A few weeks ago, we tackled some general content ideas for kitchen and bath designers. In that post, we mentioned our belief that it’s impossible to run out of content ideas! We’re here to continue to prove that theory right by sharing a handful of outside the box social media ideas for residential realtors. 

As a realtor, it’s important to post about more than just new listings. Social media is a great place to show off what you know about the home buying and selling process – and it helps to give potential prospects an idea of what it would be like if they work with you. By offering up content of value, you raise the chances of engaging a potential client. 

Once you start posting high-quality content, it’s also crucial to engage with a wide and diverse audience. Don’t just chat with other realtors, connect with potential prospects, community figures, and other businesses.

1. Break down different neighborhood personalities: A series of posts with details about different neighborhoods is sure to engage people that are new to the area. Break down the personality and reputation of each neighborhood, but also include hard data like average home price, amount of available stock, school system data, and average commute times. For an added bonus, highlight a few key landmarks in each neighborhood – this could be restaurants, local art, parks, or trails. This is the perfect way to establish yourself as a local guide! 

2. Break down terminology: APR, ARM, appraisals, equity, escrow, FMV, MLS, trust sales, and seller disclosures… the list of confusing terms goes on and on. Help new buyers (or even seasoned pros) expand their knowledge of the market by breaking down common or confusing terms. This shows off how knowledgeable you are and shows you want potential buyers to be empowered… whether they work with you or not! 

3. Show us your style: Have a style of home you love? See a beautiful wallpaper or garden that you idolize? Take us on a visual journey by sharing photos that show off your personal taste. This could be décor you see out at a showing or inspiration that you’ve been coveting on Pinterest. This helps create a visually appealing feed and is a fun way to break up more factual posts. 

4. Community Events: Demonstrate that you’re plugged into the community by sharing local events or updates from community organizations. Bonus points for attending the events you promote and sharing behind-the scenes updates!

5. DIY Tips: New homeowners often need all the help they can get – especially when it comes to DIY projects and getting acquainted with regular home maintenance. Show them that your relationship with buyers doesn’t end when your check clears by providing useful resources for new and current homeowners. 

6. Inspection Preparation: The home inspection can be one of the most stressful steps in buying a new home. Help potential buyers get a better idea of what to expect by breaking down the process, explaining potential resolutions for any repairs, and sharing how to find a good inspector. This is a great time to highlight the home inspectors you often work with…because who doesn’t love some good cross promotion?

7. Buying Anniversary: Posting when a client first closes on a house makes them feel special – but take it a step further by also remembering their buying anniversary. This is a wonderful way to pop up on people’s timelines a year (or more) after you’ve worked with them. Chances are they’ll share your post, giving you the opportunity to get in front of their connections as well. This is a positive way to keep your feed house-centric even when sales are slow, or you’re stuck on what to post. 

8. Community Service: Sharing about causes and local organizations that you support is a great way to show people that you’re invested in the community. This works best (and feels most genuine) if you focus on an indirect sell – instead of making the post about you and your philanthropy, keep the attention on the cause or organization. Be sure to include a link for people to learn more, donate, or get involved. 

9. Dream Listing: People love looking at crazy-expensive listings, even if they’ll never be close to able to afford them. Share some of your most expensive or luxury listings – just be sure to link them to your website. The idea here is to get people browsing the photos so that they end up looking at homes they can actually afford! 

10. What sets you apart: In a competitive market, it’s important to have a highly qualified and dedicated realtor. Show off the accomplishments of your team by sharing some statistics on how you’ve helped sellers and buyers. This could be average selling times, negotiating for perks, or helping people close quickly. Avoid bragging and let the numbers (or testimonials) speak for themselves! 

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Hue & Tone Creative: Looking to reach a new audience?

Let us help you create a social media that shows off your brand and lets you reach new contacts. Whether you’re looking to increase your views or simply need a break from handling your account, Hue & Tone Creative has you covered for all things social.

If you work in the field of economic development, you already know what information is important to prospective companies, site selectors, and CEOs. But when you’re focused on selling your city, county, site, or state it can be easy to get entrenched in what you’re doing and make missteps on how you market your area. 

You may read a lot about best practices for your field – but what are the common blunders and worst practices in your industry? We’ve pulled together five mistakes we often see in economic development marketing. 

