In the old days, realtors had to market themselves on bus stops, billboards, and newspapers. (How vintage.) While traditional marketing is still effective, competitive realtors know social media marketing takes the cake. They also know to be the best, you need the best social media tools for real estate agents.
To keep up with the digital rat race, you’ll need a kitted-out toolbox full of social media apps for real estate agents.
Curious to know what’s in your competitors’ bag of tricks? This blog will cover the six must-have tools your industry knows and loves.
Bonus: Get a free social media strategy template designed specifically for real estate agents, brokers, and marketers. Use it to easily plan your own strategy, track results, and keep your team in the loop.
Are you looking to curate a whole new set of resources? Or overhaul your existing go-to list? To do so, you’re going to need to know what to look for.
Here are ten must-have capabilities real estate marketers look for in a social media tool.
Social media scheduling
The ability to schedule posts in advance across multiple social media platforms allows you to plan and organize your content effectively and efficiently. Don’t be one of those realtors scrambling to get your post out between showings.
Multiple social media platform integration
Tools that allow you to manage Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, or Twitter from a single dashboard can help you save a lot of time.
Content curation
Don’t stress yourself out coming up with and curating content all on your own. Get a tool capable of assisting you in pulling together and ideating relevant and engaging real estate content, like articles, blog posts, images, videos, and infographics.
Analytics and reporting
Any realtor worth their salt knows marketing efforts need to result in cold hard dollars. Robust analytics and reporting features provide insight into your social media performance, audience engagement, reach, and other key metrics. Your tool should help you track the effectiveness of your campaigns and prove your ROI.
Social listening and monitoring
You’re going to want to know what the public sentiment of your brand is. And stay up-to-date on industry news and competitor coverage. With social listening, you can monitor brand mentions, keywords, hashtags, and conversations related to the real estate industry in real-time.
Team collaboration and workflow management
Collaboration and workflow management are important for realtors who work in teams. A good tool can facilitate collaboration among your colleagues, coordinate social media efforts, assign tasks, and streamline workflows. This will save time and improve efficiency in managing social media campaigns.
Brand management and compliance
If you’ve outsourced your social media marketing or are a marketer hired by an agent, make sure your brand consistency is on point. This will protect the brand’s online reputation and create a cohesive digital experience.
Sentiment analysis
This social listening capability is pretty advanced, but analyzing sentiment by gathering insights from social media conversations or trends in the real estate industry can help you to identify trends and adapt your marketing strategy accordingly.
Social media advertising
A tool that allows you to easily advertise on social is a no-brainer. Find one that allows you to create, manage, and track paid social media campaigns within the same place. This will help automate your advertising campaigns and increase your visibility.
Mobile app support
There’s nothing worse than running into an unsolvable issue without access to customer support. As a realtor, you’re likely too busy to troubleshoot software on your own time. Be sure your tool has customer support capabilities.
Grow. Create. Engage. Schedule. Publish. Measure. Win.
There’s a sea of social media apps for real estate agents out there. Trying to pick one or two without direction will have you drowning in choices.
Below, we’ll cover six of our favorite social media tools for real estate agents, each designed for smooth social media sailing.
1. Hootsuite
Number one with a bullet is Hootsuite. And yes, we are a bit biased. But even before I wrote for Hootsuite, I used the platform. Hootsuite’s known for its integration, scheduling, and analytic reporting features, but there are many lesser-known capabilities you don’t want to sleep on.
OwlyWriter, for example, will generate social media captions for you directly in the platform with built-in Grammarly Pro, so you’re always grammatically correct. And the AI-based Best Time to Post feature analyzes your audience base and then tells you when they’re online and likely to engage.
Source: Hootsuite
Pair all of these with the hashtag generator, which uses AI to analyze your post and suggest relevant hashtags, and you’re left with fully-optimized content in seconds.
When you look for social media tools for real estate agents, you want to find something multi-use. Hootsuite covers all of the capabilities mentioned above (and more).
