In sharing these three non-negotiables of your real estate social media marketing plan, I’m hoping I’ll help you accomplish one of two things:

1. This information will help you determine if you should stop spending time, money, and energy on social media marketing.

OR

2. These tips will empower you to level up your social media marketing and add that “secret sauce” to your strategy.

After my 10+ years of experience working with real estate agents on their social media marketing, I’ve seen time and time again that the personal touch is essential. Many realtors completely outsource their social media marketing, buy templated designs and captions (without customizing them enough), and post content that is too generic.

For many real estate agents, there is another essential component missing from their social media presence. And that key, non-negotiable essential is… YOU!

If you are investing time, energy, and money on social media as a part of your real estate marketing plan, there are a few actions that I consider non-negotiables:

Non-Negotiable #1

You must respond to all comments & direct messages.

I can’t stress this one enough. When you post anything on the social media platforms you’re on, you need to be checking in at least a few times a day to respond to any comments and DMs.

If you’re not willing to keep an eye on and respond to engagement from your followers, why are you even on social media? And I don’t mean that to come off as flippant. What I mean is that it’s worth asking yourself why you’re doing a certain type of marketing and what your goals are.

If social media is not your jam, that’s fine, but then you need to replace it with marketing activities that interest you and are going to be effective.

Non-Negotiable #2

You must engage with your followers.

Engaging in a thoughtful, meaningful way with online connections is one way that social media becomes most effective. Regarding your engagement on social media, know that liking posts is the bare minimum. More specifically, here are the engagement actions I’m referring to:

Watching Stories (on Instagram and Facebook) and send DMs in response
Comment on posts in your feed
Respond to all received DMs and comments
Share posts to your feed and/or Stories *with* a thoughtful caption or note as to why this content is interesting/informative/relatable/etc.

Non-Negotiable #3

You must create high-quality, original content.

Cookie cutter content simply does not get engagement. You don’t necessarily have to create a ton of content, but what you do create and post needs to be engaging enough that it’s worth your audience’s time. Not all of your content needs to take a long time or be complicated, but it does need to be unique to you.

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Now, I want to say this as gently as possible:

If you're not willing to do these 3 things, but you still have the expectation that a social media strategy will help you find clients, I encourage you to find a different way to market yourself.

I hope my tips either help you pivot, or help you re-invest in your social media presence!