In the past, you’ve heard about the importance of social media when developing a business brand, finding new clients, and providing virtual tours or open houses.
Now, as the year comes to a close, you may be evaluating your social media performance and creating a social media plan for 2022. You’ll likely consider the classic social media dilemma: Do I focus my social media efforts on organic posts and engagement with potential clients? Or do I put my resources into paid social media advertising to turbocharge my lead generation?
Here’s the secret: That’s a false choice.
Agents should pursue organic and paid social media together, leveraging engaging, authentic, organic social media content to market themselves and their properties — while also pursuing paid advertising on social media platforms.
We know this strategy works: Social media platforms such as Instagram and Facebook have hundreds of millions of users and provide opportunity for direct contact with potential clients. Meanwhile, agents who buy paid ads see positive results, exemplified by our data scientists’ finding that agents who buy Facebook ads through Homesnap receive 2.5 times more leads from Facebook than agents without paid Facebook ads.
That’s why you should approach social media as a virtuous cycle: By creating strong organic social media, you can engage with consumers, demonstrate your expertise, and build your brand. Then, with paid social media, you can generate leads for specific listings and direct more people to your real estate services.
Read on to learn how to create compelling organic social media and why consistent investment in paid social media will benefit your business.
Use EAT Framework for Organic Social Media
The first step to optimize your social media for 2022 should be to burnish your social media profiles with organic content that follows the EAT framework.
The first portion of EAT is engagement. With engagement, agents should focus on regularly posting on social media channels and responding to consumers’ comments on the posts. Agents should also ask questions to spur audience engagement. Consider asking questions such as “carpet or hardwood?” to get people talking about their preferences or “what homes are catching your eye this fall?” to learn about why people are entering the market and the homes they’re most excited to tour.
The second component of EAT is authenticity. By producing authentic social content, agents can tell honest stories about the home selling and buying processes and the real estate market in general.
For example, agents shouldn’t solely post videos and photos of fully staged homes and tours. Instead, consider posting before and after photos, or a video of your open house preparations. This way, consumers see that buying or selling a house is a process, and that you’re dedicated to the work necessary to make it happen.
The final part of the EAT framework is thought leadership. For agents, social media provides the opportunity to display subject matter expertise, which is especially valuable knowledge to share in a complicated time for the real estate market.
Consider the value that the EAT framework provides. For one, social media content that follows EAT principles helps you maintain a relationship with consumers and hear directly what questions or concerns they have about the market. Also, EAT content allows you to demonstrate your own knowledge about real estate, and establish yourself as a trusted voice about the market.
More broadly, following the EAT framework ensures that when people view your social media content, they see a credible, engaged real estate professional. If a consumer sees one of your paid advertisements and later searches for your information, strong organic social media may help reassure them that there is substance behind your advertisements.
With engagement, authenticity, and thought leadership at the forefront of your organic social media efforts, you can develop a solid foundation for social media success.
Invest Consistently in Paid Social Media Advertisements
After laying the groundwork with strong organic social media, you can use paid social media to draw large numbers of leads into your sales funnel.
Our data scientists crunched the numbers and found that consistent investment in paid advertisements pays off for agents. In fact, agents who buy Facebook ads through Homesnap earn 2.5 times more leads from Facebook than agents who use social media but do not buy paid ads.
Agents should consider their needs and bandwidth when deciding what types of paid advertisements to buy. For example, through Homesnap Pro Ads, agents can buy individual Facebook and Instagram ads for specific listings.
But as listings go on and off the market, busy agents may find it difficult to track and manage advertising campaigns for a host of properties.
Instead, commit to consistent, ongoing paid social media efforts. In particular, Homesnap Pro Ads offers Subscribe and Save, which helps agents automate retargeting, the sharing of client reports, and other time-consuming parts of the digital advertising experience.
With Subscribe and Save, you can spend your time talking to clients, giving tours of properties, and performing the other in-person tasks necessary to succeed as an agent — not setting up social media ads.
Homesnap Pro Ads is valuable not just because it delivers leads but because of how it delivers leads — allowing you to leave the digital marketing technicalities to experts and instead focusing on the holistic, organic social media that builds your brand and makes your leads more likely to convert to loyal clients.
Consistent paid social media ads will generate leads. And if your paid social media is complemented with strong organic social media, you will be able to introduce leads not just to a specific property or listing but to an agent brand.
Use Homesnap Pro Ads to complement your organic social media and earn more than twice as many leads from Facebook without breaking the bank or your schedule.
