How To Increase Traffic and Drive Leads With a Targeted Social Media Strategy

by threshold | Sep 19, 2022 | Digital Marketing, Thought Leadership

It’s no secret that real estate has become a predominantly online industry in recent years. The convenience and accessibility of online listings, tours, applications, and leases is unmatched. In knowing all of this, why not take your real estate marketing to the next level by taking advantage of the holy grail of online marketing that is social media? 

Before we get too ahead of ourselves, it’s significant to point out that based on a recent PEW Institute research study, over ⅓ of US adults get their daily news from social media platforms, with Facebook again taking the lead. No matter your opinions on this fact, it’s no secret that with the majority of people using 1 or more social media platforms daily – and with over 30% of people getting their daily news from social media platforms – you could reach a significantly higher audience in your marketing campaign by taking advantage of social media. 

By creating a strong social media presence, you will soon be capitalizing on an audience that you would otherwise be missing out on. It’s also worth noting that the use of social media grows rapidly each and every year, so the sooner you can get started on your campaign, the better.

First, let’s take a look at the top social media platforms of 2022 based on active monthly users.

As you can see, Facebook has the heaviest active user platform with nearly 3 billion active monthly users worldwide. Youtube and Instagram are both close behind, each with over 2 billion monthly active users, and TikTok is the final platform which reaches over 1 billion active users each month. It is worth noting, however, that even though LinkedIn has a smaller reach – about 750 million active users per month – it is still a great business-based platform to take advantage of when tackling real estate digital marketing strategies, especially in the corporate marketing world.

Now that you have a better idea at which platforms are the best options to use, let’s now look at some of the top corporate social media accounts across multiple platforms to analyze what makes them so successful in their marketing campaigns and how you can replicate their success for your real estate marketing campaigns.

Nike

With over 150 million Instagram followers, Nike is getting our top spot for this list. The main reason that Nike has been able to reach so many people across platforms is because they inspire people. Whether it be through their inspirational stories of athletes around the world, their support for causes like BLM and women’s equality, or even just their interaction with users surrounding their new products, Nike has cracked the code on corporate social media branding. 

Starbucks

Starbucks’ corporate social media accounts are wildly successful across multiple platforms due to their positive outlook exemplified in each and every post, their support of important social causes, and their inclusive content campaigns. It’s not uncommon to see Starbucks reply to dozens of users each day, and that’s because their interactions with users makes them feel more connected to the brand. Knowing that there are real people behind the screen who truly want to connect with their users is a great tool to implement in your real estate digital marketing campaign.

Shopify

Shopify has mastered the importance of being able to target every entrepreneur in search of a service like their own. They appeal to their target audiences by using bright, colorful, and inspiring designs for their posts. Additionally, they often voice their support for important social and environmental causes, showing that they too are standing up for the things that their consumers believe in, and will benefit from. 

Square

Square’s social media campaign is simple: clients first. While they have different campaign focuses for each social media platform, each of their campaigns offer modern, clean, and user-focused content that expresses how much their clients mean to them. After all, where would a business be without their clients? Another reason the brand remains so popular is as a result of their outspokenness on important social issues.

GoPro

Not only does GoPro highlight a range of adventures from users of their products, but they also follow a similar pattern to aforementioned Square, in the fact that they will focus each platform to a certain campaign, rather than mimic the same content across multiple platforms. Their company Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, and Youtube all highlight different areas of their services, while always following the same content pattern and brand voice.

So, a few key takeaways from this list:

• Keep content positive
• Bright colors and clean, modern designs are IN
• Show your support for important social and environmental issues
• Don’t be afraid to shift your focus across multiple platforms
• Discover your brand voice and be consistent

Now that we’ve covered the most popular platforms and keys to success, let’s shift our focus to specific tools that you can use to get your campaign started, or improve on what you’ve already got.

Set goals for your business

A rule of thumb for setting goals for yourself or your business’ real estate digital marketing campaign is to follow the SMART plan, which stands for Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Realistic, and Time-Based goals. While goals are important, it’s even more important to decipher the difference between an achievable goal, and an unachievable goal. Setting goals that are unachievable will not result in any growth for your brand. In fact, it will more than likely result in a regression of your brand’s campaign success.

