The social media landscape is oversaturated for the real estate industry, both commercial and residential. For real estate companies looking to build their brand and take advantage of the highly targeted nature of social media to drive sales, it’s easy to look at the landscape and wonder, “Should my organization be on 14 social media platforms, too?”
The short answer is no. In our new white paper we evaluate and analyze data from the top 50 residential and commercial real estate companies (by transaction volume) on social media. The resulting insights are instructive for both commercial and residential real estate companies spanning a variety of functions looking to enhance their digital marketing strategy. In this post, we explore three key insights from our research.
Residential is on more platforms, but commercial has greater following
The top 50 residential real estate brands operate 218 total social channels across Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn and Pinterest (an average of 4.4 per company), while the top 50 CRE brands account for just 138 social channels on the same five platforms (or 2.8 per company). However, that targeted approach has resulted in a combined total of almost 40,000 more followers for commercial real estate companies (as of this writing) concentrated on fewer platforms and thus requiring fewer resources to maintain.
Residential real estate under-utilizes Instagram
Instagram is the least used of the five social platforms that we evaluated among residential real estate companies, but those that are on the platform are finding success. The average following for these companies is the second-greatest among the five platforms. With celebrity realtors like the stars of Bravo’s Million Dollar Listing engaged on the platform alongside interior decorators and designers, it’s no wonder the image-centric platform has attracted #realestateporn seekers.
Commercial real estate knows where its social bread is buttered: LinkedIn
42 of the top 50 commercial real estate brands maintain presences on LinkedIn where they garner a combined following of 1.7 million followers, 3.5 times as many as the next most followed platform for the industry as of this writing. With its advantageous treatment of organic content within the platforms algorithm and paid advertising targeted based on title, employer and industry, LinkedIn will continue to be a key platform for this industry for the foreseeable future.
To learn more about these insights as well as additional statistics, analysis and best practices, download our white paper “Real Estate Brands: What Social Media Platforms Are They Using?” here.
