Fresh eyes
Social selling for property professionals
December 8, 2016
If you think social media isn’t useful for every industry, then you’re probably missing out on a number of great opportunities for your company.
Even within the B2B world, there are certain platforms which will help to improve your reputation, increase your networking prospects, and keep you up to date with the latest happenings within your sector. According to research by Dell, over 70% of B2B purchase decision makers use social media to help them with their initial research.
One industry which benefits from the art of social selling is property and construction. Professionals within this area can utilise social media to their advantage, whether to push their products and services, increase brand awareness, or network effectively. Below, we’ve outlined our top tips for property professionals across each relevant platform.
LinkedIn is a fantastic platform for professionals across the board. There are a number of uses that you can take advantage of, such as:
- Building your personal brand and reputation
- Connecting with like-minded professionals
- Developing relationships with potential clients
As well as keeping your own profile updated, update your company page and keep it filled with regular content from your website. Whether people are searching for you or your company, having consistent information is vital for pushing through traffic to your website and allowing people to get in touch.
Improving your profile and building your online portfolio will allow contractors, architects, developers, or interior designers view what you can do, as well as getting your brand out there and constantly improving your reputation.
Utilising groups and being active will allow you to promote yourself and your business. Adding strong, relevant content to your profile, such as video and links through to your work, gives you an online portfolio and pulls together all your achievements in one place.
Most professionals are on LinkedIn nowadays; it’s how you utilise it that will make you different from the competition. By building your brand and creating communities, you can start conversations on industry topics, such as the housing market, marketing tools for architects, the UK housing crisis, or the growth of the construction sector.
The most important premise to remember on Facebook is to be as authentic and genuine as possible to ensure that you aren’t purely trying to push sales. It can be tempting to use Facebook to simply post about houses you might have on sale or developments that are soon to be released. However, offering insightful advice or sharing useful articles from your blog is more likely to encourage people to utilise your services in the future.
Articles such as ‘Top tips for staging a property before a sale’ or ‘Housing Market Predictions for 2017’ are great for gaining traffic through to your website and increasing your authority within that subject sector or industry.
Pushing sales-related posts through targeted advertising is an effective way of enticing new customers/clients too. Buyers do their research via social media sites, so it’s vital that you’re capturing their attention.
Use the feedback and reviews that you receive from Facebook as a guide for how to approach customers in the future. You will gain a number of insights from this information, allowing you to build relationships more effectively and convert that sale.
Having a Twitter presence allows you to follow industry moguls and build your company’s reputation. Make sure you are tweeting about happenings in your company, such as new staff hires, new developments in the pipeline, or even a brand new JCB…
Many thanks to Plant Hire Uk for this lovely new machine at our ainsdale project @ovhousing pic.twitter.com/T9D1QHNGsY
— Mulbury (@MulburyUK) 12 October 2016
Follow other property professionals to keep an eye on your competition. Hashtags are extremely important too for visibility on Twitter. There are a number of property related subjects that can utilised, such as location hashtags, event hashtags, and lifestyle hashtags.
Twitter advertising is another avenue to explore too. Promote your account to the right audience (location-specific, particularly if you have properties to sell in a certain area), promote your tweets (this could be sales specific for a new property or new development you have), and maybe even start a new ‘Trend’ to create further awareness.
As a purely image-led platform, it may be difficult to determine how Instagram is relevant for the property or construction industry. However, property is an incredibly visual product and something that everyone has an opinion on. Showcasing your developments or properties or interior design work via this platform, means you’re capturing a vast audience.
Utilising appropriate hashtags on images will enable users to find your content far more easily, making your brand more visible and driving further traffic. Instagram can be tricky to navigate if you aren’t fully aware of how to use it. Having a strategy in place will help organise the content you choose to promote.
Similarly, Pinterest offers a resource for interior designers and architects, offering a plethora of images for a multitude of topics.
Use this platform for showcasing your work, arranging mood boards and ideas, alongside understanding what clients love to really pinpoint down exactly what you can offer.
