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This post was updated June 1, 2023.
Real estate agents and brokers looking to leverage the power of social media to promote their brand and connect with potential clients have found great success on TikTok. The platform’s “For You” feeds help users discover a diversity of content, creators, communities and products, which makes it an ideal place for real estate professionals to showcase their properties and connect with a younger audience.
But TikTok’s appeal goes beyond just providing a platform for self-expression and discovery. The company is also focused on providing an enjoyable viewing experience for its users. TikTok understands that there are times when recommendations don’t feel relevant anymore or don’t provide enough variety, so the platform is rolling out a new feature that enables users to refresh their “For You” feed based on their most recent interactions.
A new feature
This new feature is a valuable addition to TikTok‘s existing content controls, which include the ability to automatically filter out videos that use specific hashtags or phrases and to skip future videos from a particular creator or that use a particular sound.
TikTok also works to safeguard its community by removing content that breaks its rules, making inappropriate content ineligible for recommendation, and minimizing recommendations of topics that could have a negative impact if viewed repeatedly.
Any recommendation system is challenged with ensuring the breadth of content surfaced to a viewer isn’t too narrow or too repetitive. TikTok is intently focused on this challenge, and it’s working to design a system that intersperses a variety of topics. The platform carefully applies limits to some content that doesn’t violate its policies but may impact the viewing experience if viewed repeatedly.
TikTok’s efforts to provide a safe and enjoyable viewing experience are ongoing, and over the past year alone, the platform has implemented over 15 updates to improve its systems, along with expanding to support more languages.
The future for TikTok and its implications for agents
It’s worth noting that a ban on TikTok in the United States could have significant implications for real estate agents and brokers who have come to rely on the platform for their marketing efforts.
The TikTok ban refers to the attempts by the government to ban the popular social media app TikTok, citing concerns over data security and privacy. TikTok’s parent company, ByteDance, is based in China, and there have been concerns that the Chinese government could potentially access user data through the app.
Such a ban could open the door for other companies, such as Meta’s Instagram, to fill the video-sharing void.
Real estate professionals who have built a presence on TikTok would need to quickly pivot to a new platform to continue to reach their audience. This underscores the importance of having a diversified social media strategy that includes multiple platforms.
Although TikTok has been a valuable tool for connecting with younger audiences and showcasing properties in creative ways, it’s always wise to have a backup plan in case a platform becomes unavailable.
In any case, the efforts by TikTok to provide a safe and enjoyable viewing experience for its users are commendable and should give real estate agents and brokers confidence in using the platform to promote their brands and engage with potential clients. By leveraging the platform’s new feature to refresh their “For You” feed, real estate professionals can stay up-to-date with the latest content and connect with a diverse audience.
Katie Lance is the author of #GetSocialSmart and founder and CEO of Katie Lance Consulting, a social media strategy firm and founder of the #GetSocialSmart Academy. She’s been recognized by Inman News as one of the 100 most influential people in real estate and is a featured keynote speaker at many industry events. Katie is also is the author of the best-selling book, #GetSocialSmart. Connect with Katie @katielance
