Editor’s Note: Social Skills is a bi-monthly feature in RISMedia’s Daily News focused on social media and digital marketing tips, trends and solutions for agents and brokers.
Social media platforms are ever-evolving marketing grounds. While more and more business is coming off of social media leads than ever before, real estate professionals have to evolve with the platforms in order to continue seeing high levels of success.
In the past, hashtags were king. Hashtagging your content was what made it optimized for searches on social media and on web search platforms like Google. But, as social media has evolved, as have its search functions, hashtags have become less and less important for optimizing content.
Nowadays, users can search for things they want to see by typing in keywords or phrases, and apps will scrub for captions and content mentioning those words/phrases. Similar to how one might SEO a blog or an article on a website, you now have to SEO your social posts to get maximum exposure in search results.
Enhancing SEO
Enhancing your SEO means honing in on keywords and phrases that are relevant to your content and people can search it by. This means that while your captions will still be creative, you have to work to weave the keywords and phrases around the creativity in order to get that SEO going.
For example, if you’re showing off a fixer-upper, your caption will want to feature a key phrase that pinpoints specific aspects of the home, like its design and location. You could use something like “3-bedroom fixer-upper in West Philly” if that fits your listing, or something like “4-bedroom mid-century modern in Westchester” if that applies as well. Adding words like “listing” and “for sale” is also incorporating key search words, but the hyper-specific key phrases are ultimately most important for current search functions.
For posts featuring market insights, home-buying or -selling advice and more, you want to follow the same formula. A market insight post can have key phrases like “Miami median home prices” or “the most affordable neighborhoods in NYC.” Long story short, the point of a key phrase is to focus on a short but specific summary of your content’s message that is searchable.
You also want to try to feature the keywords and phrases you focus on in your actual content, whether as text on a carousel of photos, or saying it out loud in a video. Search functions draw off of this as well through “listening,” so it will also SEO your content.
Shifting your hashtags
While the hashtag has become a bit less important, it definitely isn’t dead. Their usage has just shifted to the backseat.
When using hashtags, put them in a comment on your post, rather than clogging up the caption. You’re also going to want to use less than you may have in the past. You’re going to drop the generic ones (the #realestate, #homelisting, etc.) and pick four to five hashtags that are specific to your content—like #Midcenturymodernrealestate for the type of home you may be showing or #Chicagoluxuryrealestate to get views on a local area and specific market segment.
