Congratulations — you just landed a new listing! You scheduled the stager and photographer or videographer, and you created your flier or gate brochure. NOW you’re ready to post your open house flier to your social media channels! Right?
ARE YOU SURE your flier will be seen clearly and completely across all your social media channels?
The question
This week I met with a local mortgage professional from BOK Financial and a new REALTOR® agent, and they both asked me the same question: “Why doesn’t my flier look the same on Instagram and Facebook? It’s not fitting, it’s cutting off the top and bottom.” The reason was the size of their fliers was not the accepted size used by one or both platforms.
People are used to seeing images in both a portrait and landscape mode or being able to tap the image and see it independently from the associated text, depending on the website they are visiting. This isn’t always the case with Instagram.
Instagram doesn’t allow its platform to rotate 90 degrees so the image can be seen landscape or lengthwise. Also, if you try to bloat an image to magnify a part of it, the image snaps right back after you release it.
Lastly, you can’t put a webpage link/URL into your Instagram post; it has to go in your Instagram bio.
What you need to know
Read these five quick tips before you post your open house flier:
- Review the size and format. If you don’t get it right, especially on Instagram, your image can end up looking either cut off or fuzzy, which can make you and your channel look amateurish. In this example, Facebook will resize your image to fit most devices, while Instagram needs an image of either 1080 px X 1080 px or 1440 px X 1440 px (pixels). Format choices are usually PNG (larger file size but supports transparent background) and JPG (smaller file size and it will create the file with a white background).
- Minimal text. The goal is to get searchers curious about the open house, not overload them with a ton of text.
- Put text in post. If all your text is trapped behind a PNG or JPG, Google and Bing can’t read it, which means your listing may not get shown on SERPs (Search Engine Results Pages) by Google or Bing. By minimizing the text in the PNG or JPG (see #2 above) and putting the rest in a post, your post is more likely going to get picked up by either Google or Bing.
- Add a clear CTA. CTA is short for “Call To Action”. Basically, you’re going to give your audience their next step. After they see your flier, do you want the viewer to call or email you to see the listing? Do you assume (watch that word!) the viewer will “just know” how to find your website? They might….unless your website name is NOT the same as your business name.
- Add contact info. Depending on the goal of your post & flier (i.e., just getting the word out vs. selling the listing), your contact info could be your phone number, a text message phone number, email address, QR code (use your came and test that link first!), or website page with details about your listing.
Bonus tip!
Include five (5) relevant hashtags so readers can click or tap to see who’s talking about that topic. This is tricky because not every social media channel can use the same hashtags due to its popularity (or lack of it). There are a number of hashtag generators you can use, but, the best way to tell whether or not a hashtag will work is by searching for it on the social media channel – in the example above, searching through both Facebook and Instagram – and discover who else is using the hashtag and how often.
Be strategic. Be visible. Be found.
Are you a REALTOR® and would like to sit down for a one-to-one consultation to chat about your unique situation, please click or tap this text and schedule a time and day to meet. Not local? Not a problem – we can meet using either Skype or ZOOM.
#arizonarealtors #smallbusiness #marketingtips #socialmedia #visiblymedia
