As a real estate company, it is important to know how to engage your audiences with fresh, real time content about the latest properties available. A great way to do this is through using social media to not only broadcast to users what you have available, but also to listen to their concerns, feedback, and questions, as well as thoughtfully respond to them.
Today, I won’t focus as much on the listening and responding parts so much as I will the broadcasting part. There are two lovely tools I highly recommend you use to create engaging content for a relatively low price, if not free.
1) Canva
Canva is essentially an easy version of Adobe Photoshop for non-designers. Canva is a free, online tool available on desktop and app to create unique designs with pre-made backgrounds, designs, icons, shapes, text sizes, fonts, illustrations and more.
For example, if you are looking to educate potential customers on the use of the Multiple Listing Service (MLS) to help them find the right realtor and property, you could create a beautiful presentation. Unlike Microsoft Powerpoint or Apple Keynote, the designs they offer elaborate, trendy, and highly customizable. There are nearly endless designs available for use. Then, you can easily upload this presentation in PDF form to social media platforms such like SlideShare.
Much of the content on Canva is free, but there are some paid portions of the site, as well, such as if you want to use a particular graphic/picture they designed/took. These graphics are sometimes $1.00 or more–nothing too expensive.
2) Animoto
Animoto is like the video version of Canva. It is a paid service, but it is not too pricey. With easy-to-use, pre-made layouts, Animoto allows you to pick “Marketing” or “Slideshow” videos.
The “Marketing” pre-made, customizable videos are typically used to create a string of video clips and pictures together to form a video. You can add your own music, too! Slideshow videos are more for stringing together a series of images to music. The design you choose will end up moving the pictures in different ways to make it look like they are moving to keep the viewer interested.
Animoto provides some in-house video clips and pictures for your choosing, but there aren’t too many of them to choose from. You can find free videos and pictures online if you dig a little bit! For example, Pexels and Pexels Video are great resources to use for these purposes. If you are willing to purchase better image or video content, check out ShutterStock.
Regardless of how you make these Canva images or Animoto videos, you can use these two valuable, online tools to help cut marketing costs (Think: You might be able to cut the costs associated with hiring professional graphic designers or cinematographers for each picture or video you make!). They also help you make visually captivating content quickly. “Quickly” is the key word here. Lastly, these tools help you engage your followership across the internet.
Looking for more business insights for real estate professionals? Check back regularly for blog updates at WDarrowFiedler.org!