16 Social Media Tools Every Real Estate Agent Needs in 2022
This article is part of a larger series on Real Estate Lead Generation and Marketing.
According to the National Associations of Realtors (NAR), agents cited social media as the best source of quality real estate leads. However, many agents have difficulty posting consistent, engaging content to multiple social media platforms. Luckily, there are plenty of resources to support you as you build this marketing channel. We’ve identified the top 16 social media tools for real estate agents to help reduce the time and stress around social media marketing, advertising, and general presence.
Social Media Tools for Real Estate Agents | Most Useful For |
---|---|
Social media scheduling and tracking | |
Planning, promoting, and scheduling posts on social media | |
Integrating apps and tools to work together for social media marketing | |
Generating fresh content ideas and topics | |
Filtering and organizing content | |
Creating graphics and amazing social media posts for free | |
Creating short videos or animated videos from your pictures | |
Finding free stock images and videos | |
Creating charts, diagrams, and infographics | |
Creating professional videos | |
Planning, scheduling, and managing multiple social media platforms | |
Social media analytics and monitoring | |
Building brand awareness and online presence | |
Automating writing tasks | |
Social media management and monitoring | |
Analyzing and collaborating on content and managing engagement |
The majority of tools on this list are made to supplement your efforts online. If you’d prefer a tool to help you outsource multiple facets of social media marketing, check out Artur’In. Artur’In provides specific solutions to generate and promote your customer reviews, create branded photos and videos, establish a blog, and even run Facebook and Google ads. See how Artur’In can help you grow today.
1. Loomly
Cost: $26 to $269 per month, billed annually
Most useful for: Social media scheduling and tracking; finding inspiration on social media
Social media sites supported: Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Pinterest, LinkedIn, YouTube, Snapchat, TikTok, and Google My Business
Loomly is the top social media management tool for content inspiration, planning, scheduling, and tracking content across multiple platforms. Loomly supports more social media platforms than any other tool or social media scheduler on the market. This makes it one of the best social media tools to generate organic real estate leads without unnecessary stress or extra hours of work.
Loomly features at glance
On top of automatic scheduling, Loomly helps you generate new ideas for posts based on trending topics, RSS feeds, dates, and social media best practices. Through these channels, you can implement new real estate marketing ideas and maximize your reach and your engagement. Plus, you can avoid mistakes by previewing each post before publishing. And with advanced analytics, gain more clarity on what your audience responds to and be able to grow your following and lead generation with ease.
2. Tailwind
Cost: Free; paid plans range from $9.99 to $39.99 per month, billed annually
Most useful for: Planning, promoting, and scheduling posts
Social media sites supported: Pinterest, Instagram, and Facebook
Tailwind is one of the most popular social media tools for real estate agents who focus on Pinterest and Instagram. It allows you to schedule posts, create pins, and even increase engagement with Tailwind communities, which are vital elements of using Pinterest for realtors. Plus, active monitoring and the Tailwind SmartGuide help you keep your strategies in line with the ever-changing algorithms.
Tailwind SmartGuide
Tailwind also includes extensive analytics to track your progress, and even has a handy browser extension that lets you pin web pages to your boards with a single click. If Instagram and Pinterest are an important part of your traffic and marketing strategy, then Tailwind will be one of your most-used social media management tools. Get started with Tailwind through its forever-free plan.
3. IFTTT
Cost: Free-forever plan; paid plans range from $5 to $10 per month
Most useful for: Integrating apps and tools to work together for social media marketing
Social media sites supported: Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, Instagram, and other platforms with custom rules
IFTTT (If This, Then That) is one of the most unique and powerful tools for not only organizing your social media marketing, but your whole life. IFTTT integrates hundreds of apps to create simple conditional statements, called Applets, that trigger an event when a website, app, or device changes. For example, you can use IFTTT to open the garage when your car enters your driveway, or start brewing your coffee when your Fitbit senses you’re awake (yes, really).
Sample productivity applets (Source: IFTTT)
As a social media management tool, you can create rules in IFTTT that help you get more done in less time. You can schedule posts on multiple social media platforms without formatting issues since IFTTT is built on native integrations. You can use this tool to create more regular and automated routines, like posting an Instagram story every time you schedule a showing. Since real estate professionals don’t typically have a regular schedule, you can use this tool to get more results from social media and your day-to-day habits.
