My oldest started high school today (not exactly, it’s just freshman orientation but still). And I’d like to inform you that I can’t possibly be old enough to be the parent of a high school student because in my head I am still only about 25 years old. But alas, here I stand, having conversations with her about drinking (she doesn’t to my knowledge) and my thoughts on sexy halloween costumes (I hate them, across the board, for any age, and have always, always, always felt that way). On the plus side, I’ve raised one hell of a young lady who is fierce and strong and smart and oh so self assured. But I digress, we’re not here to talk about my Isabelle.
We’re here to talk about my second favorite subject after my children, digital marketing for home builders! I truly do love the topic and after my experience last week at the DYC Summit, I’m so pumped to get to do this job and work for this company. Megan has a full recap on the experience that she’s posting early next week so I will save you the details of my own experience. In short, it was most excellent.
While I wasn’t able to pull out an edit on the trip, this week I’m covering Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat and the slowing down of the housing market.
THE BOOK OF FACES
Facebook put out a report about widely viewed content and there are some interesting take aways for social media marketing. Guess what? Photos and videos are the most popular content on Facebook. That’s been true for some time though so it’s not really news. The report doesn’t cover any ads either, just straight organic content. What I did find interesting was this tidbit:
“Only about 12.9% of News Feed content views in the US during Q2 2021 were on posts that contain links.”
And then I scrolled down to see some of the posts. They’re almost all posts that I consider to be spammy and annoying, like email forwards. And yet I believe they’re popular because while I’ve substantially shrunken my personal Facebook footprint this year and now have only about 300 “friends” on the book, I see a fair amount of them commenting on these silly posts. My hypothesis on this is that most people don’t fully understand how Facebook works and don’t realize that their comments will show up on their friends’ newsfeeds.
How can social media marketers use this info? For organic content sometimes the simplest content is the most engaging. Examples of the spammy posts include questions such as “What is something you will never eat, no matter how hungry you get?”, “Please settle this debate, does sugar belong on spaghetti?”,and “You’re rap name is LIL, then the last thing you spent money on, don’t lie. Go”. Super innocuous, not polarizing or political but questions that people feel super compelled to answer. It’s really a fascinating study on human behavior if you ask me.
As a home builder on Facebook, you could pose questions like, “What’s one kitchen appliance you could never go without?”, “ When lighting a fire pit, it’s cheating to use things like fatwood, yes or no”. Questions surrounding features of your homes that are not polarizing, or could incur potential negative feedback abound. Have a little fun and make sure it’s something people feel rather strongly about. Also keep them short and use the fancy text box that has colors behind it and makes your font large.
SNAPMAP
If you don’t use, or have a child who uses, Snapchat then you’re missing out on the wonder that is the Snapmap. Somehow, while checking in on other social networks has rather faded, it’s the big to do on Snapchat. In addition, users willingly let themselves be tracked all of creation by those that follow them. Users of Snapchat do not share Apple’s feelings on privacy.
Snapchat knows this is a key feature of their app and are diligently working to monetize it. I’m not ready to tell builders to jump on Snap but I am keeping a super close eye on it because I think Snapchat is onto something. I’ve mentioned their layers functionality before as something to pay attention to and these latest movements back that up.
DOING IT FOR THE ‘GRAM
It’s not all pretty pictures and a shift to video, there’s actually a semi-robust search algorithm at play on Instagram. And if you want to show up in the results, you’ve got to know how it works so you can improve your optimization and show up. Factors include what the word is that is being searched, who is searching the word, how they interact with you, and finally how others engage with you.
Ways you can improve your performance include having a handle that corresponds to your brand and line of work I.E @happyacreshomes, using relevant keywords and locations in your bio and using relevant hashtags and keywords in your captions.
There are changes and improvements coming down the pike too that will allow people to find more than just accounts and hashtags.
SLOOOOWING DOWN BUT NOT BURSTING
It’s true that the market is slowing down, but the good news is that that slow down still puts us well above previous years pace so we’re still growing! New home sales were down 13.2% in July compared to July 2021. Where our clients were pulling back on budgets earlier in the year, now we’re ramping them back up to get those leads flowing once more. Besides the slow down in sale there is a price increase issue for more than just lumber that isn’t going away until maybe the middle of 2022. It’s a great time to examine your funnel and your website, shift things around and optimize those landing pages for conversions.
The fun never ends when you’re working in digital marketing. Staying on top of housing trends only adds to the fun. Seriously. Data, social media, SEO, housing markets, mix it all together and it means that no two days are ever the same and that there’s always something new to learn. Boring does not exist in this line of work.
On that note, today marks 1 year of writing The ONeil Edit. I love this job so much! Happy Friday my friends. Make it a good one! I’ll be having 🍾, with a side of burrata and tomato confit toasts while watching the latest episode of “For the Love of Kitchens” to celebrate the anniversary – an ideal Friday night if you ask me!
