With so many people, brands, and companies leveraging social media because of its high usage among consumers of all ages and interests, social media has become a must-have for any real estate digital marketing strategy. 

Specifically for real estate, social media is essential for attracting leads, building name recognition, driving visitors to your website, and so much more. The most popular social media platforms used in the real estate industry are Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram, and YouTube for uploading videos. And, just as your real estate website needs to be optimized to rank well on search engine results pages — having a good foundation of technical SEO, user experience, mobile-friendliness, etc. — your social media profiles also need to be optimized to get the most from them.

Keep reading to learn how you can optimize your social media profiles for real estate to drive more traffic and stand out online.

What is social media optimization?

Just as optimizing your website takes time and effort, so does optimizing your social profiles. The process of optimizing your social media involves creating a specific strategy or strategies that utilize the best practices on each channel, keyword research, and extending your website’s reach.

When you optimize your profiles, you can strengthen your social strategy and connect with your audience better, extend your reach, drive more leads, build trust, and more. It’s important to note that while these strategies below can be applied to many of your social channels, each one has its own set of best practices and features.

5 Ways to Optimize Your Social Media Profiles for Real Estate

1. Create consistent brand recognition 
2. Size images appropriately 
3. Update your bios
4. Cross-promote other channels and your website
5. Leverage hashtags

Create consistent brand recognition

One of the most key pieces to having a social media presence is being an extension of your website or yourself. Having a clear brand name that matches all your profiles and consistent handle names (or as close as you can get) will make it easier for your audience to find and recognize your brand online. This often means choosing the same profile picture for all your channels, the same colors as your website, and a similar tone of voice. However, because social media can be a way you show off your company’s personality, you can have a little more fun with what you post and how you deliver messages, as long as you remain in the scope of your company’s vision and mission. 

Size images appropriately

Each platform has its own set of best practices, how users engage with it, and what types of content make sense. And, each platform has its own set of image-sizing best practices. To best feature each image, make sure it follows the platform guidelines to avoid getting cut off or being cropped. For example, Facebook image sizing for a posted photo on the News Feed is 479 x 246 pixels and Twitter 1200 x 675 pixels. Though a Twitter image might be able to fit on Facebook as Facebook has more flexibility in sizing and scaling for each photo, a Facebook image might not be able to fit on Twitter properly. 

Update your bios

Your bio is a great place to let audiences know who you are, what you do, and how you could help them. Update your social bios to include a little bit about your company, your website, hashtags, and other social media channels (more on this later). Bios should be short and sweet, but descriptive enough so people know what you do. And, your bios should be consistent on each platform so you can keep up with your brand recognition. Keep in mind that many platforms have specific word counts for bios and it may take a little finessing to figure out what you want to say in each one. 

Cross-promote other channels and your website

Similarly, your bios can also offer a place to link to your other social profiles, your website, and even your email. Doing so helps drive traffic to your other channels when people can engage with your content in their preferred format — like images or video on Instagram — but also can drive traffic to your website. Linking your website also tells the search engines that your website has value, and will give it a boost in rank. Also, some social platforms have specific places where you can link your other platforms and your website, making it easy to link and view everything. 

Leverage hashtags

Hashtags have become an integral part of social media. Starting on Twitter and then integrated into other platforms like Facebook, Instagram, and LinkedIn, hashtags are another way in which your content can be easily searched. For example, on LinkedIn, you can search, follow, and engage with posts that include a specific hashtag like “real estate” or “realty.” Any user or company that uses that specific hashtag in their posts can be found, increasing their visibility. Performing hashtag research to discover the hashtags that people in your industry are using is a great way to join in on the conversations and extend your reach. 

At the end of the day, just like other digital marketing strategies for real estate, it’s important to continually leverage each channel’s analytics and check-in with how you’re performing and if you need to adjust your strategy.

Are you ready to level up your digital marketing for your real estate website? Connect with us today for specific website recommendations to help your real estate company stand out online.