Mistake #1: Not defining your target industry 

Clearly marketing to a specific target industry shows that you know your area and have a solid understanding of what companies will best succeed there.  

Prospects want to know what kind of supply chain and workforce are available, and focusing on a specific industry allows you to better convey how your community will be able to serve their company. Back up your marketing towards a target industry with highlights from your labor market analysis, data, and maps that show the supply chain available to a prospective company. 

Mistake #2: Losing site of what makes you unique 

What’s truly unique about your area? Many regions promote themselves as pro-business or tout the benefits of their workforce… this message isn’t inherently bad, but it’s worth figuring out how to distinguish yourself from other areas that are promoting the same things. If you’re saying your area is pro-business, back it with specifics about the types of incentives being offered, state tax information, and information on local labor laws. 

But don’t stop there, really think outside the box about what sets you apart and then explain why potential investors should care. Quality of life, business climate, and workforce benefits are just the first step in attracting investors and talent – and they’re the same things that many other municipalities are touting. 

Mistake #3: Putting too much emphasis on your logo and tagline

Hue & Tone’s primary service is graphic design, so we feel confident saying no one thinks design is more important than us. That being said, we think it’s important to recognize that graphic design is only one piece of your marketing puzzle.  

While a strong, polished, and professional logo design is important, you can’t depend on it to do all the marketing for you. Strong messaging is a must when you’re asking people to invest the future of their company in your region. Let design complement well developed copy, a sound strategy, and well researched data, but don’t invest a disproportionate amount of your time and marketing budget into a logo and tagline. It would be misguided to expect a jazzy logo design to net you a big project. 

Mistake #4: Leaving the state out

Don’t make the mistake of assuming people know where you’re located – or even what state you’re in. Be sure to provide context for where you are and put your state name on everything. This extends to providing maps that show your city, site, or county in context of your state and the country. This is especially important if you’re dealing with international companies that may not know your country’s geography as well as you do.

Mistake #5: Not sourcing from existing companies

You’ve already got one of the most valuable resources at your fingertips – existing business. The best way to learn what will work for your marketing is to simply talk to the people have already decided to invest in your area. Grow your knowledge of what attracts companies to your city or state by speaking to the people that are already there and by building relationships with local corporate leaders. 

Developing these close relationships and improving your rapport with local companies will also open the door for future expansion projects. Ask local companies what services or products they would love to have closer – you may even find that some creative problem solving satisfies the needs of both existing and future investors.

These are just five of our top tips – what are yours? Do you disagree with any of the practices we’ve listed out here? 

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Hue & Tone Creative: YOur partner in economic development marketing

Realize you’ve been making all of these blunders? Never fear — we’re here to help you get your region’s marketing back on track. Whether you’re trying to attract investors or tourists, we can give you the polished look you need to hold people’s attention.

In every city there are tons of realtors vying for the same business and that makes getting customers to seal the deal that much harder -- so don’t put yourself at a disadvantage by missing prime marketing opportunities.

For example, listings with high quality photos sell at or above their listed price 44% of the time? And, that 70% of homeowners prefer to list with someone who uses video marketing?

These five simple but seriously effective tips you could start sticking it to your competitors and winning more business right now.

1. Make your properties easy to share

New to social? Here are a whole load of real estate-specific tips.

By adding social sharing buttons (Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest and Instagram) to all your listings. Even if only a handful of searchers go ahead and share you’ll potentially open yourself up to 100s, if not 1,000s, of new prospects -- for free. 

Remember to make your sharing buttons super easy to see and use, because the harder you make it to find them the more chance people will click away from your site without taking action. 

2. Set up a referral program

Let past customers market for you by incentivizing them to recommend you to their friends with something like a $200 referral fee. If you decide to start a referral program remember to:

• Make it clear the fee’s only applicable if the person they referred actually buys or sells with you

• Promote your scheme across your email, social media and website campaigns, as well as on-site and in-person too
  

3. Support the community

Whether it’s a local athletics club, school or charity, get your name out there and support the community with some good old-fashioned sponsorship. 

Not only will you boost your brand’s awareness, but you’ll show people you’re a company who cares too -- and that can do wonders for your reputation, putting you a cut above your competition.

