Real estate web portals such as Zillow.com and Realtor.com place listings right in the palm of potential buyers. Before these websites existed, potential customers had to rely on real estate agents for listing information completely. This meant, when marketing properties, listing agents only had to worry about reaching buyer agents, not consumers.  All these advances in technology have removed agents as gatekeepers, and real estate is now directly marketed to consumers.  

Social media marketing for real estate is the epitome of the new direct to consumer marketing trend.  According to the Realtor.com Realtor Technology Trends, only 29% of realtors say they are comfortable with social media and only 25% say they are extremely comfortable.

It’s important to get comfortable and proficient with social media as it allows you to directly connect to potential buyers as well as leverage your seller's personal network.  According to Contractually Real Estate Trends 2016, 72% of all online adults are active on Facebook, and only 9% of Realtors use social media to market their listings.  By posting your listings to social media, you are connecting your listings to a captive audience of potential buyers; however, posting your listings to social media isn’t enough.  In the ever-changing landscape of social media, there is one constant, good content is essential, so staying on the cutting edge of real estate marketing trends is paramount.  By taking advantage of the latest photography trends, video and Matterport 3D tours you can ensure that your social media profiles shine, and your listings reach the right audience.  

Video: Generate Inquiries + Resonate with Sellers

Video is the new necessity in real estate.  According to Properties Online Tech Trends Report, 73% of homeowners say they're more likely to list with a realtor offering to do a listing video but only 9% of agents do.  Videos are the “king” of social media content as they are shared 1200% more times than links and text combined. (Source: Orion21)  The only question you should be asking is, why only 9% of agents offer listing videos. Become one of the real estate agents who stands out from the crowd by providing video to your listing clients and get rewarded with 403% more inquiries.     

Matterport 3D Tours: Connect with Buyers

Matterport is the latest technology to impact the real estate market by offering virtual 3D tours of your properties. Combining the best of photography and video, Matterport provides a truly immersive experience, making quite the impression on potential buyers.  You make up your mind about new acquaintance within the first fifteen seconds of meeting them.  The same is true when a potential client is scrolling through their Facebook newsfeed; you have less than 15 seconds to engage them.  Matterport virtually places the potential buyer in your listing.  They can open the front door, stand by the fireplace, or sit at the dining room table.  By putting the potential buyer in the home, you are forging an emotional connection which will, in turn, generate an inquiry.

Latest Photography Trends

Being able to show essential features with photography and video is crucial to attracting customers, according to the 2015 Real Estate Tech Trends Report, 83% of home buyers found photos the "very useful." Stand out from the pack by taking advantage of the latest photography trends:

Twilight Shoots:In a highly saturated real estate market twilight photography can set your listing apart from the competition by camouflaging cosmetic flaws, highlighting hard to capture features, emotionally appealing to the potential buyer, and creating a sense of special treatment.   

Aerial Drone Photography:  

When properly operated drones can shoot hard to capture selling features of your listing. Being able to show essential features with photography is crucial to attracting customers, a photo is worth 1000 words after all.

These two eye-catching photography styles will ensure that your social media audience is engaged.

How to Share these Tech Tools - Premium Property Galleries

Now that you know what you should be doing to sell your listing faster let the professionals at Hometrack Real Estate Marketing help with the how. The digital materials needed to market real estate effectively has multiplied.  The hardest part of the process is figuring out how to display all these new digital materials. Hometrack has heard this problem and answered it, with Premium Property Galleries, free with every shoot.

Premium property galleries are a single digital gallery that can display a collection of your real estate photography, video, Matterport 3D Tours all in one place. Hometrack can even upload a property gallery to MRIS listing which will populate to sites like Realtor.com, Zillow.com, Trulia.com, and many more. Premium Property Gallery's are simple to share on Facebook and other social media sites. Premium galleries make sharing your cutting edge marketing investments on social media and the web seamless.   

Published by HomeTrack Real Estate Marketing | www.hometrack.net | Author: Sydny Atwood | Copyright May 2016