Social media management tools explained

We all know estate agents are busy people. We know too that social media posting is key part of your agency’s digital marketing strategy. The problem is that, done properly, social media planning, posting and evaluating is very time consuming.

But what if there was a magic wand you could wave to populate your feeds with rich, quality content without lifting a finger? Social media management tools aren’t quite that magic wand, but they can speed up considerably the process of strategising, planning and implementing your campaigns. They can help you keep your eye on the ball with dashboards that hold all your feeds in one place and allow you to schedule in advance on multiple platforms – up to 30 posts ahead with some tools. They can also help you engage with your customers by monitoring comments and questions and improve your presence as an industry authority by drawing attention to trending conversations.

Look out for something with a user-friendly, intuitive dashboard.

There are many more benefits to the different tools out there, but you need to pick the ones that are right for your business. Whatever tool you choose, look out for something with a user-friendly, intuitive dashboard and the ability to schedule the social media feeds you need. The option to crosspost to different platforms is important, as is data on when to post for optimum traffic. It’s useful if the tool can be used from a mobile app, if you need to post on the go, and its analysis function should give you the stats you need to evaluate your campaigns.

There are plenty of free tools out there, but it’s more important to use the right ones. Here are my suggestions to get you started:

1 SproutSocial

SproutSocial helps with monitoring, publishing, engagement, and analysis by streamlining the processes of sharing content on different platforms. It also allows you to send personalised messages to your customers – whether landlords, vendors or buyers – when they need your help. All of this means you can better understand your audience and what they want from you on social.

2 Hootsuite

Hootsuite also lets you plan social campaigns and schedule ahead to different platforms including Facebook, Twitter and Instagram – all from one dashboard. It helps you monitor traffic by setting up bespoke lists for different audiences, hashtags or topics and you can reply to queries direct. It also has an inbuilt link shortening function. While you can pay for a premium service, you can also do a lot with the free version of Hootsuite – you can even schedule up to 30 posts in advance. Be aware that Hootsuite’s focus is on social media management rather than content creation.

3 Tweetdeck

Tweetdeck is just for Twitter – a platform you might be watching carefully under the ownership of Elon Musk. It’s another free tool and great if you manage multiple Twitter profiles for your business, which can all be operated from one central dashboard. Tweetdeck lets you schedule ahead, monitor activity across Twitter and manage lists. You can post and reply in real time via your dashboard too.

4 Buffer

Buffer is good for creating custom posting plans for different platforms. Like Hootsuite, the free plan is adequate for small businesses – it lets you manage three platforms and schedule up to 10 posts in advance.

5 SocialBee

With SocialBee you can create, categorise and publish content. As well as the usual Facebook, Twitter and Instagram, you can post to LinkedIn, Pinterest, Google My Business, and TikTok. SocialBee’s analytics help you track performance, recycle your evergreen content and remove dated posts. One benefit of SocialBee is that it integrates with the free design tool Canva from inside the post editor. It also offers URL shorteners. While not free, SocialBee is an affordable tool.

6 Loomly

Loomly does more than scheduling – it can offer you content ideas and it comes with editing and design tools as well as a picture library for all your essential property shots. There isn’t a free version but the paid plans are, again, quite affordable. It also comes with a built-in ad manager.

7 CoSchedule

CoSchedule is another good management tool and useful if you have a larger team – as the paid version allows multiple users to manage several accounts at once. It has a simple calendar interface and can be used to publish to Instagram. But with the free plan you’re limited to five scheduled posts.

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