Rayner Personnel, has revealed which estate agency brands are making the big splash when it comes to their social media profiles.
They analysed social media followings as well as monthly website visits, to see which property players held the most prominent social media profiles and which were seeing the highest number of people coming through to their website.
When it comes to outright followings, Savills ranks in the top three across the three major platforms.
With 70,500 followers, the firm is top dog when it comes to their Twitter following, followed by Knight Frank (63,400), Fine and Country (15,100), perhaps surprisingly the resurrected online agent Emoov (12,400) and Countrywide (10,100).
Foxtons tops the table where Facebook is concerned with 58,662 followers.
Knight Frank (51,044) ranks second, followed by Savills (26,050), Fine and Country (22,732) and Purplebricks (20,147).
On Instagram, Savills again ranks as number one where the volume of followers is concerned (116,000) with Knight Frank (103,000), Fine and Country (12,000) Foxtons (6,160) and Haart (5,030) also securing a large following.
However, when it comes to driving engagement through their websites, there is one clear winner. Love them or hate them, Purplebricks is by far the most visited estate agency website with an average of 1.7m visits per month so far this year.
Foxtons ranks second with 731,667, followed by LSL’s YourMove (595,000) and Knight Frank (540,000).
Founder and CEO of Rayner Personnel, Josh Rayner, commented:
“Social media can be a potent tool when used correctly. Not only is it an essential communication platform in the modern age, but a strong presence can also help drive visits to your website, as well as helping to attract top talent when it comes to hiring.
“While not every platform will suit every brand, it’s astonishing to see how many estate agents maintain a ‘head in the sand’ approach, with little to no social media presence whatsoever.
“It’s also interesting to see that those with the most significant social media presence aren’t necessarily those with the highest rates of website engagement.
“That said, we all know it’s not the size of the tool that matters; it’s how you use it.
“In today’s world, merely having a social media presence isn’t adequate; you need a full-time social media professional to run it efficiently and effectively.
“This is something that many simply don’t invest in.”
Comments (15)
I think this article is misleading. Our single branch agency on the Isle of Wight has over 25,000 Facebook followers @LancastersEA
The headline does not make it clear that only corporates are included.
As a small company punching above our weight and taking on the big boys, it hurts a little when we don’t get even a one line mention the league tables. Us Brits have a long history or supporting the underdog, come on…
Any ranking of information using a single data point tends to be flawed. It probably isn’t any great surprise that the larger and mostly corporate sector of the estate agency sector has more followers. It’s nothing more than a list, rank-ordered, largest to smaller.
If you really want to go down this road, then the next level of analysis would be to look at the engagement rate i.e. what percentage of your followers are engaging with your content?
Because I had a bit of time this morning and have saved looking out the window for this afternoon (who remembers that old joke!?), I took a quick look at the last 10 posts of the top and bottom of the Facebook list and worked out that Foxtons have an average engagement (comments, likes, shares) of 10.4 for the last 10 posts. Reeds Rains for the same metric achieve an average of 5.5 engagements.
BUT, to get the engagement ratio, you divide the average engagement rate bu the number of followers getting 0.000186 and 0.000631 respectively. When you then compare the two, Reeds Rains at number 10 achieve 3.396 more times engagement that Foxtons at the top.
The key thing is this. In early 1981, Joe Dolce spent eight weeks at number one with the song “Shuddap You Face” thus keeping Ultravox’s “Vienna” at number two. It’s not always the biggest number that is ultimately the best product.
A little bit like when newspapers used to proudly proclaim ‘reaching 138,000 potential buyers of your property’. Stretching the definition of the word potential to the maximum!
Certainly, with the old free mid-week papers a better claim would be, “Lining the rabbit hutches of 138,000 homes across Berkshire!”
For those of a certain generation, being dragged towards social media by our younger colleagues (or children) has meant that we have taken a somewhat skeptical view of the whole thing, questioning its relevance for something as staid as the residential housing market.
As with Virtual tours, where we might be reluctant to recommend any offer without a physical viewing, a strong social media presence seems designed purely to win business from those who look at it. Thus a **** estate agent with a strong social media presence might get invited through more doors than he/she might without. Does it make them better estate agents ? I think not.
But I cannot ignore the amount invested by some of the bigger respected players, as shown, and perhaps this is their means of targeting a younger market, hopefully property buyers before too long. That is an aspect I shall watch.
My question though is, apart from being glorified brand awareness exercise, will social media bring more genuine buyers to a client’s property than might occur without social media ?
Q – My question though is, apart from being glorified brand awareness exercise, will social media bring more genuine buyers to a client’s property than might occur without social media ?
A – YES!!!
How exactly?
It probably is a “YES” as part of ongoing and other activities. I’d rethink the question to be about attracting sellers over buyers. Once you have the property on your books, those buyers have a nasty habit of finding you!
Hello Scruffy,
I wouldn’t worry to much about social media for genuine buyers; the way you have phrased the question suggests an awareness, a recollection of print property advertising in its heyday. If that’s the case think of social media in the same way as you thought about print advertising, you are not attracting buyers as much as demonstrating to potential vendors what you do to promote their property.
One of the very best agents does absolutely top drawer marketing and social media. The boss types no more than 240 characters in a single tweet every morning at about the same time. There is a simple elegance to his tweet that clicks through to his company website. It is simple, effective and shows an awareness and easy mastery of this new digital world.
Do not think of this skill as something the yoof have mastered, they haven’t. By asking the question you are ahead of a lot of agents who think they’ve got this sussed but have very closed discussions with other agents and suppliers.
‘you need a full-time social media professional to run it efficiently and effectively. This is something that many simply don’t invest in.‘
Hands up who’s got the money to comply with this advice?
Stick to personnel mate.
Lots of big brands missing from this list and nothing said that you can’t find from a cursory search of the web. Unless it’s a complete list of agents it’s completely useless.
Quite a tedious article from one of the long list of industry consultants that no one needs. And people say agents charge too much? Try checking out the cost of paying a recruitment agent.
Lies, dam*ned lies, and statistics.
Go on to any of the twitter accounts mentioned and you will see that a huge percentage of the ‘followers’ are a mix of porn, spam, and bots.
Big on numbers don’t mean big on quality.
Don’t Purplebricks customers, LPE’s et all have to log in to the back end system via the Purplebricks website? Clever way of skewing visitor numbers.
Misleading article as it’s just looking at corporates and online agents whereas social media is all about local communities. There are loads of independents with more Facebook and Instagram followers.
Agree it’s about what you do with social media though, not the number of followers (which can easily be bought if you only cared about winning a willy waving contest).
Emoov’s figures show how irrelevant just looking at followers is. Of those 12k, how many are still in the market or ever were? How often do you un-follow brand on social media? This proves that it rarely happens. Yet agents will still pay to target ads at these irrelevant people.
Shitee numbers when you think my agency has 650 followers on twitter and 1400 on Facebook in 1 location..
Times that by 10 locations and i would kill these so called corporate experts…
R.i.p corporates.
You died when you couldn’t shaft ftb’s for 3k a mortgage with life..