Should I Be Using Social Media to Help Sell my Home?
How to Use Social Medial to Help Sell Your Home
When it comes to sharing personal information on social media channels, it’s important to be wary. There are the obvious don’ts, like posting the dates you’ll be out of town and when your home will be unoccupied, but what about the grey areas? What about posting a job opportunity, or, more specifically, sharing your home listing?
While it’s important to exercise caution when it comes to sharing personal details online, there are huge benefits to using social media channels like Facebook to help your Realtor sell your home. In today’s ad-driven world, there are options beyond sharing your home listing as a status update.
Curious to see how you can use social media to help sell your home for more money, and faster? Check out our guide to using social media to sell your current Portland home.
Why Use Social Media to Sell Your Home
In today’s world, your market of potential homebuyers isn’t spending the majority of their time looking through newspapers and listings. Instead, they’re engaged in today’s mobile platforms and interactive networks including Instagram, Facebook and Snapchat.
Because that’s where buyers (millennials and older generations alike), are already sourcing their information – so it’s important that you plug into social media this way.
Meet buyers where they’re at, and provide your listing information on social channels where they already go to learn about news, updates, and even home listings. It’s a critical vehicle for exposure, and you don’t want to lose out on the valuable opportunity of using social media to sell your home.
Tips and Tricks for Using Social Media to Sell Your Home
Each social media platform offers its own unique set of benefits to help you sell your home. Here are a few insider tricks for today’s most popular social platforms: Instagram, Snapchat, and Facebook.
Given that over a billion people access Facebook each day to check on their social feeds for news and friends and family updates, this widely used social platform is a great tool to market your home.
If you have a public profile, or if you choose to share your post publicly, there’s large numbers of people who could potentially come across your home listing. But even if you don’t want to share your Urban Nest home listing ad on your personal page, there’s another way to use Facebook more anonymously to sell your home: through ads.
Forbes recently shared a case study where a couple ran a $5-per-day Facebook ad to target potential buyers within 20 miles of their New Jersey home, and the couple witnessed staggering results. According to the Forbes article, “within five days of being on the market, the Tardiffs had not only received multiple offers on the home, but for just $35 worth of Facebook ads, they also got a full-price offer and closed in 30 days.”
In many ways, Instagram is surpassing Facebook in terms of popularity for younger demographics, especially those under the age of 35. As many first-time homebuyers fall within this demographic, it’s important to make use of this social channel, too.
One of the best ways to use Instagram to sell your home is to share in your Instagram feed or on your story that you’re listing your house on the market, and state that you’re going to be hosting a live open house.
Thanks to Instagram’s live video feature, all of your followers will be notified when you decide to host your virtual, live open house on your feed.
Followers are also given a chance to interact with you as you host the open house, so they can send you questions during the live feed. Think of it as a digital meet and greet: just set a date and time, and your followers will be there.
Snapchat
Why use Snapchat, a platform where images disappear after a quick viewing, or after 24 hours max? The answer is, glam factor. Hear us out.
If you post a snap that features a glass of wine with a stunning view and hashtag #frontporchviews, people are going to react by wanting to see more of the view, and wanting to have the opportunity to use the hashtag themselves. And, if they buy your home, that’s also a possibility.
Think of using Snapchat as a bait for homebuyers: it establishes a sense of allure, a quick appeal, that can bolster your selling efforts on other social media channels.
Have you heard success stories about selling homes on social media channels? Let us know!