Good photographs and videos can make the difference between just offering a property for sale and really appealing to a potential buyer. Many times the photos of a property motivate a potential buyer (or not) to take the next step, to decide to look at the property. Photos and videos are the first impression a potential buyer has of a property. They "sell" the property!

Marketing a for-sale property takes more than sticking a sign in the front yard that shows your name and phone number. Especially during times when more properties are on the market than there are buyers, you need to come up with innovative ways to market properties. While all marketing methods do not have to be innovative, they do have to be effective: they need to reach the right prospects with the right information about the property so you have the opportunity to convert a prospect into a buyer. With WeSell as a private seller you will have the opportunity to use various tools to boost internet traffic to your own property webpage and gain a deep insight knowledge in how to market Real Estate online.

If you stop thinking like a marketer and start thinking like a customer, you’ll understand the secret to social media is in the “social” more than in the “media.” It’s in being human, and being the sort of person at a cocktail party who listens attentively, tells great stories, shows interest in others and is authentic and honest. To put it simply, the secret is to be likeable. 

Here are seven tips to be more likeable and ensure great success using social media: 

1. Listen first and never stop listening 

Before your first tweet, search Twitter for people talking about your company and your competitors. Search using words that your prospective customers would say as well. For example, real estate agents should use Twitter and Facebook to search for people using the words “looking for a broker or agent” or “need to find a good house” in your town. You’ll be surprised how many people are already looking for you. 

2. Don’t tell your customers to “Like” you and “Follow” you, tell them why and how they should 

Everywhere you turn, you see “Like us on Facebook” and “Follow us on Twitter.” Huh? Why? How? Give your customers a reason to connect with you on social networks, answering the question “What’s in it for me?” and then make it incredibly easy to do so. Note the difference between these two calls to action: “Like our page on Facebook” vs. “Get answers to your real estate questions on our Facebook page.” 

3. Be authentic 

Your readers don’t want to read impersonal posts about the importance of keeping in touch with their agent. Instead, be human and be yourself. Are you sponsoring a Little League team in your town? Share it with your fans! Know a few real estate jokes? Tell them! Imagine how much positive feedback you would get if you asked: “Why didn’t the hipster realtor show the ocean side mansion? … It was too current.” Write posts that show your company’s personality and watch your online community begin to engage and grow. 

4. Why ask questions? 

Wondering why nobody’s responding to your posts on Facebook? It’s probably because you’re not asking questions. Social media is about engagement and having a conversation, not about self-promotion. If a realtor posts on Facebook, “Come in and see what’s on the market today,” nobody will comment and nobody will call to make an appointment. If that realtor posts a question as simple as “What’s your favourite shutter style?” people will be more likely to comment online and engage with the company. Better yet, if the realtor asks “What’s the best part about home shopping?” think of the number of people who will comment on the post and bring attention to the company. 

5. Surprise and delight your readers 

Want to bring more attention to your company’s social media pages and become more likeable over all? Learn ways to surprise and delight your customers on a regular basis. Offer contests and raffles or encourage your community to join the conversation for a chance to win local gift cards that show off a town’s personality. Remember, free is like magic and a delighted customer will share their experience with friends and family. 

6. Share pictures and videos to tell stories 

People love photos. The biggest reason Facebook went from zero to 1 billion users in nearly 10 years (yes, Facebook will be celebrating its tenth year this February!) is photos. Photos and videos tell stories about you in ways a text alone cannot. You don’t need a big production budget, either. Use your smartphone to take pictures and short videos of customers and cool things around town. Then upload them directly to Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn. A picture of a young couple in front of their new home is Facebook gold. Try a video featuring testimonials from your happy customers! A picture really is worth a thousand words — and a video is worth a thousand pictures. 

7. Spend at least 30 minutes a day and use the new storytellit app to help! 

Storytellit is a tool created by Likeable Local which gives you great suggestions for highly engaging posts and then automate and schedule them to Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and Tumblr. If you bought a newspaper ad or radio ad, you wouldn’t spend five minutes on it or relegate it to interns, so don’t do it with social media. Not to mention, there’s a lot to learn, and every week, new tools and opportunities across social networks emerge. Spend real time each day reading and learning, listening and responding, and truly joining the conversation. The more time and effort you put in to social media, the more benefits your company will receive. 

The tips listed above are critical to maintain and grow an online community, but before you even consider social media – I tell Likeable customers – consider this: Facebook will help magnify and multiply the conversations about your company. Will you be happy about the nature of those conversations? 

Before you get involved with external communications – online marketing, advertising and social media – look internally at your company. The secret to the most effective marketing is so simple — just be likeable. 

What do your customers say when they talk about YOUR company with their friends and family? Do they rave about easy communication, effective listening and great results? Or, will they have less than savoury things to say? 

