Mastering TikTok for Real Estate Agents

TikTok is an incredibly popular social media platform with over one billion active users. While it’s often associated with dance and music videos, real estate agents can use TikTok to promote their brand and reach a broader audience.

In this blog post, we’ll share tips on making engaging TikTok videos that can maximize audience engagement and get more leads for your real estate business. We’ll dive deeper on these topics below:

The Benefits of Tiktok for Real Estate Agents

Understand the Basics of Creating a TikTok Video

Identify What Makes a Good Real Estate TikTok

Proven Real Estate TikTok Ideas

The Benefits of TikTok for Real Estate Agents

It’s easy to write off TikTok as yet another platform that real estate agents “need” to be on. In that light, it’s more of a nuisance than anything else…but the reality is that TikTok has unique platform characteristics and, if real estate agents understand them, they can benefit massively. Here’s what makes TikTok’s different:

1. Algorithm: TikTok’s algorithm is designed to show users content that they are most likely to engage with, even if they don’t follow the creator. This means that videos have the potential to go viral quickly and reach a wide audience.
2. Editing Tools: TikTok offers a range of editing tools and effects that make it easy for users to create high-quality, visually engaging content. Often times these effects become part of popular culture whether people realize it or not.
3. A Massive Variety of Content: TikTok’s content is user-generated from people from all over the world (well except for the countries that have banned TikTok). These users have applied their unique backgrounds and interests to create ALL types of content. Yes of course dance videos and food porn BUT Tiktok has been used for true crime investigation, fundraising, and even mole removal.

The beauty of all of these things coming together is that creative users can be rewarded with an incredible amount of exposure on the TikTok platform.

1. Increased visibility: By creating engaging content on TikTok, real estate agents can increase their visibility and reach a wider audience than they would on other social media platforms. This is largely achieved through TikTok’s algorithm boosting a creator’s content well beyond just the creator’s followers.
2. Targeting a relevant audience: TikTok’s algorithm is designed to show users content that they are most likely to engage with, so real estate agents who create engaging content may see increased engagement from users that may already be in-market
3. Targeting a younger demographic: TikTok is popular among younger audiences, so real estate agents who want to target this demographic may find the platform particularly useful.

Hopefully the concept of reaching a wider audience beyond your existing followers is compelling as a real estate agent. After all, IF all you wanted to do is engage with your existing audience, well you’d create content on all your existing platforms because that’s where everyone you know already is.

FACT: Facebook’s platform has 2+ billion daily active users – but most of Facebook’s sites and apps are based on symmetrical social networks (friends vs followers). Instagram is the exception to this model…but TikTok takes asymmetry to a whole…notha…level even when compared to Instagram Reels. Read on to see why that matters.

Understand the Basics of Creating a TikTok Video

Before you go totally TikTok viral, you’ll need to understand the basics of creating a good TikTok video. Putting together a good plan aka storyboard is an important step in creating any content on TikTok…and for real estate TikToks these plans are extra important because organization saves time that you can use to run your biz.

Don’t get scared by the concept of organization though. It doesn’t always need to be super involved. Here are the basic steps to plan a successful TikTok for real estate:

1. Determine the Purpose of the Video: Deciding the goal for the TikTok video means identifying the your target audience. For example you’ll be creating significantly different content if your goal is to reach first-time homebuyers vs other real estate agents.
2. Plan the Narrative: Decide the type of shots needed, the order of the shots, and the voiceover or music that will be used. Consider using multiple shots with different framing to keep the viewer engaged. Timing shots to music not only makes the video more exciting, but also gives you a template to work within when you get to editing.
3. Create/Capture the video clips: Capture the videos on your phone/camera. Get multiple takes so you have options in case editing doesn’t go as planned. If using external content, download and check to ensure the quality works for you AND that it’s formatted for use in a vertical TikTok video.
4. Add Text and Graphics: Consider adding text or graphics to the video to reinforce the message and make it more engaging. While music is a big part of TikTok, many users will be watching with audio off so captions can help…and at a minimum, text can emphasize key concepts.
5. Review and Post: Review and make any necessary revisions before posting.

