Real Estate Marketing & Beyond
By now, most real estate agents should recognize the importance that social media has in their profession. Being a successful real estate agent in today’s world requires an Internet presence. Twitter, specifically, is a great place for real estate agents to market themselves. It’s quick, free, and informal, and when used the right way can provide a significant boost to the amount of business an agent attracts. Here are some of the best ways that Twitter can be used as a marketing tool for realtors.
Success in any industry means creating a recognizable brand, and Twitter can be a great way for any real estate agent to either establish a brand or expand their current brand. It’s important that your Twitter profile and all your activity on the site be an extension of the type of real estate agent you are in real life. You don’t want to create a new persona or online alter ego; instead, recreate and expand upon your identity while trying to reach a wider audience. By doing this, people will be able to tell from your Twitter profile what kind of real estate agent you are, and more importantly what kind of person you. What are your values? What are your likes? What are you greatest skills and assets? These can all be incorporated into your Twitter profile in one way or another.
Studies show that Twitter posts with images are more likely to receive engagement than those without an accompanying image, so utilizing images is a great way to get noticed on Twitter. Of course, you have to use images the right way. For starters, your profile picture should be nothing short of professional; in fact, it should probably be the same picture you place on any other advertising or marketing you do. Always stay consistent with pictures like this, as it’ll make it easier for potential clients to recognize you. When you use an image on posts, make sure they are attractive and professional. Leave the selfies taken on your cellphone for your personal Instagram account, not your professional Twitter profile.
Every good real estate agent knows that you have to make yourself a notable part of the neighborhood and community around you, and Twitter can help you do this. If there’s a public event, tweet about it; this will let everyone know you were there and that you care about what’s going on in the community. This also applies to commenting on local events. Congratulate the local high school seniors on their graduation or acknowledge the local little league team winning regionals. By being timely with tweets that are important to the people in the places you serve, you’ll increase the chances of getting new followers or getting people to engage in friendly banter that can improve your brand and reputation.
If you’re new to Twitter, you must understand hashtags, because they can make a huge difference. Using hashtags on a topic that’s popular or trending can increase your visibility and engagement level. You’re probably not going to create a hashtag that’s going to become popular, but you can definitely create a clever and innocuous tweet about one of the hashtags that’s currently trending, like #SeinfeldIn4Words or #ScaleBackABook. Just one or two tweets with a hashtag like this, even if it has nothing to do with real estate, will show people that you’re human and not just about business, while at the same time help you to boost your visibility and allow more people to discover you on Twitter.
Sharing content can be one of the most important marketing tactics you can utilize on Twitter, but you have to go about it the right way. For starters, you should always include a picture when you share content on Twitter. As mentioned earlier, this will increase the chances it’ll get noticed, and any content you put out on Twitter is definitely something you want to get noticed. You’ll also want to make sure that you are sharing other people’s content a majority of the time. Obviously, this doesn’t mean sharing information about a competing real estate agency, but share content that’s relevant to real estate so that people interested in that type of content (i.e. potential clients) can find you and see that you’re in the real estate industry and a good source of information. Also, by sharing content created by other people, you’ll be able to form partnerships with those people, and they will retweet you and share some of your original content with their followers. This kind of cross promotion is easy to conduct on Twitter and can be mutually beneficial.
Hardly anyone makes cold calls anymore, but Twitter can be a great way to contact potential clients and form new relationships out of thin air, as it’s a lot more personal than mass email campaigns. It’s also a low-risk maneuver because if a person doesn’t respond to you on Twitter, there will be other ways you can try to contact them. The key, of course, is not to make it obvious from the start that you’re just talking to someone to get their business. Try simply responding to something they said or a comment they made. If you’ve shared a link or blog post recently that’s relevant to something they said, sharing it with them directly can be a great icebreaker. All you want to do is start a conversation in a way that’s both friendly and helpful. You don’t need to mention the fact that you’re a realtor because your profile will do that for you. Simply ask an engaging question or provide a helpful tidbit to someone and they’ll figure out on their own that you’re in real estate and may be able to help them, assuming you’ve done a good job of setting up your profile.
This is an important aspect of marketing on Twitter that too many people overlook. There are a variety of tools available that allow you to monitor how many people your tweets are reaching and how many people you’re able to engage with each of them. This can tell you the types of tweets, the topics, and times of day that are producing the best results so you can make the appropriate changes. Remember, you’re on Twitter for marketing purposes, so everything you do on Twitter should have a purpose behind it. If your tweets aren’t reaching an audience or having an impact on that audience, you need to change the way you use Twitter, and the only way you’ll learn what works and what doesn’t is by monitoring your activity.
