Stop Focusing on Building Your Own Social Profile

Social media is designed to be just that: social. So, stop focusing on building your own Facebook page and take a look around.

Amazing content about your brand is already out there. Your job is to find it, curate it, and send it back into the wild—carefully directed in the direction of potential new buyers.

Let’s take a quick look at how.

It All Begins With Social Listening

If you want an audience to pay attention, you must first listen to them. What are their interests? What do they care about? What are they saying about you?

The same applies in social media for business. In fact, listening to what’s being posted, tweeted, shared or otherwise published online about your brand should be a key part of any social media strategy. It provides invaluable insight into the wants, needs, concerns, and successes of customers—past, present, and future.

A variety of services and products is available for this purpose. Step One will be to choose a tool which meets your needs based on your business size and available budget. Then put it to work scouring social media for what’s being shared by your customers about your new homes.

Double-Tap, Share, Retweet

Unless this is your first foray into residential development, people are sharing content online about their experiences with your brand.

Examples we found posted about a variety of brands includes a modified version of an “unboxing video” with new homeowners crossing the threshold for the first time. We discovered many happy couples posing in front of their new home, keys in hand. We also viewed families happily standing in dirt lots they’d just purchased to build a new home. And we saw photo albums documenting construction progress—every step of the way.

Each of these examples illustrates a buyer success. Because they are user-generated, they carry the power of word of mouth. When you find them, curate them and purposefully reshare them to your audience because they have a greater chance of influencing buyers than anything your marketing department could whip up on its own.

Give Your Social Accounts a Little Push

Guests at your new model homes might take pics without any prompting and post them all over their Instagram, Twitter, Facebook and other social media accounts.

Wouldn’t the odds be far more likely to be ever in your favor, though, if you made the effort to inspire sharable moments they’d be itching to capture and share throughout their tour? We think so too.

Here are some ideas to keep visitors’ mobile devices out and busy:

• Invite guests to download a value-added branded mobile app

• Offer an augmented reality app to help buyers visualize possibilities (and to capture them with their mobile device so they can share them)

• Prominently post the handles and addresses of your social channels in key locations throughout your models and in your design center

• Suggest hashtags for your guests to use

• Install a webcam in every lot ready to capture time lapses and other milestones the soon-to-be homeowners will be thrilled to share online

Regardless of how you do it, be mindful of creating shareable moments. Keep an eye out for them online and be sure to treat them with the same reposting strategy outlined previously.

Need Help?

Not sure where to start? You’re not alone. LAVIDGE can help you develop a social media plan,  perfect for your specific needs.

To learn more, give us a call at 480.998.2600 or send email to [email protected].