In today’s digital age, real estate social media marketing is an indispensable tool for real estate agents to connect with clients, showcase properties, and build a strong online presence. In this comprehensive guide, we’ll share our proven social media strategies and techniques, which we use to help thousands of agents on our platform thrive in the dynamic landscape of online marketing and branding. Whether you’re a seasoned agent looking to refine your online strategy or a newcomer eager to establish a digital footprint, we’ve got invaluable insights for your business.
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Why real estate social media marketing matters
According to a recent report from advisory firm Kepios, more people find new brands through social media than by word of mouth, websites, or review articles. This makes sense when you consider other stats from the report: There are 4.88 billion social media profiles and the average social media user spends almost two and a half hours on social networks every day across an average of more than six different platforms every month.
Social media has tremendous power specifically for real estate. Leveraging social media provides you:
- Increased visibility and reach: Agents can reach potential buyers and sellers beyond their immediate network, expanding their visibility and increasing the likelihood of attracting qualified leads.
- Targeted advertising: Sophisticated targeting options allow real estate agents to tailor advertising to specific demographics, interests, and behaviors. This ensures that messages reach individuals who are more likely to be interested, thereby maximizing return on investment.
- Engagement and interaction: Agents can respond to inquiries, address concerns, and provide valuable information in real time, building trust with potential clients. Comments, likes, and shares enable agents to create a sense of community and encourage user-generated content.
- Visual storytelling: Real estate is inherently visual, and social media platforms excel at facilitating aesthetic storytelling. Compelling visual content captures attention and elicits emotional responses, driving interest and engagement among prospective clients.
- Enhanced credibility: By sharing valuable insights, market updates, and educational content, agents can demonstrate their expertise, build credibility, and attract a loyal following. Consistent, relevant content establishes agents as trusted advisors.
- Networking and referrals: Agents can expand their professional network, exchange referrals, and uncover new business opportunities by engaging with other industry professionals on social media.
The top real estate social media platforms
Let’s dive into some of the best networks for real estate and look at a few examples of professionals who successfully use them to fuel the growth of their businesses.
Audience reach: With more than 2.9 billion monthly active users, Facebook offers unparalleled exposure for your real estate marketing efforts. It’s also a platform that reaches across generational divides.
Best for targeted advertising: Facebook’s robust ad platform allows real estate professionals to tailor ad campaigns based on demographics, interests, behaviors, and even specific locations, ensuring that marketing messages reach the right audience. Also consider retargeting ads. This strategy puts ads in front of those who’ve visited your site or engaged in some way but haven’t taken action. We’ve seen serious ROI from retargeting ads on Facebook, which remind your audience why they were interested in a property or blog post in the first place.
Visual content: Facebook supports photos, videos, and virtual tours, enabling agents to showcase properties effectively. The ability to leverage visual collateral is why ads are particularly effective on the platform. You can drive your audience to specific landing pages, property searches, or single-property sites, catching their attention mid-scroll.
Engagement: Facebook facilitates direct engagement with potential clients through comments, likes, and shares, fostering community and relationship development. Facebook groups are an especially effective way to be social on the network and they have the added bonus of organically segmenting your audience. Consider joining or creating local groups, ones that focus on your community, what’s happening, local history, and nearby events — and be an active participant.
Pro tip: As a platform, Facebook straddles the professional and informal divide. Your business Facebook page should represent your brand and include helpful, easy-to-find information. When you post on Facebook, use plenty of visuals, a clear call to action, and hashtags to help others find your content.
Favorite Facebook accounts:
Audience reach: Instagram boasts over two billion active users every month, with sixty percent of those being between the ages of 18 and 34.
Best for building awareness: Of all the platforms, Instagram is the most inherently visual, making it ideal for showcasing high-quality photos and videos of properties. While there is opportunity for lead generation, most agents focus their efforts on brand awareness, or making sure the wider community knows who they are, what they offer, and what sets them apart.
Visual focus: Users are scrolling, looking for images and short videos, not long professional treatises on the current state of the market. Keep your images carefully curated and evergreen in the static grid, and use Instagram Live, Stories, and Reels to offer more personal, spontaneous, behind-the-scenes content.
Engagement: Instagram promotes high engagement rates, with users actively interacting with content through likes, comments, and direct messages. The platform makes it easy to save, share, and comment on posts, which gives users a chance to directly engage with content. It’s important for agents to like, comment, and post on other accounts as part of a larger Instagram strategy. This shows your audience that you are an active, caring member of the community.