Keeping your goal specific can prevent your goal from becoming too broad, which can cause harder measurability. Measurability means being able to see an actual figure, whether it is a growth in active users, engagement, clicks, you name it – just make sure there is a specific, measurable figure to be obtained. Attainable and realistic often come hand in hand, as there is rarely a realistic goal to be had that is unattainable. For example: if your current social media accounts have under 1,000 followers, it’s unrealistic to create a goal of reaching 500,000 active users by the end of the month. However, through trend and insight data, you can gather your current growth data and discover a number that is more realistic for your brand. 

Finally, time-based is one of the most important milestones in this goal setting process. If there is no end date in sight, how will you know when you have reached your goals? If it takes 5 years to reach a small goal that could have been completed in 6 months, what are you gaining? Similarly, don’t pinch yourself into an unrealistic time frame of a project that needs 1 year to hit its target, but try to push it all to get done in 6 months. Now, will there be times that you hit goals early? Absolutely. Will there be goals that maybe take a few extra days, weeks, months to complete? Definitely. Yet, knowing that you have a goal in place that is specific, measurable, attainable, realistic, and time-based are going to result in the most growth, and target goals for your brand.

Here are some great places to start with creating new goals for social media growth:

• Increase your brand awareness: if no one knows who you are, how do you expect to push your brand’s information?
• Grow your audience: how many people do you want to reach? What is a realistic time frame and measurement to track this?
• Boost your engagement: respond to followers, answer inquiries, and increase your posts.
• Increase traffic: track your conversions, clicks, bounce rates, and other measurable data to see where you are most successful, and where you need to improve.

Research your target audience

First thing’s first, nail down the demographic you want to target the most with your campaigns. If you’re trying to appeal to millennials, you will have to use much different tactics than if you are working to appeal to boomers, and vice versa. Once you’ve got your demographic down, then you can move forward with your campaign. 

Once you’ve reached your demographic, it’s important to research what platforms are going to be the most successful for your target audience. 

• Gen Z and Millennials: Instagram, TikTok, and YouTube
• Boomers: Facebook
• Industry Specific: LinkedIn
• Women: Pinterest
• Men: Facebook

While this is not an end-all be-all list, it is a general outline to start with when determining your base’s highest used platforms to create the most effective content. The key to all of this is actually conducting this research. Every brand and every target audience is different, so if there’s anything you remember, it should be this: don’t assume anything.

Decide what metrics are most important to your brand

There is no one metric that is superior to all others when it comes to real estate digital marketing, and this is because all brands and marketing campaigns are different. What you must decide when creating your campaign is what metrics are the most important to the success of your brand.

Here are a few thought starters on what metrics could be right for you:

• Clicks across various sites and platforms
• Reach
• Traffic: both paid and organic
• Bounce rates
• Site and platform engagement
• Hashtag performance

Regardless of which metrics you find to be most important in your campaign, it is important to recognize it early on, and set SMART goals to continue enhancing your metrics over time. Stagnation, while not all bad, should not be your end goal, but rather a healthy growth increase over time. Remember what we said earlier: social media use continues to grow steadily every year, which means yours should too!

Content creation

Now that you’ve got a better idea of what goals should be in place for your brand’s social media and real estate digital marketing campaign, you can focus on the content theme you’d like to follow. Looking back at some of the top social media brands above, one of the most common themes across each brand were optimism, inspiration, and showing support for important social and environmental issues.

Once you discover your brand voice, you can begin to incorporate it into each of your social media posts across various platforms. Whether you decide to mirror your posts across all platforms like Starbucks or Nike, or take a similar approach to Square and GoPro and give each platform a specific purpose, you want to make sure all of your posts are consistent, cohesive, and aesthetically pleasing.

Starbucks

Starbucks loves to keep their focus piece front and center, and includes bright, colorful backgrounds that revolve around their themed drink or personal focus.

Nike

Nike allows their photos to speak for themselves, keeping a strong focus on the main element in their content, with a simple or blurred background so as not to distract from the content focus.

