Real Estate Agents and Hashtags

 June 16, 2014

As you’ve probably begun to suspect, social media gets more important to real estate agents almost every day. Ronique Gibson has a great overview of why you should use social media in an article called The Benefits of Using Social Media for your Realty Business

A key tool you can use in several social media services are hashtags. You’ve seen them – words proceeded by the number sign or #. 

A way to find stuff

Essentially, hashtags are used to help identify the content of social media posts or messages. They can identify places, like the name of a state, region, city, town and even in some cases, neighborhoods.

For example, #realestate is a recognized hashtag. It’s also probably the most generic tag for the real estate industry there is. And yes, you and I both know it’s two words, but when it comes to hashtags, they get run together.

Look at the first few tweets – chances are they are aimed at agents, not buyers and sellers. Sure, if you’re writing something for the other agents in your office or your state organization, you’d want to tweet it under #realestate for sure.

For comparision’s sake, go to twitter.com and in the search box type: #chicagorealestate Now you’re starting to see some listings. You’re like to attract more buyers with a location based hashtag than something as typical as the tag #realestate.

The trick is to think like a buyer or a seller when you’re working with hashtags.

Note too, that the @ sign that proceeds some items is actually the ‘twitter handle’ or nickname of the person who posted. Keep that in mind when you create your own twitter account.

Not just twitter

It’s not just Twitter that supports hashtags in their 140 character microblog posts. Sure, they started it all, but the list of social media sites that are supporting hashtags keeps growing.

According to Mashable.com’s article, The Beginner’s Guide to the Hashtag, you can use hashtags on Facebook, Instagram . Google+, and Pinterest  as well as, of course, Twitter. I suspect this list is not exhaustive.

Learn to use #hashtags

For the most part, using hashtags is easy. When you’re making a post you simply add the hashtag, often at the end. You’re signaling to folks that your telling them something that is of interest to those who follow that hashtag.

Finding real estate hashtags

You can google up  real estate hashtags pretty easily. Experiment with your area’s name followed by ‘forsale’ or ‘realestate’ and see what you get. Check your office name and see if that’s getting any interest.

Using hastags well isn’t likely to make or break you as a real estate agent. They are just one more marketing tool to add to your collection.

What’s been your experience, if any, with social media? Tell us about it in comments.

annesig


Anne Wayman

By Anne Wayman

Before Anne Wayman became a writer she sold real estate in Southern California. She worked with her father who learned the business from his father. Not surprisingly she learned a few things along the way. Since then, she has been freelance writing for over 30 years – she is a grandmother, loves cats and writes about a wide variety of topics including real estate.