How to Increase Your Social Media Reach (Without Paying)
By now, as a real estate investor you’re probably well aware of the importance of social media. You’re also probably aware that these days, seeing any reach on social media in a market like real estate means paying for that reach.
You’ve probably tried posting daily. You’ve probably tried the incredibly confusing advertising structures on various social media platforms. Maybe you’ve had some success, or maybe you’re starting to see it as a money pit. So how can you increase your reach on social media without paying through the nose, and more importantly, what’s the point? How can you parley that reach into leads and actual results?
A few weeks ago, we touched on social media when we talked about how to maximize the potential of your website. These suggestions assume you have a website, so with that in mind, here’s how you can increase your performance on social media and ensure you can get results:
Think Strategically
For starters, you need to narrow down your objectives and then apply them to a target audience. After all, you don’t need to reach everyone; you just need to reach the people who are interested in your business.
That’s what we mean by thinking strategically. Assign methods to specific goals. For example, are you trying to find buyers? Are you trying to reach wholesalers and access their inventory? Or are you trying to increase the traffic to your website?
Narrowing down your objectives will help you avoid trying to find a needle in a haystack, because with 2 billion users on Facebook, for example, that’s exactly what you’ll be doing if you try to reach everyone without a plan.
Focus on Quality Content
Posting daily is less important than posting engaging content. In other words, focus on quality, not quantity.
What constitutes quality content is going to vary by platform, too. What works well on one might not on another. Videos, for example, tend to perform well across the board, but not every style of video. You’ll also want to tailor your content to your audience and your objective.
Without keeping these things in mind, posting random content is pretty much a wasteful exercise. You’ll attract more engagement and the right engagement if your content is tailored to your target audience, deliberate, and of good quality.
Integrate Your Social Media With Your Website
Your website and your social media accounts should work in tandem. Posting your blogs on your social media and linking your listings and various pages of your website (such as an email list signup form) should be the bare minimum.
Integrate your social media into your website as well. People who find your site through one social platform may want to follow you on another, and you should make it easy for them to do so. Have follow and like buttons visible on your page, but also place them into blogs and listings.
It’s ridiculously easy to import your Twitter and Instagram feeds into a sidebar on your website, which will attract attention, expose visitors to your social content, and encourage them to follow you.
Social media functions by viral spread, or user sharing content from websites; you should facilitate that as much as possible. Put share buttons within each blog so readers can tweet it, or create a share button so users can share listings or pages with their friends.
Use Facebook Groups for Networking
Facebook is probably the king of paid advertisement on social media and a source of frustration for many real estate professionals. It’s a complex platform and you can waste a lot of money with little success if you don’t know what you’re doing.
Groups are a great way to increase the reach of your content. There are a vast number of local and global real estate groups for every niche, from investors to wholesalers to agents. All you have to do is join them and share your business page’s content to them to increase your reach by several orders of magnitude.
The advantages of groups make it well worth your effort to use them. Each time you post in a group, every member is notified (that’s a huge advantage over posts from your business page). Plus, you’re directly reaching people who are interested in your market. Take advantage of this, and join several dozen groups. Share your content and watch your page’s reach skyrocket.
If you’re an investor looking for deals, you can also join local buy and sell groups. These function as a marketplace of sorts, like eBay or Craigslist. Users post items to sell and other users buy them. As an investor looking for inventory, posting bandit signs (i.e., “We buy houses in cash!”) in these groups is a lot cheaper, more effective, and more efficient than hoofing it around town and putting them on telephone poles – and you’re less likely to run afoul of local sign ordinances.
Chances are, someone in that group is looking to make a short sale, sell an inherited home, or might be a wholesaler just browsing. Post regularly and watch the calls come flooding in.
On Twitter and Instagram, Hashtags are Your Friends
Using hashtags on Facebook is largely useless these days (and if you don’t know what hashtags are, get acquainted fast – you’re going to need to catch up). Facebook’s algorithms place your posts according to simple text, so there’s no real need to use hashtags.
On Instagram and Twitter, hashtags ensure your content is searchable for people who may not follow you, and this is what you want. Using tags like #RealEstate, for example, places your tweet or post in search feeds specific to that hashtag.
Use as many relevant ones as you can, and on Instagram you have no real limit as to how many you can put into a post. People actively search terms and tags for content and profiles to follow, so make sure yours shows up!
This is a great way to increase your reach, specifically to people who A.) don’t follow you but might if they like your content, and B.) people for whom your business is of interest.
For more perspectives on real estate investment, check back with us each week as we post new blogs and be sure to sign up for our Priority Access List for advance listings and market updates. You can also keep up with us on Facebook and Twitter!
– Get It Right Solutions