GoPro

GoPro is known for their adventurous spirit through their products, and they make sure to capitalize on it through their social media posts. Simple, straightforward images enhanced to keep up that bright aesthetic and maintain the centered focus of their content choices.

Establishing this cohesiveness expresses a level of professionalism and organization for your brand that social media users love to follow. No matter your brand’s aesthetic, be sure to get started on it early!

Moving on from appearances, it’s important to discuss what your content should actually contain. This goes hand in hand with our earlier portion about researching your target audience, and here’s why: your target audience is a “target” for a reason. There are certain things about your brand that are drawing them in, and the more you capitalize on those areas, the more successful your campaign will be. However, without researching what your target audience cares the most about, your campaign will flounder.

Hashtag research is one of the most important areas to nail down for real estate digital marketing, especially with a new or young social media campaign. Hashtags are one of the most effective ways to associate your brand with the topics that your target audience cares most about. Learn what your followers – and prospective followers – want to hear about, and capitalize on it. Inflict and HashTagsForLikes are two examples of tools you can use to expand on your hashtag research, and expand your social media reach all at once.

Engaging content should be the goal of any social media campaign, but what does that term really mean? For content to be engaging, it not only needs to be interesting and relevant to your audience, but it needs to give your audience the chance for some type of interaction. Whether it’s likes, clicks, tags, comments, or any other interaction, encouraging your audience to do more than just read your post is a great way to nudge them in the right direction, as well as expanding your reach. 

This can be done through promotions, contests, hashtag campaigns, and even just asking questions through your posts, and giving them an opportunity to share their thoughts and ideas. Even if not all of your audience goes through with that extra engagement, it will cause them to think a little deeper about your brand, regardless – even if they don’t realize it. 

Learn the best times to post for active engagement across different platforms. Some scheduling tools like Hootsuite will recommend you the most popular times for each platform on any given day when scheduling ahead, but it’s still worth researching for yourself to get that upper hand over your competitors. After all, what’s the point in posting at a time when half of your intended audience won’t see your message?

Never stop improving. We can all agree that just because something works, doesn’t mean it can’t be better. This must be your constant mindset when creating, updating, and maintaining a social media marketing campaign. Trends fade in and out nearly every day. The world changes every day. Even your own business can change its message at the drop of a hat. Always being prepared for any one of these scenarios is the key to maintaining a successful social media presence, and continuing to grow at a healthy rate. 

Choose your content form

From platform to platform, there are certain content types that will always succeed. However, it is important to recognize a couple of specific content types that work best for certain social media platforms.

Stories

• Stories are a great time-sensitive method of posting that will inadvertently activate your followers’ FOMO complex, increasing your interaction and engagement. This is a great tool for adding in some personalized content, behind-the-scenes projects, and can be posted far more often than regular posts without feeling too overwhelming.

Best Platforms

• • Instagram
  • Facebook
  • Snapchat

Reels

• Short-form videos are quickly becoming the most popular method of social media marketing, and overall content posting. Getting ahead of the competition and stepping up your reel-game early is a great resource for setting yourself apart from competitors.

Best Platforms

• • Instagram
  • TikTok
  • Facebook

Remind your audience that you’re relatable

There is a time and place for corporate and business-based writing voice, but social media is not that place! Keeping things casual with your followers lets them know that you are real, relatable, and reachable. 

Followers are 10x more likely to engage with a brand that they feel is personable, friendly, and relatable, so be sure and capitalize on that! Both regular posts and stories/reels are great ways to tackle this, and can boost your engagement, which is what we all want, right?

Be sure to ask questions, and include times and spaces to give your audience a chance at regular interaction. This can not only increase engagement, but can also result in your brand being featured on pages and platforms that it otherwise would not, and can increase traffic as well.

To conclude

Starting or improving your social media marketing campaigns doesn’t have to be scary or overwhelming, contrary to popular belief. In fact, you can even reach out to one of our awesome Threshold employees and see how we can grow your social media presence. 

Remember, the place to start a new campaign is by creating a SMART goal for your brand and your real estate digital marketing campaign. How are you going to start yours? Let us know in the comments, or on our Threshold Instagram or Facebook page!

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