4. Reddit
Cost: Free; paid plans start at $5.99 per month
Most useful for: Generating content ideas and topics
Social media sites supported: Content can be reshared manually on all platforms
We know what you’re thinking—Reddit is an online forum, not a social media tool. However, it can be a valuable resource when used strategically. Since Reddit has an astonishing 52 million daily active users and is constantly keeping up to date with relevant topics and information, you can and should use it to find social media marketing tips. Use it to pick up trending stories, recipes, and ideas for engaging, sharable social media posts that your audience of buyers, sellers, or investors will love.
Sample Reddit thread
For your real estate social media content, find the latest mortgage news, infographics, real estate market news, or fun articles or memes to generate engagement. Plus, you can customize your feed by following specific subreddits, which represent a vast constellation of interests and ideas.
5. Feedly
Cost: Free; paid plans range from $6 to $18 per month, billed annually
Most useful for: Filtering and organizing content
Social media sites supported: IFTTT, Hootsuite, and Buffer
Feedly is what is known as a content aggregator. It uses artificial intelligence (AI) to gather news, images, videos, or podcasts from many different sources and consolidates them on one custom web page. For example, you can set up Feedly to pull trending stories from Realtor.org, Inman News, The Wall Street Journal, or any source that will offer up-to-the-minute news and information your audience might enjoy.
Feedly folder
Instead of browsing a few dozen websites for great content every morning, you will only have to check Feedly to see the relevant pieces from all sources. Feedly also integrates with social media tools like IFTTT, Hootsuite, and Buffer so you can schedule social media posts right from Feedly.
6. Canva
Cost: Free; paid plans start at $12.99 per month
Most useful for: Creating graphics and amazing social media posts
Social media sites supported: Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp, TikTok, and YouTube (content can be manually shared on all platforms)
Canva is one of the most popular and highly respected design platforms among real estate professionals, business owners, and social media marketers alike. It offers an intuitive interface that makes it easy for new and successful real estate agents to create beautiful graphics for social media, blogs, emails, ads, or any other type of marketing.
Real estate flyer templates (Source: Canva)
Canva offers hundreds of templates with fonts, layouts, and imagery for all kinds of social media posts, including infographics, Facebook covers, Instagram posts, stories, and blog headers. You can even use Canva to create flyers or postcards for your listings, or graphics for your email marketing.
7. Adobe Creative Cloud Express
Cost: Free (limited) or $9.99 per month
Most useful for: Creating short videos or animated videos from your pictures
Social media sites supported: Content can be manually shared on all platforms
Video is more important—and more necessary—in 2022 than ever before. Luckily, gone are the days when you had to buy professional video equipment and spend hours learning highly technical video editing software to publish video content. Now, you can simply use your smartphone and Adobe Creative Cloud. It allows you to easily stitch together pictures, video clips, and your narration to help show off a new listing or neighborhood to attract open house visitors.
Template library (Source: Adobe Creative Cloud)
Using Adobe Creative Cloud can help you create videos to generate leads on YouTube or build a real estate audience on TikTok. It’s a perfect way to highlight open houses, neighborhood tours, explainer videos, or create an agent introduction. Plus, you can easily create animated photos or GIFs with hundreds of templates. Try Adobe Spark’s free 30-day trial.
Visit Adobe Creative Cloud Express
8. Pexels
Cost: Free
Most useful for: Finding free stock images and videos
Social media sites supported: Content can be manually shared on all platforms
Using high-quality images that are relevant to your brand is extremely important for any social media strategy, but particularly for real estate agents on Instagram. Luckily, you don’t need to photograph and edit hundreds of original photos. Pexels is a stock image site with a wide variety of beautiful, professional images for free. Unlike many other free stock image sites, Pexels also doesn’t require attribution.
Pexels’ real estate photo library
While you’ll still want to be picky in your selection and only use relevant stock images, Pexels can transform your social media brand. There are photos of houses, apartments, neighborhoods, cities, and interior design that could be shared directly onto social media along with a caption written for your social media strategy. Pexels can also be used in combination with Canva to create beautiful, custom, branded images on every social media channel—for free. This can provide unlimited options for social media banners, posts, real estate brochures, or signs.
