Social Media Strategies for Real Estate Agents

Social media has become a cornerstone of modern real estate marketing, but just knowing it’s important isn’t the same as using it well. Whether you’re fresh out of a pre-licensing course or brushing up through continuing education, understanding how to market yourself online is essential in today’s competitive market. 

In this article, we’ll break down effective social media strategies for real estate agents and the core principles that can help you grow your brand and generate leads.

Why Is Social Media Important in Real Estate Marketing?

According to the National Association of REALTORS® (NAR®)’s most recent REALTOR® Technology Survey, social media was respondents’ number one source of quality leads in the last 12 months, outpacing both CRMs and their local MLS.

While lead generation may be the most impactful use of social media for your bottom line, it can serve additional roles in building your career. Social media can provide the tools for networking locally, nationally, and even internationally. It can give you opportunities to elevate your professional profile, and in the modern world, it’s the most logical place to build your brand.

That said, social media runs the risk of being a time suck without proper planning. To get the most out of your efforts, you need to think strategically and allocate the time you spend on social media to real estate activities with the greatest impact.

Below, we’ve cultivated some of the best social media strategies for real estate agents to help you do so.

How to Use Social Media for Real Estate Success

While you can find many social media tips for real estate professionals focused on increasing your followers and engagement, we’re going to keep our suggestions anchored to results-driven strategies that are proven effective.

Apply the 80-20 Rule to Your Content

If you’re getting into social media to get results, your first instinct may be to focus on leveraging social media platforms for property marketing.

It’s counterintuitive, but this is a losing strategy. Social media platforms are already cluttered with advertising, and it’s unlikely that followers will flock to you if all you offer is a rehash of their Zillow searches.

This is the principle behind the 80-20 rule of social media: at most, only one in five posts should directly promote your business. The rest should provide value to your target audience without a direct benefit to you.

Of course, all of it is for your benefit – that’s why you’re putting in the time! But only 20% of your posts should promote yourself, your services, and your listings in an obvious manner. The other 80% will promote you implicitly by providing evidence of your skills, savvy, and usefulness to potential clients through helpful and relevant content.

Give Away Your Expertise

No one likes to work for free, but giving away your expertise as a real estate agent can be a great investment to build trust, prove your worth, and bring clients to you.

Buying or selling a house is a complicated business with a lot of moving parts. This gives you plenty of material that is valuable to your target audience, whether they’re new to the process or someone who’s trying to do things better their second or third time around.

Having introduced this concept of giving away expertise, here are a few things to keep in mind. 

• Not all of your “80%” needs to be hard-hitting, substantive professional advice – that’s not practical or sustainable. There are many lower-effort ways to provide followers with relevant and helpful content, including highlighting local businesses, promoting community events, and even sharing the occasional meme.

• Not all of your social media real estate content needs to be self-generated. Pointing people toward helpful articles or resources from others is also great!

• When you do give away self-created substantive advice, don’t give away too much at once. Keep all posts bite-sized. You’ll want to leverage meatier content for leads – more on this below.

• Keep these freebies on a general interest level. If someone asks a specific question, move the conversation to a more personal avenue, like phone, email, or chat, so you can build a relationship and gather more information.

Don’t Forget to Gather Leads

Ultimately, the goal of real estate social media is to gain more clients so you can close more deals. It’s incredibly easy for many professionals to lose sight of this in the race to get more engagement, attract more followers, or go viral, especially since we just told you that you have to limit the amount of direct promotion you do.

“Lead magnets” are a lead-gathering method that’s perfectly compatible with the 80-20 rule. Create a resource that’s more value-dense than one of your normal posts and offer it only to those who provide basic contact information – typically their full name, email, and phone number. 

Examples of lead magnets include buyer/seller guides, market analysis reports, customized property value estimates, and more. Ask yourself what a highly qualified lead would be interested in learning and then design something accordingly.

Hosting webinars or Q&A sessions can also be a great way to connect with qualified leads and gathering their contact information as part of the sign-up is an expected step.

Use Targeted Advertising

Another great way to gather lead information is by capitalizing on a social media platform’s advertising options. 

Social media real estate advertising can be very effective due to the amount of information these platforms gather on their users. This allows you to target your ads to the people most likely to need them, which helps you get the most out of your advertising dollars.

Facebook and Instagram ads are great places to leverage social media platforms for property marketing.

Drive Social Media Strategy with Data

The most surefire way to avoid wasting time and money on real estate social media is to track results and make data-driven decisions about how to adjust your strategy.

This is particularly important with any advertising dollars you spend – experiment with what types of ads perform best, as well as audience parameters, campaign durations, and ad budgets, then go with the options that provide the strongest numbers.

However, you can and should do the same with any lead-gathering strategies you employ. Which lead magnets are most effective? Which topics draw more people in? Try different calls-to-action, headlines, and graphics to see which versions perform best. 

Business accounts on social media sites also make it easy to see which posts perform the best, so you can replicate success and avoid future failures. 

Keep Yourself Informed with Online Real Estate Education

As you can see, staying on top of your game is an integral part of getting value from your social media efforts. Formal education, whether pre-license or continuing education, is an important piece of the puzzle.

As a trusted online education provider for over 20 years, we offer state-approved coursework across the country. Our online, self-paced continuing education courses can help you stay on top of your license renewal requirements while learning valuable skills and information, all on your own schedule, wherever it’s most convenient for you. 

Enroll today!