 

4. Don’t just use images

Not sure where to start? Check out part one, two and three of how to make professional videos on your iPhone.

With the starting stat in mind, think about branching out into the video world for your listings. It’ll:

•  Give you a chance to show your personality

• Cater to what you know people want

• Better showcase your listings

• Give you a competitive advantage (if your competition’s not already taking the lead)

5. Partner with a local organization

If you don’t ask you don’t get. So, see if you can open yourself up to new audiences by teaming up with, say, your local coffee shop and asking if you can buy them a new set of takeout containers with your branding on the front.

They’ll benefit from the free supplies and you’ll benefit from more exposure. Just remember to include key information like your:

• Name

• Logo

• Contact details 

And make sure the end finish looks top-notch -- after all, the quality of your marketing materials says an awful lot about your business, so if you’re going to do something (and want awesome results), do it properly. 

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Hue & Tone Creative: Your Marketing Partners

The problem with all of the above? It requires time, resources, and expertise you might not have in-house. But don’t worry, we can fill those gaps for you. Get in touch at hannah@hueandtonecreative.com or (336) 365-8559 to see how.

Most real estate agents have a social media presence – but having an account and using it effectively are two totally different things. 

If used properly, social media can help you create connections with potential buyers or sellers, help you share your expertise, and let people get a sense of your personality. It’s also a great way for new realtors to let buyers, sellers, renters, and other realtors know you’re joining in the game. 

Whether you specialize in working with first time buyers or seasoned investors, defining and refining your social media strategy will always benefit your business. From stories to geo-targeting and anti-spamming, we’ve got five on-trend tactics to help you give your presence a boost.

Use pictures to pique interest

Our pet peeve? Realtors who put the property listing link in their Instagram caption! That link isn’t clickable – and including it there not only annoys your followers, it makes it obvious you don’t know best social media practices. Need to include a lot of links? Check out Linktree.  

Golden rule number one: don’t just post the link to your listing and expect people to click it. But equally, don’t forget to include the link altogether! If there’s one way to irritate your followers, it’s to post an awesome looking property, without a link, and expect them to trawl through your site to find it themselves.

To really catch peoples’ eye, get creative with your photography and consider venturing into the realm of videos. Instead of just sharing the property’s location and price, share your personality, throw in fun community facts, and highlight what’s unique about the house. 

Start sharing social stories 

Social stories are big no matter what business sector you’re in -- but in real estate, they provide the perfect platform to bring your properties and brand to life, give exclusive behind the scenes insights, and drive both engagement and authenticity with real-time content. 

The beauty of social stories is that they needn’t require cutting edge technology or editing skills, either. Raw footage can often be more relatable, so next time you’re checking out a property, why not grab some footage on-the-go and give your followers a bit of a teaser?

Don’t be a social spammer

This might seem contradictory given this article is all about marketing your listings, but don’t justpost about your listings on social media. If you do, you run the risk of overbearing your followers with relentless sales-lead content, which could result in them hitting that dreaded unfollow button.

Instead, mix up your feeds with a blend of listings, blogs, tips, advice, guidance, fun facts, ideas, and testimonials. It’ll ensure your feed doesn’t start looking stale, and will allow you to provide your audience with a variety of genuinely useful content.

Don’t forget to be…social

Social engagement is a two-way street. Whether it’s on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram or Pinterest - and every other platform in between, if someone’s made the effort to comment on one of your posts or send you a message, always reply - promptly.

Replying is especially important if you’ve received a negative comment – instead of ignoring the question, engage and stop a negative interaction in it’s tracks. Thoughtful feedback can often clear up a misunderstanding – and if nothing else, it will show that you’re responsive and reasonable. 

Tap into geo-targeting

If you’re looking to promote posts and you operate across a wide geographic area, be sure to utilize geotargeting with your ads. Instead of bombarding your entire base with listings that aren’t in the same city, take a strategic approach and target your audience based on their location. 

 It’ll increase your engagement ratio on the posts, and ensure you don’t become a nuisance by sharing irrelevant content. If you’re new to the world of geo targeting, here is a simple guide talking you through how to do the doing.

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Hue & Tone Creative: Serving Greensboro and beyond

If you’re not sure where to start or simply don’t have the time to execute your business’ social media strategy, then we’re here to help. Contact us today at (336) 365-8559 or hannah@hueandtonecreative.com to see where we can fit into your business strategy.