By following these basic steps for storyboarding, real estate agents can create engaging TikTok videos that showcase properties in a unique and interesting way and have the potential to go viral.

Identify What Makes a Good Real Estate TikTok Video

When it comes to TikTok, platform reach (aka virality) is the name of the game. After all that’s what expands your audience. So that’s what dictates if a Real Estate TikTok Video is good or not.

There are several factors that can contribute to a TikTok video going viral, including:

1. Pattern interrupts: This means starting your video with something unusual to grab the user’s attention. TikTok feeds users a stream of never-ending content so using an initial hook to snap them out of the content stream is a critical first step in engaging your audience.
2. Engaging content: Now that you’ve got their attention, keep it. The most successful TikTok videos not only capture the viewer’s attention within the first few seconds but they keep them watching to the end. To create engaging content, try to make your video visually interesting, humorous, or emotionally compelling. It doesn’t need to be all three btw. Just set expectations on what you’re videos about and deliver.
3. Quality production: TikTok users are accustomed to high-quality content, so investing time in production quality can be crucial for a video’s success. This includes smooth video shots, good lighting, and excellent audio quality.
4. Great editing: Not only can editing cover up flaws in the initial production, but when the video and audio are edited well together, the video can have a highly shareable, almost addictive level of quality.
5. Trending content: Creating content that goes along with various TikTok trends will help a video gain traction and improve chances of going viral. This includes picking music that’s gaining in popularity, reusing trending audio in a clever way, remixing other popular TikToks, or participating in challenges.
6. Consistency: While it takes time and hard work, consistently creating high-quality content can help build a following on TikTok which increases the likelihood of a video going viral.
7. Timing: Posting a video at the right time can be key for its success. This might mean posting during peak hours when your audience is most active, or timing the post to coincide with a relevant events or holidays.

Ultimately, going viral on TikTok is unpredictable, and success often comes down to a combination of these factors as well as luck and timing. However, by creating high-quality and engaging content, real estate agents can increase their chances of reaching a wider audience on TikTok and growing their business.

Proven Real Estate TikTok Ideas

Now that we’ve covered the fundamentals, it’s time to start planning out the actual content ideas for your real estate TikToks. Start with proven real estate TikTok ideas like these:

1. Property tours: Real estate agents showcase their properties by filming tours and highlighting the best features of the property. They might include clips of the surrounding neighborhood or any unique aspects of the property.
2. Behind the scenes: TikTok users enjoy seeing behind-the-scenes footage of real estate agents at work. This could include a day in the life of a real estate agent, the process of preparing a property for sale, or the work that goes into closing a deal.
3. Humorous videos: Real estate agents can use humor to engage with potential clients. They might create funny skits related to the buying or selling process. Also behind-the-scenes content can be an opportunity to inject some self-deprecating humor.
4. Before-and-after transformations: Real estate agents can use TikTok to showcase before-and-after transformations of properties they have worked on. This could include home renovations or staging a property for sale.
5. Q&A sessions: Real estate agents can use TikTok to answer common questions from potential clients. This is a great way to establish credibility and build trust with potential clients.
6. Tips and advice: Real estate agents can use TikTok to share tips and advice for buyers and sellers. They might provide information on what to look for when buying a home, how to negotiate the best deal, how to prepare a property for sale, or home improvement ideas.
7. Run a contest: When it comes to getting your audience to engage with you, one of the challenges is addressing the question “what’s in it for me?”. Well, contests solve that! Agents can run contests on TikTok and encourage their followers to create content related to their local market. These are also great to do in partnership with another local business, for example, a popular restaurant or destination in your target market.

TikTok is a great platform to grow an audience and generate leads. If you are a real estate agent who is looking for a creative way to grow your audience beyond what’s been possible on Instagram, Facebook, and YouTube, checkout TikTok!

By understanding the basics of creating engaging content you can be sure that your real estate TikToks will draw new people into your existing audience that you can convert into either leads or referral opportunities.