When reading about real estate marketing on social media, you might get the impression that it’s the end all be all.
Many recommend a regular posting schedule and growing your audience organically, not considering the steady decline of organic reach most platforms have experienced over time.
There are two reasons you should not do real estate marketing on social media, which I will analyze in this article.
You will not only learn in which cases you should not do real estate marketing on social media but also how you can do it in a way to get the most out of it.
Sounds interesting? Then please, keep reading.
Why Should Realtors Use Social Media?
Before we jump into why you should not do real estate marketing on social media, let’s discuss why you might want to do it for a moment.
There are primary and secondary reasons why realtors should use social media.
The primary reason is the same as with all marketing activities – You want to get more real estate clients that increase your revenue.
The secondary reasons influence the primary reason directly and indirectly and usually have to do with increased conversion rates.
Social media fits particularly well when you want to use client testimonials in paid advertising campaigns or posts you publish on your social media account.
The same applies to Facebook like-campaigns and other campaign types that aim to increase social proof.
Why?
Social proof always positively affects converting cold traffic into potential clients.
It is one main element you can use in copywriting to be more persuasive.
The only difference to other marketing channels not being social media is that you have the functionality of social proof built-in (e.g., likes, comments, and shares).
Two Reasons Why You Should Not Do Real Estate Marketing on Social Media
As a general rule, you should not do real estate marketing on social media when you build your whole business on it and don’t own the relationship between you and your potential clients, and when you only bet on the organic reach of the platform.
Using social media as your primary marketing channel to build your real estate business, you make a risky bet.
In general, you want only to use social media to take advantage of their traffic and bring it to your website (what you control) as soon as possible.
Why?
Because when you create content on social media, you are their product, and they are in control.
They can shut you down at a moment’s notice or reduce your organic reach with time, depending on the age of the platform.
So, you want to own the relationship between you and your potential clients or audience and be independent of social media.
The declining organic reach for social media posts is for the following reason.
I already analyzed this situation in my article about which social media platform is best for real estate.
There is this general rule of thumb: the newer a social media platform is on the market, the better the organic reach of your usual posts will be.
The older and more established it is, the more you will lose on organic reach for your published posts.
The reason is that with time, the platform will implement some advertising options and has to reduce the organic reach to motivate advertisers to use the platform to reach potential clients better.
In this article, I created a list of social media platforms and ordered them according to age and organic reach loss based on reports and statistics.
To refresh your memory a bit, I ordered them below from worst organic reach to best:
- Facebook (6 years of reported organic reach decline)
- Twitter (2 years of reported organic reach decline)
- Pinterest (2 years of reported organic reach decline)
- YouTube (2 years of reported organic reach decline)
- LinkedIn (1 year of reported organic reach decline)
- Instagram (1 year of reported organic reach decline)
How to Market Your Real Estate Business on Social Media
You first need to know the type of audience you want to target, select the right social media platform, and run targeted advertising campaigns.
Depending on the age of the platform, you may also include a regular posting routine.
Now that you learned when not to use social media for your real estate marketing let’s also see what you can do to improve your success.
1) Start with Finding and Determining Your Target Audience
You either already know your target audience because you already have years of experience in your niche, or you don’t know it yet and need to find it first.
In real estate, this often comes down to the niche you are doing business in and for how long.
In my article about real estate niches, I discussed that a real estate niche could be determined by property type, contract, demographic/life situation, geography, retail or investor need, and seller situation.
Regarding social media, you will have better chances of finding the right platform when you are less product-focused and more focused on the target audience.
Niches by property type, when your focus has been townhomes so far, won’t give you much information about the target group that usually buys townhomes, but you can find this by researching.
The best niches for social media are demographics or life situations.
Why is that?
Enough data is available to know which demographic group is mainly represented on which social media platform.
If your niche would have only been a particular geographic area, you would first need to analyze your current and past clients and how they are distributed across the different demographics.
But this is still the second-best option since you can use geographic targeting on all social media ad platforms.
