From time to time I get questions about using Twitter in a real estate practice.  Most of the time I discourage the use unless someone has already built a Twitter presence and has followers who can be the audience that user is trying to reach.  Another reason that I discourage using Twitter, is that unless your target audience is on Twitter why would you spend the time to learn and use Twitter. (Here are some articles on finding your target audience: https://realtytechbytes.com/?s=target+audience)

However, if your target audience is on Twitter, then you need to be there too! 

Excelling at Twitter marketing doesn’t have to be rocket science. Sure, it’s somewhat complicated if you’re just getting started for the first time and a lot of people will miss the key ingredients to success if they just launch themselves straight in.

But once you know what the keys to unlocking Twitter success are, you’ll realize just how straightforward and easy the whole thing is.

What follows is a quick guide to getting started with Twitter.

Getting Started

When you start out, it’s key to recognize the importance of great branding. This is what will keep people coming back to you and it is what will make you memorable.

What this means is that your Facebook, your Twitter, your Google+ and your LinkedIn and your website should all use the same logo, same brand name and same design language to reinforce your branding at every opportunity. Success on one will help to bring success on the other.

Likewise, you should integrate Twitter with your website. Have a link on your site at least, social sharing buttons and ideally a feed embedded as a widget.

What to Post

The next consideration is what to post. These tips will help you make that decision:

• Provide value by teaching or entertaining your audience
• Stay on-topic but don’t be afraid to think outside the box
• Do NOT just promote yourself or your listings repeatedly
• Do Mention open houses as special events
• Retweet news and trending tweets in your niche/industry
• Provide some insight into your personal life/business if appropriate
• Comment on the news and events in your niche, use the correct hashtags
  • But always add a comment of your own

Some of this can be automated

You can save yourself a lot of time by automating some of your Twitter marketing. The following tools will help with that:

• Buffer – for scheduling tweets
• Hootsuite – for running your entire empire
• IFTTT – for linking accounts and web apps and setting up relationships
• Bitly – for shortening URLs
• BuzzSumo – for finding trending articles and content you can share

Use these to save yourself time and to avoid a desolate looking account. But DO NOT rely on them for the entirety of your content.

Ongoing Tasks

1. Attempt to get retweeted by prominent Twitter users. This way, you can gain exposure to large numbers of followers quickly. This is a growth hack known as ‘influencer marketing’. It works much better if you have some kind of ‘in person’ interaction first.
2. Follow people and retweet. Use Twitter analytics to identify your most influential members. Recognize the power of reciprocity: if you do something nice for a follower, they will normally return the favor.
3. Work your way up – don’t go after the ‘big fish’ first. Look for someone with just a few more or few less followers and work with them. Then aim for someone a little higher up the pecking order.

Hopefully these tips will help you get started with Twitter.