Are you feeling overwhelmed by social media? While social media can be a powerful tool to grow your real estate business, many agents feel lost on what type of real estate content for social media works best.
You might end up feeling like you’re spinning your wheels. You post and post…but nothing seems to bring in results.
Or maybe you’ve gotten so fed up with the ‘gram you just stopped posting altogether.
Sound familiar?
If so, you’re not alone.
But today I want to show you how you can take your social media content from feeling like a giant waste of time to being your biggest lead generator.
It all starts with figuring out the right type of real estate content for social media. A lot of agents are currently getting the content piece wrong. and wonder why their social media isn’t converting any followers into clients.
Keep reading to know exactly what to post on social media to grow your real estate business.
Why It’s Hard To Show Up on Social Media
Tell me if this sounds familiar…
You follow a ton of other agents on social media.
You see them promoting their services, and it feels sleazy, icky even.
And you think to yourself, “I so don’t want to look like that!”
But, you have no idea how to post in a way that feels good AND brings in sales. So you don’t post at all.
It All Starts With Our Ideal Clients
In reality, your social media channels should be anything BUT constant promo feeds.
Instead, they’re a place to serve up major value to your ideal client. This is where you want to go back and revisit your ideal client avatar.
You have to get crystal clear on who you’re speaking to. Because if you’re trying to speak to everyone, you’re speaking to no one.
Once you’ve gotten clarity around your ideal client, you can begin to craft content that will resonate with them.
Whether you’re speaking to first-time buyers, move-up buyers, up-sizers, down-sizers, corporate women, or the LGBTQ community…you want to get specific.
You want to make content uniquely tailored to their struggles, their desires, and their fears.
Where so many agents go wrong is they forget to put their ideal client at the heart of their content creation.
Instead, their real estate content for social media is a mix of posts that appeal to them. Rather than thinking about what their ideal clients need to hear, they simply post what’s resonating with them in the moment.
And what happens next is that instead of attracting ideal clients, they end up attracting other agents to their profile.
To avoid this phenomenon, make sure every time you post, you ask yourself:
Who is this for?
How do I want them to feel while reading this?
What kind of outcome will my ideal client get from consuming this content?
That way, the real estate content you create for social media will attract perfect-fit clients…instead of your competitors.
Real Estate Content For Social Media: The 3 Major Content Buckets
By now, you’re probably ready to get into the three types of content that will convert your ideal clients.
These content types are going to work one hundred times better than the typical real estate social media content you see.
Most agents rely on pictures of houses with banners saying “Just listed!” or “Sold!”.
There’s no value in those types of posts. All you’re doing is showing the world you have business in the hopes it’s going to attract more business.
What you need to remember is that social media is meant to be social.
It’s about connecting with fellow human beings.
In order to do that, there are three main types of real estate content for social media you want to be posting.
These three types of social media content will help your followers get to know you, like you, and trust you. Which ultimately leads to them wanting to work with you.
The three content types you absolutely need are:
- Authority-building content
- Social proof (case studies, testimonials, PR)
- Personal content
Let’s dive a little deeper into each content type.
Authority-building content
Authority-building content helps showcase your expertise to your potential clients.
Think about content that educates and delivers value, as well as shows off your signature process. Your signature process is how you help clients get from point A to point B.
This type of content will help you become the go-to agent in your client’s mind.
Social proof content
Social proof content is going to be posts that feature case studies, testimonials, and PR.
When you post this type of real estate content on social media, it shows your followers that you know what you’re doing. You have a list of happy clients for whom you’ve gotten big results for.
It tells them you know how to get them to where they want to go.
Personal content
The third content bucket is personal content.
And this is where so many agents go wrong.
They don’t include any personal content, so their profile starts to feel very business-like, stiff, and corporate.
And that’s when you lose people.
You’ve got to remember, when it comes to real estate content for social media, people don’t move 50 times a year. They only move once every 3-7 years.
And if you’re only relevant to your followers during a short period of time, it’s going to be extremely difficult for you to grow an audience.
That’s where the personal content comes into play.
You want to make sure that you’re continuously relevant to your audience by sharing your personal beliefs, your personal philosophy, and your personal story.
You want to take them behind the scenes are share different things about your life.
