Is Twitter For Real Estate Agents?

Twitter was the hardest social network for me to understand.  I know how to use Facebook, Pinterest just makes sense since I read a lot of blogs, and Google Plus is great for SEO.  But it took me a while to figure out how to use Twitter.

So, today I’m going to be breaking down some of the best Twitter marketing tactics I know of! I’m going to try my best to tie each of these tactics back to lead generation for you! So here we go:

Positioning Statement – Twitter For Real Estate Agents: 

Before you send your first tweet, you really have to decide what your brand’s position is Twitter. Are you going to use it as a personal account? Or a business account? Will you tweet non-professional things? These issues can be decided by answering these four questions:

Developing a brand positioning statement involves four steps:

• Describe your ideal clients
• Define how you better service them than the competition
• Explain how you will Tweet better, more local, or more engaging content than them
• Summarize these three answers into a statement

You’ll now be better positioned to attack the market near you. I personally recommend using your own Profile image and name for your Twitter account. Why? It gets more engagement. Twitter is constantly bombarding its users with tweets. There are over 300 billion tweets sent since it’s inception.  And it’s statistically proven that even the top brands like Starbucks, Facebook and Twitter itself get less engagement than people. 

People like to follow and do business with other people. I recommend using a personal Twitter Profile. In fact, it’s how Easy Agent Pro’s Twitter page is setup.

If you need help with this, check out:

• Real Estate Branding
• Real Estate Name Ideas
• Real Estate Slogan
• More Real Estate Slogans
• Free Real Estate Logos

The Basic Rules Of Twitter – Twitter For Real Estate Agents:

So, there are some ground rules you should know about as a Realtor on Twitter. Here are a few of them:

1. Always use an image if you want people to see it: Tweets with images see a 5X higher engagement rate.
2. Tweeting at people should be treated like talking to someone at a networking event.  You don’t want to rush into the sale. Yet, you also don’t want to never start the conversation. On Twitter, you have to reach out and personally @ Tweet people. But you don’t want to try to sell everyone right away.
3. It’s about engagement: Twitter can produce leads for you. In fact, Realtors on Twitter typically see twice the number of leads.  But it’s more about engaging, reTweeting, replying, and exchanging information so that you start the sales process later.
4. Have a complete profile: Make sure you have a complete profile on Twitter! I recommend a good headshot for the logo photo and a nice background for your profile.
5. Share local content: There is nothing better than taking a picture and posting it on Twitter with local hashtags. People love to engage with material that is local.

Awesome Strategies – Twitter For Real Estate Agents:

Cold Tweet: 

The Cold Tweet is a strategy that takes it’s name from cold calling. When you first join Twitter, it’s great to share other peoples content and your own articles. But what makes it really valuable is reaching out into the community and directly touching potential clients.

This is much like cold calling!

The neat thing about Twitter is that it is really easy to find these people near us. You can find them in 2 different ways:

1) Go to: https://twitter.com/search-advanced and fill out the places setting

You’ll now see a list of people near you that you can Tweet with.

– OR –

2) You can type your city into the Twitter search box and see who is Tweeting about events near you.

Both of these methods will find people near you that you can Tweet with.

But what do you say?

Like with cold calling, you need a script. I honestly think the questions on a FSBO script are probably a bit too direct. You’ll want to stick to questions that probe them with things related to housing.  Such as:

“Interesting post @USERNAME. What’s your next DIY home improvement project?”

“Ha I thought the same thing @USERNAME. Did you see this: INSERT LINK TO RELEVANT ARTICLE”

Basically, the idea is to start a conversation.  If you have a blog, be especially vigilant to people asking questions that you’ve answered in a post.  This can be your way of introducing them to your content.

You mostly are just looking to start as many conversations as possible while being helpful.  Over 14% of the population will move sometime this year (Source). This is one way of getting people to engage with you, visit your website, and understand you’re a Realtor.

IFTTT – Retweet

Are there always articles that you want to Tweet or profiles who always include content that you want to ReTweet?  Great! IFTTT solves this problem for you. They let you setup automation for Twitter. You can automatically post other peoples blog articles to your feed. And you can automatically Retweet content by specific users.

For example, let’s say you want to Tweet out new articles from a local paper.

You can add Twitter on IFTTT like this:

Then you’ll select Twitter and Pick “New Tweet From Search”

Then you’ll want to type in @USERNAME of the newspaper company and “real estate.” Your search will look like this:

@Easyagentpro AND Real Estate

Next, you’ll setup an automatic Retweet. And that’s it! Now, you’re automatically curating real estate content that is localized without having to manually search Twitter.

I find IFTTT to be a really valuable resource when it comes to Twitter.  You can also use it to reply to new followers and engage with key members that you’re targeting on Twitter!