2) The Right Social Media Platform for Your Target Audience
Let’s stay with the niche by demographics because it is the best way to approach which social media platform would be the right one to target potential clients.
In my article about which social media is best for real estate, I also analyzed which demographic is mostly on which social media platform.
Here comes the list again:
- Facebook: 25-34 years old (Gen Z and Millennials, source)
- YouTube: 15-56+ (Gen Z, Millennials, Gen X, source). They are pretty equally distributed over different age groups.
- Reddit: 18-29 (Gen Z, Millennials, source)
- Instagram: 18-34 (Gen Z and Millennials)
- LinkedIn: 36-55 (Millennials, Gen X, source)
- Pinterest: 25-54 (Gen Z, Millennials, Gen X, source)
- Twitter: 18-49 (Gen Z, Millennials, Gen X, source)
- Tumblr: 18-24 (Gen Z, source)
- Snapchat: 15-25 (Gen Z, source)
Let’s change this list to one that has a demographics perspective.
While baby boomers also use social media, targeting them, there wouldn’t be worthwhile since other digital and offline marketing channels are likely to be more effective, as I concluded in this article.
Nevertheless, you might have some chances on YouTube since this social media platform has the widest variety of age groups.
If your target audience is millennials (most home buyers right now), you will find them in large numbers on all of the above social media platforms except on Tumblr and Snapchat.
While not yet interesting for real estate transactions, you can find Gen Z on them.
To target the smaller demographic group of Generation X, you can use YouTube, LinkedIn, Pinterest, and Twitter.
3) Running Social Media Advertising Campaigns and/or Growing an Audience Organically
Because of the continued decline of the organic reach of mature social media platforms, I would not recommend growing your audience organically as a primary focus.
With time, mature social media platforms tend to use you, not vice versa.
It doesn’t happen if you find a rising newborn “social media baby” with a fast-growing user base, such as Clubhouse is right now (you can get in by invite only).
This social media app focuses on live auditory communication via “rooms.”
Each “room” has a capacity of up to 5,000 people.
So, unless you already are in Clubhouse, I would use the advertising options the different social media platforms provide and get control over the potential clients you generate as soon as possible. It means collecting their contact information and bringing them to your website.
Generally speaking, on social media, you don’t want to do the same type of advertising as you would do via direct mail or search advertising.
You will need to be more “social,” like when participating in a barbecue with friends.
No one likes the guy that wants to sell the latest life insurance during the first sentence when he introduces himself during a social gathering.
Social media-friendly offers that work better are, for example:
- Checklists
- Swipe Files
- Cheat Sheet Downloads
- Quizzes and Surveys
- Webinars and Events
- Free ungated blog content
Remember the example I made with client testimonials as social proof?
It would only be the attention-grabbing part of the actual offer, the “hook,” so to speak.
The hook’s function is only to get your potential real estate clients a taste of what you offer.
Suppose clients give you a positive testimonial when you find them the right house in record time. In that case, you could use it either for sellers to show that you can sell their house fast or for other buyers.
The offer would need to be quite different depending on your target audience.
For sellers, this could be a “make your house ready to sell” checklist and, for buyers, a webinar about the particular neighborhood you are focusing on.
Getting to the point where you generate leads consistently is done via rigorous testing over time.
Which Social Media Is Best for Real Estate?
In my opinion, finding the best social media platform for real estate would mean finding the best middle ground of the following three criteria:
- Reaching the largest number of the demographics significant for today’s real estate transactions, representing Millennials and baby boomers
- The lowest cost per lead or acquisition
- You still have some chances of growing an organic audience.
In my article about this subject, I concluded that this is possible with YouTube and LinkedIn.
But keep in mind that this is a generalized result. It would be different if would you focus on only one demographic.
So, overall, which social media is best for real estate depends greatly on the target audience or demographic you are focused on.
24 Real Estate Social Media Content Ideas You Can Use
Firstly you want to prioritize a real estate content marketing strategy benefitting digital assets you control and own (e.g., your website, email list, etc.).
Secondly, prioritize the real estate content you produce that you can reuse on different social media platforms.
