The following is a guest post from Jessica Thiefels

As a real estate professional, you can navigate a competitive housing market with shrewd proficiency. But how strategic are you when it comes to optimizing the available real estate on social media? When used effectively, these platforms make it easier to get your content in front of potential clients and leads.

While social media is powerful, it’s not useful if you’re just posting to post. It’s also not as valuable if you’re not willing to use video.

According to Wyzowl’s 2021 State of Video Marketing Report, most surveyed marketers agree that video is an important tool in their overall social media strategy. Here are some of the benefits they see from this medium:

• 87 percent feel that video content yields a strong ROI
• 86 percent feel that video increases traffic to their website
• 84 percent feel that video helps them generate leads
• 83 percent feel that video increases the time a user spends on their site
• 78 percent feel that video helps directly with closing sales

These simple tips and strategies will help you see the same amazing benefits for your business too. Whether you’re a veteran or novice to video, it can have a huge impact on your social media success.

Start With a One-Minute Video Strategy

 It can be intimidating to create a video. There are several moving parts to consider: Which information do I want to communicate? What if I forget the whole spiel I rehearsed? Is the backdrop visually appealing or distracting?

All of these components can lead to performance anxiety, so it helps to ease yourself in. Start with a quick, manageable one-minute video to increase your comfort and confidence levels with this medium.

All you need is a smartphone camera to film yourself. Then use this following checklist from the real estate marketing experts at The Paperless Agent to make sure you have everything you need to get it right:

• Lights: Make sure that your face is clear and visible on camera with natural light to eliminate any shadows or darkness and bring you into focus.
• Attention: Grab the viewer’s interest right from the onset with a unique, creative opener that influences them to keep watching, rather than scrolling past.
• Message: Share the main crux of your topic in a way that’s informative, digestible, and enthusiastic, while establishing yourself as a credible resource.
• Action: Tell viewers what to do next with a strong CTA that will continue the audience interaction. This could be to visit your website, read a new blog post, follow you on social media, check out a listing, or comment and share the video itself.

If you use this checklist, you won’t have to edit the final product either. Plan it, practice it, and get it right on the first shot.

Tailor Your Content for Each Social Media Platform

Each social media network has its own user demographic, communication style, and content format. If you plan to cross-promote videos on various platforms, consider the differences. This can require more work on the frontend, but will ensure that every aspect of your video—from the messaging to the caption—is optimized for the channel you’re posting on.

For example, most LinkedIn audiences want to see professional, authority-driven content, while Instagram audiences prefer content which makes them feel connected to your business. In fact, 66 percent of all Instagram users choose this platform to interact with brands.

This means that your message on LinkedIn should be informational or educational, while your tone for Instagram can be more casual and conversational. Here are a few other key differences to consider when sharing your video content:

• Twitter allows just 280 characters, while Instagram has space for 2,200 characters.
• Instagram favors captions with many specific hashtags while tweets can be effective with just one or two broad hashtags.
• Your audience on Facebook may be older while an audience on TikTok or Instagram is likely younger.

In terms of the actual formatting specs, Sproutsocial has compiled a list of each network’s requirements to help you create video content accordingly.

Be Intentional About Quality

You don’t need to invest in top-notch filming equipment or editing software to have great video quality. However, you do still need to consider the elements that take a video from mediocre to memorable, including:

• Clear audio
• Natural light
• Polished background
• Mobile responsiveness
• Smooth transitions
• Legible text overlay

According to a poll from the Association of Talent Development, the videos that consumers are most likely to watch contain these important features. Surprisingly, however, only 5 percent of consumers will stop watching a video if it’s clearly not made with state-of-the-art expertise or technology.

In other words, most viewers don’t care if you have amateur skills or inexpensive tech—as long as your videos look crisp, sound clear, and give the impression that you put some real time and effort into the production.

Connect in Real Time With Live Video

Less than 15 percent of brands use live video as a marketing tool, a 2020 HubSpot survey found. While this medium is largely still untapped, it has major ROI potential.

Another recent study from Social Insider reveals that Facebook Live streams earn twice the user engagement of pre-filmed video content. Audiences enjoy the interactive connection and authentic human touchpoint of a live video they can watch in real time.

Whether you host a professional real estate webinar on LinkedIn or share a few tips for making an offer on Instagram Live, this real-time video format allows you to interact with viewers as they tune into the broadcast.

Here are some live video content ideas to try:

• Live walk-through of your newest listing
• Interview Q&A with another real estate professional (I.E. contractor or broker)
• Home buying strategy with a new live each week
• Live video of clients walking into their new home for the first time

Get creative—your videos can include other people; they don’t need to focus solely on you sharing educational content.

Use SEO Keywords to Maximize the Video’s Impact

If you’re putting your social media videos on your website, you also need to optimize them to rank on a search engine results page (SERP). The main SEO goal for this form of content is to ensure that Google indexes it in the “video” search tab for easy and accessible searchability, explains Phil Nottingham, SEO specialist at Wistia. In order to achieve this, you need to do  keyword research.

The title of your video, meta description, and subject you talk about on camera must be optimized with keywords that members of your target audience search for. However, it’s also important to be tactful and strategic about how you use those keywords. “Don’t just stuff the title and description with loads of keywords. Rather, ask yourself: ‘Is it clickable? Is it interesting?’” Nottingham continues.

Blend keyword research with your own expertise and knowledge of what your audience wants to create videos that resonate with search and humans.

Master Video for Your Own Social Media Strategy

Video doesn’t have to be complicated or overwhelming. In fact, with these simple, actionable tips, it’s much easier than you might think. Use video to connect with your audience, improve your social media presence, and ultimately drive more leads to your business.

Jessica Thiefels is an entrepreneur and founder and CEO of Jessica Thiefels Consulting. She’s been writing for more than 10 years and has been featured in top publications like Forbes. She also writes for Business Insider, Virgin, Glassdoor and more. Follow her on Twitter @JThiefels and connect on LinkedIn.