember that not every post is boost-worthy! Only boost posts that have real potential to generate leads. Example: The page for our free app, RE:Focus Analytics, has around 800 likes, but this post only reached 143 of them.
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Overview Of all the social networks out there, LinkedIn is probably the most “professional.” It’s used more for actual networking than any of the others. It’s a great place to connect with other professionals, and build business relationships. You’re less likely to strike up discussions with current or potential clients, but that’s okay, as long as you know that going in.
187 million monthly active users 2 people join LinkedIn every second There are over 2 million groups on LinkedIn where
It can be a great asset for brokers looking to recruit agents. You can
professional conversations
actually post jobs and get applicants all through LinkedIn, (although it
are happening
can cost money).
You should post once a day
LinkedIn also has great SEO. When someone Googles your name, your LinkedIn profile is usually one of the top results.
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What to do First thing’s first. Get your personal profile completely filled out. Make sure to include all the relevant information including experience, education, skills, a professional headshot, interests, contact info, web address, other social media accounts. Create a company page for your business. (Click here to get started.) Put in your company name and e-mail address, then go through the steps that follow. Just like your personal profile, you’ll want to make sure you include all the necessary information. These can be an important part of your overall SEO strategy. The more inbound links to your website, blog, etc. the more traffic and better SEO you’ll see. Join groups! There are over 2 million to choose from. For example, the “Real Estate Professionals Referral Group” would be a good start. The connections you make here can end up paying off big time. Plus, there’s often valuable discussion, tips, ideas, and feedback within groups.
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What to do Make connections with as many professionals as you can. And not just ones you already know. Use LinkedIn to expand your professional network. Look for other agents, brokers, mortgage pros, inspectors, appraisers, developers, and the list goes on. Unlike Facebook, your LinkedIn connections won’t be viewing your summer vacation photos — they’ll be seeing your business-related activity and could be sending a referral your way any minute. Endorse people (and ask for endorsements). Endorsements are LinkedIn’s way to show that your peers appreciate and approve of your skills. The best part is that it can be as quick and easy as one click. LinkedIn does a good job of automatically suggesting endorsements that require nothing but a click from you, and usually result in an endorsement coming back your way.
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What to do Ask to be “recommended.” Recommendations are much more in depth than endorsements, and carry more weight. This feature allows you to send a message to your contacts asking for a recommendation, which they can write and submit fairly easily, but will take them more time than just clicking “endorse.” These should be targeted to people you’ve worked with and had a very positive experience in helping. To do this, click on your profile, hover over the little arrow next to Edit my profile and in the drop-down, select Ask to be recommended. You can then create your message and choose who you’d like to send it to.
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Quick tips Use the “add connections” feature. This lets you import and quickly add contacts instead of searching for them one by one. Keep posts relevant, helpful , and (mostly) industry related. Leave your cat pictures for posting on your Facebook instead. Keep an eye out for “long form publishing.” According to LinkedIn, this feature should be rolled out to everyone soon, and allows you to write articles/blog posts within LinkedIn that become part of your profile and are shared with your network, groups, etc. It’s great for SEO and gets lots of exposure. (Hint: You should still post on your blog!) Use a (recent) professional photo. LinkedIn is not the place for your muscle-flexing mirror selfie. Use a headshot that will help someone actually recognize you when they meet you in person. Post once a day, every day. This establishes your presence and shows that you’re active. Again, you can use tools like Hootsuite to schedule posts ahead of time.
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More quick tips Add video for more engagement. If you have a company or “about us” video, add it to your company page. Videos generally have higher engagement than any other media. Look into LinkedIn ads. You may love the fact that social media is free, but there’s also something to be said for the powerful targeting that’s available with advertising on networks where people are browsing by choice, and are already in the mindset to engage. Use share/follow buttons or embed your profile on your website. LinkedIn lets you add a “share” button, a “follow” button, or embed your member or company profile with their pre-built plugins. Just visit http://developer.linkedin.com/plugins to get started. Claim your unique URL, and add it to your e-mail signature. Go to Profile > Edit profile, and under your picture, you’ll see your URL. Click Edit and type in the custom URL you’d like. It’s probably best to use your name if it’s available. When you have it, add it to your e-mail signature so other professionals can easily click to connect with you on LinkedIn.
