How do you do real estate and social media marketing for real estate at the same time? Here’s a quick guide to help you decide which social media platforms for real estate are worth your time (and money) and what to do to make them as efficient as possible for marketing your business and communicating with your audience.
- The benefits of social media for your real estate business
- The best social media platforms for real estate marketing
- How to pick the right social media platforms for promoting real estate
- Social media tools for real estate marketing
- FAQs
- What social media platforms do realtors use most?
- Does social media marketing work for real estate?
- How often should I post on social media for real estate?
Simplify Social Media
Management with One Tool
- Manage & reply to comments and DMs in one place.
- Monitor ad comments from multiple accounts.
- Automate answers to repetitive questions.
- Schedule posts to multiple accounts, on desktop.
- Analyze performance and monitor hashtags.
- Keep track of your competition.
- Create or schedule in-depth reports in seconds.
The benefits of social media for your real estate business
Just as with any industry or niche, social media can be a great channel to market your services as a real estate agent or agency.
- Your visibility increases. You no longer have to rely on billboards, leaflets, and posters to advertise your business. By building a social media presence, you can reach many more people, not just locally (and, you know, people move across the country or even the world these days much more frequently), and target the right ones with social media’s personalized content suggestions and ads.
- You can target your content much more precisely. You don’t have to rely only on printed media, which is much harder to target for the right audience. Whether you rely on organic content or social media ads (or a mix), you have much higher chances of reaching the very people who can become your clients.
- You can measure the effectiveness of your ads. So you’ll know – almost instantly, as opposed to print advertising – what kind of content works best and what exact results it brings you when it comes to your real estate clients.
- You can drive more engagement. It’s no longer just about people calling you about specific listings. It’s also about sparking conversations, sharing your knowledge and interesting facts, and getting people to respond, share your content with others, and essentially, make “friends” with your brand.
- You can show up as an expert. And that’s a super effective trust-building tactic. And guess what? Trust is super important in the real estate industry (I don’t have to tell you that.) The more people trust you, the more clients you’ll end up having.
- You can build your brand reputation. Online reviews are your best friend. People like hearing about your services from others who are happy clients rather than from you as a brand. And collecting reviews that are available to everyone often means additional (free!) advertising in one of its most effective forms.
- You can generate leads at a wider scale and in a more cost-effective way. Think about a social media ad displayed to thousands of potential leads as opposed to printing thousands of leaflets and leaving them for random people to find them. Social media wins, hands down.
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The best social media platforms for real estate marketing
Which social media platform turns out the best for your real estate business depends on several factors, including your target audience and where they hang out online, your niche, and even your location. But here are some of the most popular social media networks for real estate that you need to consider for your social media strategy.
1. Facebook
Facebook is super popular among real estate professionals – though these days, it’s mostly the ads that help them reach the right audience. By being active on your Facebook Page, you can do things like:
- Connect with potential clients using Messenger
- Use lead ads to capture contact details from prospective leads
- Use Facebook events to promote local events like open houses or online events like webinars
- Network in Facebook groups (or even create your own group for people buying and selling properties in your area)
- Add photos and videos of properties for sale, letting people engage in the comments.
2. Instagram
Instagram is a visual platform, so it’s the place to post photos and videos showing properties for sale.
- Create photo/video carousels to showcase your listings
- Record Stories and Reels of home and apartment tours, letting people see all the interesting details
- You can even walk them around the neighborhood
- Or do an Instagram Live from inside a place you have for sale
- Obviously, you can also use Instagram ads to reach people outside of your following
- And you can connect with people directly in the DMs, answering their questions and concerns
- Plus, with the interactive tools in Instagram Stories, you can publish polls, ask questions, or ask people to ask you questions and then respond to them in your videos. (It’s a great tactic for when you struggle with inspiration and don’t know what to post about.)
With a little bit of creativity, you can come up with formats that are uniquely yours and that people will instantly recognize and enjoy. And yeah, humor is not off the table. Just see this example (which also shows content that’s both funny and personable while jumping on a popular trend that helps content go viral.)
3. TikTok
You should definitely look into TikTok if your target audience is Gen Z or Millennials who are also on TikTok. Plus, if you want to infuse your social media presence with some creativity and possibly humor, just like on Instagram.
- Record TikToks walking people around the properties and their surroundings
- Show what a real estate professional’s daily life looks like
- Jump on popular trends and use popular sounds to help your content reach more people on their For You pages
- Use TikTok Promote to reach even more TikTok users
Due to the nature of this social media platform, it’s better if your content is more educational/entertaining/funny, etc., than it is actually advertising (and there’s nothing wrong with advertising. You do need to add some extra value for the audience, though.)
Like in this example:
4. YouTube
If we’re talking about videos, we can’t forget about YouTube – obviously. And YouTube also offers plenty of opportunities, with longer and shorter formats available.
