Using Twitter for real estate isn’t about marketing your business – It’s for listening in on conversations that are happening in your farm – In real time! In this article, I’ll show you how to harness the power of Twitter and why it’s the perfect platform to keep an ear to the ground in your community, conduct market research, and curate all of your community news.
The Problem With Using Twitter for Real Estate Marketing
It’s not about that marketing. There’s really only one way to use Twitter for real estate agents: To conduct market research on their real estate niche or farm and to curate community news. In the past, Twitter was a great resource for real estate agents to prospect and get leads. But now, the platform is so saturated, that it would take 12-18 months to make even a little headway.
But even though I wouldn’t use Twitter for real estate lead generation, it still has a place in your social media marketing plan. I’ve listed out several ways that real estate agents can still use Twitter (in this day and age).
Benefit #1: Local Market Research
There’s no better way to conduct local market research for your business than Twitter. You can easily survey what’s happening in your real estate farm – In real-time. When you conduct a location search on Twitter, it allows you to eavesdrop on local conversations. This is a great way to discover local events, the hottest places to visit in town, and what people are looking for in your community. Knowing what the people in your community want is the first step to providing a solution.
As a real estate agent, you should be using Twitter to curate lists of the best restaurants, community construction projects, local government officials, sporting events, community concerns, and more. Provide widespread solutions to these questions, comments, and concerns by creating content around the topics.
For example, if someone in your community Tweets that they are fed up with all of the construction happening on Main Street, you should create helpful content that addresses this issue. Find out when the construction is going to be over, what they are building, and how the community will benefit from it. You can post this content on your blog, Facebook page, YouTube Channel, and more. This is the type of content that people are looking for and this is the type of content that will get shared!
Benefit #2: Niche Research
If you operate within a real estate niche – and I recommend that you do – Twitter allows you to see how your fellow colleagues are providing solutions for their clients within that same niche around the world.
For instance, if your niche is horse properties, you can find other real estate agents on Twitter who also specialize in buying and selling horse properties as well. Once you know what other agents are doing to serve their clients, you can get a better idea of how you should be serving yours.
Twitter even allows you to make connections with your fellow colleagues, so you can form mastermind groups together, and become better at serving your niche over time.
Benefit #3: Breaking News In Real-Time
Twitter is also great for getting news updates in real-time. To do this, follow all of the local news reporters, papers, magazines, police departments, charities, government officials, and school districts. When breaking news happens, Twitter is the first place that people turn.
If you can collect this content and syndicate it across all of your social platforms, people will begin to look to you for news updates and events. It’s a great way to provide value and to stay top of mind. Just be sure to stay away from posting extremely negative or divisive news content. Remember, we are doing this for business, and you don’t want to offend someone who is thinking of doing business with you.
Benefit #4: Content Curation & Creation
Twitter Lists is an underused feature by the real estate industry but can be very powerful when used correctly. All you have to do is go to the Twitter Lists page, then create a new list. From there, you can start categorizing certain accounts together. You can have a list of local events, community news, niche topics, national real estate trends, and local real estate trends. You can then use this data in two ways.
First, you can curate the content and syndicate it out on all of your social platforms – which is a great way to provide value and stay top of mind. Second, you can use the information from your Twitter lists to create content of your own – which is a great way to get over writer’s block when you’re stuck and can’t think of anything to post.
How To Conduct Searches On Twitter
Conducting a search on Twitter is super simple. Just type the name of your town, city, or community in the search bar and see what comes up. Alternatively, you can also search by hashtag.
