19 Apr Twitter Tips for Real Estate

When you first got on Twitter was your reaction the same as everyone else’s? Did you overthink it, and insist that it was stupid because it was “nobody’s business what you had for lunch”?  I’m guessing it took about six months for you to stop overthinking it.

Since it is the global opposite of traditional marketing, no complicated strategy is actually needed.

The biggest challenge is not figuring out what a hashtag means, it’s learning to communicate in 140 characters or less and learning how to shut off your “marketing mind” and turn on your conversation.

Twitter is an amazing place to keep up on the news, and for meeting people and sharing ideas. Over the years Twitter has been good for businesses. It puts you in touch with people you may never have met otherwise.

It’s also a place to experiment with content ideas and to test out reactions to photographs and articles before pulling the trigger and making them part of your permanent message.

If you are just getting started, or if you have been using it for shameless self promotion and gotten discouraged, here are some quick tips to keep in mind:

• Follow the local media. They don’t just tweet the news, they are also usually pretty social.
• Try to spend more time on Twitter reading than tweeting. Get familiar with the conversations happening and join in. It’s sort of like training wheels, only when they come off you will still be listening.
• Please – don’t tweet or read through tweets when you are with clients. It’s a constant stream so forget trying to keep up. You can set up filters and notifications for the tweets you simply don’t want to miss and read them at your convenience.
• Promote other businesses in your community. Recommending others – even those that may have seemingly appeared to be competition in the past – goes a long way at defining you as an expert. People will naturally want to return the favor when you play nice in the social sandbox.

Learning how to use Twitter means being able to network anytime and maybe even connect with people that you wouldn’t get to meet any other way. Remember it’s not about a list of your next open houses.