Pro tip: Personal brand counts now more than ever. Use your Instagram account to share your personal as well as your professional life. Your audience wants to see all the glossy professional property images, but they also want to get to know you as the agent. Video makes it easy to communicate your personality as part of your brand. Use the Live feature when you’re hosting an open house. Shoot informal reels as you walk through new properties, and keep your stories active with current information, personal vignettes, and news.
Favorite Instagram accounts:
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View this profile on Instagram
Check out more of our favorite Instagram accounts.
Audience reach: LinkedIn has more than one billion active users, and almost 30% of American adults use it, with a majority being between 30 and 49 years old. Often overlooked for the flashier, dance-oriented platforms, LinkedIn has the potential for serious lead generation.
Best for networking and thought leadership: LinkedIn is a valuable platform for connecting with other real estate professionals, industry influencers, and potential clients. LinkedIn’s publishing platform, Pulse, enables you to share valuable insights, market updates, and industry trends, positioning yourself as a thought leader in the real estate industry. It’s the ideal platform for establishing yourself as a trusted, go-to advisor for all things real estate.
Visual focus: Of all the platforms, LinkedIn is the least visual. Images and infographics are certainly helpful, but this is really a place to share written content. Focus your efforts on shareable posts (with compelling headlines), that reveal your expertise.
Engagement: Much like the other platforms, liking, commenting and reposting are critical to long-term success. In terms of garnering engagement on your own content, always include a call to action by asking readers to weigh in on your topic. And don’t be afraid to push the envelope and toss in something that is provocative (as long as you can handle the heat).
Pro tip: LinkedIn Groups provide forums for networking, exchanging ideas, and building relationships within the real estate community. This could potentially set you up for referral relationships with agents and business leaders that you connect with online.
Favorite LinkedIn accounts:
YouTube
Audience reach: YouTube is the world’s largest video-sharing platform (we’re talking almost 2.5 billion users a month), making it an ideal platform for showcasing property tours, neighborhood highlights, and how-to content.
Best for setting yourself apart: The statistics are in your favor: Only 9% of small businesses use YouTube as an active marketing platform, while 51% of homebuyers use it before purchasing a home. Plus, an optimized YouTube channel can improve SEO efforts, as individual videos often appear in search results, driving traffic to your website and helping you outrank your competition.
Visual focus: This is a platform for videos—long or short, highly produced or informal—on virtually any topic. Many agents fear being in front of the camera, but in today’s AI-forward world, it’s not absolutely necessary to feature your face onscreen. Videos should be entertaining, informative, and most importantly, a reflection of you and your brand.
Engagement: Unlike other platforms, subscriptions is a key metric for YouTube engagement. You want the likes and comments, but getting subscribers is going to make your channel grow, increase views, and help others find your content. Include a call to action at the end of each video reminding viewers to subscribe.
Pro tip: We talk a lot about ads for Facebook and Instagram, but YouTube ads are also powerful and effective. Some of our favorites include in-stream ads that take advantage of a captive audience, in-feed ads that recommend your videos, and pre-roll ads that put your content right at the beginning of every video.
Favorite YouTube accounts:
TikTok
Audience reach: TikTok has grown rapidly in popularity among younger demographics, particularly Gen Z and Millennials, making it an ideal platform for targeting first-time homebuyers and renters. According to the data, 53% of the internet-using world is also on TikTok. We’re watching the news to see if the countrywide bans will actually go into effect, but in the meantime, embrace the platform and all it can do for you.
Best for authenticity and creativity: TikTok’s format encourages real-life, creative content, allowing real estate professionals to showcase properties in unique and entertaining ways. This makes the platform perfect for entertaining property walkthroughs, before-and-after transformations, and behind-the-scenes glimpses.
Visual focus: TikTok content should be being short, pithy, catchy, and above all, entertaining (especially in the first three seconds). Participating in trending TikTok challenges (might need to brush up on those dance moves) and using relevant hashtags can increase the visibility of real estate content on TikTok. Popular videos related to real estate include topics like homebuying, interior design, real estate investing, behind the scenes, and home walkthroughs. Just make sure the music is catchy.
Engagement: TikTok’s algorithm is part of its appeal — it seems to know the right content for the right people at the right time and its engagement metrics are off the chart. It’s not just liking and commenting — it’s using video to comment on duets, stitches, and more. Also consider collaborating with other creators to compound the impact of your engagement.
Pro tip: While there are a lot of dance videos, it can be a serious tool for conveying information. For agents, it’s often beneficial to focus on a specific niche. For example, use TikTok to educate viewers about various aspects of the homebuying process, market trends, or financial considerations, establishing yourself as a knowledgeable and trustworthy advisor. The likes and views will increase as your content is found by the multitudes.
