Even though the holiday season is not exactly prime time for buying, selling or renting, we shouldn’t kick back, relax and hibernate until spring. On the contrary, agents and brokers should take advantage of this time to share good tidings with old and new clients to stay top of mind year-round. Here, Homes.com unwraps five holiday marketing tips to capture more business from your social networks.
- Keep Calm and Be Prepared. This time of year can easily get away from you if you don’t get ahead of it. That is why brainstorming content and scheduling your posts in advance is so critical. You may be down a few staff members who travel during the holidays and planning ahead allows you more time to be creative, get your content approved and still have time to dedicate to other tasks.
- Add Some Holiday Spirit to Your Branding. This time of year is when visuals can really set you apart from the other marketers competing in your audience’s news feeds. To balance your branding with the holiday spirit, be subtle so that your logo and other image assets aren’t compromised. You don’t need to re-create your branding, or change fonts and colors to celebrate the season. Download the free holiday stock photos from HubSpot, insert your logo and you’re ready to deck the halls of your social channels.
- Share Relevant, Unique Content. Work smarter, not harder. Follow other social profiles that provide quality, relevant content with lifestyle and entertainment tips and share it on your page. Write a post with how-to tips for creating a festive table scape or door wreath, or select some of the holiday posts from the Homes.com blog. For even more recognition, add your branding to Homes.com’s customizable guides and checklists to share with buyers, sellers and renters. These brandable resources include entertainment guides for holidays of all seasons, a tailgating guide to celebrate their favorite sports teams, checklists for first-time home buyers and seasonal home preparation tips for owners.
- Host a Contest. Sixty-three percent of users are likely to share a link to a holidaycontest (Crowdtap).Contests and sweepstakes are a great way to increase your exposure, gain followers and interact with your audience. Here are some quick concepts to customize for your office that won’t involve too many resources or break the bank.
- Costume Contest: Generate some buzz at your next open house and invite buyers to come in costume for a chance to win a gift card. This concept can be extended to your social followers who can snap photos of themselves or their pets, and can work for several occasions such as wearing sports jerseys during playoff season.
- Photo a Day Contest: Participants snap a photo of a different holiday scene for each day of the month and share it to Instagram with a custom hashtag for a chance to win a prize. Check out examples like Homes.com’s ‘Home for the Holidays,’ or other contests and sweepstakes for active buyers and sellers. For your chance to win $500, enter Homes.com’s “Rake in Success” sweepstakes for real estate pros here.
- Door Decor Contest: Incentivize your followers to decorate their door for a particular holiday. Share some inspiring door decor trends from the Homes.com blog to get started.
- Food Drive: This is a great way to be socially responsible and engage with your audience. Partner with your local food bank and encourage your community to donate non-perishable food items. Ask participants to take a photo or selfie as they make a donation and share it to Instagram or Facebook with the contest’s unique hashtag.
- Measure your ROI. Once you’ve executed your social campaigns, it’s time to evaluate their performance. Facebook and Pinterest have outstanding reporting tools to measure the level of engagement with content, including the number of likes, pins, shares and comments, as well we the increase in followers. Compare this data against that of a previous time frame to calculate a positive ROI.
We hope that these holiday marketing tips for your social channels are a gift for your business this season. For even more enhanced social tools, take a look at Homes.com Social, a comprehensive social media suite designed specifically for real estate to help build your social audience, increase engagement and protect your reputation.
For more information, visit connect.homes.com.
