As a result of Tuesday’s publication of Rayner Personnel’s assessment of agents’ use of social media we heard from a firm that specialises in developing social media strategies for agents.
What Mint Content has told us is a useful pointer to how agents could start to approach the use of social media.
Getting social with the right strategy
Instagram hit one billion monthly users in June 2018 and, according to eMarketer’s research, it will have 26.9 million users join by 2020.
Pair this with the fact Instagram is the perfect place for showcasing property images and building designs, it is surprising many estate agents in the UK are not taking advantage of this social platform.
One local estate agency that is seeing success on Instagram is Parrys Fine & Country, who appointed Mint Content earlier in the year to help grow their social profiles.
Launching a strategy
In April 2020, the company launched a new website for Parrys Fine & County.
To drive traffic to the site, a comprehensive social media strategy was employed to grow the agency’s social following – notably Instagram.
This platform has seen growth from around 200 followers in April to almost 3000 followers currently – an increase of nearly 1000 followers per month.
This highlights social media as a key component to a successful content marketing strategy, but, as an estate agency looking to grow your presence on platforms crowded with other agencies, what else do you need to consider?
Get social
Some key considerations for building your social media channels include:
Involve your team and prospects: Personalise your brand and let those outside your agency get to know the personalities within it.
For example, the strategy for Parrys Fine & Country included a Meet the Team video series, where each team member was filmed answering a set of questions.
A 5-minute video was released each Friday to introduce a member of the Parrys team.
These have proved popular, especially on Facebook, with one post reaching over 12,000 people and being watched 3.3k times.
This helped to cultivate greater brand awareness for Parrys, positioning them as a go-to estate agency which potential clients recognise and feel they have a connection with.
Demonstrate knowledge of the area: Some of the most popular posts on Parrys’ Instagram account are the #lovewhereyoulive posts.
Aimed partly at their local audience who are proud to live in such a beautiful place, they also offer key facts to anyone who doesn’t live in the area but may one day choose to buy in.
Be consistent: consistency and reliability are vital components of building trust on social media.
Give potential customers relevant, consistent content and be a reliable source of information.
Be consistent with the amount and times of posts, and your followers will start to look forward to – and expect – your content.
Earn your customer’s trust and they will be more likely to return.
Offer real value
Social media shouldn’t be used to sell. Instead, communicate the value of the solution you are offering.
Think about what your audience wants or needs. They will mainly be interested in property or the local area so offer tips for buying, selling, renting or building property.
Write about the local area; top restaurants to visit; local attractions; things to do with kids etc.
Dedicating time and effort to your social channels – Instagram, Facebook or another platform – will have a huge influence on how people view your brand, so it’s important to consider them when planning your content strategy.
Comments (5)
Social Media is not a “one size fits all” – I appreciate that some companies may have thousands of likes/followers etc. but surely a lot of it depends on demographic of the area. Not everyone wants to talk business on social media.
that said.. we have a social media page, with a decent following compared to our local rivals, but I honestly cannot think of one bit of business over the past few years that has actually come to us because of it. We put a few blogs out there, bit of marketing if you can call it that, not much else… but something goes up daily and gets a few views/reads, shares etc. We have paid “social media gurus” in the past to manage the account and, quite frankly, had more success when we ran it ourselves. Maybe if we all just concentrated on being Estate/Letting Agents, rather than being concerned about how many followers or likes we have things would actually be okay?
each to their own though
Happy Thursday folks
Instagram, Twitter, FaceBook are certainly having an impact on communication and not something to be ignored BUT HEALTH WARNING ……
Anyone who has been on these platforms (all of us) will know the exposure comes with a very big threat to your good name. One single poor communication or lack of, as you will need to respond, can lead to the opposite effect you intended …… BAD PUBLICITY.
There is always one who wants to pick a fight, one who knows nothing they are talking about but insists they do and are very vocal. Made up stories, people loving to have a dig because they are jealous and down and outright lies by some.
Social media can be very demanding and time consuming to the point you may need to consider employing a person just to look after it. Agents have history in some quarters in failing to respond to web site and email enquiries and this multiplies it ten, ten, ten fold. Do not drawn into believing everything you hear from these PR companies who’s sole aim is to up the anti with business for themselves and their customers ….. ‘if you are not in, you will lose out’ nonsense.
Think very carefully or you may have stepped into a pond that you can’t step back out of. What is the risk to your business by not being in? Should you consider limiting the exposure that can have no comeback on you? I know one agent who is all in with social media and the staff say its a nightmare dealing with the hassle it creates and often by eejits.
Shouldn’t this be marked as ‘Advertorial’?
LOL you are constantly pushing what your company does and asking people to contact you on here !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
What an ignorant liar, no-one on here knows what I do.