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Overview Twitter is a fast-paced social network designed for conversations and sharing. Over 500 million Tweets are sent per day, which means their lifespan is short. While you can get away with posting once a week on Facebook, it’s important to stay more active on Twitter to gain interactions and engagement with your followers. Twitter’s 140 character limit makes it unique from other social networks. On Facebook or LinkedIn, your posts can be paragraphs long, but on
255 million monthly active users Half check Twitter at least once a day You should post 5 times a day (or more)
Twitter you have to be a little more creative with what you write. The short character limit combined with a high amount of Tweets sent every day means the lifespan of a Tweet is short. You should be posting on Twitter more frequently than other social networks for maximum exposure to your followers.
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Know the lingo This symbol directs a Tweet at a certain user. Use this in front of their name to tag them in a Tweet, and this will then notify them that you mentioned them. (Note: These Tweets are still visible to the public.) This symbol helps organize the mass of posts on Twitter every day. Hashtags are a keyword preceded by a #, like #realestate. If you include this in your Tweet, anyone who searches #realestate will be able to see your post, (and other posts with the #realestate tag). This is short for Retweet, or the act of reposting a Tweet by someone else that you find interesting to your followers. The Tweet will show up by the original author with “Your name retweeted” at the top of the post. This stands for Direct Message, the form of private communication on Twitter. Unlike @ mentions, these are only visible to those in the conversation. Unfortunately there is SPAM on Twitter. Just use common sense and be careful what you click on, especially in Direct Messages. If you get anything like “I can’t believe these pictures of you I found on this website!” you should probably ignore it!
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What to do Twitter is a fantastic news source for all things real estate. A quick search for #realestate will pull up thousands of articles and posts about the industry. Use this tool to find informative and influential pros in the real estate industry. However, with the fast pace of Twitter, it can be time-consuming to catch up on a full day’s worth of Tweets just to read a few quality articles. Simplify your feed by making lists to organize who you follow. For example, make a “Real Estate News Sources” list to check daily for days that you’re extra busy. To add one from your mobile device, go to your profile, then click Lists below your feed. Hit the plus sign in the upper right hand corner to create a new list. You can also add them from your desktop by clicking the lists tab as shown below.
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What to do With posts of only 140 characters, it’s easy to get carried away and tweet every little thought. Here are some guidelines that will keep your content fresh and shareable. For a real estate agent, nothing scares followers away faster than constant posts of nothing but new listings. The standard for sharing content on Twitter is the 4-1-1 rule. This was created by Tippingpoint Labs in 2009 and is still relevant today. This rule will keep your content interesting and varied, and will keep your feed from being all about you. For every…
1 self-serving tweet, you should post… 1 retweet from a person in your field, and share… 4 useful pieces of content written by others. Share this eBook!
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Quick tips Utilize a social media management system. Just because you’d like to post around the clock doesn’t mean you need to be on Twitter 24/7. Almost all successful Tweeters use a social media management system to post on their behalf at designated times of the day. Two big ones are Hootsuite and Buffer, which both allow you to schedule Tweets out in advance for maximum engagement with minimal time commitments. Ensure your conversations are visible. If you Tweet directly at a user, it will only be visible to those who follow both of you. For more visibility, it’s common to put a period in front of the @ sign in the beginning of a Tweet, like this: .@InmanNews great article! Follow these users!
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More quick tips Shorten your URLs. Twitter is a great place to share links to your blog and to other content you find on the Internet. However, links can get long. Using a URL shortener like Bit.ly shortens all your links to 19 characters, leaving more room for @ mentions and commentary. Check out Bitly.com. Save the hashtags you frequent. You can save a particular hashtag search that you would like to follow. We have #realestate saved so we can keep up with news and trends in the industry. Simply search #realestate, then click Save in the top right corner.