Feel free to setup an IFTTT for @easyagentpro tweets! 😉

Follow / Unfollow – Finding Relevance

The hardest thing for me on Twitter is finding quality Twitter users. There are over 20 million fake accounts on the platform! The easiest tool I’ve found to help me with this is Manage Flitter. This platform makes it easy for me to find and engage with high quality accounts.

I recommend you trying it out if you attempt the “Cold Tweet” method talked about above. They rate Twitter followers for you and enable you to see analytics on your Tweets.  This lets me find people that engage with my content the most. And then find people similar to the most engaged followers.  Additionally, I find it helpful for growing the number of people following my account.

Content – Give to Get

When it comes to distributing your content, Twitter is really fantastic! There are several things to keep in mind. The first thing is to always include a picture with your Tweets. Like I said earlier, this increases engagement by 5X.  Secondly, you’ll want to only post your content 20% of the time. Why? It’s best to promote other peoples content and engage with users rather than always writing about your own blog.  You’ll find that the people you promote will then cross promote your content.

In other words, give other blogs attention and they’ll return the favor!  

You’ll also want to take this philosophy when writing blog posts. Write only about things that will honestly help other Realtors, buyers, sellers, and renters live life better.

Viral Content Buzz –

If you have quality content and just need to give it a boost, try Viral Content Buzz.  This is a platform that operates on the give-to-get mentality I outlined above. You create an account, and then can upload your blog post URL. Next, you’ll share others posts in order to get credits.  Then you can spend these credits on having people share your post.

The network does a really good job of keeping the SPAM down, and you can get really good Tweets from it.

Here’s a Tweet from Kyle @ Rochester Real Estate Blog:

The Complete 2015 Guide to Local SEO for Real Estate Agents http://t.co/U7Vc71GqIL RT @easyagentpro

— Kyle Hiscock (@KyleHiscockRE) March 18, 2015

This type of network is a great way to get in touch with some of the biggest players in the real estate blogging network. I highly recommend checking it out!

Cold Introductions For Business 

Have you ever tried to email the head of a large property management company? Or tried to get in touch with a reporter? Twitter is a great place to do that!  You can followup with an email or phone call with a quick Tweet.

I know my typically sales followup system for our websites and marketing involves Twitter, LinkedIn, Google Plus, and sometimes Facebook.  These social networks are simply another way to communicate. You rarely know how other people like to communicate so why not try as many avenues as possible?

Cold introductions are more effective with followup! Integrate Twitter to your followup routine. I bet you’ll see great results.

For those of you wondering why I followup on Google Plus, I find it the easiest way to grow my G+ network.  I use gmail for my email. There is an easy button next to my email that makes it one-click to add someone on G+. Most of the time, they add me back.  I have no idea how Google Plus will impact SEO in the coming years. But it can’t hurt to have a large following there, right?

Local Schools And Promotion

Have you ever heard of the Wal-Mart effect?  Basically, every Wal-Mart gets around 450,000 people to their store every month. That means the businesses that put themselves right next to Wal-Mart just plan on converting around 1-3% of that predetermined traffic to their business.

Now, I’m not telling you to relocated next to a Wal-Mart. But what if you could use local schools, events, plays, graduations as you Twitter version of Wal-Mart.

People will be tweeting about these events in large numbers. You simply have to catch them at the right time and tweet along with them. This will convert 1-5% of that mass number of people to follow and engage with you.

That’s really valuable! You simply have to associate yourself with the right crowd of people and provide value. Then a certain percentage of them will join you!

Hashtags – The Trending Topics

I really disliked hashtags when I joined Twitter. And then I realized that content that includes at least one hashtag gets up to 2X more engagement.  The key to hashtags is to find ones that people actually use. You can’t simply ‘create’ a hashtag for your own brand and expect it to grow your Twitter account.  (Fun fact: Sponsored hashtags on Twitter cost $200,000 for 24 hours!)  When researching hashtags, look for ones that are used at least once every 5 minutes. This will ensure that other people will easily discover your content and hopefully engage with it!

Looking for a place to start?

Finally, looking for a place to start on Twitter?  Follow me: Twitter.com/easyagentpro and send me a message! I’ll introduce you to a few popular accounts and be sure to share some of your content.

What do you think?

Is Twitter part of your social media marketing plan? Do you get traffic from the network?  Let me know how you plan to integrate Twitter with your real estate marketing plans this year.

Talk with you on Twitter and in the comments below!

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Tyler Zey

Hey! I'm Tyler with Easy Agent Pro! We provide top notch marketing content for realtors... And we do it for FREE! I get excited about sharing tactics and strategies that can be implemented TODAY.

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