Realtors, in particular, should pay attention to these key features:
- Hootsuite’s social media planner lets you easily schedule and stay on top of your content campaigns.
- Track performance across all platforms, schedule posts from one place, and have a single-source messaging platform.
- Hootsuite Impact takes analytics one step further, allowing you to track social customers all the way through your sales funnel and present your findings with custom graphs and charts.
- Social listening and sentiment analysis to give you an inside look into what your audience thinks of you.
- If you’re a larger real estate agency, a real estate marketing agency, or you’ve hired support, then Hootsuite’s collaboration capabilities are key. You can collaborate amongst team members with multiple logins and give members of your team different limitations.
- Using OwlyWriter to generate original social media captions will save you so much time.
- Reading and responding to all of your messages in one place. Hootsuite’s inbox gives you a single platform to perform all community management.
Price: Free with a 60-day trial. Paid accounts start at $99 monthly.
Try Hootsuite for free. You can cancel anytime.
2. Canva
Canva is a non-designers dream for creating aesthetically pleasing content. Your social platforms matter as much as your IRL physical appearance. You want to appear polished, put-together, and professional.
Canva allows you to design on-brand digital marketing assets with minimal effort. You can use pre-made templates configured for each platform or create your own templates to be rinsed and repeated as you see fit.
While Canva makes it easy for you to create simple designs, it does come with limitations. Free accounts have limited templates, you cannot create original graphics, and you can’t download raw files to your computer. That being said, for most realtors, it gets the job done.
Pro tip: You can use Canva within Hootsuite!
Source: Canva
Key features for realtors:
- Platform-specific dimensions
- Realtor-specific templates
- Intuitive design elements
Price: Free with Canva Pro accounts starting at $119.99 annually.
3. Animoto
Global averages for 2023 show consumers watch 17 hours of video content a week. That’s an entire waking day. This implies people already consume a lot of video advertising — are you part of the conversation?
When you’re listing a new property, give your audience a taste with a video tour to promote online engagement and pique interest IRL.
@metroguiderealty Presenting a Fully-Furnished 6BR Modern Industrial House for Sale in Antipolo City Floor Area: 610 sqm. Lot Area: 491 sqm. For Inquiries and to Book a Viewing contact: 0917-8204088 Jake Bautista Licensed Real Estate Broker #Antipolo #Antipolohouseforsale #Antipolohousetour #Dreamhome #Dreamhouse #housetourph #realestateph #Metroguide #MetroguideRealty #manifesting #propertyph #realestateph
While it’s an effective marketing tool, busy realtors may balk at the necessary time investment into creating video content. That’s where Animoto comes in. With Animoto, you can stitch together still photos and video clips and easily add your narration.
But that’s not all, folks. Animoto also offers real estate-specific video templates you can use for tours, listings, testimonials, and ads.
Pro tip: Try creating video content of the surrounding neighborhood to stand out from the crowd.
Source: Animoto
Key features for realtors:
- Real estate-specific video templates
- Drag-and-drop video maker makes it easy for non-designers (like realtors) to create professional, personalized videos.
Price: Free with paid accounts starting at $96 annually.
4. Venngage
Venngage is like Canva’s buttoned-up cousin. This design platform is specifically catered to professionals with easy-to-edit infographics, charts, and other assets.
Real estate content can be so much more than open house tours and new listings. You can use your platform to educate your audience and grow your following, solidifying your brand’s reputation in the process.
@tsairealestate Tag someone down below! #realestate #realtoroftiktok #vancouverrealestate #vancouverbc
Use Venngage’s templates to create professional infographics, reports, mindmaps, or timelines to help your audience visualize the home buying or selling process.
As an aside, you can also use Venngage to design print materials like brochures.
Source: Venngage
Key features:
- Real estate-specific templates for infographics, reports, mindmaps, and timelines
- My Brand Kit allows you to save your branding within the platform
Price: Free with paid accounts starting at $120 annually.
