Social Media 101

Tools to Help You Grow Your Channels

BY ERIN McFEETERS

Roughly seven in ten American adults use social media, according to the Pew Research Center, making it one of the best ways to grow your business and find potential clients. However, with constantly changing algorithms and new features, when it comes to staying relevant on social media, it’s vital to stay current on trends and engage your audience. If you’re not a social media guru or algorithm specialist, try these social media tools designed to make you look good.

Photofy

graphic design; member perk; free

New Jersey Realtors® knows graphic design is not every Realtors® forte, which is why the National Association of Realtors® and NJ Realtors® collaborate with Photofy to bring you customizable social media assets. Get started for free by visiting photofy.com/nar—upload your headshot, input your contact information, and you’ll be ready to go to share graphics on all your social media accounts.

Kicksta

brand awareness

One way to grow your Instagram following is by engaging with others online. Kicksta makes it easy by finding accounts that are like yours and automatically engage with accounts. Kicksta will help you obtain the boost you’ve been looking for and help you grow your audience.

Hootsuite

scheduler; analytics; links; collaboration features; free version

Whether you’re a part of a real estate team or manage your accounts all on your own, Hootsuite can help you manage all your social media platforms. Schedule content to your profile, reply to direct messages, discover new trends, and more.

Sprout

scheduler; collaboration features; scheduler

This social media management tool can help you create and stick to a marketing strategy. Why post without a purpose when Sprout can help you achieve your social media goals with listening features, publishing tools, analytics, and more.

Canva

free version; graphic design; scheduler; collaboration features

Canva set out on a mission to make designing and publishing accessible to everyone from anywhere. With Canva, you can create beautiful graphics and videos for social media and print materials for your next open house—it’s a do-all tool. Use one of the premade templates or start from scratch using their smartphone application or desktop version.

Tezza

photo editing; video; graphic design

Create a new aesthetic online with presets and easy-to-use editing tools. Tezza is full of fun filters, presets, and effects you can use to make your account pop. Their templates for Instagram Stories make posting every day a dream.

Animoto

video; member perk

No experience is required to create marketing videos to share on your social channels with Animoto. The platform has real estate video templates ready to go to create property listing, testimonial, and informational real estate videos. The drag-and-drop templates make putting a video together a breeze. As an added bonus: Animoto is a NJ Realtors® Member Perks Partner so members receive 15 percent off of the professional plan.

WordSwag

graphic design; free

Turn words and phrases into beautifully designed graphics with a touch of a button with WordSwag. The templates are easy to use and can help you create social media graphics in a crunch, and they’ll look like you hired a professional graphic designer.

Repost

brand awareness; free

Use Repost on Instagram to share user-generated content. Whether it be an insightful post from a colleague or a testimony from a client, you’ll have the ability to repost it on your feed. As a rule of thumb, always ask the original creator before reposting their content to your profile.

Bit.ly

links; organization; analytics

According to Bit.ly, branded links drive 34 percent more clicks than the average link. With this tool, you can create links branded to you to inspire trust and help you gain control of what you’re sharing. It can also help manage links, create mobile-friendly links, track click performance, and generate QR codes.

Instagram Hashtag Generator

free; hashtags

The Influencer Marketing Hub created its hashtag generator tool to help users find relevant trending hashtags related to your content. Upload the photo or graphic plan to share, and artificial intelligence will generate hashtags you can copy and paste into your post caption. You can also try their Tiktok Hashtag Generator.

All Hashtag

free; hashtags

Before hitting post, quickly see what hashtags are trending by keyword with All Hashtag. Then, you’ll have the ability to copy and paste them directly into your post caption. You can also check out the top 100 hashtags for the day, current popular hashtags, and more.