TOP TIPS

• Make sure your profiles are all 100 per cent complete and similar across all the platforms in use. They must look professional; think about changing them to be themed/branded to your latest promotions, eg “£500 referral fee offered” or “Free mini iPad with every new valuation” etc.
• Use other media forms such as photos and videos to complement updates as these are proven to gain better engagement/clickthroughs/shares etc. If you are offering a free mini iPad as an incentive then take a picture of it in your office and use it every time you mention this promotion.
• Use HashTags to increase chances of being found on social media. Hashtags aren’t for only Twitter, they work across Facebook, Pinterest, GooglePlus etc.
• Interact with other ‘local’ users of social media – Share/like/comment on updates. This will attract interest in your account and if your updates are of interest then a local audience is more likely to be responsive. Research your town/city name on social media and follow trends/hashtags and engage with them. Look out for your town hour, eg #ColchesterHour #DevonHour etc as these usually run weekly and are highly active and local audiences engage with them.
• When using social media, think about giving a name to the person who you are asking people to contact. Rather than saying, “Call our head office if you have a property to sell”, you will get a better response by “Speak to Tracey in our Cambridge office who is waiting to hear from you and she can help you sell your property”.
• Study your competitors and take advantage of enquiries they may generate. This doesn’t necessarily mean ‘stealing’, but more so about studying OSLG (Outbound Social Lead Generation) which I’ll explain a little bit later.
• If your audience faces the same set of problems/question when selling/renting a property then create a FAQ page on your website and share that link on social media.
• Remember to study best times to update and remember that not all your updates will be seen, especially on Twitter. Repeat an update on a different day/time to increase it’s chances of being seen.
• Think about running competitions and giveaways specific to social media. Request likes/shares/follows to enter and collection of the prize in person from your agency to allow for photos of the winner receiving their prize.
• Use social media management software to schedule in updates if you haven’t time to update during the day, evening or weekend.
• When posting links on social media, try as much as you can to have them pointing to your website. Build content on your agency website by writing blogs, news updates rather than sharing content of third party websites such as Telegraph Property or BBC etc.

WHAT IS OSLG?

Outbound Social Lead Generation, or OSLG, is where you can look to capture a relatively untapped area of social media. The main action lays in studying your local audience interactions on the theme of your industry: property/homes/house prices etc. By offering help and advice to these individuals which may lay outside your current network/following, you can be engaging with a key target audience and placing your agency right in front of a persons consciousness at a point where they require your expertise the most.

As an example, by your agency regularly searching keywords such as ‘annoyed estate agency’ you may stumbled across someone’s Twitter update of, “Can’t believe the estate agency sent round one of their junior members of staff to show our property. So annoyed!” – if reacted to quickly your agency could simply reply, “Hope that your experience of selling your property improves! This month we’ve 20 per cent off our commission rate to cheer you up!”

As with any marketing operation on any media platform, be it online or offline, it is important to adhere to three main points:

• The right message (be direct, clear and think about your clients needs)
• The right market / audience (usually local)
• The right method of communicating (study which are the best platforms, topics and hashtags).