4 Ways to Use Twitter in Your Real Estate Business

Twitter, of course, is the mini-blog posting platform that seems to address all of life in posts of 140 characters or less. It’s used for strictly social purposes and it’s used by businesses, including real estate agents as part of their marketing strategy.

At least 4 ways

There are at least three ways real estate agents can use twitter effectively:

1. to look for and find clients
2. to track news of your community
3. to track real estate news
4. to drive traffic to your iHOUSE website

Of course, you can meet each of these four in other ways. It doesn’t have to be done through Twitter. Twitter and other social media are only tools you may decide to use as part of your marketing.

It’s also worth noting that like all social media, Twitter can become a distraction, an actual hindrance if you’re not paying attention to how you spend your time.

Start by exploring

Before you jump into posting on Twitter for your real estate business, you probably should spend some time exploring what’s happening in your community regarding Twitter.

Begin with your office. If your office has a policy about social media, you should be familiar with it.

Log into Twitter – at this point it doesn’t matter if you have an account there or not.

When you enter some real estate search terms you’ll begin to get a feeling for what’s happening in your area. For example, I live in San Diego county in southern California. If I look for San Diego county real estate I get this:

I did this search on May 26. The dates alone signal there’s not much here that’s worthwhile. But when I tried house hunting in san diego I found this – the arrows point to possible leads.

Often you can find the email for the people who tweeted by clicking on the links in the tweet – it’s then fairly easy to contact them and offer your services.

Get creative

Get creative in your searches. Here are some suggestions :

• Neighborhoods in your city
• Your real estate office name
• Your name
• house hunting
• apartment hunting
• sell my house
• moving to (your city)
• moved to (your city)
• sell my property
• buy property
• hunting for property

Any of these and many more may turn out to be productive for your business, resulting in leads that turn into buyers.

I suggest you don’t post real estate for sale ads with the hashtags that reveal leads. Instead, contact the people who posted them.

Remember too, that how people use Twitter changes over time. If a search that’s been productive seems to peter out, do some more creative searching.

Giving & getting the news

Notice when you try searches like San Diego real estate you may find news that’s helpful to you about what’s going in the industry.

Again, try several combinations until you find one that works for you.

Once you have discovered some good hashtags, feel free to post news about yourself or your office that others might appreciate.

Driving traffic to your iHOUSE website

The way you drive traffic to your iHOUSE website with Twitter is to tweet your post url or webaddress every time you add something new.  Twitter will automatically shorten the url for you.

The key, of course, is choosing the right hashtag.

The searches you found most productive can be turned into hashtags simply by adding the # (capital 3 on your keyboard) in front and eliminating all spaces. Like this:

#sandiegorealestateforsale

#sandiegohomesforsale

#sandiegorealestate

Your post might look something like this:

Listed lovely home overlooking surf (the url of listing) #sandiegobeachhome #sandiegorealestate #Lajolla

or

Valley view 3 bedroom on Elkhorn for sale (the url of listing) #valleyviewforsale #sandiegorealestate #delmar

Although it’s tempting to add as many hashtags as you can, experts say it’s better to limit yourself to two or three hashtags per tweet. If you add too many, folks will feel you’re being pushy and begin to ignore you.

Have you tried tweeting about your iHOUSE website yet? Share your story here.