Creating a strong online presence for your development project allows you to widen your reach and share information with interested people and businesses. In addition to capturing the essence of your city or surroundings, your website should also follow a few marketing best practices in order to enhance your effectiveness. 

The things that make an economic development website great are the same things that make any website a dream: intuitive navigation, on-trend branding, and clear messaging. But what else can really help your website stand out from the pack? 

Whether you’re starting from scratch or looking to overhaul what you’ve currently got, here are eight useful tips to help you get the most out of your economic development website.

1. Make your mission clear 

If you want to stand out, your mission needs to be clear, inspiring and distinguishable from the competition. The overarching goal for any economic development campaign is to connect with prospective companies about why you’re a good fit for their company.  

To lure potential job creators to your area, you’ll need to thoroughly develop your mission statement and make sure it’s clear who you’re targeting, how your site or area will benefit them, how you plan to engage them, and what the next steps will be. 

2. Show off your support

No one does economic development alone –chances are you have a handful of partner organizations and public or private financial backing. People should easily be able to determine who is involved with your project, and what portions of the project they are involved with.

However, just adding this information to your website isn’t enough –you’ll want to keep people updated as your project progresses. It can take years for a project to go from the idea stage to groundbreaking, and staying active on social media or sending out a monthly newsletter can help keep people bought in to your project. 

3. Use statistics sensibly 

If you are using statistics to support something you’ve said or to support the value of your mission, make sure they’re up-to-date, accurate, and applicable. If you try engineering semi-relevant stats to fit your message, you’ll just end up confusing your audience. 

 Use tailored statistics and use them sparingly to make the most impact on your audience. 

4. Disclose individual contacts

Don’t use generic email addresses like info@mywebsite.com or contact@mywebsite.com. Potential site consultants will want to be able to do research on all parties involved and want to know they’re about to build a personal connection with someone. 

We suggest including the name, job title, email address, contact number and photo of each of your employees.

5. Stick to the three-click rule

You might have lots of really great content on your website, but if your visitors can’t find it, it’s not going to be doing you any good. The less clicks visitors have to make the better!

As a general rule, you don’t want to make pertinent information further than three clicks away from any given location on your site.

6. Don’t cut corners on imagery

The look and feel of your online presence is clearly important –but it’s not just about branding. When you’re choosing your imagery, don’t cut corners on the quality. 

There will be times when you’re selling a vision for a mid-construction project, which means you may have to use stock photography. If that’s the case, look for images that feel authentic. Try to target stock images that all have a similar style so that your site looks cohesive. 

If you’re in the early stages of a project, we suggest incorporating lots of placemaking imagery to give prospects a better sense of your community. Photos of lively town centers will help balance out the sterile feel of elevation drawings and floorplans.

7. Boast about your buy-in

If you’re in the early stages of a project or are searching for an anchor tenant, community buy-in matters. Showing off major backers will definitely turn heads -- but if you’re stretched for valuable web content don’t limit yourself to just the big names. 

Consider compiling a semi-exhaustive directory of all the small businesses and civic leaders who are engaged with your project. Pull quotes that highlight public support to convey a feeling of success…before you’ve even broken ground. 

8. Keep it fresh

Keeping your stats up-to-date is one thing, keeping the rest of your content fresh is another. When a project is in a construction lull, or you’re waiting for permits to come through, it can be easy to let your content get stale. 

To make sure you don’t fall into a rut, we suggest putting together a content calendar together that highlights key developments for the next year. This will help you brainstorm relevant content for the down times and force you to think outside of the box. Just be sure to keep revisiting your content calendar as construction schedules change! 

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Let’s get into business: together.

If you need a partner to help you optimize your website, help you develop a campaign, or maintain your social media efforts, get in touch at 336-365-8559 or hannah@hueandtonecreative.com.

Real estate can be a lucrative industry, but if you’re marketing your services in a fiercely competitive market, you’re going to have to do some serious work to stand out. 

While there’s no one magic ingredient that will guarantee success, there are a number of tactics you can employ to help gain more exposure and to create long term success. Investing in quality marketing, means creating quality content that gets your name out there and keeps it top of mind. Quality content is about playing the long game and building a solid foundation for your brand. 

