How is social media being embraced within the property industry?
A recent editorial that I was asked to write was on some of the major names in Property Portals and their usage of social media – It will be out soon in The Negotiator magazine so be sure to get your copy and read it there too! I randomly chose some well know names that were in the current spotlight of property news and below are their own direct responses on how the likes of Twitter and Facebook helps to build their brand awareness online and the results they are receiving.
The property industry is very much alive and kicking in the usage of social media, more and more estate agents are adopting it as a marketing tool as well as the service providers. Our weekly leaderboards #EAUK200 and #EAUK500 are always busy with comments and feedback and how agencies rank on social media and their performance becomes more and more important.
Read below the thoughts of a few well know names in the industry:
Zoopla.
With the staggering growth in use of social networks in the UK it would be an ill-informed business decision to ignore the huge potential social media can offer a business in terms of traffic and engagement. Over the last 2 years they have focused on growing their social media channels and have seen significant return. Today they have an audience of over 300,000 for Zoopla.co.uk across the various social networks, growth of 700% in 2 years.
However the reach of social media, and Facebook in particular, isn’t restricted to the number of likes/followers you have. One of their recent posts on Facebook reached over 4 million people and they’ve now have an average weekly reach of 4.5 million for the Zoopla Facebook page.
This provides them with excellent brand exposure, an ability to reach a large audience organically, and they are experiencing an increase in visits from social media that is in line with this growth in use of their social media channels. It’s halfway through January and they’ve already hit 1 million visits from social media websites which is up 540% YoY.
Rightmove.
Our social strategy is focused on strengthening relationships and helping people to see past ‘the brand’; for them to get to know the people and personalities behind the brand.
Keen to empower those within the company that have expressed an interest in social media, 2014 saw us begin a training programme to members of our Customer Service team, who now work alongside our social team to deal with inbound enquiries as quick and efficiently as possible.
Understanding that our customers deserve and expect the best Customer Service possible, we also recently launched a new twitter channel specifically for our agent customers (@RightmovePro ), giving agents a quick and easy means to ask us questions, get updates on the latest seminars and webinars, as well as other tips to get the most out of their Rightmove memberships. We really hope that by giving our customers this dedicated twitter communications channel, we can save them time in the long run.
We also remain committed to providing our customers with as many extra property detail views via social websites as possible. In 2014 we generated over 12 million visits to property details pages from sites such as Facebook and Twitter (+120% on 2013).
Houser.
Founder, Rocky Mirza, said that “social media is key to the growth of Houser and gaining the best exposure for listings that are live on it’s property search engine.”
As an example, rather than only the main Facebook page for Houser, they are looking to work with others to syndicate posts to specific area pages across the UK so that information released is channeled to hit a more target and responsive audience. Only launched, so results yet in to prove if this method will prove successful or not.
eMoov.
On the importance of social media to eMoov, company CEO Russell Quirk stated:
We focus strongly on social media. It’s a key consumer messaging tool and is vastly underused by the estate agency industry. Many agents that do utilise it seem to think it’s just a neat way of following and being followed by other agents and sign erectors etc. Our Head of Marketing, Stephen Jury (copied), is a social media guru and has honed our messaging and exposure significantly in the last 12 months. How important is social to brand awareness? It could be argued that it IS brand awareness. We find that social is definitely transactional however conversion is hard to track and embryonic. ‘Scommerce’ will be massive though soon.
How important is social to brand awareness?
“It could be argued that it IS brand awareness. We find that social is definitely transactional however conversion is hard to track and embryonic. ‘Scommerce’ will be massive though soon.”
Have you seen a growth is activity / web traffic / following from your efforts on social media?
“Yes. But you have to do it right and I wouldn’t want to give any of our secrets away. It’s not of nothing that we are a Zoopla Power 100 top 10 agent each week.”
Thank you to Zoopla, Rightmove, Houser and eMoov for sharing their thoughts on social media and providing content for this editoria.
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