March 17, 2022
Best Social Media Platforms for Home Builders and Developers
Home builders and developers must be present on social media – but should they be on every platform? Selecting the best social media platforms that meet your target audience’s preferences, fit your team and allow you to make the most of your resources can be challenging.
Over 4.62 billion people use social media, meaning this is a strategy businesses cannot afford to disregard. Social media marketing is an excellent way to reach new prospects, build your brand identity, drive traffic to your developer or home builder website, engage homebuyers and much more. Each social media platform delivers unique benefits and disadvantages that should be considered when creating a robust home builder or developer digital marketing plan.
So, which platforms offer the most opportunities for home builders and developers? Let’s explore the unique value and advantages of each and the ways they can enhance your home builder or developer social media marketing strategy.
Should You Be On Every Platform?
This is a common question that many brands trying to grow their business may be asking. Our answer is not necessarily. Although some home builders and developers may be active on every social site available, it’s not a must to achieve successful results from social media. It’s all about determining the platforms that work best with your company’s objectives, and that may not include every site. Expanding your brand’s presence across several different platforms is beneficial for enhancing trust and credibility, but that doesn’t mean you’re required to be present absolutely everywhere.
What Are Your Goals?
When developing home builder or developer brand goals for your social media strategy, it’s important to set performance goals. What are you hoping to achieve by expanding your brand presence through social media?
Common goals for your home builder or developer social media strategy may include:
- expanding brand reach
- engaging with prospects
- boosting website traffic
- showcasing work from your portfolio
- promoting company updates
- building trust/credibility with homebuyers
- gaining new leads
Not every platform may be as effective as others for accomplishing each goal, so it’s important to assess where your marketing efforts, time and advertising dollars will be the most well spent. As we discuss each social platform, we’ll outline the goals that each platform can be most effective for helping home builders and developers achieve.
Great for: engaging with prospects, expanding brand reach, boosting website traffic, showcasing portfolio, promoting company updates, building trust/credibility, gaining new leads
Although Facebook may seem outdated as it has been around for so long, it continues to be among the most heavily used platforms today. This community-based platform has an audience that skews older, which may seem undesirable to some companies. But in the real estate industry, this demographic reach often works to the advantage of home builders and developers who are typically targeting Millennials, Gen Xers and Baby Boomers.
The largest benefit of Facebook is that it offers fantastic versatility with opportunities to promote upcoming events, special promotions/incentives, company updates, etc. This platform also provides the ability to share photos and videos and distribute them within albums or playlists. Home builders and developers can easily leverage Facebook to engage with homebuyers in relevant target areas or those who are specifically seeking out your offerings. For great social media content ideas that help home builders and developers take advantage of Facebook’s capabilities, check out our previous blog!
Facebook also offers businesses the ability to utilize highly effective paid ad options. These ads can be created to reach more prospects by delivering posts to a wider audience, enhancing profile visibility to boost page likes or driving greater website traffic and generating new leads with ads that encourage clicks. Facebook ads can also be boosted across Instagram to provide greater results for your company’s advertising dollars.
Great for: showcasing portfolio, expanding brand reach, boosting website traffic, engaging with prospects, promoting company updates, building trust/credibility
Many new homebuyers search for inspiration to visualize the look of their new home. How should they decorate their spaces, choose interior paint colors or select the materials that fit their style best?
When these questions arise, many homebuyers often look to Pinterest to take a look at the examples of others and begin to envision their own new home. While other social platforms primarily center around messaging, Pinterest is a visual-centric site that offers an opening for home builders and developers to engage homebuyers during the pre-planning stages of their new home search. By establishing a consistent presence on Pinterest, home builders and developers can showcase their homebuilding portfolio and popular master-planned communities.
Unlike other social platforms, Pinterest delivers unique opportunities to reach consumers at a specific stage of their homebuying journey – before they’ve made decisions about their final purchase. Due to this distinct timing, Pinterest users are often more open to discovering new brands and products as they’re still in the exploration phase. Home builders and developers can take advantage of this by using their content to guide prospective homebuyers during the initial stages of their buying journey.
Along with engaging prospective homebuyers, Pinterest also enables home builders and developers to gauge the current home and community trends that interest their target audience. The better your understanding of your buyers’ preferences and expectations for their new home, the more effectively your company will be able to market its offerings and boost sales.
