Remember that social media is exactly that… it’s meant to be 'social'. If and when you can, remind yourself to go with the flow. Conversations occurring in the comments of your posts is a good thing as they show that your audience is engaged with you and your topics. I’m not a self-help expert. I have no sage advice to offer you other than my opinion that: 'Debate is healthy. Hate is not.'

Encourage your followers to always be social and actively discuss. Jump in and moderate and curate if and when it starts to devolve into name calling and sledging.

Identify and follow your community influencers

The simplest way to work out who your community influencers are is to pick up and read your local community newspaper. 

Once a week a local community newspaper probably gets delivered to your letterbox or thrown over your fence. This year 2017 is the year you need to read it. It is full of topics for community based social media posts.

Find the local progress association; the local bowls club; the local footy clubs; the scouts and girl guides; find all your local, state and federal politicians; the local activist groups and all your local school P&Cs. Find each and every one of them on social media and start following them.

• Use them as your content resource
• Track and talk about what’s happening locally in your posts
• Curate relevant content from others
• Please do not just blindly re-post their words
• It’s okay to express your own opinion too
• Expect that not everyone will agree with you

Here’s my rough guide to what the social media content might look like for a real estate agent who’s wanting to engage with their local community in 2017. When you look closely at the breakdown you’ll notice that more than half of the content is still real estate centric, but the skew is towards community rather than direct agent self-promotion.  The difference is subtle, but very important.

• Community and current events – 35%
• Real Estate Advice – 20%
• Links to other community and real estate resources – 15%
• Property data and market statistics for your area – 10%
• Videos – 10%
• Real estate Listings – 10% (Limit to your big important listings)

Be Interesting and plan at least two things to say

Have a mud map plan of what you’re going to say throughout the year. If you intend making social media one of your client acquisition strategies, then it’s probably a good idea to plan out in advance week-by-week and have a rough mud map of the stuff you’re going to say when.

My rule of thumb is. There are 52 weeks in a year, so have a rough idea of the 52 topics you’re going to talk about? Or at the very least – plan your first 30 topics. In fact I’ll go as far as to request that you please don’t start trying to build your social media following till you at least have your first 30 topics in mind.  You don’t want to be a one hit wonder. If you want to be in it for the long haul then work smarter, not harder. Please take a week to think it through and create a list of things that matter to you and to your community that you might like to talk about.

There would be nothing worse than starting off like a horse bolting out of the gate only to run out of things to say when you’re just 10 stories into your journey. So planning really is key here. Because I want to help you get started, below are 25 topics for your consideration.  You could likely come up with at least 52 social media post ideas just from these topics alone.

1. Local community events
2. What's on: Local concerts, art, gallery, museum showings
3. Back to school tips
4. Local kindergarten, primary and secondary school events / concerts / fetes 
5. Local sporting club wins and losses
6. Religious observances relevant to your community (multiple denominations and beliefs)
7. Support for the local homeless
8. New roads / upgrades needed
9. Local Traffic / Traffic Plans (Council / State Gov't)
10. Shopping centre events / promotions
11. Local soup kitchen support / general support for local homeless
12. Controversial planning announcements / decisions by council or parliament
13. Hyper local issues (new traffic lights needed, dangerous intersection, new crossing)
14. Public holiday long weekends
15. Road safety tips
16. Indigenous support in the local community
17. Storms / flood season precautions
18. Seasonal Property Market Statistics (Examples: Spring Selling Season, Rent prices, Yields, Median Values)
19. Real Estate guides (for first home buyers; for renovators; for upgraders; for investors)
20. Weekend auction results
21. State government planning revisions / decisions
22. Local emergency services issues (Ambulance, Police, Fire, SES, Hospital)
23. Local theatre company productions
24. Local courses on offer (Vocational, TAFE, College)
25. A career in real estate (a day in the life of you)

This article was written by Lee Wade, head of digital CoreLogic.

The next article in this series, 'Use data to create great social-media content', will be published in The Real Estate Conversation tomorrow.

View part one of the series:  Taking the social-media content strategy leap.

See also:

Top five tips for successful lead generation

Using targeted data to win listings