5. Talkwalker
Sentiment analysis and social listening through Talkwalker allows you to track and analyze mentions and market activity.
This social listening platform monitors 30 social networks and 150+ million websites to keep you informed on what people are saying about you when you’re not in the room—and whether it’s positive, negative, or neutral.
You can track industry trends as they develop, joining the conversation at the optimal moment. Oh, and did we mention Talkwalker integrates seamlessly with Hootsuite?
Key features to watch out for:
- Talkwalker’s integration with Hootsuite makes it easy to use
- Data from 150m+ sources, including blogs, forums, social networks, news, videos, and review sites
- Real-time conversation sentiment analysis (this can really help in a potential crisis) and email alerts for important trends
- Brand mention monitoring
Price: Talkwalker offers various pricing tiers to suit the needs of different businesses, from small startups to large enterprises.
Plus! Hootsuite is set to acquire leading social listening platform Talkwalker VERY SOON. This means that you’ll be able to dig even deeper into brand mentions and customer intelligence, with Talkwalker’s AI-powered tools right in your Hootsuite dashboard!
6. Chatfuel
Imagine having a robot assistant who replies to all of your messages for you. That’s what Chatfuel is, a bot assistant that takes care of most of your messages, schedule appointments, and help with lead generation.
Your Chatfuel bot can ask prospects whether they’re buying or selling, about any special requests, and source their contact information. Then, it provides you with a tidy package of information.
Chafuel can handle routine property inquiries online, giving you more time to focus on higher-priority tasks, like closing deals.
Source: Chatfuel
Key features to watch out for:
- Automated discovery questions and provide a natural customer journey
- Appointment scheduling
- Capture contact information for prospective buyers
- Lead generation and qualification
- Route prospective buyers or sellers to your agents, if you’re an agency
- Provide your audience with information about a property
- Rent calculator
- Answer buying and selling FAQs
Price: A free trial includes 50 conversations per month, with pricing rising up to $59.99 per month for 3,000 conversations.
What social media should realtors use?
The social media platform that will serve you best depends on your goals. If you get specific with your social strategy, you can tailor your content to the audience on each platform. Then, serve them content designed to meet your goals.
Facebook and Instagram’s visual-forward platforms can help you showcase your property listings.
Psst: If you don’t have a real estate Facebook page, check out our guide.
LinkedIn is known for B2B networking, so your content on this platform should focus on building relationships with other professionals.
TikTok can help build your personal brand. Have fun with it, and give people a reason to follow you.
YouTube’s long-form video capabilities give you the opportunity to show off your listings in detail and publish longer thought-leader or educational pieces. This can both increase sales and further your brand presence.
Here are some specific real estate post ideas you can steal, and here is an entire guide on picking the right social platform for your real estate business.
How do you optimize social media for real estate?
Optimizing social media for real estate marketing requires a multi-pronged approach.
Keep your individual platform content specific to your audience. Beyond that, be sure to have consistent and uniform branding across all touchpoints. Using high-quality visuals for your property listings will help entice people to click through and engage.
And, of course, create a social media content schedule and stick to it. Lastly, make sure to monitor and analyze your social media analytics to gain insights and adapt your social media strategy.
How do I promote myself as a realtor on social media?
Be sure to include content about yourself in your social strategy. This can be thought-leader editorial articles you’ve written, posts about your real estate milestones, or even personal stories.
Don’t forget to engage with people to build a loyal following.
Do real estate agents use social media?
Absolutely. In fact, 57% of realtors report using social media daily. Need more convincing on whether or not your peers are on social? Check out these very compelling real estate social media statistics.
Real estate agents and brokerages worldwide use Hootsuite to streamline their social marketing efforts, improve their client experience, and ensure compliance with industry regulations. See for yourself why we’re the real estate industry’s leading social media management platform!
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