Social media can be an excellent tool for getting some attention for an open house.
It can also be a little bit intimidating if you don’t know where to start.
In this post we’ll explain exactly what to do, step by step.
You’ll see it’s much easier than you think.
1) Gather all your information
Your first step is to gather all the information you need about your open house.
This includes things like the date, time and location of the event itself.
Also get as much information as you can about the property, its features, the neighbourhood and your company.
Write out everything you can think of so you have a place to start.
Also think of any fun contests or games that you want to run as well.
2) Create event pages on Facebook and LinkedIn as well as a specific Pinterest board
Next create event pages on both Facebook and LinkedIn.
Give these pages lots of information and photos. You should have collected more than enough information for this in step 1.
Think about events you might have seen on Facebook. You need to make your event page exciting enough that people will want to attend.
Try to encourage as many people as possible to RSVP for the event. If someone RSVPs online they’re much more likely to show up in person.
Also set up a Pinterest board specific to this open house.
Later you can pin photos of the property and link back to your event pages or the blog post you’re going to write in step 3.
3) Write a blog post on your website
Be sure to announce the open house on your website with a blog post.
Using the information you gathered in step 1 you should easily be able to write a good post.
Go into as much detail as you can, more detail than on your event pages.
Be sure to include lots of great photos in the post as well.
Make sure this post gets people excited to attend your open house.
Finally, don’t forget to link out to your event pages from your post.
Post it to all your social networks as well.
4) Create a post schedule
Now you want to think about how often and what you’re going to post to social media.
You should probably start posting about a week before the open house.
Aiming for around 2 posts a day is probably good too. You don’t want to go overboard promoting your event.
Think about exactly what you’re going to post. You can post things like:
- Photos of the property
- Facts about the neighbourhood
- Features of the home and property
- Why you’re a great agent to do business with
- Each post will focus on one little fact or feature.
Once you know what you’re going to post the next step is to make the schedule itself.
Try to post around the optimal times on social media. According to CoSchedule these are the best times in general to post to each social network:
- Facebook: around 9am, 1pm or 3pm
- Twitter: around noon, 3pm or 5-6pm
- Pinterest: around 2-4am, 1-3pm or 9pm
- LinkedIn: around 7-8am, noon or 5-6pm
- Google+: around 9am, 11am or 1 pm
- Instagram: around 8-9am, 5pm or 2am
It may be different for your audience but this is still a pretty good assortment of times for your posts.
5) Create and schedule your content
Next you want to create and schedule your posts.
Using a tool like Hootsuite you can easily schedule all of your posts to automatically post according to the schedule you set up in step 4.
Create any graphics you want to include with your posts. A post with a great image is always better than plain text.
Once all your posts are ready to go and scheduled in Hootsuite’s publisher most of your work is already done.
6) Consider promoting some of your posts
During the week keep an eye on your posts as they go out.
If any of them get a good amount of engagement consider paying a few dollars to promote them.
This will increase the reach of your posts.
Sites like Facebook you have really extensive targeting options.
You can promote your posts to exactly your ideal client in your location.
7) Monitor your social media throughout the week
As the date of your open house approaches be sure to monitor your social media accounts.
If anyone has any questions make sure you’re there to answer them.
8) What to do during the open house itself
During the open house itself consider doing a livestream.
There are lots of options for hosting a livestream such as:
- Periscope
- Facebook Live
- Google Hangouts
- Instagram Stories
You can answer questions people might have on your livestream and save the video for later.
If the event is busy be sure to take a lot of photos as well.
Any contests or games you might have make excellent photo opportunities.
9) What to do after the event
The first thing to do after the event is thank as many people as possible for attending.
When that’s done write another post-open house blog article on your site.
Include any questions people might have brought up along with your answers.
If you recorded a livestream embed that video in the post as well.
Any pictures you took during the open house should be included in this blog post.
Don’t forget to upload them to your social media pages too.
In Conclusion
As you can see, promoting an open house on social media is pretty simple and shouldn’t use up too much of your time.
In maybe a couple of hours you can have event pages set up, a blog post written and a week’s worth of posts created and scheduled.
After that it just takes a bit of social media monitoring (which you should be doing anyways).
Plus a post-event blog post and little bit of follow-up.
And that’s it!
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