9. Venngage
Cost: Free, paid plans start at $16 per user, per month, billed annually
Most useful for: Creating charts, diagrams, and infographics
Social media sites supported: Custom designs for Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn, and Pinterest
Venngage is another platform that simplifies image creation, but is focused primarily on generating charts, infographics, checklists, and visual maps. Canva also offers chart and infographic templates, but in comparison to Venngage, it is much more limited. Venngage offers extensive options within an extremely easy-to-use interface. Even if you’ve never generated a visual report with your data, Venngage makes it easy to create in just a few minutes.
(Source: Venngage)
You can even upload spreadsheets directly from Google Drive and create graphs to show real estate trends, steps to buying and selling, generate a beautiful comparative market analysis (CMA), or make a listing presentation. Infographics provide a lot of value and are easily sharable, so if you find your audience responds well to hard data, you owe it to them to use Venngage—especially since you can start using it for free.
10. Magisto Editor
Cost: $4.99 to $34.99 per month, billed annually
Most useful for: Creating professional videos
Social media sites supported: Facebook and Vimeo
Magisto Editor is an easy-to-use video editor that’s surprisingly powerful for its relatively low price. Like Adobe Spark, it allows you to stitch together photos, add music and narration, and create awesome videos your audience will love. However, Magisto offers a much larger music library and significantly more advanced editing features.
You can incorporate videos into your marketing strategy by making a real estate tip of the day or producing engaging home tours. If you choose to utilize the incredible marketing power of video, then Magisto will be your most-needed social media management tool. They even offer specific real estate video tips and templates that you can seamlessly customize with your own footage.
11. Hootsuite
Cost: Free plan (limited); paid plans start at $49 per month
Most useful for: Planning, scheduling, and managing multiple social media platforms
Social media sites supported: Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn, Pinterest, and YouTube
Hootsuite is an extremely popular social media management tool that provides an extensive number of resources and tools to plan, schedule, automate, track, and manage content from multiple social media platforms. Although Hootsuite doesn’t integrate with as many platforms as Loomly, it is one of the only schedulers to simultaneously manage and optimize social media advertising.
Hootsuite’s analytics dashboard
Another reason why Hootsuite is one of the top social media schedulers is because of its powerful, in-depth reporting capabilities. You can see not only your engagements within the intuitive dashboard, but also learn more details about what your audience responds to best and even when your real estate brand is being talked about. With these analytics, you’ll be able to continually improve your social media strategy by covering the most interesting topics for your audience at the right time and even in the right format. Get started with Hootsuite’s 30-day free trial.
12. Iconosquare
Cost: $49 to $79 per month, billed annually
Most useful for: Social media analytics and monitoring
Social media sites supported: Instagram, TikTok, LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter
Iconosquare operates as the centralized location for all of your social media marketing analytics. Without tracking or measuring the data, even the best social media strategy would fall short. Iconosquare provides visualizations of data so you can more clearly understand the best times to post, which real estate hashtags perform best, and even generate presentations to communicate the data.
Iconosquare’s analytics dashboard
In addition to the analytics dashboard that combines multiple social media feeds, Iconosquare also includes a scheduling tool and an activity monitor. Instead of going between multiple social media apps to track comments and messages, you can engage with your audience directly through the Iconosquare app. You can even continually track your competitor’s feeds and analytics to learn more about your audience through its content. Start using Iconosquare today with a 14-day free trial.
13. Artur’In
Cost: $199 to $399 per month for agents
Most useful for: Building brand awareness and online presence
Social media sites supported: Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram, and Google My Business
Artur’In is defined as a digital marketing manager, making it slightly different from the other social media tools on this list. Although Artur’In offers many social media services, like automated Facebook ads and Facebook page management, it’s primarily a tool to support real estate professionals as they implement their social media strategy.
Artur’In analytics
Artur’In is also uniquely designed specifically for real estate agents and brokers, which means that the tools included and the expertise you’re given will be much stronger and more relevant in value. There is a creative design studio that removes the confusion from the process of creating photos. Furthermore, it has a real-time analytics dashboard, helping you measure the most important data points from your online marketing strategy.
14. Jasper
Cost: Starts at $29 per month
Most useful for: Automating writing tasks
Social media sites supported: Facebook, Instagram, Google, YouTube, and Twitter
Jasper (formerly Jarvis) is an artificial intelligence (AI) tool that helps you write content and social media captions almost instantly. You simply select which type of copy you need, add a few keywords or descriptions, and your copy will be automatically generated. Written content is a foundational piece of any social media or online marketing strategy, so this is a great tool for real estate agents who struggle specifically with writing.
