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Social media has become a fundamental part of every marketer’s toolbox. Your presence as a brand, company, or individual salesperson is not only expected on popular social media channels, it’s a necessary part of operating your business. You don’t want to miss out when potential clients look to Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Snapchat, or LinkedIn to find information about you, your business, and your services.
One of the main goals for business owners on social media is to engage with an audience. You want your audience to like, share, comment, and connect with your content in hopes of building brand recognition and trust, which will eventually lead to sales and brand loyalty.
Brokers, agents, and other real estate professionals can find success connecting with clients and prospects through active involvement on social media. Just remember that beyond posting, it’s important to respond to comments and to like, share, and comment on their people’s content as well.
What to Share
Sure, you can post information about new listings, open houses, and professional achievements. But you can also build authority by sharing articles related to our industry.
We are lucky to work in an industry with such a wide selection of relevant topics to choose from when it comes to social sharing. For example, on my Twitter account @thatrentergirl, you can see that I share articles a wide range of real estate content. But I also include marketing and SEO tips since it relates to my job and personal interests. You can choose anything from decorating and home maintenance to buying and selling to local housing markets and community information. Share content you have a genuine interest in.
How Often to Post
CoSchedule, a marketing calendar and post scheduling platform, analyzed 14 studies to discover how often you should be posting to social media to get the most engagement. Posting the right amount increases your engagement, but posting too often can look spammy and decrease engagement.
Here’s a breakdown of how often to post per social channel according to CoSchedule’s research:
- Facebook: 1 post per day
- Twitter: 5–15 tweets per day
- LinkedIn: 1 post per day
- Instagram: 1–2 posts per day
Do I Need to Be on Every Social Network?
It’s important to remember that not every social network will work for your brand and business. Consider where your audience is spending most of their time and how you can best connect with them. I personally find success in real estate through Facebook, and I’ve seen agents and brokers successfully utilize Instagram to show off new listings. Twitter and LinkedIn are great outlets to connect with other professionals and brands in the industry, but they might not be best way to generate new sales leads or promote an open house.
How to Stay on Top of Your Social Postings
Keeping up with your posting schedule is a huge task. I remember when I first started in social media marketing, I felt like social posting could be a full-time job. But then I discovered a few helpful tools to streamline my social media outreach.
Buffer: This platform lets you set up a posting schedule for each of your social media channels. For example, if you want to post to Facebook every day at 11 a.m., Buffer creates a calendar for you with time slots for each day and time you want to post to your business’s Facebook page. You can then write all of your posts and add links to any articles you want to share and place them in each time slot, referred to as your queue. This is a great tool to complete all your Facebook posts at one time. Buffer has been a lifesaver for my productivity.
Buffer also has a handy plugin for your browser, so when you happen upon an interesting article online that you want to share with your followers, you simply click the plugin and the link is added to your queue. If you have already shared something that day, Buffer will put the article and post in the next available time slot in your queue. This is a great way to share relevant content with your followers without sending out too much content at once. The platform also offers analytics reports so you can see how your posts are performing.
Quuu: One of the challenges of keeping up with a busy social posting schedule is finding enough relevant content to share each day. You can spend an hour or two a day reading industry-related blogs and news, but if you want to streamline your article selection for social sharing, than this has tools to help. Quuu allows you to select relevant categories to find content that will appeal to you and your audience. You can then connect your Quuu to Buffer, and Quuu will fill your Buffer queue with content to share with your social networks. Quuu also has a scheduler, similar to Buffer, that you can use to fulfill your content posting goals. You can still add your own content and make manual posts for things like new listings or open houses.
SmarterQueue: Working off of a scheduling calendar will help you stay consistent. I’ve talked about the benefits of an editorial calendar for successful content management, and SmarterQueue meets the same needs for your social channels. SmarterQueue gives you a social media posting calendar and lets you select categories for the types of posts you want to share and when. For example, if you want to post five times a day to Twitter, it can get mundane simply sharing five different articles from your Quuu or Buffer. Plus, you may run out of content. Instead, you can choose from various categories of content to share, such as a real estate–related article in the morning, an inspirational message at lunchtime, a link to a current listing in the afternoon, and a link to an article on your blog in the evening. These different types of content will help your social channel appeal to a wide range of interests in your network.
The idea is to spend less time selecting content and posting so you can spend more time interacting and building relationships on your social networks. When you use automation tools like Buffer, Quuu, SmarterQueue, and others, it can be easy to get into a “set it and forget it” mindset, but remember, you still need to log into your social accounts to engage with your audience. You want to respond to comments and like and share other people’s content on your social networks, so that your prospects get the personal touch.
