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Social media marketing is a necessity for brands looking to grab the attention of their target audience on social media platforms. For realtors, it is a perfect opportunity to get close with their potential customers and even generate leads! But, that’s only possible when you develop a solid and fool-proof social media marketing strategy. If you have just started out with social media marketing, this extensive guide will help you design a perfect social media strategy for sure. So, stay with us till the end of the post. Let’s get started!
Steps to Create a Social Media Strategy
1. Create Social Media Marketing Goals
As a real estate business owner or a realtor, you will have goals different from other independent professionals or brands. You need to figure out what exactly you want out of your social media campaigns. This is important because you can only begin drafting your social media calendar once you know what you want to achieve on social media. You can use social media marketing to pursue goals like brand awareness, lead generation, grow brand audience, boost engagement, or even boost traffic to your official website. So, spend some time here in this first step to create a vision for your social media marketing campaign.
2. Get to Know Your Target Audience
Now you have your incentive. Once you have your goals ready, it’s time to figure out who exactly you want to reach with your social media marketing campaign. Most brand owners make assumptions and skip this step altogether. This can be extremely dangerous especially if you are indulging in paid advertising as well. So, the best way to find your target audience is to go through the demographic data and use social media analytics tools. The other reason why you need to refine your target audience is that you want to figure out the right social media platforms for your campaign. Since every social media channel has a different audience demographic, knowing your target audience is going to be of great help.
3. Know Which Performance Metrics to Measure
Again, you don’t want to rely on assumptions and guesswork. Social media marketing, like any other digital marketing strategy, is data-driven. Meaning, you will be able to make decisions that are precise and focused. Now that you know you can get data from social media analytics tools, it is important to focus on the right metrics. There are many metrics that you can track to check the performance of your social media marketing campaign. These are Reach, Clicks, Engagement, Hashtag performance, Organic and paid likes, sentiment, and more. Since you already know what goals you have in mind for your social media marketing campaign, it will be easier for you to shortlist the performance metrics accordingly.
4. Get a Hold of Your Competition
If you want to make an impression on your target audience, you will have to stand out. In other words, you will need to come up with a social media marketing campaign that makes your competition look ordinary. How do you do that? You do that by digging into what your competitors are up to. It is a primary step before you go onto create content. There are many third-party competitor analysis tools that you can refer to gain useful insights. Most realtors will have similar social media marketing strategies. You can take inspiration from the content they are posting and the kinds of campaigns they run on various social media platforms. But never should you copy the same campaign. It’s unethical and also will make you look like an ordinary brand on the consumer’s newsfeed.
5. Create High-Quality Engaging Content
A huge part of social media marketing is content creation and distribution. Your social media campaigns will be centered around content and it’s crucial that you have the right idea about what you want to showcase through it. You have got to stick to a content theme, which by far is the toughest task in social media and content marketing. Finding the right balance of entertainment and information might take you some time. But, you will eventually reach a point in time where it will be easier for you to develop content that gels well with your audience. Having a set content theme will make it easier for you to generate a content calendar. Make use of User-Generated Content (UGC) and interactive content like stories on all major social media platforms. Most importantly, focus on creating video content. Here are some social media content strategies to help you get started.
6. Develop a Content Calendar and Stick to it
If you have just started out with social media marketing, you will need to come up with a content calendar. This is important since it will help you get in the practice of keeping your social media pages fresh. Although there are many automation tools that will take care of the publishing part, a content calendar will, in the future, help you automate the task of content development. In other words, social media marketing will run smoothly for your real estate business. Secondly, you will need to practice timeliness on social media. You just can’t ignore messages, comments, and feedback left by your potential customers on social media. Find the right time (in the week and day) to post content and then always be ready to respond to queries.
7. Assess Results and Optimize
You don’t just keep feeding your social media pages with content. You also assess the performance of your marketing campaigns. Having a big-picture of where the campaigns are leading your brand and whether or not they are helping you reach the set goals sets you up for long-term success. Monitor the performance metrics at all times and figure out what the data has to tell. Make small tweaks and optimize the campaigns for better effect.
8. Always Stay Up-to-date with Social Media Trends
Lastly, take note of how user behavior is changing on social media. Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and other social media platforms have significantly changed from when they were launched, and so has the behavior of people using them. To ensure that your social media marketing campaigns are a success, keep up with the trends and try introducing them in your content calendar. Need some help understanding the different social media platforms take a look at our previous blog on understanding the different social platforms here.
Final Thoughts
Now that you know everything you need to create an effective social media marketing strategy, make it a challenge for yourself to come up with a strategy yourself. If you are working with a team, ensure proper communication, and share your vision so that each member of the team is on the same page. Need help developing a social media marketing strategy? Connect with us today!