Creating and sharing valuable content on social media is crucial for real estate professionals looking to build their brand, get more leads, and stand out from the competition. However, consistently producing and distributing content can be challenging without a documented social media content strategy.
This guide will provide tips to strategically plan out your real estate social media content calendar on a monthly basis. Follow these best practices to determine what types of content to create, plan your content pipeline, and schedule social media posts effectively.
Determine Your Overall Social Media Goals
Before planning individual social media posts, define your overarching goals across all platforms. As recommended by Buffer [1], ask yourself:
- What is your purpose on each network? Lead generation? Brand awareness? Community building? Determine your unique objective for each.
- Who is your target audience? Research their key interests, challenges, and pain points. Then create content that directly speaks to what your audience cares about and their problems.
- What metrics matter most? Follower growth, engagement, conversions? Track key numbers.
With clear goals, you can create content that moves the needle on your real estate business’ key objectives.
Map Out Your Monthly Content Mix
Next, plan the types of content you’ll create each month across social platforms.
According to Hootsuite, a balanced social media content mix Includes:
- Educational content: Blog posts, guides, market updates, FAQs, etc. Offer advice and expertise.
- Behind-the-scenes content: Photos/videos of you, your team, properties for sale, company events, etc. Give an inside look at your real estate business.
- Curated content: Share industry news and local area insights from authority sources. Provide value to followers.
- Community interaction: Reply to comments, post questions, and run polls to spark engagement. Build relationships.
- Lead generation content: Promote open houses, new listings, and special offers. Convert followers into leads.
Map out how much each content type you’ll produce weekly or monthly. For example, scheduling 2 educational posts, 1 behind-the-scenes, 2 curated, and 1 lead generation post per week creates a balanced mix.
Build a Content Creation Pipeline
With your content categories mapped out, build a pipeline of specific content to develop each month. Here are some approaches:
- Leverage your existing content assets: Repurpose older blog posts, refresh outdated guides, and excerpt key sections into social posts.
- Optimize evergreen content: Update seasonal tips, location-based advice, and market trends data on a regular cadence.
- Promote new listings: Showcase fresh property listings frequently. Feature specs, photos, open house dates, and listing copy.
- Tap into trends: Comment on real estate news, local area happenings, holidays, events, etc. Link to trending topics.
- Develop monthly themes: Focus certain months on specific topics like first-time homebuyer tips, renovations, etc.
- Schedule guest contributors: Line up industry experts, and local partners to author relevant guest posts.
Build out your pipeline weeks or months in advance so you always have content ready to publish on social media.
Create a Detailed Social Media Content Calendar
With your goals, content mix, and pipeline defined, map everything onto a monthly social media content calendar.
Tools like CoSchedule [2] allow you to schedule posts across multiple platforms in advance. You can plan content for each network on the calendar and visually see your overall mix.
When scheduling, consider:
- How frequently do you post on each channel – 1-2 times per day for Facebook, 1-2 per week for LinkedIn, etc.
- Post content during peak times when your audience is most active on each platform for higher reach and engagement from followers.
- How far in advance do you plan – at least 2 weeks for thorough planning and approvals?
- You are mixing up your content types each week/month for variety.
- Promoting time-sensitive posts like open houses closer to the date.
Regularly update your calendar with new content ideas and industry events. Audit what performs well and adjust your mix as needed.
Track Performance and Improve
The final step is to track content analytics to understand what resonates most with your real estate social media followers.
Review performance data monthly and measure:
- Engagement metrics like comments, clicks, reactions, etc.
- Reach and impressions to gauge interest
- Lead generation from gated offers, call-to-action clicks
- Traffic referred from social channels to your site
Use these insights to double down on what works and adjust unsuccessful tactics. Consider surveying followers directly for feedback as well.
Continually refine your social media content planning process and aim to provide maximum value to your real estate audience. With these best practices, you can consistently promote your brand and listings while engaging new leads through strategic social media content.
