If you haven’t had a chance to familiarize yourself with Twitter, we definitely recommend it, as it is a great tool to help you increase your real estate business.
What exactly is Twitter? Twitter is a tool for “micro-blogging” or posting very short updates, comments or thoughts.
Here’s our (Redman’s) top 10 tips to start using Twitter for your real estate business:
1. Understand what Twitter is and plan before you tweet. Twitter is about posting short updates of less than 140 characters, which have been described by some as a little like a mobile phone’s text messages for the web. It’s all about telling your followers about what you’re doing at that moment. Look closely at examples of how others use it.
2. Create a Twitter handle that tells people who you are. Now that you got your goals set, it’s time to create a Twitter account. When signing up for an account, make sure that you come up with a Twitter handle name that would tell people who you are and what you do. Our’s is @redmantech This can get you followers that are relevant for your real estate business. For example, you may have different offices or website’s so you may want to look at setting up different Twitter handles for different offices or website’s. If your brand is your name or a specific slogan, you will want to use that.
3. Update your profile. Your twitter profile should be complete with your contact details and location. Setting the location to your targeted market’s location can also get you the leads you need for your business. Make sure that your profile looks professional as this will help your followers in terms of taking you seriously. You can also add either a photo of yourself or the logo of the firm you are representing. Most importantly, let people know why they should be following you.
4. Customize your Twitter page. One way of making sure that your Twitter account has followers is to have a well made page. One way to do this is to customize your background to make it appealing to your target market. Redman’s design team would love to help you brand your Twitter account to match your website and other online elements. Despite most people accessing Twitter through a client like Tweetdeck now, there is still a large proportion of the Twitter community that access Twitter via twitter.com.
5. Start creating your network. Twitter is a social networking site. Your main goal here is to get as many relevant followers on your profile as possible. This helps you get more prospective clients that may be interested in buying or selling a property. Remember to choose quality over quantity though when building your Twitter sphere of followers. It would be useless to have a thousand followers that are not in the same area of interests. You should also start following other tweeps who you find interesting and who have interesting accounts.
6. Tweet. You can’t expect any activity to happen if you don’t do anything. Be active in posting tweets. This is the only way that you can be noticed by people. A good practice would be to tweet at least three times a day. This should be easy since you can tweet no matter where you are with your phone. Be careful to not over tweet. Nobody likes spammers. Make sure that tweets are interesting. Engage in conversation and share useful advice.
7. Make the most out of 140 characters. Your tweets are limited to 140 characters. You need to be creative in your posts to make sure you pique client’s interests and attract potential home buyers and sellers. Don’t tweet just anything. Only tweet things and events that are relevant to your real estate business. Very few people would be interested in reading what you had for breakfast today.
8. Use different accounts for general business, personal and listings tweets. You want to build followers with Twitter, so it’s probably not a good idea to set up one account and tweet everything to it, such as your latest new listing, what you’re doing this weekend, and breaking real estate news. Each of these type of posts are likely to appeal to a different segment of your followers. You risk alienating and losing followers unless you separate these into accounts they can follow for what they want to see.
9. Team management. You can also manage your team through twitter. Beats CC emails and SMS all day long. Everyone stays on the same page and can contribute to the conversation as it progresses, in real-time.
10. Work to build a network of other agents, buyers, sellers and investors whose relationships will benefit your business. Twitter isn’t a popularity contest. Resist the urge to sign up for services promising “thousands of followers a month” – they send out automated tweets (the same for everyone who signs up) that are almost always irrelevant and, sometimes, offensive. Those services may quickly build you a large following, but it may come at the expense of the quality of your tweets (and perhaps your reputation). You’re much better off slowly building your network by writing tweets that are interesting and relevant to your area – the kind that people in your network actually wanted to read.
If you are looking for additional information on how to use Twitter or brand your Twitter today – contact the Redman team today and learn about how we can help you grow your online business!
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