Real estate is a competitive industry. If you don’t keep up with the latest trends and keep your audience engaged, you’ll quickly fall behind. It isn’t for the faint of heart, we’ve seen first-hand the determination and resiliency our real estate clients need to have to keep up with demand, make their sales, and market successfully to their intended audience.
So, how do you ensure your target is engaged, entertained, interested, and wants to select your property for their next home, business space, or otherwise? Good. Social. Media.
We truly cannot stress it enough. We live in a digital world, and real estate social media strategy is the quickest, easiest way to get your message across.
Leveraging social media gives your property or development a leg-up from your competitors. It gives you the platform you need to stand out and show your audience how unique, high-quality, and right for them your property is. Social media opens opportunities for….
The list goes on. Consider utilizing social media as a cost-effective, successful way of reaching your audience and achieving your real estate goals.
We’ve been around Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter (or X as it’s called now) for years now. Let’s chat ‘the how.’ How do you successfully leverage the benefits of social media? How do you make the most engaging and unique content? How do you go into all of it with a good strategy? Let’s dig in.
It is quite clear that different people like or relate to different things. If your target audience was 55+ middle-class couples, you wouldn’t market to them with TikTok dances. Traditional overly touched-up interior shots might not be good enough for college graduates looking to move into a hip, new apartment complex in the middle of a lively city. The first and most important part of your social media strategy is knowing who will be looking at and interacting with your posts.
We’ve seen too many developers neglecting the importance of high-quality photos and video. Aesthetic and functionality are huge selling points for any mixed-use or single-family neighborhood developments, for example. To showcase the beauty, be mindful of how sharp your images and video are, how well-framed they are, and how interesting the content is. It may be in your best interest to hire professionals to ensure the eye-catching qualities of your content.
Offer your audience ways to envision themselves in their new space. Don’t just stage a house or an office space with typical furniture, really paint a picture for your prospective buyers/renters so they can get excited about the possibility of their new space. You may even want to style and furnish the same space multiple ways to attract a wider array of tastes.
We’ll touch a bit on the different ways you can go about this below, but highlighting the neighborhood you are in is just as important as your property. People want to know they’ll have something to do outside of their building, home, or apartment. You can get local businesses in on it as well, develop partnerships, and showcase the city these prospective tenants will be entering into.
After a while, your audience will start to get bored of seeing your content if you don’t keep them engaged. Stunning visuals, interesting use of media, varied content — these are all great, but taking it a step further and getting some interaction started will give you a leg-up. Try running a contest, or even showcasing contests your current tenants are a part of. Ask people to submit pictures of their dogs in Halloween costumes, or tag a certain number of people in the comments for a free pair of Apple headphones — whatever will resonate more with your target audience.
This point isn’t so much about creating content, but following up. If your audience is loving your content and commenting on your images and videos, comment back! Let them know you are real, that you care about what they have to say, and that you’ll be there for them if they engage with your offerings.
Nothing is more boring than a feed filled with the same general static images over and over again. Instagram and Facebook especially have evolved beyond their origins, and are more and more keeping up with new platforms such as TikTok and Snapchat. Utilize all forms of media! Video, photo, infographic, graphic images, gifs — you name it, use it. Or at least ensure you are utilizing any and all forms of media your target audience will appreciate.
Social media isn’t just a post here and there, you can utilize paid ad services on almost all social platforms to boost your posts as well as run full-on ad campaigns. This is a great way to reach people in your audience who aren’t following you. If they are interested in what you have to offer, your ads will show up on their feed. Nowadays, most feeds are filled with sponsored content and ads targeted toward the user via the algorithm — make it work for you. Most social platforms also provide you with ways to AB test your ads, ensuring your best ads are shown most often and guiding the creation and optimization of future communications.
Of course make your social media about you, because at first, you need your audience to learn who you are, but then turn it around and make it about them. They want to feel like they are part of your story, part of the property or apartment or otherwise they are moving into or interacting with. Your audience will be hooked by your ingenuity, unique approach to engaging social media, and who you are, but they’ll stick around for the community and connections they build being associated with your organization.
Embodying your brand is the most important point on this list. Be you. Be genuine. Be consistent. Especially if you’ve spent time and money establishing your brand story and visual elements — keep the momentum going in your social media. If you have a fun-loving and playful tone/voice, ensure your captions match that energy. If your colors are green and sand, make sure all elements of your graphics match those colors.
Finally, one of the most important things on this list….have a plan. Don’t go into your social media strategy winging it. Having a plan will ensure you are getting the right messages out to your audience at the right time. Even at AOR, we have a detailed content calendar as far as three to six months out at a time. This ensures we have a variety of content, we are staying true to the time of year, and we’re engaging our audience effectively.
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The tips above should get you where you need to be, but below are a few ideas to get you started. Whether you’re attempting to sell a move-in ready home in your development neighborhood or you want to let your prospective tenants know about the neighborhood their mixed-use facility will be in, there is a way to get that information to your audience.
Here are some examples from our client, Koelbel & Company, to help with your inspiration:
Social media. It can be both terrible and fantastic all at the same time. But for marketing? It’s an amazing tool, and one we highly suggest you use and use wisely. Hopefully, this insight has given you some food for thought. Maybe you’re just getting started, or maybe you’ve been on social media for a while and are looking to refresh your tactics — the above list of tips and ideas should get you moving in the right direction.
As always, if you have any questions or want to know more, give us a shout. Check out our real estate development work to see how some of our strategies have worked in the wild.