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Five years and 1 billion active monthly users later, TikTok has established itself as a space like no other, where people express who they are, share what they dream and reveal their aspirations for what their life could be.
As I see it, this medium is mirroring the acute sharing culture of our society. People are finding connections, trust, and joy, often in places, people and organizations that they are just beginning to know.
However, the anatomy of trust is changing; the more real we can be with our content, the more we will find opportunities to expand our networks exponentially.
With humanity at the heart of real estate, creating genuine connections with new potential clients is vital.
On TikTok, expressing the authenticity of your real estate brand can go beyond the “beautiful image” archetype; no matter how aesthetically pleasing, a picture of a house could never fully encapsulate the life that could be lived there.
Now, TikTok offers more ways than ever before to get creative in how we communicate with our audiences.
Embracing this app is embracing a living, breathing platform where the full spectrum of personalities, opinions, and characters are what gives air to its lungs. There is no feature that makes TikTok remarkably “different” or “better” than any other medium.
More than anything else, it is how TikTok encourages its user to play with its ever-evolving library of audios and effects and its editing capabilities that set it apart.
To push the boundaries here is to advocate for creativity and innovation, to make a commitment to the opportunity in potential. Although it can be a humbling experience, we know it is one that has been absolutely worth it.
Wondering where to start?
Define success
Post content that places an equal emphasis on maintaining an entire brand identity and encouraging engagement with your growing community (by commenting, liking, interacting, following, etc.). Have the metrics that matter for your brand in place to ensure you’re able to track toward success.
Go all in
Commit to consistency or don’t commit at all. It sounds simple, but it ensures that you are always available for a conversation. Not every video is going to go viral, but every video should carry the voice of your brand. It only takes one video to introduce a new viewer to your whole page, so make sure the content that greets them there tells your entire story.
Once you’ve committed to what success on TikTok looks like for your brand, here are a few tactics to keep in mind when getting started on the platform:
Consistency: Posting consistently comes up time and time again as a key growth factor. However, there is a lot of discrepancy surrounding what “consistent” means. For real estate professionals, finding a consistency that is sustainable should be their number one priority, whether it is once a day, three times a week, or anywhere beyond and between.
Content planning: Planning ahead enables any brand, whether corporate or individual user, to make the most out of every video, picture, audio and trend. Make a conscious effort to go beyond just posting to post and focus more on delivering relevant, value-based content. The perk of TikTok is that the stigma surrounding posting similar content twice doesn’t exist as it does in other spaces.
As an example, for every home we publish for Engel & Völkers Americas, we create three videos:
- The walkthrough: This gives the viewer a real-time, personal sense of the home.
- The trend video: Trending audios continue to give videos an extra push from the app’s algorithm; put your own twist on trends that make it niche-specific. Not only will you get a boost from the trend, but your creativity will help your own content stand out from the crowd.
- The POV: If you were to live in this home, what would a glimpse of your life in it be? What is it about the energy of this home that would elevate the next owner’s quality of life? This is your chance to be real and authentic, while also helping the viewer establish the sentimental value with a home and make an offer that reflects it.
Prioritize quality
Consistency and content planning mean nothing without quality content behind them. This means crisp, high-value videos that answer questions, provide solutions and focus on the situations our audience experiences.
- Want to know what it is like inside a $35,000,000 home in Vancouver or a $300,000 vacation condo in Mexico? We’ve got you.
- Stumped on how to stage a home? We’ve got that covered too.
- What sets this listing apart from the rest? We’ll tell you, using the most current trends and audio clips.
It could be understandable for any real estate professional to hesitate before joining this environment, however, as it evolves and you cut through some of the clutter, there lies a platform that enthusiastically encourages people to be real, to share their knowledge and experience, no matter how successful or how gritty it may be. That is what we love about TikTok.
What better industry to express these elements than real estate? If we can do this, if we can produce content that provides knowledge, encourages relationships, and promotes positivity, we will always be positioned to provide tremendous value to our audiences.
Katelyn Castellano is Senior Vice President of Marketing, Americas at Engel & Völkers. You can connect with her on Linkedin.
