You wouldn’t have gotten into real estate or lending if you weren’t a master multi-tasker. You don’t just sell houses or mortgages, you’re a marketer, counselor, negotiator, expert, and confidante. But even the best multi-tasker can’t be everywhere at once. And you definitely can’t be present everywhere on the web, searching social media and the web for mentions of your brand and content to share. Luckily, you don’t have to be. There are tools out there that keep an ear out for you, making sure you stay aware in as little time as possible.
These tools will help you improve your social listening capabilities, which is a fancy marketing term for keeping tabs on your business, your competition, and your market. By using social listening in your real estate or lending marketing, you’ll be able to track mentions of your business online, create relevant content related to what your audience is talking about, and curate content from others to share.
The best tool for tracking mentions of your business
Mention: This is the easiest way to keep track of how your brand is talked about online. Mention scours the web for whatever keyword alert you create, and notifies you every time it’s mentioned. It’s quick and easy to set up and customize, and their free plan is sufficient for most small businesses. Here’s a quick video on how to set up an account with Mention:
Once you have an account, you can set notifications to e-mail you every time you receive a new mention, or you can log in to their dashboard and see them all in real time. Keeping track of mentions online can help you stay on top of your brand and respond to posts, Tweets, or reviews online. You can also use Mention for more than brand monitoring, you can set up to get notified of new mentions of a specific topic, or even your competition.
The best tools for curating and sharing content
Buffer: This company made a name for itself in the social scheduling world by having a simple, easy to use interface. Even a social media novice should feel comfortable managing their media with Buffer. Scheduling your posts to Facebook or Twitter is easy to do, but a great social feed also includes posts from other sources like local businesses, events, and news sites as well. Buffer makes curating and sharing content from local sites a simple process in the Feeds menu, shown below.
To get started, go to “Feeds” and select “Add or remove feeds.” From here, you can type or paste in the name of a webite whose content you would like to share. Once a site is added, all of their new posts will appear in you Feeds menu, so you can share or schedule their posts by clicking “Add,” and then sharing the post now, or adding it to your queue to share later. Try adding some local blogs, a local news source, along with some home decor websites like Houzz and Porch to your Feeds to give your social channels some great variety.
Hootsuite: Hootsuite is another social scheduler that’s a little more complex to use, but has some great built-in social listening tools. You can keep track of certain keyword mentions in Hootsuite by setting up “Streams.” If you don’t have a Hootsuite account, head to Hootsuite’s plan page and select “Get Started Now” under the free plan and create your account.
Once you’re on your Hootsuite home page, select “Add Stream” at the top left corner of the page, then click the Keyword tab.
Enter in up to 3 words or phrases you would like to track here, and they will show up as separate stream columns on your Hootsuite home page. A good keyword to start with is [your city’s name] real estate, and then you can also add any specific keywords that your market would be interested in, such as mortgage rates, first time buying advice, reverse mortgages, or home decor. When posts appear in your stream, you can share, retweet, or repsond to them accordingly.
These 3 tools will help you put together an easy and effective social listening plan, where you can keep tabs on your online brand while finding and sharing relevant content in just a few minutes a day. What are your favorite social listening tools and strategies? Leave a comment below and let us know!