Twitter for Real Estate: Are You Getting Too Personal?

Have you been trying to promote your real estate business on Twitter for some time now without any noticeable boost to your bottom line? If so, it could be that you’re taking too personal an approach to Twitter, and missing out on its business potential.

From watching agents’ tweets in our own Twitter feed, we know you’re not the only agent who might veer off course from time to time. To help you get back on track, we’ve looked into Twitter’s own best practices for business users and added a real estate specific twist. Here are our top five tips:

1. Listen, ask and share - in that order. Let’s face it: Twitter has a bad reputation as a place where people go to share boring updates about their lives. But you don’t have to reinforce that stereotype. Before you next share an update, think about whether you can re-phrase it as a question. And before you do that, spend some time reading through recent updates to get a sense of what people are interested in.

2. Reward your followers with up-to-the-minute information. If you have buyers or sellers following you on Twitter, chances are they’re looking for information that’s more up-to-date than what you’d send out in an email newsletter. What can you share that will keep your followers ahead of the real estate game?

3. Keep your re-tweets useful. If you’re having trouble coming up with up-to-date tweets, you might want to add a local news source to your own feed and re-tweet any real estate stories to your followers. Go for useful, information-packed tweets before you re-tweet the latest viral YouTube video. (For an explanation of re-tweeting and other Twitter terms, click here.)

4. Make listing tweets original. Rather than simply tweeting “new listing” followed by a link, take a few moments to come up with an interesting description that will get people clicking. Stuck? Have a look at our previous website spotlight curbed.com for ideas on how to spice up real estate descriptions.

5. Stay consistent. There’s nothing that draws people to the “unfollow” button more quickly than loading up Twitter and finding a barrage of tweets from someone they don’t even remember following. That’s why agents need to keep their tweets consistent, ideally spacing them throughout the day to reach the widest possible audience.

Those are our ideas, but we know Twitter-savvy agents have plenty more to share. Let us know your business-boosting Twitter tips in our comments.

Related posts:

1. Top 10 Tips for Real Estate Agents Using Twitter
2. Get More (Valuable) Twitter Followers
3. Back to Basics: Twitter Commands Explained
4. Twitter Tool Review: Who Gives a Tweet?
5. 10 Reasons to Try Out Twitter
6. Follow PropertyAdGuru on Twitter
7. Twitter for Real Estate: New Tool Tracks Questions
8. Twitter for Real Estate Twits
9. Imagining A Twitter Future
10. How the New Twitter Could Help You