Jasper’s copywriting skills
There are many different types of AI writing tools available on the market, but Jasper is the clear front-runner when it comes to quality and range of content. Hundreds of templates are available, from short social posts, Instagram captions, real estate listing descriptions, LinkedIn bios, and even a category dedicated to “ridiculous marketing ideas.”
There is a learning curve to using this tool, but it comes with an active Facebook group, live trainings, and a huge variety of tutorials and tips to help you improve the copy created by Jasper. Try Jasper for free.
15. Agorapulse
Cost: $79 to $159 per month, billed annually
Most useful for: Social media management and monitoring
Social media sites supported: Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, YouTube, and LinkedIn
Agorapulse is an ideal tool for centralizing all communications on a variety of social media channels. Like many other social media tools, it can be used to schedule and publish posts and keep track of insightful data. However, the standout features of Agorapulse are the unified social inbox and social listening, which can help even the most overwhelmed real estate marketer successfully manage all facets of social media communication.
Agorapulse’s social inbox
The social inbox brings messages from the most popular social channels into one inbox, which you can organize, assign, and label from a desktop or mobile device. On the other hand, social listening continually searches the web for mentions of your brand so that you can stay informed and proactively manage your brand’s reputation. These two features alone can help you continue to post and stay on top of content, comments, and messages on every social media channel. Try Agorapulse free for 15 days.
16. Buffer
Cost: Free; paid plans range from $5 to $100 per month, billed annually
Most useful for: Analyzing and collaborating on content and managing engagement
Social media sites supported: Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Pinterest, and LinkedIn
Buffer is another social media tool that helps you plan and schedule posts in advance, and it also provides resources for analyzing data and managing engagement. It does not provide as many direct integrations as Loomly or Hootsuite, but it has the easiest-to-use scheduling interface. It allows you to customize posts for each social media platform within the dashboard, which can help you get more mileage out of every piece of your content.
Buffer’s engagement management interface
Out of the most popular social media planning tools, Buffer has the easiest interface to manage and respond to comments from multiple sources. You can sort comments and prioritize the most important messages and conversations. Buffer is also the only tool of its kind to offer a built-in landing page builder and an integration with WordPress and Google Chrome. Try Buffer for free.
Real Estate Social Media Tools Best Practices
Many of the tools covered above have the ability to completely skyrocket your social media reach, engagement, and ultimately your real estate business. However, social media tools are not magic wands—you still need to put in the time and effort to leverage them for your marketing strategy.
With this in mind, here are seven best practices to help you use the real estate social media tools most effectively:
- Choose your social media tools wisely: Don’t attempt to purchase and use a large number of social tools at the same time. Start slow and continue building your repertoire of tools as your social media success grows.
- Plan a variety of content: Posting nothing but real estate listings is a sure-fire way to get you nowhere. The best real estate social media accounts share listings, behind-the-scenes videos, real estate memes, and personal stories.
- Repurpose content: Trying to think of daily content for four different social media platforms—while serving your real estate clients—is a recipe for disaster. When you have a piece of content to share, repurpose the same idea for each platform in order to save time and effort while maximizing results.
- Expect a learning curve: The most powerful social media tools include a wide variety of features, which means that it will take time to explore and experiment. When you choose a new social media tool, plan to give yourself time to learn the best and most efficient ways to use it.
- Stick to your brand: Ideally, you should take the time to define your audience, your values, and your brand before you invest your time and effort into growing a social media audience. Your real estate branding is what will differentiate you from all the other real estate professionals marketing in your area.
- Prioritize data: Even if you don’t plan to dig through data and analytics in-depth, it’s important to continually track a few basic metrics. Make sure one of the social media tools you choose can show you the best time to post on each platform and help you keep your finger on the pulse of what your audience is most interested in.
- Always provide a call to action (CTA): Even the most engaging content will fall short without a call to action. You shouldn’t be prompting a call or a meeting on every post, but each of your social media accounts should have a clear next step for users.
Bottom Line
Many real estate agents and brokers feel overwhelmed by the prospect of building a social media strategy on multiple platforms. However, the right tools can help you create engaging content, grow your following, and gain new leads through social media. Choose the tools that will help simplify the process of creating content, posting, and engaging with your ideal audience.