Maximise Your Efforts on Social Media

Social media platforms such as Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, X (Formerly Twitter), Threads and LinkedIn can be a great way for estate agents to generate leads. One thing that remains consistent across all platforms is the vital concept of content, and that is, making sure your content is informative, attractive, and beneficial to the viewer.   

Instead of posting constant property listings, our advice would be to lean towards Education Marketing, in order to provide maximum value to your followers. This could be in the form of offering, ‘Top Tips’, ‘Meet the Team’, ‘How To...’, or ‘Did You Know?’ ‘Interior Ideas’, ‘Countdown-to-Moving Check List’ etc. Post these value offerings in between property listing posts, to break up the monotony of listing after listing. 

Unless you’ve been living under a social media rock, you’ll now know that short-form vertical video is given top priority by the algorithm on most social media platforms.  You Tube being an exception, although You Tube Shorts are proving to be extremely popular and are in a vertical format. 

The main explanation for the favouring of vertical video is, of course, because we look at our social media apps on our phones, and very rarely on our laptops and PC’s, hence why the videos should be vertical. 

Here are some more tips for generating leads from each social media platform: 

Facebook: Facebook is a good platform for estate agents to connect with your target audience. You can join relevant groups, engage with followers, create ads, and create compelling content to help you find potential buyers and sellers so you can start generating more leads. Be sure to create a professional Facebook page that can help to showcase your brand and the services you offer. We would suggest that Facebook is better for B2C (Business to Consumer) target audiences, although some can be for a small percentage of B2B (Business to Business) users. 

Instagram: Instagram is an excellent platform for creating visual content such as images, videos, reels and 24-hour Stories. As mentioned, it is important to create engaging content such as pictures and vertical videos that can help to attract potential property clients. Additionally, you should create stories and keep them constant to highlight any new listings. This will help to attract more leads and help to increase your brand visibility. The Instagram collaboration feature is effective as you can collaborate with other Instagram accounts and both of your posts will appear on your (and their) main grid. As with Facebook, Instagram is predominantly for B2C audiences, however, here at Pattinson Auction, we do have an Instagram account aimed at partner estate agents for our auction service, as opposed to buyers and sellers, so is largely B2B orientated. 

X (Formerly Twitter): X is again, a great platform for your B2B marketing efforts, and for staying in touch with your followers and keeping them up to date on the latest news. As with other social media platforms you should post valuable content such as tips and advice that could help people and keep them engaged. 

LinkedIn: Although we, here at Pattinson Estate Agency and Pattinson Auction, use LinkedIn mainly for B2B content, there is still a place for it as a B2C tool, in fact some would say that LinkedIn is now at a place where Facebook was 8-10 years ago for social networking. 

TikTok: Contrary to widespread belief, TikTok isn’t all dancing and teenagers! More adults and businesses are turning to this extremely popular social media platform to search their interests, as well as to display their content respectively. Estate agents can use TikTok as a powerful tool to reach their desired target audience by easily creating and posting attractive videos showcasing their properties, and other features such as upcoming events, exclusive offers, and so on.  An effective way to do this is to create fun, engaging and entertaining content that appeals to the TikTok audience, such as creating house tours with voice overs and great music, behind-the-scenes looks at the agent's day-to-day activities, or showing potential buyers what the area around a property has to offer. You can run campaigns through the app's #hashtag challenge feature that encourages users to engage with your brand and make referrals. With the right strategy, agents can use TikTok to build their brand awareness, increase leads, and ultimately drive sales. Our Social Media Manager here at Pattinson Auction will certainly vouch for the effectiveness of TikTok, as we have had great success through this innovative platform. 

Threads: Meta’s latest social media app, Threads is arguably a copy and paste of X, and is an extension of Instagram. As with X, on Threads, you can post text, photos, videos and links, and as the name suggests it’s formatted in a series of threads. It’s hard to predict, in this early stage, as Threads is in its infancy, but I would suggest that businesses could successfully utilise this platform for a B2B audience, in much the same way as X. 

In short, social media platforms offer amazing opportunities for estate agents to find potential leads, build relationships with them and sell/let properties. With over 3 billion users worldwide, leveraging the power of social media is essential for those who want to grow their business.  

Here are a few more tips to help estate agents generate more leads from the above discussed social media platforms:  

1. Have an active presence on multiple platforms: Contrary to popular advice, we would suggest that having an active presence on multiple social media platforms such as Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, X (Twitter) LinkedIn, and YouTube will help estate agents to reach a wider audience and get more leads. But it’s vital that you take time to respond to messages and comments in order to stay engaged with leads and prospects.  

2. Again, be sure to use visuals and video: Images, videos, and GIFs are engaging and often draw more attention than text. To make your posts more interesting and engaging, include visuals whenever possible. Posting videos is an especially great way to highlight properties and draw in potential leads.  

3. Use technology to automate tasks: Automation tools can help you save time and streamline your social media marketing efforts. With automation tools, you can schedule posts, respond to comments faster, track key metrics, and much more.  

4. Run targeted ads: Social media advertising is one, but the best ways to reach potential leads and increase engagement. Running targeted ads with specific keywords, demographics, and locations will help you get in front of your potential leads. For example, if you are targeting landlords and homeowners in a specific town, targeted ads would work more effectively than physical canvassing in the area, if the properties are tenanted. 

And finally, the clue is in the name, people use social media for social reasons too, so have fun with it and be consistent with your efforts because social media is going nowhere!