If you’re tired of sitting in front your next showing appointment starting at a blinking cursor on your Instagram trying to think of a caption, this is your sign to make a content calendar for your real estate business. We’re dropping all our tips for planning, organizing and scheduling content so you can spend less time thinking about what to post, and more time engaging with the people that matter to you: your clients.
Why You Need a Content Calendar
When it comes to social media and content creation, advance planning is key – but that doesn’t mean you have to be rigid in your approach. In fact, one of the best things about having a content calendar is that it allows you to be more spontaneous with the rest of your social media strategy. If something big happens in your market or you stumble across an interesting article, you can easily fit it into your content calendar without having to completely scrap your original plan.
Here are a few tips for creating a real estate content calendar that works for you:
Think about the topics you want to cover
Start by brainstorming a list of topics you want to cover. This could be anything from local market trends to home staging tips to advice for first-time homebuyers. Having a running list of ideas and topics makes it easier for you to develop content around those core ideas.
Decide how you want to present your information
Once you have a list of topics, start thinking about how you want to create content around those topics. This could be blog posts, social media posts, images, infographics or even video content. Having a variety of formats will help you keep your social media posts fresh and interesting and will allow you to figure out which formats work best for your audience.
Create a Calendar Framework
Decide how often you want to post and how frequently you want to discuss some of the topics in your original list. Then develop a calendar framework that you can fill in at the start of each week, or month if you’re a real goal-getter.
Develop Your Content
Now it’s time to start filling in your calendar with content. If you’re struggling to come up with ideas, consult your original topic list for inspiration. And don’t forget that social media isn’t all about promoting yourself – mix things up by sharing new ideas, different content formats, and even throwing in a few personal posts from time to time. They are hiring a person, after all.
Pro tip: elevate the level of professionalism on your feeds by creating and sticking to a color palette or even a specific brand style.
Schedule Those Posts
Once you have a library of content created, start mapping out when you want to publish each piece. This is where a content calendar comes in handy – you can visually see when you have gaps in your content and plan accordingly. While you can go in and manually post your content each day, there are also tons of great tools out there to help make the process easier.
Benefits of Using a Content Calendar For Your Real Estate Business
Still not convinced a content calendar is for you? Here are some of our favorite benefits of planning your content in advance.
Scheduling content in advance frees up time in your day-to-day social media routine, which means you can spend more time engaging with clients, following up on leads, and working on other areas of your business.
When you have a content calendar, it’s easier to measure the performance of your social media posts and track which topics are resonating with your audience. This helps you create more targeted content in the future and avoid wasting time on posts that no one is interested in.
A content calendar also makes it easier to collaborate with other team members, whether that’s someone who handles your social media for you or another agent in your office.
A content calendar also helps you maintain consistency in your online marketing efforts, which is key to growing an engaged audience on social media.
Creating a content calendar may seem like a lot of work up front, but we promise it’s worth it. Not only will it save you time in the long run, but it will also help you create more targeted and effective social media content. And who doesn’t want that?