When you increase your social media presence by encouraging engagement on your posts, you will create more traffic and leads to your real estate agent website. Social media platforms can help professionals in the real estate industry find email subscribers, potential clients, and referrals from other real estate agents.
Social media is more prevalent than ever and utilizing these platforms is a great way to generate leads for your real estate business. If you’re looking to boost your social media engagement, take a look at the four contest and giveaway ideas listed below. You’ll also find free social templates to use as well!
And if you want to learn more about social media and it’s impact on lead generation, check out our podcast below:
Social media giveaways
1. Ask your audience to comment with a personal story
This giveaway is twofold. You receive the engagement you’re looking for and get to know your audience and potential real estate clients better! Post a real estate image, template, or link to your listing for this giveaway. You want to make sure that your audience knows it’s a giveaway.
Start the post by saying GIVEAWAY in all caps. Then, ask your audience to share a story about living in their home—it can be their favorite renovation memory, the most challenging thing about settling into their first home, their future home goals, etc. You can build your giveaway around so many topics, which is great because that means you can create a bank of issues for future contests!
Next, let your audience know that you will be selecting one of the stories later that week, and the winner will receive a prize. If you’re using Meta products, such as Facebook or Instagram, you can feature your contest winner on your Instagram Stories or Facebook stories. If it’s a high-value prize, it will help to mention the award to get more participation.
2. Host a comment and share giveaway
This social media contest helps boost your page reach. For this giveaway, post either a real estate image, a graphic about you, or a new listing template.
If you post your client’s listing, you’ll get major brownie points. After you decide what to post, let your audience know it’s a giveaway and lay out the contest rules. Tell your audience that they need to comment on the post, like the post and SHARE the post. This will give you the engagement and the reach you’re looking for. Lastly, tell participants that you’ll select a winner by the end of the week.
3. Join forces with a real estate provider
This social media giveaway is a fantastic opportunity to work with a real estate provider and offer a high-value prize to one of your followers. A contest like this will take a bit more planning, too. You will need to reach out to a few real estate providers—consider your real estate photography companies, home stagers, landscapers, or title companies. Ask if they’d like to host a social media contest with you and go in on a high-value prize for the winner.
Once you find your co-hosts, collaborate on a post that you will all share on your social accounts. Your post should include the following information:
- That you’re co-hosting an exciting giveaway
- The rules: the participant needs to follow all of the accounts hosting the giveaway, the participant needs to comment that they completed the rules, the participant needs to like the post, and extra-points if the participant shares or tags a friend.
- Tags/links to each account that is co-hosting
- A nice graphic to grab attention
- A deadline for when the contest ends
- A description of the special prize
These types of contests are incredibly successful marketing campaigns that build your audience and credibility on social media, which will boost your brand awareness and lead generation efforts. Not only that, but the user-generated content can help build social proof for your real estate business.
4. Create a poll to gain feedback
Here is a contest that is easy to create and easy for your audience to participate in. We recommend a smaller giveaway for this contest as the work is minimal. In order to better understand your audience, create a contest through a poll. You can easily create polls on Facebook and Instagram.
You can ask a fun question or a more in-depth question. For example, you can post real estate images or templates and ask your audience to choose which house style they prefer. Or you can post real estate stock images and ask which neighborhood area your audience enjoys more.
If you’re looking for more important data, consider questions about when they plan to buy or sell a home. Or ask what is holding them back from buying their first home.
Again, make sure that you let your audience know that the post is a giveaway and when they participate, they are entered for a change to win.
Social media giveaway prizes
Below is a list of gift ideas you can use as your giveaway prize. These can range anywhere from a $5-10 Starbucks gift card to an $80 personalized gift. It really depends on your set budget and how engaging your contest is. These are also great options for closing gifts.
- Giftcard
- Food delivery services – Uber Eats, Grubhub, DoorDash
- Home improvement centers – Home Depot, Lowe’s, ACE
- Coffee – Starbucks, Einstein’s
- Online stores – Amazon
- Personalized Gift
- Welcome doormat
- Custom house portrait
- Monogram bag/dopp kit
- Campfire mugs
- Cutting board
- Return address stamp
Using real estate photography to enhance your social media
There are a ton of different giveaway ideas to help increase your social media presence as a Realtor. If you’re just now getting into social media and building your brand, giveaways are an effective and fun way to build your audience and start generating leads.
Another way to elevate your social media is by using professional real estate photos. Adding real estate pictures to your giveaways can make your post more visible and entice users to enter. Additionally, it’s a great way to show off your previous listings!
With Virtuance, we offer real estate photography, 3D tours, virtual staging, and aerial photography to showcase your listings and capture 2x more attention than other visual solutions.