Is your customer service immaculate? Are there displays of community awards? What about your company is remarkable? What about your business is likeable? 

Remember to follow the golden rule: Would you yourself click the “Like” button, the Follow button, or Retweet button if you saw your company or your content here? Would you want to be friends with your company at a cocktail party? Just how likeable is your company?

To make you’re posting efforts more laidback and to keep up with the daily tasks of committing to social media marketing, we suggest an online tool that will help you to get things done more easily and more efficiently.

The website tool is called StoryTellit and is a free of charge extremely easy to handle.

The advantage is that you can use StoryTellit to post to Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter at the same time. You have the opportunity to select a trade line in our instance “real estate” and the system is giving you suggestions for posts or things to say.

This is the link to the website and it only takes you 5 minutes to read the explanations and the how to….

https://likeablehub.com/

This is obviously ideal for the WeSell residential platform to assist the seller with his social marketing tasks. 

An open mandate is when many different estate agents or brokers can have a mandate to market your property, meaning that one estate agent cannot claim to have the sole right to market it.

Exposure, exposure, exposure. That's how sellers sell their home fast.

WeSell provides extensive property exposure by listing your property at a mouse click to 39 web portals with over 10 million unique visitors each month.

WeSell is advertising its services on a daily basis through in2assets brand awareness campaigns, social media platforms, press articles, blog publishing and property advertising features, which generates a constant stream of visits to the sellers’ property webpage.

An online agent is a property professional whose job involves selling and renting out buildings and land for property owners by using online technology.

Marketing has pretty much been around forever in one form or another. Since the day when humans first started trading whatever it was that they first traded, marketing was there. Marketing was the stories they used to convince other humans to trade. Humans have come a long way since then, and marketing has too.

The methods of marketing have changed and improved, and we've become a lot more efficient at telling our stories and getting our marketing messages out there. EMarketing is the product of the meeting between modern communication technologies and the age-old marketing principles that humans have always applied.

To outlining the benefits and pointing out how it differs from traditional marketing methods lets have first a look at the “What and Why” of eMarketing.

Very simply put, EMarketing or electronic marketing refers to the application of marketing principles and techniques via electronic media and more specifically the Internet. The terms eMarketing, Internet marketing and online marketing, are frequently interchanged, and can often be considered synonymous.

E-Marketing is the process of marketing a brand or a property using the Internet. It includes both direct response marketing and indirect marketing elements and uses a range of technologies to help connect sellers and buyers. By such a definition, eMarketing encompasses all the activities a business conducts via the worldwide web with the aim of attracting new business, retaining current business and developing its brand identity.

Why is this important?

When implemented correctly, the return on investment from EMarketing can far exceed that of traditional marketing strategies and E-marketing in the Real Estate world plays today the major role to the success of a property transaction.

Whether you're a "bricks and mortar" business or a concern operating purely online, the Internet is a force that cannot be ignored. It can be a means to reach literally millions of people every year. It's at the forefront of a redefinition of way businesses interact with their customers.

The real estate industry is one that still likes to rely heavily on face to face meetings and transactions, and seem to be slow to adopt technical advantages says Rainer Stenzhorn of In2assets, the first online service provider to the commercial and residential property industry in South Africa.

In residential and commercial industry, high value transactions are the norm and all involved parties like to “size up” to get their measure in the transaction.

Many game players online presence is and has traditionally been nothing more than a static web page and perhaps the occasional newsletter sent out by an Agent or Broker. Generally social media has been perceived by the real estate industry as being nothing more than social. However, to paraphrase Bob Dylan – “The times are changing”.

Real estate companies are starting to recognize that social media can play a vital role in their marketing strategies. In an attempt to become more nimble, or at least appear more so, In2assets representing WeSell a unique online real estate trader have realised that utilizing social media can be a very cost effective public relations and general communications tool announces Stenzhorn.

Social media provides another avenue to present and market our seller’s property tapping into yet another marketing vehicle, one that has broad appeal and a huge following, and also extends the range of traditional marketing channels continued Stenzhorn.

Positioning our property platform by involving our sellers and property owners is a strategy that gives maximum activity and exposure to each and every property transaction.

Involving property sellers, landlords, tenants and buyers and other interested parties in a much more informal way, thereby giving a more “human” face to our company and proving the perception of being a much friendlier, accessible and likeable real estate role model.

Social media marketing allows our sellers and buyers, or landlords and tenants to engage in a conversation with people outside the sales environment and gives a valuable opportunity to receive feedback from the market and have the opportunity to join the online and social world of real estate.

Stenzhorn ends his statement by saying: If adopted in a deliberate and strategic fashion, social media can be a very powerful and effective tool to assist in selling real estate online.