What were 53 million people in the UK doing in Jan 2021?

Actively using social media, according to the Statista Research Department publications 2021.

Social media has created an immense opportunity for estate agents, landlords and letting agents to access a far greater audience, quicker than ever before and all for free.

The industry is adapting to changes in consumer behaviour and looking to capitalise on the amount of time that prospective buyers and vendors spend in the digital environment.

I spend a large amount of time talking about having a bespoke social media solution…using social media to get the brand out there

Here’s how to be ahead of the game and utilise social media far beyond your competitors…

Top five social media marketing strategies:

1. Use plenty of videos

Why?

Sales listings with videos receive on average 31% more leads and 36% more views than those without.

Professional looking videos will grab and hold attention, emotionally engage the receptor, build consumer confidence, increase chances of getting shared and be a lasting memory!

Video appears in 70% of the top 100 search result listings, so using video to promote your business creates huge SEO advantages.

How?

Unique, fancy videos can be really expensive and although they have their place in marketing, doing this for the majority of listings just wouldn’t be feasible.

Great news … Instant Property Tours have now made it cost effective to market all your listings through video tours. Create 3 different video tours for each property within minutes. Why 3 videos? The portrait video is perfect for mobile use (social media sites and networks), the landscape video is best suited for the property portals, in-house video walls, YouTube etc and the snappy teaser video is ideal for initial attention grabbing (Facebook, Instagram and so on).

Instant Property Tours create engaging video tours that display your brand throughout and can be customised with a good choice of themes and colours to compliment.

Instant Property Tours minimal cost and rapid, simple setup means any property video tour can be ready for display in your shop window to your social media networks and on your website, in rapid time.

The property market moves swiftly and these instant video tours will keep your sites active and up-to-date.

2. Build your Brand

Why?

To grow your market audience. To establish a bond with the consumers and gain an understanding of their likes/dislikes. To learn which groups to target for your listings.

How?

For most local businesses, reviews and recommendations from existing clients are an extremely powerful way to build your brand on sites like Facebook. Tell your current clients you’re on social media so they know to look for you. This automatically brings a relevant group of followers straight to your pages. Ask your happy clients to give feedback on social media.

Posting property news and local news are the obvious, but also run mini competitions on your social media page to engage the consumers and build your brand. Post about any charity work your staff do and include some human interest posts like staff shout outs.

Here are the top sites to consider using…

Facebook: By July 2021, Statista recorded that there were over 48.5 million Facebook users in the UK. This social media site is a great asset for reaching out to both local and remote audiences. There are many great tools to help a business get the most out of its pages, including paid advertisements. These tools can seem overwhelming but what users value most are high visual content and a responsive, open dialogue.

YouTube: According to the GMI (2021), YouTube is the second-largest search engine after Google. This is used primarily for video sharing. With over 35 million adults in the UK watching (according to CyberCrew 2021), it makes sense to engage in all that untapped potential. There are billions of videos on YouTube so each property video should have the location within its title.

Twitter: “Twitter emerged as the second leading social media website in the United Kingdom as of May 2021” (Statista 2021). Use Twitter hashtags with your listings to hook in and target users like #town #city #location in your own tweets along with any other groupings or features. You stand a higher chance of being retweeted by the city’s followers and therefore reaching their followers too. Be responsive to comments.

Instagram: Tends to be used by the younger demographic so people looking to rent or the first time buyers. Instagram is a very visual platform so you’ll need an artistic photo or a snappy teaser video. Add a hyperlink to your video or picture, taking them to elsewhere for more information. Don’t try to use Instagram like the other sites; it’s for initial attention only.

TikTok: meant for videos 3 minutes or less, can be frenetic. Currently only really used for entertainment but could be one to keep an eye on in the future.

3. Be time savvy

Why?

Keeping up-to-date with so many platforms could fill all of your time if you’re not mindful!

How?

Create a weekly, manageable plan of when to update which social media connections. Be purposeful and productive - it’s all too easy to fall down the social media black hole, we’ve all been there!

Create banks of ideas when you’re feeling creative and only post one at a time. It’s more effective marketing to post valuable content less often than to fill your pages with bland content more regularly.

Respond to all feedback and keep it lively. Social media users want to talk to a person, so don’t be a corporate robot! Respond quickly when you can. Keep it lively and human.

4. Measure your social media success rate

Why?

It’s only working if it’s providing you with consumers who convert to business.

How?

Check out which platforms are bringing in the most business and utilise that data. Analyse how much your brand is shared, mentioned, liked, watched, subscribed to etc. Compare what makes your top two platforms the most successful. Use that data to improve your presence on the other media sites. Check out any successful competitors’ sites and be inspired by some of their techniques.

5. Speed up consumers navigating time

Why?

Make sure your pages are simple and speedy to navigate so the users can find their way to the most appropriate listings for them. Too long and they’ll give up.

How?

Keep it as visual as possible.

The human brain processes images 60,000 times faster than text.

Don’t overwhelm your customers with unnecessary posts. Use the most successful method for grabbing attention and engaging the consumer - videos!

Instant Property Tours boast very low priced videos with a speedy and simple setup. Agents can now afford to maximise marketing with video tours for all listings.

The video tours will support the consumer to enjoy the initial stages of remote house viewings and release the agent to do their more productive tasks.

In short, social media has fantastic potential as a platform for marketing properties, especially through videos. The consumers are already actively using these sites, so create your social media strategy and climb aboard!