What the Tweet? Twitter for Real Estate 101

A little birdie told me that Twitter is great tool for real estate marketing.

It’s true – but you’ll have to adjust your basic social media strategy for this unique platform. Success starts with understanding how using Twitter for real estate marketing is different than using any other social network.

First, let’s take a look at a couple of definitions:

• What’s a Twitter?

  Dictionary Definition:  
  (as it pertains to a bird) is “give a call consisting of repeated light tremulous sounds” 
  
  Social Network Definition:
  A social platform designed to give everyone the power to create and share ideas and information instantly, without barriers.
  
  
  

• What’s a Tweet?

  Dictionary Definition:
  “The chirp of a small or young bird”
  
  Social Network Definition: 
  A post on Twitter
  
  

Twitter is designed to act as a rolling conversation. It’s a fast-paced network with great targeting functionality that can be really useful to businesses seeking to connect with specific demographics of people. Twitter is not designed for the overly verbose. Each tweet is limited to 140 characters or less so there’s no room to get long-winded. 

So the question is, as a real estate agent, how can you use Twitter to grow your business?

• 
  ✔ Learn the basic language
  If I say #FF, do you know what I’m talking about or are you totally lost? If you’re lost, it’s ok (#FF means ‘Follow Friday’) - Twitter has a language all its own. Simply getting familiar with common twitter symbols, abbreviations and terms is a great place to start in terms of leveraging the platform as an effective real estate marketing tool.

   

• ✔ Find inspirational people to follow
  There are tons of well-known real estate companies, bloggers and agents in the Twittersphere. Finding and following people who are great at using Twitter for real estate will help you develop your own voice and strategy.
  
  

• 
  ✔ Post useful content
  A good social media best practice is to use the 80/20 rule. Your content should be 80% useful or educational for your prospects and 20% promotional. Balancing your posts will help you drive better engagement.

• 
  ✔ Put in your 2 cents
  Search for conversations where you can share your expertise. At the top of the page, you can type in different topics – things like real estate, the name of your city, or specific market values. Find a topic stream that you have some expertise on and reply to a comment to join in the conversation. You’ll get exposure to a new group of potential prospects and can build your credibility as an agent in the process.
   

This post is just beginning to scratch the surface on how to effectively use Twitter for real estate marketing. To help you get to the next level, we created a Quick-Reference Guide that includes information on how to set up your account, a Twitter Decoder and much more.