Social Media Tools to Help You Share Your Content

Social Media Tools to Help You Share Your Content

 April 22, 2016

It’s happening. You’re writing blog posts, making videos, and adding great content to your real estate website several times a week. Great! You’ve taken the first step.

Did I just say first step? Yes, I did.

Creating great content isn’t the end of the process of generating leads and building an audience on your website. It’s just the beginning.

If you thought you were finished when clicked “Publish,” think again. Now you’ve got to get the word out. You have a few ways to do this: your email newsletter (you do have one, right?), your Facebook profile, your Twitter account, maybe Pinterest or Instagram if you’ve got a good graphic.

That sounds exhausting, doesn’t it? No worries, there are a few social media tools that will help you share your content and get more eyes on your website.

Social Share Buttons

The first tool is to give your readers a way to do the work for you. Make sure your website/blog has social share buttons on every page and on your blog posts. This way, when someone reads or watches your content and loves it, they don’t have to work too hard to share the information with their own friends and family. Social share buttons work best when paired with a call to action like “Found this helpful? Share this with your friends!”

Automated Sharing

When you write a blog post and hit publish, you can also have that post automatically shared to your personal and business social media feeds. Depending on how your website is set-up or what plugins you use, you can share to Twitter, Facebook, Google+, and more. Free options include specific plugins like Jetpack while you can pay for a service called Co-Schedule which allows you to schedule your content to be shared at specific (and multiple) times.

Schedule Your Social Media Posts

Co-Schedule is an option you can use within the back-end of your website and is great for power-users of social media with a lot of blog content. But if you want something that allows you to do more than share your own blog posts, it’s time to look at social sharing tools like Buffer, Hootsuite, and even Tweetdeck (if you love Twitter and only Twitter).

Buffer and Hootsuite offer free and paid options. All three let you schedule posts to social media. With Buffer and Hootsuite, you can connect several accounts (more if you pay), and share much more than just your own content. With browser extensions, you can share good information that you find on the web as you read it. With a paid Buffer account, you can even connect your Pinterest account. Whether you choose Hootsuite or Buffer, you’ll spend a few minutes a day or week scheduling tweets or posts that share your blog content. It makes it easy to share evergreen or older content from your website, too.

Become Part of a Tribe

Hootsuite and Buffer are probably more familiar names. Have you heard of Triberr? Most people haven’t, but it can be an effective tool in getting your blog content in front of new and different audiences. When you sign up, you link your blog’s RSS feed to your account and join different tribes of like-minded bloggers. In real estate, you may want to join tribes that blog about decorating, business, or a local area you serve. If you don’t see a tribe that fits your niche(s), you can create one.

Once you’re part of a tribe (the default is “follower” but reach out to the tribe’s chief and ask to become a “member’), your content will be shared by other members of your tribe, and you’ll share your tribe member’s content. The benefit is two-fold: you have more content that isn’t yours to share to social media, and your content will be shared to audiences you haven’t connected with – yet.

While Triberr is available for Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn, it’s most commonly used on Twitter. If you’ve wanted to grow your Twitter following but didn’t know what content to share (other than your own), this is a good option. As long you’re creating content that has value for people, you’ll see your numbers grow: social media follows, views on your website, how often your content is shared. But it’s based on reciprocity (something you’re already very familiar with). In order to have your content shared, you need to share posts from other members of your tribe.

Remember when I said creating the content was only the first step? There’s so much more to do once you’ve sweated over the words or re-recorded your video 10 times and have something you like. You can spend hours a week or month trying to stay on top of sharing your content or you can take advantage of the tools that make this easier to do.

You don’t have to do this all at once either. Try one thing – a free Buffer account, adding calls to action on your blog posts, something – and see how it goes. As long as you’re creating content of value, you’ll find an audience. These tools make it a little easier.


Michaela Mitchell

By Michaela Mitchell

Former Communications Director for a local Realtor Association and a big cheerleader for all things real estate related, Michaela is now a full-time freelance writer specializing in real estate and other business industries. When she's not writing the serious business-y stuff, she's likely to be found writing about the hilarity of being a Mom to two rowdy boys.