ForSaleByOwner Social Media Sales Kit

Social media revolutionized the Internet and ushered in the age of Web 2.0. Home sellers can leverage the marketing potential of sites like Facebook and Twitter to help them with their sale. While knowing when to post and what content users find most engaging are essential tools in your social media sales kit, you’ll want to get creative to make your listing stand apart and reach more buyers.

Building a Foundation

You don’t need to be a social media guru to get your core community of friends and family to help build buzz about your home. Keep these essential tips at the forefront when you build your social marketing strategy.

1. Highlight the best features of your listing – An updated kitchen, open floor plan and close proximity to great schools are all qualities you should focus on in your post. Use the same strategy to create a great post as you did to write a great listing ad.
2. Follow a regular post schedule – Tweet about your home 1-2 times per day and post to Facebook 2-3 times per week. You’ll want to experiment to find the best day and time for engagement in your community, but start with weekdays between 1pm and 3pm. Make sure that you post on Thursday and Friday as house hunters begin planning which homes they’re going to view on the weekend on these days. You can even use a free tool like Hootsuite that makes it simple to schedule all of your posts at one time so you don’t forget.
3. Be available – If someone shows interest in your home by sharing, commenting or messaging you, make sure that you follow up with him or her in a timely manner. They may not be your next buyer, but they may know someone who is. Following some critical customer service tips will help you handle buyer leads in the social space.
4. Don’t spam the community – Posting too often (more than once a day) can desensitize followers and friends. Tweeting at them or including them in your posts too frequently (more than once) can agitate them.

How to Construct a Great Post

What does a great post look like? You’ll want to create content that appeals to the users on each platform and that means short, quick tweets and posts with images.

Facebook
We’ve found that users on Facebook really respond to pictures, so you’ll want to make sure that your post includes a great description and an engaging picture of your home’s exterior. When sharing additional photos start with the rooms that matter most to buyers such as the kitchen, main bathroom and main bedroom, Make sure you include the location and price of your home and a link to your listing on ForSaleByOwner. An example might look something like this:

Custom-built in 2006, this 3-bed, 3-bath dream home in Minnesota offers over 5,000 square feet of living space with an inviting open floor plan that’s perfect for entertaining guests. The main suite is incredibly spacious and includes a beautiful fireplace and whirlpool tub. Top-of-the-line features incorporated during construction include granite counter tops, custom stained knotty alder cabinets, low-emissive windows and much more. Truly a must-see and priced to sell at $459,000.

Creating a Facebook album for photos of your home can also be a great way to get users engaged. You can also take advantage of Facebook Events to promote a successful Open House. Don’t forget to share your pictures, listing and event on our Facebook page @ForSaleByOwnerDotCom to reach more potential buyers. Video performs extremely well on Facebook, so make sure to post any video tours you have recorded.

Twitter
Twitter requires you to work within 140 characters with photos, links and hash tags taking up valuable characters. While creating a tweet may seem difficult at first, it can help you focus your communications about your home without burning out your followers.

Start with an initial tweet announcing the sale, including a link to your listing and a photo. Photo urls can boost the number of retweets by as much as 35%, according to Twitter.

Make sure you encourage sharing by tweeting at your followers and businesses you follow that have been involved with your home sale like ForSaleByOwner. Focus on property details and features in specific rooms of the home, which may or may not include pictures. Here are a few examples:

Excited to share the news that we’re selling our home. Check out our listing on @ForSaleByOwner.com.

Please RT our @ForSalebyOwner.com listing 

Just added new appliances, check out our listing on @ForSalebyOwner.com

The Finishing Touches

Create a Page for Your Home
Making a page that is dedicated to your home can be a great way to advertise without bombarding your friends and family with statuses about your sale. More importantly, it can create a rich ecosystem that shows off everything that makes your home so great. An easy marketing method that can help you structure your week is to create Destination Days or days of the week that are dedicated to a specific topic. Here are four examples to help get you started:

1. Interior Features- Dedicate one day a week to posts that focus on one room in your home. Create a photo album on Facebook or a board on Pinterest and fill it up with photos of the room.
2. Neighborhood- Focus your posts and tweets on photos of the great features your community has to offer. Share or retweet news articles about the great events in your city, even show visitors what the weather is like near your home.
3. Reviews- Did you go out to a new restaurant that just opened near you or go see a great community production of Shakespeare in the park? Sharing a brief paragraph-long review can help buyers get a taste of the community from someone who really knows.
4. Real Estate News and Education- Help educate house hunters by sharing current mortgage rates, educating them on how to get pre-approved and submitting an offer or tools they can use throughout the buying process.

Personify Your Property
Creating a Twitter account or Facebook page for your home can be a good way to engage with the community in a creative way. In March, the Chicago Tribune reported on how a Twitter account helped a man in Mount Prospect, Illinois sell his home. After four years and three real estate agents, the owner took matters into his own hands and created a Twitter handle for his home.

Rich Burghgraef personified his home, naming the account Bob the House, and shared everything from tweets about how great it would be to watch the Chicago Bears in the basement to retweeting local news stories, weather and more. The home was under contract within roughly three months after a final price reduction.

With a listing on ForSaleByOwner, sharing on social media is simple. “I loved that there were easy ways to share with Facebook,” says successful seller Coli Huffty from Henderson, Texas. “By using these tools I feel that our house got the exposure it needed. We were able to sell our house in just 60 days.”

What social marketing tips will you use to sell your home?