The social media has experienced phenomenal growth over the last decade, making it one of the most powerful tools for lead generation today.
There is a mammoth community of users on networks like Facebook, YouTube, Instagram, and Twitter. All you have to do is join these platforms and seek out, find, and connect with your band of prospects.
Regrettably, the crowded nature of the social media is also it’s undoing. Now, you have to do more than just posting something on these networks to be able to engage your followers. There are best practices to follow – which are precisely what this guide is about.
Facebook Lead Generation.
This giant network boasts well over 2 billion monthly active users. That’s a huge community of potential customers for your real estate business, which is why it should be top on your list of networks to include in your social media strategy.
Start by creating a business page to start building a fanbase. Once everything checks out, you can begin posting content that you want your followers to engage with. These could be local market updates, selected gossip that may affect the locality, neighborhood news, restaurant reviews and more.
You could use a suitable tool to schedule and publish your Facebook posts automatically to save you some time, but don’t forget to check your page from time to time to respond to comments and user queries.
The form of content to post on Facebook
Articles are great for posting on Facebook. You can always create long articles on popular real estate topics, post them on your website and share snippets of these on your Facebook page with backlinks to your website to drive traffic.
However, real estate is an incredibly visual industry, and people will engage more with videos, images and other visual media than they will with text. Besides, visual content typically gets shared more than twice as much as Facebook posts without pictures.
So, ensure that your posts are loaded with high-resolution images, videos and 360-degree demos of your portfolio and such other useful content.
Connect on high-traffic fan pages
Once you have a Facebook page, you can post as you, or as your page. One way to get free exposure for your brand is to socialize on other high-traffic walls by posting content and commenting there as your business page.
This can be an effective way to drive leads back to your page. Just ensure that the fan pages and groups you are engaging are in your local market and have follower numbers larger than yours.
Boost your Facebook posts
Organic Facebook posts are experiencing declining reach, meaning that only a small percentage of your followers, about 2 to 6 percent, will see your posts at any given time.
However, you can circumvent this roadblock by buying promoted posts to increase your visibility. Remember that the more people you can reach with your posts the more leads you are likely to generate.
Buy Facebook sidebar ads
The other practical way to gai maximum visibility is to run a few ads on Facebook.
Despite requiring little effort on your part because of their automatic nature, these campaigns can reach a very vast audience depending on your budget.
YouTube Lead Generation.
The National Association of Realtors (NAR) reports that 85 percent of real estate customers prefer working with agents that use video marketing.
Property listings that include video content receive up to 403-percent more inquiries compared to those without video. Additionally, you can expect 73 percent of homeowners to list with you if you are using video to market their home.
These are just some of the statistics that give an idea of the value of YouTube to any realtor. Video drives the highest level of engagement and YouTube is video heavy; which makes it an authoritative source of leads.
Begin your YouTube journey by posting a feature video of you introducing yourself to your prospective customers.
Once this is done, you can then start creating videos of your listings, taking care not to saturate your channel with sales pitches. Just like on Facebook, ensure that your posts comprise a healthy balance of educative, informative and sales content.
Your video content can:
- Highlight favorite spots in the locality plus other important neighborhood information.
- Offer virtual tours of new properties and the neighborhood at large.
- Be comprised of aerial videos of attractive properties. Drones will be much handy in capturing these.
Pro tip: Be sure to specify the appropriate video category, and include the right keywords in the video description before posting for purposes of searchability. Also, add a clear CTA, or call-to-action at the end of each video, and include your contact information and links to your website to drive traffic there.
Instagram Lead Generation.
Just like YouTube, Instagram has a massive user engagement potential. The platform reigns in images and video, and hosts 800 million active subscribers.
As a realtor, jump aboard the Instagram bandwagon by creating your business’ account to start leveraging this highly visual medium.
Once you have set up your profile picture and description that’s consistent with the rest of your social media presences (logo, brand color), you can start posting a balanced mix of videos and photos of listings that you have sold. You may also feature any exciting spots or restaurants and other essential places in your neighborhood.
Consider using popular hashtags and featuring testimonials from your happy clientele to boost your reputation.
Twitter Lead Generation.
The procedure is the same with Twitter: you set up your account by creating a suitable profile picture and background image consistent with your brand.
Once everything is set up, start off by following major real estate mavens in your area. Observe the way they tweet and adapt what you can from their style.
Twitter is a platform where you can engage your followers directly and in real time by tweeting and retweeting current information and informative news about your niche.
Also, it helps to get actively involved in as many discussions as possible. Use popular hashtags, and whenever you can, include a link to your website to drive traffic.
Well, there could be a detail or two that we have left out. However, the guidelines we have provided here should be sufficient to get you to the top of your game.