Social media has become an inseparable part of real estate agents’ lives. 47% of real estate businesses report that their highest quality leads are generated from social media, according to the National Association of Realtors. Proper planning, timely strategizing, and quality content creation are mandatory to establish a solid social media presence. Social media scheduling is a life-saver when it comes to managing your social presence across channels. Scheduling ensures uniformity and consistency and is time and effort-saving as you can publish across all channels in one click instead of uploading content and entering captions several times.
Top Social Media Scheduling Tools
Once you have decided on what tools to use, it is time to decide what to post, when to post, and how often to post on each platform. To help you strategize a plan and save time, we have detailed what works best for each social media channel below.
What to post: Post local market stats and numbers and explain how it is relevant to your audience. Instagram is a visual medium, so don’t forget to include listing images and videos. People are always curious to know what’s happening behind the scenes, so give a sneak-peak about clients and visuals from the office.
How much to post: At least once a day, but not more than thrice. Alternate between pictures, videos, and stories.
Best Feature: Instagram stories are extremely popular and are used by 500 million people daily. Reels are hot these days. Use these short clippings to provide quick homebuying tips and tricks to your followers
Instagram is definitely the most popular social media channel out there and is a goldmine for real estate agents. Almost 40% of Instagram users have high disposable income levels; hence it is the perfect marketplace for agents. The platform allows you to share attractive images of listings, clients, and the neighbourhood. People care about local stats. However, be careful not to overdo them and bore your followers. Hashtags help you get discovered on Instagram, so don’t forget to incorporate relevant ones on your posts.
Testimonials are popular among real estate agents, so let us take a leaf out of Sephora for that. This testimonial is fun, quirky, and hilariously advertises their product. A post like this once in a while can fire up your Instagram engagement.
What to post: Facebook is the best place to get traffic to your real estate website and blog posts, so include links. Upload images of listings. People love motivational quotes as they provide a quick energy boost during workdays. Also, support your community by sharing and commenting under other real estate agents’ posts.
How much to post: 2-5 posts a day. Thrice a week is a good number.
Best Feature: Facebook events help your audience keep track of upcoming events. You can use them to update your next open house. Facebook will let you give details like date, location, and time of event tell you how many people are interested in attending
Facebook has 2.3 billion monthly users and is surfed by home buyers and sellers alike. Visual posts always generate the most engagement, so include them and tag your brand and contemporaries too during social media scheduling. The first 18 characters of the caption can show up in search results on Facebook, hence use the right keywords. Use around 7 relevant hashtags too for every post.
Facebook users approve polls as everyone has an opinion and is waiting for a chance to tell the world theirs. Zillow tapped into this demand and created this post that flooded the comments section.
What to post: Alternate between listing images, links to blog posts, and real estate websites. Posting motivational quotes now and then will be refreshing for your followers.
How much to post: 5 - 15 times a day, or as much as you can!
Best Feature: Retweets and Twitter chats are great ways for visibility on the platform. Twitter threads provide a fantastic forum for discussing various topics under the sun. Have weekly conversations with your real estate audience to understand their pulse.
According to the National Association of Realtors, Twitter is where the millennials are, and millennials make up 38% of homebuyers. So, if you are a real estate agent without a Twitter account, go set one up and start posting! Since the average life of a tweet is 18 minutes, which is shorter than any other social media channel, there is no limit to the number of tweets you can send in a day. The more, the merrier, is apt for Twitter. When it comes to captions, keep them short, sweet, and keyword optimized. Tweetdeck is an application for managing Twitter accounts only. It allows you to tweet messages immediately or schedule them for later. You can add images, videos, and GIFs to be incorporated into your tweets.
MoonPie goes all out and does not shy away from laughing at themselves in this tweet. Also, do not bother about punctuations on Twitter. Lesson to learn: Don’t take your Twitter presence too seriously.
What to post: Posts listing images, links to your website, and blog posts. Being a professional network, it is the best place for hiring announcements and updates about your real estate business. Posting content around queries and problems your audience faces is going to be beneficial for them. LinkedIn is the place people turn to for solutions, so give answers to issues that are relevant to your network.
How much to post: 2 - 5 times a week. Weekdays only.
Best Feature: LinkedIn articles are longer posts published through LinkedIn’s publisher, and polls are a great tool to learn about your audience’s preferences and feedback about your services.
Out of all the social media channels, LinkedIn has proven to generate the most leads for businesses. This makes it ideal for real estate professionals. While the misconception is that LinkedIn groups are more engaging, posts and articles are shown to get more activity from users. Add multimedia - pictures, slides, links, and embedded YouTube videos to your profile to attract attention from readers.
What to post: Pin pictures of listings and website and blog links on Pinterest. Since 77% of Pinterest users are female, resources for home buyers and sellers, home maintenance tips, and decor ideas would make engaging content.
How much to post: 5 - 10 pins a day.
Best feature: Repinning allows you to share other people’s content. Your Pinterest activity should consist of a mix of repins and original pins. Pinterest’s hidden keyword research tool will help you find the right hashtags and captions that will make your content stand out.
With over 125 million users in the US alone, Pinterest is an ideal platform for real estate agents. More than 90% of Pinterest users say they use the channel to plan purchases. Sharing practical home resources is the perfect way to use the platform. Follow Pinterest accounts that share home buyer/seller tips and start repinning their content. The platform is mainly used outside working hours during leisure time. The key to succeeding on Pinterest is producing quality graphics with the right keywords and hashtags to stand the test of time.
Poppytalk is a Vancouver-based Pinterest influencer with over 8 million followers. Their top-performing board - Entertainment + Fun, contains aesthetic pins incorporating links to recipes, decorating ideas, and party planning pointers.
What to post: Real estate agents can upload how-to videos answering homebuyer/seller queries (e.g., the procedure for home loans, negotiating about home price), market update videos analyzing the housing market trends and forecasts, and neighborhood videos showcasing the highlights of your locality. Listing videos can be made using 360° virtual tours.
How much to post: Post content regularly- once a week/month.
Best Feature: YouTube’s live stream feature can be used to stream live videos during open houses. With the platform supporting 360° videos, real estate agents can use virtual tours to showcase listings.
360° virtual tours are 3D videos created with panoramic images adding text and background voices. They give potential homebuyers a chance to tour the home digitally. Virtual tours show the viewer every nook and corner of the home, thereby giving the viewer an immersive experience. To create 360° virtual tours, write to us at hello@styldod.com.
Real estate listings with videos receive 403% more inquiries than ones without videos, and Youtube is the best place to host your online video content because Google owns it; hence it is the #2 search engine in the world. Videos are given different weightage on SEO, so they tend to rank higher in Google searches than webpages. To get a successful Youtube channel up and running, you need to post quality content regularly. Upload videos weekly or monthly, depending on the length of the videos. Incorporate captivating headlines, SEO-optimized descriptions, and compelling thumbnails. As your channel grows, sort the videos and create playlists for users to stream similar kinds of videos.
Using the above-mentioned social media scheduling tools and tips, you can chalk out a successful social media scheduling strategy to grow and establish your real estate business across the various platforms and eventually generate leads.