Favorite TikTok accounts:
@glenndabaker
@steeviesoucie
@heider_realestate
Best practices for real estate social media marketing
We gathered Luxury Presence’s experts in real estate social media marketing—the ones responsible for helping more than 45,000 agents skyrocket their social networking—and asked them what advice they’d give agents on this important topic. With decades of combined experience and thousands of case studies to pull from, here’s what they said.
“Be yourself.”
Agents often feel pressure to portray themselves in a certain light on social media—but being your authentic self is a much more effective way to resonate with current and potential clients.
“Educate your audience.”
Real estate social media marketing is an essential tool for connecting and sharing information with buyers. By helping potential clients and leads learn about the real estate process, you position yourself as an expert and build relationships that increase sales.
“Post regularly.”
Regularly sharing valuable content that educates prospective clients about the industry and showcases your expertise will quickly build trust among your followers. Not only does it help you meet your audience’s expectations, but it feeds the algorithm. All platforms reward you for posting more and often, so keep the social media gods happy.
Free social media templates
Ready to execute on these strategies but need a little design help? Our expert social media team put together three sets of engaging, on-brand post templates you can customize and deploy today.
“Respond to comments.”
By responding to comments quickly and amiably, you show prospects and clients that you are engaged, timely, and on top of your game.
“Promote landing pages.”
Sharing your landing pages on social media is a proven way to drive more traffic to your website. This will not only increase visibility but can also generate leads and sales.
“Build your brand.”
Having a consistent presence across online channels gives you credibility, visibility, and reliability, which builds trust with potential clients.
“Don’t forget video.”
With the right strategy, real estate agents can use videos to engage with prospects, highlight properties, and showcase their expertise—all of which help you stand out from the competition.
“Shine a light on others.”
Excessively focusing on yourself limits your reach. Highlight those in your community who help make your work a success, partners in the industry, or even your favorite coffee shop.
“Promote your accounts.”
As simple as it may sound, agents often forget to include their real estate social media accounts on their website, marketing collateral, Google Business Profile, and other client-facing assets.
When is it time to hire a real estate social media expert?
With so many social media platforms and ever-changing algorithms, it’s easy to fall behind on your real estate social media strategy. That’s why hiring professionals to handle your social media is one of the best ways to ensure you get results without having to spend countless hours learning, testing, and managing campaigns yourself.
If this sounds like a good route for your brand, get started by connecting with our expert real estate social media team. They’re here to fast-track your progress and save you time so you can focus on other important aspects of your business.
What to post in your real estate social media marketing
Social media isn’t just about posting updates and hoping for the best. To get real results, you need to have a plan and be intentional in your approach. Here are some proven strategies used by industry leaders who’ve built impressive real estate businesses fueled by social media.
High-quality photos
Professional photography is more than just beautiful pictures; it can help build trust with clients, increase engagement, and ultimately drive more sales. Luxury Presence client David Hatef’s Instagram account is a great example of the value of photography.
Best to post on: Facebook, Instagram
Success stories and client testimonials
One of the best ways to make your presence known on social media is by posting testimonials and success stories from past clients like this one from Barry Cohen. This not only shows potential buyers that you’re an experienced and successful agent, but it also humanizes you and provides social proof.
Best to post on: Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, (YouTube and TikTok if video testimonials)
Company milestones
Posting major moments in your business on social media can be a useful way to build authority and trust. If you’re savvy, you can even turn this into a promotion. Here’s an impressive example from Ryan Serhant, another powerhouse Luxury Presence client.
Best to post on: LinkedIn, Facebook, Instagram
Industry and market news
Posting about the latest housing numbers on social media shows that you’re informed, establishes you as an authority in your space, and helps build trust with your followers.
Best to post on: Facebook, LinkedIn
New listings and properties
Real estate social media provides the perfect platform to showcase your properties in an engaging way that will draw people’s attention. Ginger Martin does exactly that in her Instagram Stories—and it has paid off.
Best to post on: Facebook, Instagram, TikTok
Home tips and renovation ideas
Sharing DIY projects and decor trends on your real estate social media account is another time-tested strategy to establish yourself as a reliable, helpful, and creative expert.
Best to post on: Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, TikTok
Real estate event coverage
Leveraging your involvement in industry events is also a smart social media practice. Not only does it demonstrate your commitment and expertise, but it leaves a positive impression on prospects, too.
Best to post on: Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, TikTok
Social media strategy + Luxury Presence
If you’re ready to implement our award-winning social media strategies but want some help getting it right, reach out to our team of experts. We’re really good at this and excited to help you leverage this incredible marketing and branding tool — starting today.