Great for: engaging with prospects, expanding brand reach, showcasing portfolio, promoting company updates, building trust/credibility, gaining new leads
Similar to Pinterest, Instagram delivers a great opportunity to present your brand primarily through visual media. Home builders and developers can utilize this platform to showcase finished projects or homes currently under construction to build excitement among prospective homebuyers and keep followers updated with your recent company activities. To attract more attention to posts, you can strategically incorporate hashtags that are relevant to the images or videos to share. Utilizing hashtags allows your content to become searchable and thus more visible on Instagram.
Not only does Instagram provide ways to showcase your work, but it also offers openings to continuously engage and interact with users to find new prospects and maintain connections with your followers. The best ways to make the most of engagement opportunities on Instagram include:
- Responding to comments on your posts
- Following relevant businesses that your prospects might follow
- Following users that fit your target audience
- Leaving comments on posts from both the relevant businesses and potential homebuyers you follow
Following these guidelines will expand your brand reach as you begin to actively engage with prospects and show up where your prospects are interacting. As more prospects start to notice your brand on Instagram, this enables your brand to build a reputation and gain stronger credibility.
TikTok
Great for: showcasing portfolio, expanding brand reach, engaging with prospects, building trust/credibility
With over one billion monthly active users, TikTok has quickly become one of the most popular social media apps today – but does that mean it’s right for your brand? Although the largest demographic active on the platform is users aged 18 to 24, Millennial users aged 25 to 34 are also active on TikTok at 32 percent. And there’s no doubt that home builders are on TikTok as a quick search of #homebuilder reveals that roughly 108.8 million videos contain this tag.
While the majority of users may not fit your target demographic, that doesn’t mean it may be valuable to have a presence on this app as you may be able to reach relevant prospects. This short-form mobile video platform offers fantastic opportunities to share the new home interiors, community features/lifestyle, home design options and more. While TikTok may not need to be a primary focus for most home builders and developers, it can still be a great way to engage with prospective homebuyers and build the reach of your brand online.
Houzz
Great for: showcasing portfolio, expanding brand reach, boosting website traffic, engaging with prospects, building trust/credibility
Houzz stands apart as a highly important social platform that is essential for home builders. This platform is dedicated to sharing photos of architecture, interior design, landscape design and home improvement. On Houzz, home builders can upload images from their portfolio to attract greater homebuyer attention to their work and establish credibility within the homebuilding market.
Along with highlighting your work, Houzz also enables satisfied customers to share reviews that effectively boost your brand visibility within the platform. You can also utilize Houzz as a channel for sharing design ideas. By commenting on other types of work, you can make them searchable as images can be found on Houzz based on both original descriptions and the comments that they receive.
YouTube
Great for: showcasing portfolio, expanding brand reach, engaging with prospects, building trust/credibility
Incorporating video into your digital marketing strategy has become increasingly popular– which makes YouTube a great fit for home builders and developers trying to keep up with what’s trending. According to Hubspot, 85% of marketers rank short-form videos as the most effective type of social media content.
Filling your YouTube channel with short video content enables your brand to better reach prospective buyers and quickly capture their attention. If the videos are short enough, they can also be cross-distributed throughout several different social media platforms including Facebook and Instagram as well. By including links back to your website within video descriptions, you can expand your online reach and drive more traffic to your site.
Great for: engaging with prospects, expanding brand reach, promoting company updates, building trust/credibility
Although it’s not disadvantageous to establish a brand presence on Twitter, this platform is often not considered a must-have for maintaining an effective home builder and developer social media strategy. This platform centers around short messages and acts as a hub for dialogues on trending topics. The largest demographic of Twitter users are between the ages of 18 and 29, which may be beneficial for home builders and developers targeting younger, first-time homebuyers.
Twitter allows businesses to engage with consumers and widen their digital brand reach. This platform offers ways to interact and share relevant ideas, suggestions or information about your company or services. As Twitter allows you to search specific tags, home builders and developers can take advantage of this function to stay on top of trending topics or engage with their target demographic by searching for relevant keywords.
Create a Home Builder or Developer Brand Worth Sharing on Social Media Platforms
Establishing a wide presence on several social media platforms provides home builders and developers with advantageous opportunities to grow their businesses. From furthering brand reach to increasing online engagements and driving traffic to your website, social media enables businesses to effectively meet their brand performance objectives.
Partner with Milesbrand to see how we can create a compelling brand for your company along with establishing a powerful social media presence that reaches the right target audience through incredible brand positioning. There’s no better time to get started – reach out to our team today to learn more!
