The good folks down at AccuraCast were kind enough to share with us some excellent tactics for building and engaging a strong Twitter community for your real estate business. Check out the content below and leave a comment with your thoughts or share some of the ideas working for you in your social media marketing.
Twitter is a favorite social channel for businesses – it’s low cost, immediacy and inherently viral nature make it one of the most efficient ways to connect with customers and influencers within the real estate industry.
However, building a following from scratch is no small feat – it takes patience and diligence to connect with the right people and be seen as a major voice within the real estate conversation.
You may have already learnt how to generate leads from Twitter, but here are five techniques to ensure you’re able to build the wide social following you’ve always wanted.
Build a Solid Twitter Profile for Your Real Estate Business
The foundational step on your Twitter journey lies in putting your house in order and presenting yourself in the most attractive way possible. This means having five things:
- A strong profile photo – which is most likely to be your company logo;
- A colorful and compelling Twitter background – this is your shop window, and first impressions count;
- An engaging bio – this should let people know precisely what it is you do and what you like to tweet about. Include hashtags to let people know what kinds of conversations you aim to be a part of. You have 160 characters, so use them wisely!
- A website link – if you want to also drive leads to your website;
- Your location – especially important for real estate business, for obvious reasons.
MSN and NWT Real Estate, although both large corporations, have managed to keep the tone of their Twitter profiles down-to-earth, human and engaging:
Tweet Engaging Content
This may be a self-evident aspect of Twitter, however is often easier said than done. Be sure to keep abreast of news and updates within your industry – make sure you are regularly checking the major finance and investment publications, magazines and blogs, as well as other websites that curate content related to real estate (e.g. architecture websites). In addition, Google Alerts is a great way to get daily email updates about all of the things that are of interest to your audience.
Also, get into the habit of using photos and video to share your activity or events: a real estate agent, for example, might share a video walkthrough of a new house and ask “what do you think?” This is a great way to get click-throughs and comments.
Use the Right Language
Call to actions on Twitter can be truly instrumental in boosting your engagement. According to a Twitter blog post, the most effective calls to actions are:
1. Asking for a download (this can increase clicks by 12-15%) 2. Asking for a retweet 3. Asking for a follow 4. Asking for a reply In addition, using the right keywords and phrases in your tweets can also get you more favorites, retweets and replies. Words like “you”, “Tweet”, “free”, “please”, “help”, “top”, have all been shown to boost clicks and engagement.
Use Images in Your Tweets
Images, when posted appropriately, are one of the best way to foster engagement on your Twitter page, and is especially important in real estate. Studies have shown that posts with pictures are 94% more likely to be retweeted than plain text – as they say, a picture paints a thousand words.
WSJ Mansion, for example, is a luxury real estate company who regularly post beautiful pictures of homes and interiors. Their pictures draw-in users, playing on the seductive world of conspicuous consumption. Take a look… aren’t you jealous?
Focus on Relationships, Rather than Followers
No one likes the guy at the party who only talks about himself, and the same rules apply to the online world. Twitter is about engagement, rather than self-promotion, and those who don’t engage other users are significantly less engaging and less likely to get followers (as a rule of thumb, only self-promote once every five tweets).
Colonial Capital, a housing investment company based in Chicago, often share other stories about the area. This keeps their Twitter page neutral and informative for their local users.
As well as starting conversations, you also want to be able to join them: being part of conversations will get you in front of more people, increasing your chances of being followed. Look for opportunities to comment by searching for industry hashtags (e.g. #realestate), and be always looking to network locally by searching by location.
Here's a few more cool little tips from Scott Stratten and Chris Farias of Kitestring Creative.
1) Using a photo of yourself over a company logo has exponentially higher click rates as the user feels more trusting of someone rather than some company
2) Don’t use all of the 140 characters on Twitter, this will leave room for quoting and retweeting
3) Have great content that people will want to retweet
4) Be there to respond to your post. Your post is only in the top for 5-10 minutes so being there to answer questions is hugely important
5) 80% of your tweets should be either replies or retweets of others. This keeps the engagement level high and people will be more likely to retweet your content.
I hope this post has given you some new ideas and strategies to begin Rocking Out your social media presence on Twitter.
Strength and Courage,
Wade
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