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Overview Pinterest is the most visual social network. It’s basically a huge, interactive, virtual scrapbook for sharing links and images. Pinterest is a perfect
ďƒ€ 255 million monthly active users
example of why using visual content on your other social outlets is so important. Links will only get saved here with a great visual element. Pins also have a much longer shelf life than other forms of social media like Tweets and Facebook posts. While the majority of engagement on a Tweet occurs in the first 18 minutes, and a Facebook post within the hour, Pins continue to see action for up to a month. Lifespan of a post: Twitter Facebook Pinterest
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What to do The most beneficial aspect of marketing with Pinterest is the high amount of clicks a pin can receive, and also their long shelf life. As with all other social networks, Pinterest works best if you engage your followers rather than just advertising your newly listed properties. The best way to do this is through pinning home decor and living articles that will gain followers. The Home Decor category is one of the largest and most popular on Pinterest. What you should pin:
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Quick tips Utilize hashtags. Pinterest uses a hashtag system similar to Twitter, where users can browse posts with a particular tag. Tag all new listings with your city or area name to increase traffic. Try browsing #realestate for ideas on how other professionals are using Pinterest. Convert your personal page to a business page. The board will appear the same to users, but you will have access to analytics that will show you how many people you are reaching, the number of visitors to your website, and much more. Use a browser extension for simpler pinning. Google Chrome and Mozilla Firefox both have extensions that allow for one-click pinning from web pages.
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Overview Instagram is a highly visual social network, where you can share images enhanced with any of their digital “filters.” Instagram uses a hashtag system like Twitter and Pinterest, where users can easily follow trends. Since Instagram is owned by Facebook, it’s easy to share posts to your timeline. An Instagram photo with a beautiful filter will get great engagement on your Facebook page. You can pre-set your photos to
20 million monthly active users 20+ billion photos shared You should post once a day (or as often as relevant)
share automatically under your Share Settings. You can also upload 15 second videos to Instagram. Though not long enough for a full home tour, they’re great for a sneak peek to show the highlights of a property.
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What to do Perhaps the best way that real estate pros can use Instagram is establishing themselves as a local expert in their area. By using your city’s hashtag and geotagging the location of your posts, you’ll gain credibility in your area. Select Name This Location to type in a geotag for your post. If you post a picture at your favorite pizza place or of a new open house, you can tag the name or address of the location. Choose any of these options to share your Instagram post on other social networks (Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, etc.)
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What to do Your geotagged location will show up here. If you click the location, you can see all other photos tagged there also. This helps your posts get discovered. Your hashtags will show up in the caption at the bottom of your image. If you click a hashtag, you can browse others tagged the same.
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Google +
Overview Often the subject of mockery in the social network realm, Google+ is possibly the most under-utilized social network for real estate professionals. If you’re not using Google+, you could be hurting your search engine
540 million active users You should post once a day.
rankings without even knowing it. Posts to your Google+ profile get an automatic boost in search engines that posts to your blog don’t. Google indexes Google+ posts quicker than outside links, which means you’ll show up in searches faster. Another benefit is that your Google+ posts can show up in Google search results with a small headshot out to the left of the Google link, along with your name. Why is this important? If your post comes up in a buyer’s search, your headshot will make you a real person instead of just a link on a search page, which potentially means more clicks.
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Image dimension cheat sheet Social media posts with images get more engagement. Images can also be optimized for different networks with different sizes. These dimensions show the best sizes for images on each social network. Cover photo:
851 x 315px
Profile photo: 165 x 165px
Profile photo:
180 x 180px
Pins:
Shared image:
1200 x 1200px
Pin expanded: 600px tall
Shared link:
1200 x 627px
236px tall
Profile picture: 110 x 110px Banner image:
646 x 220px
Standard logo:
100 x 60px
Square logo:
50 x 50px
Photo size:
510 x 510px
Cover image: 1080 x 608px Profile photo: 250 x 250px
Header photo:
1500 x 500px
Shared image: 2048 x 2048px max
Profile photo:
400 x 400px
Shared link:
In-stream photo: 506 x 253px
150 x 150px
Shared video: 497 x 279px
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Tools and links
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100 FREE
SOCIAL POSTS! We know mastering social media doesn’t happen overnight. But you can do it, and we’re here to help. We created an “inspiration page” full of 100 social posts related to the real estate industry. We even used our GhostWriter technology to rewrite the post with one click. One more click and you’ve posted it to Twitter. When you aren’t sure what to post, we’ve got your back. Just choose something from our free, expertly curated collection. Click below to check it out! TRY IT NOW!