5 ways letting agents can harness the power of social media

6 March 2018

Social media is now pivotal to building a recognisable agency brand, as well as being an effective (and cheap) tool for targeting  landlords and tenants at truly micro level.

The lettings industry has been relatively slow to take advantage of the tremendous power of social media for getting the right message in front of the right people. While television, radio and newspaper advertising has been successfully used by agencies for years, the opportunities to get yourself known and heard online by the right people are immense, and generally come at a far lower cost.

Although you can be pretty confident that advertising via traditional means will ensure you reach a wide audience, you have limited control over who that audience is. Social media allows you to target at a truly micro level, which means reaching a smaller audience but with far more control over exactly who they are - and with less spend involved. Here are five social media tips for letting agents to get started.

1. Start a blog and create content you can share on other platforms

Effective marketing via social media is not just a matter of posting an inspirational photo on Twitter or Instagram and a link to one of your currently available properties on Facebook.

To really harness the potential of these platforms requires a coordinated and consistent strategy that plays to the strengths of each respective channel used, driven primarily by strong content that your target audience will want to see and share.

Sales are really just the tip of the iceberg. So if you haven’t done so already, start a blog. There are so many opportunities for creating quality and shareable blog content geared towards your different audiences including, for example:

  • Thought and comment from your experts on current topics of interest, such as the tenant fee ban or changes to legislation that will affect landlords
  • A checklist for tenants who are moving house, or advice on how to give tenants the best chance of passing a reference check
  • Case studies and customer stories that demonstrate satisfied clients and provide social proof of your agency’s success

Avoid salesey social media

It really is important to remember that your audiences don’t use social media in order to be sold to, so it is key that the content you share doesn’t generally look like advertising. In order to generate engagement, interaction and a positive response, a post ideally needs to fit well into a user’s newsfeed either by:

  • providing some kind of value or sparking genuine interest, or
  • standing out by being brilliant - not because it looks like a cold and commercial advert amongst everything else

Remember that it's not all about your organic following

Your existing followers are clearly the people who (in theory) see your social posts by default. However organic reach is declining - the social media world is very busy, there is a constant stream of content everywhere, and the hard truth is that realistically you now need to pay in order to give yourself the best chance of social success.

Boost your posts to help them get seen by your followers, but also pay to reach others. Because the social landscape is so crowded, try and really focus your efforts by targeting specific groups who are likely to respond well to what you have to say. And even though we call this concept 'advertising', it's best to try and make it look like anything but.

2. Use a little bit of money to make a big splash on Facebook

Putting a budget - even a relatively small one - behind your Facebook posts is a quick and simple way of increasing the reach of your message across the platform, and can provide you with greater visibility amongst potential tenants and landlords than more established local competitors in a very short space of time if done correctly.

By utilising Facebook’s targeting functionality you can, for example, promote a post to any or a combination of the following:

  • Potential tenants who live in very specific parts of your local area
  • Potential landlords who follow or like a combination of accounts that you specify (such as leading landlord or letting industry publications)
  • People who have already visited certain pages of your website but aren’t yet on your customer database

Make use of demographics to target the right audience

You can then use demographic targeting to ensure your post is seen by people of specific age ranges, certain salaries, particular interests, relationship statuses and many more variables besides.

Looking to promote your student properties? Try targeting 18-21 year-olds who live in the area and are listed as studying at or 'liking' the local university.

As is probably evident, outright advertising on Facebook will work best for attracting tenants rather than landlords. By installing the Facebook pixel on your website, you can build dynamic 'audiences' of Facebook users who have visited a page or combination of pages on your website (just make sure your privacy policy is up to date and is GDPR-compliant).

Why not, for example, create a dynamic audience of users who have been visiting your listings in the last 30 days and ‘retarget’ your latest properties to them? You can get as granular as you want - perhaps filter out your existing customer base and split the remaining audience into sub-groups based on the kinds of properties they’ve viewed.

You can categorise by number of bedrooms, area of town, monthly rent, or maybe even properties that are pet-friendly - and by using this data effectively you can be confident that your specific property adverts will be seen by people with a genuine interest in what you are looking to promote.

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3. Position yourself as an expert on LinkedIn

LinkedIn isn’t the place to post links to your available properties or to shout about your latest deal. It is, however, a perfect platform for positioning yourself as a thought-leader in the lettings industry, and for identifying and engaging with landlords and potential investors.

LinkedIn has experienced a sharp growth in daily use over the last 12 months as people begin to treat it as a genuine B2B platform rather than just a way of finding a new job, and through regular comment, thought and engagement from both your brand and your key people you can position yourself as a trustworthy, knowledgeable and engaging agency who others will want to do business with.

Your thought leadership and commentary blogposts from earlier will be key here, and these can also be repurposed as articles within LinkedIn’s native publishing platform - potentially reaching even wider audiences and demonstrating to other businesses that you are a strong player in your industry and/or region.

4. Make powerful connections on Twitter

By using Twitter effectively you can really place yourself amongst the local community and beyond by following and engaging with relevant local businesses, publications, journalists and experts.

The agencies who do well on Twitter are the ones who put themselves at the heart of relevant discussion and prove to be a knowledgeable (but humble) source of valued insight and content. Typically, they:

  • share interesting and timely content - which could be their own or that of a trusted third party who is likely to also be of interest to their followers
  • don’t constantly shout about themselves, or use automated tools that brag about how many new followers they’ve accrued in the previous week (a figure which is of interest to precisely no one outside of the business)
  • respond quickly to questions, acknowledge positive feedback, and deal proactively with anything more negative

Through the building of online relationships with key real-life businesses and relevant individuals, it’s possible to create brand ambassadors who can help to ensure your voice is far more likely to be heard in the right spaces and by the right audience.

5. Plan your social media calendar in advance

Probably the most important thing to do when it comes to using social media as a business is to plan. Make sure you use (and stick to) a content calendar. A good rule of thumb is to divide your social media output into category types, and try to stick to them. For example, a good regular aim might be:

  • 50% - own content (not salesy)
  • 35% - third party content and industry news
  • 15% - more salesy content, including outright adverts for properties available to let

Make sure you're providing value through social media

By using the bulk of your social media quota to provide value through your own content and advice, or to share the strong and relevant word of others, you 'earn the right' to be a bit more salesy and business-focused with the remainder of your posts.

They are more likely to be well-received and shared than the output of a business who use social media channels purely as self-promotional sales tools.

Even when you’re not generating sales or leads on a daily basis through social media, the halo effect caused by keeping your brand in the positive thoughts of potential landlords and tenants can’t be underestimated when it comes to the point at which they do actually require your services.

Further reading