At Wordsmithie we work with clients in numerous sectors, including the food, beauty, education and tech industries. Each area in which we work presents different challenges. The real estate industry is no different. Brokers and agents trying to use social media face particularly difficult obstacles when it comes to presenting properties to a targeted, relevant audience. If you specialize in high-end Seattle real estate, for example, its no good to have high school-aged followers in Texas.

Yet, social media is one of the fastest growing methods for agents and brokers to reach new clients. Most people, including those looking to buy and sell homes, are taking to the Internet to find pretty much anything and everything. Thus, having a social media presence is a very good idea. It is an easy way to spread brand awareness and a new way to recruit new clients.

Social Media for real estate

Most brokers and agents struggle to get started with social media. There are so many social media platforms, from Twitter to Facebook to Instagram and beyond. All of these platforms require that your organization post content, in either image or written form, fairly often. So what to post, and when?

We recommend that agents and brokers start with a website. If you don’t have a website, there is little point in starting up a social media presence. Having a simple site built on one of our recommended, easy-to-use platforms is better than having no presence at all. Once you have a website, your social media will complement your website. Posts that you make, if they are frequent and high quality, will drive up your search engine rankings- thus, when someone types in the name of your firm, you’ll rank more highly. Social media can also drive traffic back to your website, so people doing due diligence can easily find you in more than one place. It is always nice to know that a company is easy to find, and has an online presence. It adds to your credibility.

Once you have that website up and running, you need to examine who your audience is and where they already are. Do you work with a younger urban market, or an older rural market? Do your homework and find out where most of the people who you work with are “hanging out” on social media. For instance, those of you working with younger urbanites will find Instagram and perhaps Pinterest useful. If your audience skews older, or more rural, you may find more utility in using Facebook.

Once you determine where your audience is, start slowly but deliberately. Post a few times each week. Make sure your copy is well-written, and that your posts have nice pictures to complement the text.

Our top tips

We often see social media posts that seem to have no real point, besides filling up a social media profile. Many real estate profiles are full of links to various news articles and listicles, or include dozens of memes and inspirational quotes. However, there is little apparent overall point to all the posts.

Social media is a way to tell a story about you and your organization interactively. Therefore, our top tip is to always have that story in the back of your mind when you are posting to social media. Are you trying to sell houses? Then make sure that, even if you post articles that link to news stories every once and a while, you are overall posting about the amazing homes you sell and why you’re the best option for potential buyers. Are you trying to get more sellers to list with you? You might want to post a few listicles about why now’s a great time to sell, but more importantly you want to show sellers why you’re the best agent to list with.

Our work in the real estate industry

At Wordsmithie we’ve worked with real estate clients around the US and the world. Read more about our work in the real estate industry and make sure to tweet us or email us if you’re interested in learning more about what we can do for you and your company.