An Overview of Social Media Marketing for Commercial Real Estate

For too long, Commercial Real Estate marketing has been the exclusive domain of big brokers focusing on big clients – the Old Boys Network! With Brokerfied’s tools, you can push hundreds of inquiries to your website. Your website along with SEO services, Brokerfied signs and flyers, and simple marketing techniques can take your marketing efforts to the next level.  With the correct marketing, your property will get the widest possible exposure, and you can screen and qualify buyers and tenants yourself.

Keep reading for a quick overview of how social media works and how you can use it alongside your Brokerfied tools to market your commercial space for lease or sale.

Before you begin posting to social media, you should gather all the promotional material you have for your property including photos, floorplans, your Brokerfied Flyer, your Brokerfied Website Address, and your Brokerfied QR code. You’ll want to utilize all of this material in your social media posts.

The first thing to understand is that social media marketing works best when it is TARGETED.  Unless you strategically target your messages to specific audiences, your posts will enter the vast ocean of social media and won’t be found by the people you want to engage with.

There are two ways to effectively target a specific demographic – using hashtags and posting on specific pages. Pages are Facebook groups or other community spaces that are focused on a particular subject or hosted by a particular person or group you want to expose your listing to. For example, you might look at Facebook groups focused on the neighborhood or area where your property is located. Hashtags are keywords following a pound sign that categorize posts. Users can search for specific keywords to related posts. For example, on Instagram, if you use a hashtag for a certain neighborhood (#Brookln or #SanDiego), your post will show up with other posts related to that neighborhood. Users researching that neighborhood can then easily find your post.

We’ll focus on the big three social media platforms here- Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter.  If you already have an account on these platforms and you don’t mind mixing you commercial real estate efforts with your personal content, then you can go ahead and use your existing accounts. Otherwise, you can open new accounts on each platform specifically for your real estate content.

On Facebook, you’ll want to join any group that you think might have members interested in your property. For example, if your space used to be a barber shop, and you think that would still be a good use, you can search for barber groups in and around the area where your property is located as it’s possible that one may want to expand or relocate to your space.  Once you’re in that group, you can begin posting your property. Start with the best picture you’ve got, whether that’s inside or outside, and write some simple copy to go along with it.  For our barber shop example, the copy could read “Former barbershop space available.” You can include a link to your Brokerfied website in the post so that anyone interested can get more information and have a direct way to contact you through Brokerfied. People may message you through Facebook, but we recommend that you direct them to your website and Brokerfied email address and/or phone number. -This ensures your potential client can get the correct property information on and your communication is kept neatly in one place.

On Instagram you’ll start with a photo or video. Video content tends to perform the best on Instagram and is the most interesting to users. If you’ve got multiple photos and videos, that’s even better! Post a couple per day until you’ve run through them all.  Post the photo and a caption such as “Former barbershop available” and then add hashtags like the zip code or general area of the property, the status of the property (#forlease or #forsale), then use hashtags that describe the property suc has #barbershop and general hashtags like #cre #entrapreneurs #smallbusiness. Use your Brokerfied website address in the post as well so that people can easily access you and your property details. You can also add your Brokerfied email as a contact button on your Instagram page if you utilize a business Instagram account.

For Twitter you can use the same strategy you used on Instagram except you’ll need to limit the number of characters you use to 280. This shouldn’t be a problem especially since you can send tweets in a series if you have more to say.  As on the other platforms, you can post pictures and videos. You can also post the Brokerfied flyer PDF or a floorplan if you’ve got one. You can post a picture of the Brokerfied Sign and your Brokerfied QR Code. You want to make sure to use your Brokerfied Website address since all the property information is there along with your Brokerfied contact info.

Each platform has its own private or direct messaging system which can be useful to get the conversation started. However, we always recommend that you move your communications to your Brokerfied email or phone number. That way all your communication and contact information is stored in one place and not scattered around different locations and mobile apps.

Finally, it is important to keep in mind that the more you post, the more likely the algorithms will push your content to new viewers so plan on trying to post once or twice a day to Twitter and Instagram for as many days as possible. The algorithms across social media platforms are also favoring video content so utilizing video content in addition to photos and text can help boost your content in the algorithm. If you’ve got your Brokerfied flyer, 10 photos and videos, a floorplan, a map of the neighborhood, and your Brokerfied sign, you’ve got enough material to post twice a day for a week to start.

You may get a few leads or many leads from these social media sources as you start but the more you use social media, the better you’ll get, and the more useful these tools will become. And the more other people use social media to search for or market commercial real estate, the more productive this will be for everyone.  There are plenty of tutorials on using social media on YouTube and Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter. You may even want to consider an automatic social media posting tool like Hootsuite or a social media calendar service to really energize your social media marketing efforts and ensure consistency in your posting.

This blog is meant to be an overview and there’s plenty more to learn if you’re interested! Posting on social media is free and, with Brokerfied’s help, it’s not that hard. Brokerfied makes it easy to market your commercial real estate yourself! It’s time to give it a shot!