Social media is vital to your business, by helping to validate your brand, increase traffic to your website and open the lines of communication between you and your customers. If you don’t have a compass to guide you on the digital sphere, it might be time you create your own social media manifesto. This statement of ideals and intentions will help you foster a commitment and enable you to stay the course for why you’re really on social media.
The reason for creating a social media manifesto is not just being on social media for the sake of being there – but rather what is your driving force for being there? Make this your personal declaration to serve as a bold statement of principles
You want to provoke change within your space – so what will you stand for as a real estate agent on social media?
Consider the Why – Before the How
The why goes before the how. If you’re on social media just to be on it – then you’re wasting a golden opportunity to connect, listen, educate and engage with your audience.
What Makes You Different?
How will you appeal to the heart of your audience, rather than the head? Think about it this way, Apple doesn’t portray themselves as technology providers – they’re about innovation.
So what are you about? You’re an agent by profession – but you’re much more than that. You’re a connector, a problem-solver, a confidante, a dream maker, and a consultant. Use this as a launch pad to show your passion when developing your manifesto for social media – this is an extension of who you are. You own these channels through and through, so make sure that everything you post has a direct artery to your brand guidelines and your core values.
Size up the Competition
Execute your due diligence and create a competitive analysis on what your competitors are doing in the digital world. Look at the frequency to how often they post, what approach they take, and are they actively engaging with their audience? You can often times find their strengths and weaknesses on the platform, and peel a page right out of their book – or exploit the gaps in their strategy.
Content Rules the Kingdom
A successful social media presence is all about quality – not quantity. Creating an effective, and engaging social media presence takes time and experience – but it also takes some creativity.
Here are some great content ideas to ignite your creative juices.
- Behind the scenes
Everyone loves exclusive access so give the people what they want and peel back the real estate curtain. Have fun with it!
- Promote a local charity or drive
Build trust with your audience by tapping into your community and showing your social responsibility. You could show past events, results from how much you’ve raised and promote new ones coming up.
- Throw it back
Everyone has heard of #ThrowbackThursday. Dive into your archives and show something of yours from memory lane. It’s a great personal touch!
- Top housewarming gifts
What’s the greatest housewarming gift you can think of? There are so many ways to get creative around this – and everyone needs new ideas!
- What’s trending?
The Internet moves at a fast pace, and it’s important to keep up with the latest trends. See how social media influencers compose a post and take a page from their book. (Hint: use the explore tab on your Instagram account for research.)
- Interior design tips
You’ve been around enough homes and professional decorators to have developed a keen eye for design. Highlight some of your best tips on your blog and social.
- Get personal
Showcase your family and friends on your account and what you would do around the home or off-hours – it adds a personal element to your brand.
- A day in the life of an agent
It’s no secret that real estate agents are machines – design some content around what a day in the life actually looks like.
- Customer appreciation events
Promote a customer appreciation event and show off pictures from your last one.
What Does Success Look Like to You?
You can use your social media vehicles to help accomplish several business objectives, but it would be wise to narrow your focus and aim to target a few primary areas. You obviously want to build up your audience, but where do you go from there? Are you using this for sales? Customer loyalty and retention? Awareness? Or is it just a platform to show your lighter side? Define your metrics and key performance indicators in order to know what to measure.
Working the Plan
Focus on being social – rather than just engaging in social media. This doesn’t mean that you can set it and forget it because otherwise, you might be missing out of conversations going on all around you and creative ways to interact with new audiences.
Remember, one size doesn’t fit all on social media. How you would frame a piece of content on Twitter can be completely different on Instagram. You have to work with these parameters to tell your story. For example, you have to work with 140 characters or less on Twitter, whereas on Instagram you can let a high-resolution image tell your story, with the ability to add text in your caption, along with up to 30 hashtags to expand its reach. And of course, with the built-in Blog that comes with your IXACT Contact agent website, you have complete control over the length and type of content you provide. The medium is the message here.
You can also leverage IXACT Contact’s Social Intelligence feature for one click access to every contact’s social media channels, as well as contacts’ interests, employment history, age, and social media bio’s.
Start your FREE 5 week free trial of IXACT Contact now.
