Social media platforms offer an amazing opportunity for realtors to reach prospective buyers and sellers. With 80% of all buyers and sellers beginning the process on their mobile devices it makes sense for professional realtors to put together a strategy specifically designed for mobile. Here are some steps that you can follow to begin a successful social media mobile strategy.
1) Professional Profiles- It’s a bad strategy to use your personal profile to promote your real estate objectives. Build professional profile pages across, at least, these four platforms; Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest and Snap Chat. Linkedin doesn’t count unless you are looking for a job or want to build up your ego on a site full of self promotion.
2) Create “Mobile” Content- You ever see posts on your mobile phone where the box, the post is in, cuts part of the image off? Or a video that has text that isn’t visible because its outside the viewable area? This is an instant post, or ad, killer… Viewers will most likely immediately dismiss the post.
Instagram and Facebook, as an example, are set up to show pictures and video with a ratio of 1:1. That can be 720 x 720, or 1080 x 1080… As long as the ratio is 1:1..Like a square! (An inside marketing secret is that you can actually get more bang for your marketing buck with Instagram if your boosted post is in that format!)
When taking photos with your iPhone use the “SQUARE” setting… It’s there for a reason people :)… When producing video ads make sure to set them up for 720 x 720.. Still a 1:1 ratio, 16:9 or 4:3 will not cut it… If you’re using Final Cut Pro you’ll see that using a 1:1 ratio rules out quite a bit of the affects and transitions… But the finished product will be so much better, trust me!
3) Test Your Post for Mobile- Once you’re ready with your post send it to yourself!
Make sure that the image, once opened, is legible without doing the old two finger image expanding maneuver… Make it easy to business with you!
Less is more for mobile ads! Remember, all the info you want to fill them in on is just a click or two away… Looking at the ad below and comparing it to the ad above… You can see that the 16:9 ratio doesn’t do very well on a mobile device. The letters get really small and the image has to be expanded. The image up top has less info, less images and can be easily read from a mobile device “as is”.
4) Get 3rd Party Endorsements – Its one thing to say “You know who is really good looking? Me!” and quite a different thing when someone else says “She’s really good looking!” It carries a little more weight when your looks are exalted by someone other than you.
< Shameless plug alert >Our company, The Ripple Effect Group, for an example will advertise for individuals, restaurants, other businesses and point out their features and value to others on their behalf. We target ads in the areas that surround these folks and drive traffic to their websites. Guess what? It works!
Obviously, there are many ways to do this and get great results. Cross promote other businesses on your pages and ask them to return the favor. If an appraiser does well for you give them a shout out and humbly ask for one in return! Give each other backlinks and honest reviews!
Following these 4 steps are just the beginning to developing a mobile social media strategy that we know will work. In blogs coming up we will discuss frequency, hash tags, and timing, as well as, tap into the brains of some successful mobile geared realtors and share some of their secrets to success! Stay tuned!
#therippleeffectgroup #reg #socialmediarealtors #socialmediatips
