How to Increase Your Engagement Within Your Own Network

This is a sponsored post in collaboration with Agentology. 

There’s no denying that social media has been a focal point for success within the residential real estate industry. We’ve discussed before the importance of building brand awareness within real estate, and given the fact that 90% of Americans go online to shop for property, it’s worth utilizing social media to meet potential clients within this popular space. Other agents are certainly using social media to do so, as 87% of marketers rank more exposure for their businesses as the primary benefit of their social media efforts.

Using social media insights allows you to measure the success of your efforts, giving you the tools to optimize your social media strategy. The question you need to answer is – are you trying to get engagement or cast impressions?

While the answer essentially depends on your goals, each has their pros and cons.

Impressions vs. Engagement

Digital impressions refer to how many times your post, tweet, or other content is served up to your target audience. Impressions don’t take clicks into account.

Engagement, refers to shares, retweets, likes, comments, and clicks. It’s the measurable interaction with your online content. The better your content is, the more likely your audience will engage with it.

Additionally, the more impressions you have, the higher the visibility of your content across people’s feeds and timelines. Greater visibility means more opportunities for your content to be shared across networks and that means more potential clients for your real estate business.

It’s a simple snowball effect.

When we consider that, according to Wordstream, 51% of Instagram users access the social media platform every day, and 35% look at it several times a day, just imagine how many new prospective buyers and sellers you could reach.

So, just how do you increase your engagement within your very own social media network? We answer that question by breaking down the top 5 ways to achieve this.

Increasing Social Media Engagement

Use Videos

Wordstream reports that 100 million hours of video are watched on Facebook every single day. Likewise, Twitter reports that over 80% of its users watch videos every day.

It’s safe to say that your audience consumes more videos than any other kind of content. In fact, there’s extensive statistical proof  that videos are the future queen of content.  To create and share social videos to boost your engagement, try these tips:

• Use more video! – Duh, the most obvious tip. 63% of marketers use video content in their social media marketing. So entertaining videos, how-tos, and promotional clips are great options for fresh content.
• Keep your video length 1:30 minutes or under.  – The best length of video for Facebook followers is around 1:30. Twitter’s maximum direct upload length is 2:20. You could record just one video and share it across networks.
• Tell a story. – Storytelling style videos are more engaging for viewers, says Facebook.

Tag People

If you’re looking to engage with existing and potential followers alike, make sure you tag them. According to Simply Measured –  Posts tagged with another user (56%) or location (79%) have significantly higher engagement rates. So when it comes to curating your content, this can help present you as an authority figure within the real estate realm and boost your engagement rates. It shows you’ve got your finger firmly on the pulse. Here’s what to do:

• Reference buzzworthy topics and tag other thought leaders in the industry
• Thank the people you reference when you publish your own videos and posts and link back to their content

The point here is that social media revolves around people. Tag your friends, fans, followers, and anyone else who inspires you to build an engaged, interested community. This is especially important in light of the new changes implemented by Facebook in the aftermath of the Cambridge Analytica issue. In the interest of protecting privacy, Facebook has shifted to a more organic, less advertiser-friendly space. Building an engaged community using this organic approach is now essential to achieving social media success.

Get Visual

Wordstream reports that 98% of posts on LinkedIn that have images receive more comments than posts without images and return a 200% higher engagement rate.

Social media and visual content go hand-in-hand. Using graphics or images has some serious benefits for boosting your engagement.

There are plenty of creative options for adding images to your posts, too, such as:

• A behind the scenes shot of getting a property ready to show
• Old photos of sold properties
• Highlighting current properties for sale
• Sharing images from industry events

Additionally, taking advantage of stock photo sites will go a long way to improving the look of your content. Whether you’re creating a Facebook Event for your next open house, or creating buzzworthy content for your real estate blog – professional stock photos are a great touch. There are many sites that offer these visuals for free or only require that you credit the creator of the photo.  Some great resources for stock photos are:

• Freepik
  • Freepik not only allows you to find suitable stock photos, but it also provides PSDs (Photoshop), Vector files (Graphic Design), and icons. All of this is hosted and most are free for download, provided you that you give authorship credit.
• StockSnap
  • While it doesn’t possess as large or varied collection of stock photos as Freepik, StockSnap has a much cleaner aesthetic and organization. It offers you the ability to search for your photos by category as well. The nice part about StockSnap is that you can use their photos without credit attribution (unlike Freepik).
• Hubspot
  • While not a traditional resource like the other options, this article by Hubspot highlights the importance of finding the right sites for stock photos, as you can get into a spot of trouble if using something that was falsely promoted as a royalty-free image. In the spirit of avoiding this, this Hubspot post provides you with 500+ images, separated by category.
• Pixabay
  • On the surface, Pixabay looks like a carbon-copy of StockSnap. Yet, it differs in the sense that it provides Videos as well as photos! Also, you have the option of searching for media by a photographer or even the camera used to take the photos/video. As a result, Pixabay offers the highest level of filtering out of the other sites, so even the most discerning user can find the photo/style that fits their needs.

These are just a few examples, yet there are a myriad of free stock photo resources you can use to spice up the visuals of your content.

Let Your Personality Shine

Your audience wants to see the actual person behind the real estate business. So, share some personal information, like your favorite pastime or your favorite home designs, for example. You could even share recommendations on blog posts you find informative (and don’t forget to tag the author!).

The Rule of Thirds

Social media rules dictate that a third of your content should promote your business, a third should share ideas and stories from industry leaders, and a third should be based on personal interactions. A strategy coined by the social media experts at Hootsuite, this methodology speaks of the balance needed to achieve true success.

Can you see how this ties into the above points? If you follow the rule of thirds, you’ll successfully execute in tagging industry thought leaders, allowing your personality to shine and including videos and images to promote your business or listings.

Building stronger social media engagement is a full-time job, but once you establish a happy medium between self-generated content, curated content, and engaging your network, it gets a whole lot easier.

Drive Engagement, Drive Your Business

Social media is amazing for gaining traction. It’s all about your fans and followers and getting to know your network while they get to know you.

Use the tips we’ve discussed in this post to drive more business to your real estate business.

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