In March’s Marketing and Branding Month, we’ll go deep on agent branding and best practices for spending with Zillow, Realtor.com and more. Top CMOs of leading firms drop by to share their newest tactics, too. And to top off this theme month, Inman is debuting a brand new set of awards for branding and marketing leaders in the industry called Marketing All-Stars.
Savvy real estate agents know that social media is powerful — when used correctly. So many tools can help you use social media to your advantage that it can be hard to choose the right ones. Most social media tools are built for marketers, making them too much for single agents or small teams that don’t need to manage various accounts.
That’s why social media tools are a must in 2023. Social media tools will help you connect with your audience, build your brand and generate leads.
Before using the tools, remember that social media can quickly become antisocial if used to promote something instead of to connect with people. So, no matter how good your tools are, promoting homes for sale on social media will quickly turn off your audience and obliterate your chances of growing your market.
Reminders:
- Social media should be about connecting, not promoting
- Use social media to show off your personality and build relationships
- Post engaging content to increase followers
- Be active — don’t just post and disappear
- Engage with other users — comment, like, share
Adhering to some of the above can be challenging as a busy real estate agent, but social media tools will help you save time and money while optimizing your social presence. Once you get the hang of the tools, you’ll be able to quickly track performance and analyze how people interact with your content.
If you are ready to improve your social media results and save time while doing it, feel free to use some or all of the tools below:
Canva
Cost: Free (* 119.99 per year for Pro)
Canva is a free design tool that allows users to quickly and easily design attractive posts, infographics, and more. The drag-and-drop feature makes it simple to create interesting visual posts, even if you don’t know much about graphic design.
As a creative who prides herself on innovative design, I recommend using the existing, ready-made templates as a starting point.
Once you’ve selected a template, adjust it to fashion four branded templates. I would create a “just listed,” “just sold,” a “statistics” template, and a “featured” headline over an image. Although you can certainly make more templates, four is an excellent place to start.
Cortex
Cost: Free (* $19 per month for Introduction)
Cortex is a great AI tool that can help your social media posts in many ways. Cortex provides reliable insights that can inform your posting decisions, from quickly discovering the best-performing keywords and hashtags to tracking user behavior over time.
Cortex can also be used to research popular topics and engagement trends, so you can create social media content that resonates with your audience. Its AI tools look at not only your social media posts but also those of popular accounts in the real estate industry and give you data about them.
According to Cortex, engagement increases with four to nine hashtags but decreases with more than nine, and showing a face with a beard in your images reduces engagement by 34 percent. It can also tell which parts of an image are making people more interested. For example, putting a car in your post can make people 64 percent more interested.
Don’t spend valuable time creating posts that won’t cut it; instead, make your time as efficient as possible by creating content that will get positive reactions.
BuzzSumo
Cost: $119/month
In keeping with turning insights into results and creating content that resonates with your audience, BuzzSumo is an excellent tool. When it comes to content marketing, understanding the data and trends can be essential for success. Luckily, intuitive tools like Buzzsumo make this process easier and more effective.
With Buzzsumo, you can gain powerful insights by leveraging data on topics, competitors, and influencers. Using this information, real estate agents can easily create content that meets the needs and interests of their audience and helps them reach their goals.
Buzzsumo also helps provide transparency around performance so that you can adjust your strategy along the way. The price may be steep, but think about the ROI you will glean by studying the competition, creating compelling content and quickly monitoring what is happening online.
Lately.ai
Cost: $49/month for Litely
With so many real estate agents competing for attention on social media, it’s important to post consistently to build a strong presence that clients can trust.
Most real estate agents fail at consistency because they need more time or resources to keep up with their social media accounts. It’s a daunting task, and with no time-turner in sight (Harry Potter reference), this is the next best thing.
Meet Lately.ai. This robust tool, powered by AI, looks at your content and tells you when and on which networks you should post to get the most attention. Instead of manually analyzing your posts, you can set your preferences and let the AI take over, breathing new life into your social media presence.
That’s right. This tool will automatically produce posts across Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn and Twitter. You can run any long-form content through Lately; its AI will slice it up into dozens of high-performing social posts at the click of a button. The coolest part is that it doesn’t only do text; it also works with audio and video. Its AI is so sophisticated that it will learn your unique brand and voice.
Keyhole
Cost: $39/month for Profile Analytics
Keyhole is the final tool you should have in your arsenal. This new platform lets you track and analyze online conversations to improve your channels. With custom filters, hashtag tracking and insightful reporting insights, Keyhole offers a comprehensive set of tools to measure results, better understand your audience and benchmark against competitors.
#realestate was used in 13,600 posts today by 12,300 users and was used the most between 10 a.m. and 12 p.m. Using Keyhole, you can spy on the competition and benchmark your performance against theirs. You’ll also be able to improve your social media strategy with personalized optimization and real-time insights.
Don’t give up on social media if it’s not giving you the desired results. There are ways to ensure that the right people see your content at the right time. Real estate agents must create content that resonates with their audience to succeed.
Luckily, there are powerful and intuitive tools like BuzzSumo, Lately.ai and Keyhole to help you track data, create content that works, monitor trends and measure results. These tools can help real estate agents maximize their reach, optimize their strategies for success and ensure that their content resonates with the right people at the right time.
Laura Viñalet is the CEO of Keenability, a marketing agency specializing in lifestyle marketing that targets the affluent buyer. Follow her on Facebook or Twitter.