Despite the declining organic reach, you might still want to organically grow an audience on social media. Maybe it’s because you are not convinced just yet that this decline is a real thing.
Although I would advise against this being your main focus when using social media as a marketing channel vs. paid advertising campaigns, there are 24 real estate content ideas for social media that you could use:
- Property pictures
- Client testimonials
- Client success stories
- Industry and market news
- Polls and quizzes
- Share videos you create
- Share videos of others
- Before and after pictures of DIY projects
- Share blog posts you create
- A video walk-through of an open house
- Contests (e.g., to win a free home staging)
- New listings and properties
- Discounts and special offers
- Renovation ideas
- A personal post (e.g., hiking tours, vacation, pets, etc.)
- Regular giveaways (e.g., home decor for Halloween and Christmas)
- Interior design ideas
- Event coverage (e.g., open houses)
- Share event calendars for the current month
- Pictures of neighborhood features
- Pictures of local businesses
- Home decoration inspirations
- Whitepapers
- Exciting and funny memes
Generally, all these content ideas could also be used in a paid advertising campaign as hooks and/or offers similar to the social media-friendly offers mentioned above, where you will reach more potential clients in a targeted way.
I repeat myself, but even if you have many “fans” on, let’s say, your Facebook page and post content there, you will only reach between 10% and 35% of them (source).
This number might be a bit higher on other social media platforms than Facebook, but you will still reach only a fraction.
If you want to reach most or all of them, you must go down the paid route again with a “boosted” Facebook post, for example.
Suppose you don’t want to fall into the trap of solely producing content for social media (one of the reasons for not doing real estate marketing on social media).
In that case, you want to use the platforms just as “recycle bins” for your overall real estate content marketing strategy for your website and/or blog and other marketing channels (e.g., email marketing).
For example, if you produce written and/or video content for your real estate blog on your website, you can redistribute this content on different social media platforms.
You might also want to read this article if you need some inspiration for real estate content marketing and video ideas.
How Often Should Real Estate Agents Post on Social Media?
There is no specific rule for real estate agents regarding post frequency on social media.
A frequency of 1-2 times per day is most beneficial for social media accounts of more than 10,001 followers. For fewer followers than that, it’s just five times per month.
Some studies suggest a specific frequency is beneficial, and above or below this frequency does more damage than good.
While there is no magic formula, according to this source, several statistics, at least for Facebook, can be safely translated to other social media platforms.
1) If you have more than 10,001 followers, 31-60 monthly posts seem ideal. Posting more will not increase the clicks per post in a significant way.
2) If you have less than 10,000 followers, the higher your post frequency, the fewer clicks you will receive per post.
More than 60 times per month will get you even 60% fewer clicks than posting just five or fewer times per month.
Are Real Estate Social Media Marketing Packages Worth the Cost?
To make real estate social media marketing packages worth the monthly cost, you must know the cost per lead you will pay and the average revenue one client will generate.
Why?
To determine whether you will have a positive or negative ROI.
Different marketing agencies offer different real estate social media marketing packages.
When selecting such providers, I would focus on those offering paid advertising management.
But ensure they have a track record or some marketing key performance indicators, such as the cost per acquisition (cost per lead) and the number of leads they can generate with the monthly costs they charge.
By knowing this performance indicator, you can calculate the actual cost per acquisition for yourself and compare that to your average revenue per client.
The scope of what they offer goes from the simple setup of social media accounts, and engaging with potential followers to all-encompassing marketing campaigns, including content marketing, managing several social media accounts, paid social media advertising, and more.
Many of these providers still have a large portion of their focus on offering regular posting for organic reach, which, as I’ve already mentioned, isn’t that efficient anymore.
Prices go from as low as $99 to up to $3,995 per month.
When selecting such providers, I would focus on those offering paid advertising management.
Ending this article, I will provide you below with five providers that offer real estate social media marketing packages in different variations:
This article has been reviewed by our editorial team. It has been approved for publication in accordance with our editorial policy.
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