To make sure you’re maximizing your market’s potential, here are 12 tips to help give your sales momentum a boost:
 

1. Be active on social

From renting tips and mortgage advice to home decor trends and how-to-sell guides, real estate agents have endless potential content to work with. Widen up the scope of your content from just current listings and make sure what you’re posting is beneficial to home owners during every step of the buying journey (including those who have already completed the buying process!). 

Build your presence by filling your feeds with genuinely useful information – and, as always, remember to interact with other users to gain exposure.

 

2. Don’t play hard to get

Don’t make people have to work to find your contact details. Whether it’s on your website, social bio or sales collateral, your contact details should be everywhere! Make sure your info is clear and easy to find to up your chances of an inbound inquiry. 

3. Branch out from stock photography

People can sniff stock images from a mile off. Give your brand an authentic feel by using real images of real houses and real homebuyers. Your smart phone has a great camera for snapping photos out in the field, but when it comes to photos of listings we suggest hiring a specialized real estate photographer. 

4. Hire a wordsmith

Your pictures are just one part of the pitch. Your words are the other. Do your listings justice and pique people’s interest by retaining a copywriter who can help bring your properties to life. 
 

5. Don’t over exaggerate

While you want to make your listings appear appealing, don’t get carried away and over sell your properties. If you build a reputation for wasting people’s time, you’ll only tarnish your reputation -- which is not easy to undo!

6. Consider the UX of your listings

Not sure what to display? Take a look at how Zillow and Redfin display their info to get an idea of what might matter to prospective buyers!

User experience (UX) testing helps you understand how real people navigate their way around your website so that you can identify areas in need of improvement. 

You’ll want to consider what potential homebuyers are looking for when they come to your site. Information like square footage, location, price, and features should be readily available and easy to read. Photos should be easy to flip through and maps should be easy to explore. 

7. Watch out for stale listings 

You fall in love with a house. You make an inquiry. You’re told it’s already off the market. At best, it’s just inconvenient and irritating. Make sure you put a process in place to ensure properties that are no longer available are swiftly removed from your site.

8. Keep people in the loop

Buying a house can be a long process – and some people might start the process only to realize they’re not quite prepared to buy. Don’t lose that relationship! Be sure to collect prospective buyers email addresses and point them to your social media, so that you can engage with them until it’s time to buy.
 

9. Don’t forget about millennials

It feels like every day there’s another headline about millennials and how few of them are buying homes, but it’s important not to discount them as potential buyers. Homeownership is starting to increase among this generation, and it’s important to start engaging this demographic because of their future purchasing power. Social media is a great way to do this because it shows you can speak their language! 

10. Get offline with a broker event 

While maintaining your social media is important, don’t be afraid to pull things offline and connect in person. A broker event could be anything from a traditional open house to a first time home buyers class. 

11. Become an authority

Creating quality content like webinars, videos, white papers, and blogs will help you increase your search engine optimization while also building your brand awareness. We suggest writing and accepting guest blogs to help you cross promote with other realtors and reach new people.

Valuable content -- like neighborhood profiles -- can help drive massive amounts of traffic to your site, making your name recognizable to potential homebuyers now and in the future. 

12. Get real feedback to share

Customer testimonials give insight into what it’s like to work with you. They’re a great way to give potential buyers some insight as they try to decide if they want to sign an engagement letter with you. 

When collecting testimonials, it’s often best to engage with home buyers as they near closing – your experience is fresh on their mind and there’s a chance you might lose contact with them after closing. 

13. Print isn’t dead

When you’re doing the rounds at open houses it’s easy to get confused about what house offered what. Don’t let prospective buyers leave a tour empty handed! Create handouts that recap all the important specs of the house, photos, and location information. 

We also suggest putting together a special packet for first time home buyers that covers every step from getting approved for a mortgage to what to expect at closing. Empowering first time buyers with their own information will eliminate confusion and cut down on the time you spend answering easy questions.  

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Hue & Tone: Your Real Estate Marketing Partner

If you’re a real estate agent and you’re looking to ramp up your online presence, you’ve landed on the right site. From complete brand overhauls to social media management, we’re your one-stop-shop for all things web and design.