Many people believe that social media and content marketing are one and the same, but they are actually quite different.  The best way to explain their relationship is that you need good quality, relevant and engaging content to feed your social media.

Social media is the perfect tool to:

• Listen and engage with your audience to understand what they care about, so you can create content that they will find valuable and relevant.
• Distribute content from your business such as your monthly blog post, market report, up and coming open homes, sales testimonial, community sponsored events etc

I’ve seen many agents post listing after listing and maybe throw in a few successful sales on their social pages and wonder why this isn’t driving much engagement or any leads to their business.  But this isn’t the best way to use this tool.  You need to get a few things in place before you can really leverage this channel effectively:

1. Set up a content hub. An agency blog or website is an important feature of your content marketing strategy and this is where you will direct your social media followers to a platform that you own.
2. Dedicated owner of social media – Make sure you someone focused on updating the social platforms, as having outdated posts and comments and questions un-answered, looks worse than not having a presence at all.
3. A documented content plan – It is best to start small and focus on only a handful of social platforms such as LinkedIn, Facebook and possibly Instagram. But fundamentally you need to ensure you are posting regular, valuable content

The key elements of a social media content plan for real estate

This plan will sit within the content marketing strategy but it is a good idea to think about social media in more detail by considering the following:

What is the goal of this channel?

For example, do you want to increase followers to drive brand awareness and traffic back to your site. Do you want to capture them as an email subscriber, inquire about a property, contact you for an appraisal? Each social channel’s goal will vary, think carefully here.

What action do you want your visitors to take?

Do you want people to click through to a property listing, connect with you, share, comment, get an appraisal or do something else?

What is the specific type of content your audience would like to receive on this channel?

You want to make sure you customise the content you send via each channel. Think about people on these channels what message would be most appropriate. Do they want text, images, videos, downloads?

A quick look at the three primary channels you should be on

• LinkedIn – more thought leadership content, industry trends
• Instagram – more visual content, user generated content
• Facebook – more of a mix of content- thought leadership, visual, community support, fun content, listings, sales, user generated content

What is the right tone for this channel

What tone do you want to use for each channel; friendly, fun, professional, conversational?

How often will you post content on different social pages?

Consider how regularly you will post content and who will create, manage, upload and respond to the comments from your followers?

More than anything, it is important that you engage with customers. With content marketing, you can have a two-way conversation with your customers. Being able to see your customers interact with your brand makes social media and content marketing fun and exciting and if you’re not getting the results you want you can quickly change direction.