- Post longer videos for your listings and organize them into playlists
- You can then reuse them on your website or on real estate websites
- Post YouTube Shorts (you can reuse your Instagram/TikTok content) to keep users engaged
- Optimize your copy for people to find you on Google more easily
- Add calls to action to visit your website, get in touch with you, etc.
5. Pinterest
As a purely visual medium, Pinterest can definitely be considered a real estate social media network, letting you post and organize your listings and make them easily searchable. Because yes, Pinterest is great for SEO. It makes your content easy to discover and share with people, who pin it to their own boards for later, making it a great way to reach home buyers.
- Besides pinning listings, you can pin things related to interior design, home makeovers, neighborhood cafes, architectural styles, and gardens… there’s really a lot of topics to choose from
- Create infographics (these are great for Pinterest) with educational content and stats
- Join real-estate-related boards like the Pinterest Real Estate Group Board
6. LinkedIn
Consider LinkedIn especially for business-related real estate, such as office rentals. Your potential clients – businesses that rent office space or people and companies that buy and sell properties – are there, and you can reach them with helpful content and offers.
- Post client success stories
- Include educational content, for example, on selling properties or what to watch out for when looking for an office space
- Optimize your LinkedIn profile so the right people can find you.
- Join and engage in real estate-related groups on LinkedIn.
7. Google Business
Though you might not be thinking about it as a real estate social media network per se, it’s definitely the place to be if you’re a realtor or a real estate agency. But it’s so much more than just your location on Google Maps.
- Add helpful educational content and your offers and listings on your Google Business profile
- Collect and respond to reviews from clients
- You can now also share content from other social media networks to make it more of a multichannel experience and showcase different kinds of content
The added value of keeping an active Google Business profile is that it will positively impact your local SEO results, possibly sending more real estate clients your way.
How to pick the right social media platforms for promoting real estate
There are several factors you should consider when deciding on the real estate social media network you want to spend your time on. Here are a few of the most important ones:
- Find out where your prospective clients hang out. This will depend on things like their age and preferences, as well as your niche and specialty. You don’t have to be everywhere. But you should be where they are looking for real-estate-related content.
- Consider the advertising opportunities. Most social media platforms offer advertising options, so determine which makes more sense for your business.
- Decide on the type of content you can – and want – to create. Do you have the resources to record elaborate, aesthetic videos for YouTube, more behind-the-scenes, raw content for TikTok or Instagram Stories, or maybe carousel posts for Instagram?
- Follow your competitors and analyze what they’re doing and where – and how their content performs.
- Use social media analytics to see what actually works back your decisions with data and insights.
Social media tools for real estate marketing
Platforms like NapoleonCat include tools that will make social media marketing and customer service much more manageable (you’re a real estate agent, after all, not a marketer, right?)
- Social Inbox – This is the place where you can collect messages, comments, and reviews from all your social media accounts. It’s super helpful when you run a real estate agency and get lots of engagement on your profiles that’s difficult to keep up with as your agents are busy doing their jobs on-site.
- Auto-moderation – To automatically reply to frequently asked questions – for example, about the price of a specific listing, viewing hours, etc. You can set up different versions of responses based on keywords and save yourself a considerable amount of time (that you don’t have. 🤡)
- Publisher – To schedule your carousel posts, Reels, and TikToks (and even Google Business posts) in bulk and ahead of time in a publishing calendar. Again, this saves you time posting when you’re busy selling property, but it also makes it easier to recycle content across different real estate social networks.
- Analytics and reports – to regularly monitor your social media performance, including your competitors, and adjust your social media marketing strategy based on what works best for your business and your audience.
We highly recommend you test NapoleonCat for free – no credit card required 😉
Simplify Social Media
Management with One Tool
- Manage & reply to comments and DMs in one place.
- Monitor ad comments from multiple accounts.
- Automate answers to repetitive questions.
- Schedule posts to multiple accounts, on desktop.
- Analyze performance and monitor hashtags.
- Keep track of your competition.
- Create or schedule in-depth reports in seconds.
FAQs
What social media platforms do realtors use most?
Wondering what is THE real estate social media network?
According to a study by the National Association of Realtors, 89% of realtors use Facebook, followed by Instagram (59%) and LinkedIn (53%.)
Does social media marketing work for real estate?
According to the same bit of research, 63% of realtors use social media to post listings. Given that 99% of millennials search for homes online before they turn to physical listings these days, we can safely say that you can’t afford not to be on social media with your real estate business.
How often should I post on social media for real estate?
There’s really no hard and fast rule for this – it will depend on the social media network, your audience and its preferences, and – let’s not forget – the resources you have. Plus, things like whether you’re running any social media campaigns. A Facebook ad that keeps popping up might often do more than several organic posts seen by a fraction of your audience.
Your best bet to find out your ideal posting frequency is to dig into your social media analytics and start from there. But if I were to generalize, you should be looking at posting several times a week, at least.
(Sounds like a lot of work? Check out how NapoleonCat can help. 👀)
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