Connect with them on a human-to-human level.
Often, I see agents feel a lot of resistance towards sharing their personal life online.
They’ll tell me, “I’m a professional…my lawyer doesn’t show this kind of stuff on social media!”
And to that I say – one, your lawyer most likely isn’t advertising as much. And two – your lawyer often isn’t dealing with such an important, vulnerable moment in someone’s life.
Buying a house is one of the most important financial decisions your clients will ever make in their lives. And it’s often stressful, too.
It’s expensive. It’s time-consuming. You’re packing up your whole life and putting it into boxes.
You’re supporting your clients through an intensely emotional experience.
So it’s incredibly important that your content helps them get to know you on a personal level.
You only want to go through an experience like that with someone you genuinely like and connect with!
Social Media Imagery Do’s and Don’ts
Now that you know the three main types of real estate content for social media, you’re probably wondering…
But what kind of images should I post with these captions?
So let’s get into a few do’s and don’ts.
✅ DO post lots of pictures of yourself.
Now, I know this might feel weird, or even a little egotistical. I’ve felt the exact same way in the past. But when it comes to social media, people want to see YOU.
They don’t want to just see pictures of pretty houses. There are already dozens of massive inspo accounts devoted solely to posting pictures of beautiful homes.
People want to see you, they want to get to know you, and they want to build a relationship with you.
Think about your favorite influencers. The people you feel you have a real connection with – even though you’ve never met them.
When you look at their profiles, they’re posting pictures, they’re showing up in videos, and they’re being themselves.
✅ DO edit and brighten your photos
You don’t want to just snap a photo and post it. Instead, you want to brighten it so it shows up nicely in your followers’ feeds.
Your visuals are often the first thing your followers notice before they even begin reading your caption.
So if your visuals aren’t captivating, they’ll simply scroll past.
You want to make sure that your photos are light, bright, and airy.
It’s super easy to achieve this effect by using any kind of editing app, such as VSCO or Lightroom.
✅ DO take up as much space as possible within the feed
When it comes to the orientation of your photos, you always want to make sure your photo is vertical.
If you’re scrolling through your feed, whether on Facebook or on Instagram, 99% of the time, you’re doing it on your phone.
So from an imagery perspective, you want to try to take up as much space as possible.
On Instagram, the ideal size for this is 4×5.
❌ DON’T post overly branded images
I’ve said this many times before, and I’ll say it again:
If your photo looks like an ad, people are just going to be repelled by it and scroll past. We don’t like being advertised to, especially when it comes to organic social media content.
So many agents add a branded banner, design elements, or their logo onto their photos.
Instead, you want to keep them as clean and natural as possible.
That way, people will simply feel like they’re connecting with you…rather than being advertised to.
Branding will only hurt your reach.
Social Media Post Formatting Tips
When it comes to real estate content for social media, not only is your message important…but so is how you format it.
First things first, you want to make sure you’re using the appropriate hashtags.
Specifically, I’m talking about Instagram. Skip the hashtags on Facebook. Facebook tried to make them a thing a few years back and they didn’t take off. So if you include a blurb of hashtags at the bottom of your post on Facebook it will look a little spammy.
When using hashtags on Instagram, be sure to include some spaces after your caption so that they don’t distract from the main body of your post.
Next, you want to make sure you’re using appropriate spacing for your captions.
No one wants to read lengthy paragraphs of text when it comes to social media.
While you absolutely want to be creating long-form captions (think mini-blogs!) it’s so important that you space out your text so it’s scannable and easy on the eyes.
And lastly, don’t forget to include a catchy hook to grab people’s attention.
The hook, or the first line of your piece of content, is by far the most important part of the whole caption.
The headline needs to entice your followers to hit that “Read More” button on Instagram and consume the rest of your content.
So take some time to think of a hook that’ll have your potential clients thinking, “I’ve GOT to know what they’re going to say!”
Next time you’re sitting around trying to brainstorm what type of real estate content to post on social media, use one of these 3 types of content. You’ll notice an immediate uptick in interaction and conversion from your ideal clients!
And if you’re ready to dive deeper into building an automated marketing system for your real estate business, you’ll want to learn more about The Listings Lab Method. Get all the details in our free guide, The Listings Lab Guide.
