Twitter for real estate, it’s one of my favourite platforms, but the one I see being used wrong the most. People are doing the very things you should never do on Twitter. It can be an incredibly valuable tool in your arsenal but only worth doing if you do it the right way.

Here is what I see people doing wrong most often:

Cross-Platform

Do you know what sucks to see on Twitter? Anytime someone has a Facebook post that automatically goes to Twitter. The post starts off, it may even be interesting, then it has a link to continue that takes you to another social platform. It’s an easy way to fill up your tweeting quota but you know what it also does? It annoys people.

Not only do people find it annoying, the content probably isn’t even good Twitter content. How you use Facebook and how you use Twitter for real estate should be different. They are very different platforms. Each requires its own strategy and execution!

One-Way Communication

I’ll use an example for this one. Let’s take the example from Mr. Real Estate Agent. Mr. Real Estate Agent is going to go into his account and type “OPEN HOUSE ALERT: Come check out 123 Main Street in Nobody Cares, Ontario today from 2-4 pm!” Some might even include a picture of the house!

Do you know how many people will see that and come to your open house? Probably the same amount of people who actively use and enjoy Google+ in your town. You are just blasting content out there with no particular reader in mind.

How do you use Twitter for Real Estate the right way?

Talk to people. Seriously. It’s that easy. Let’s take that open house above for example. I’ll even use an example from a listing I was doing an open house on. The house had a hockey rink and a sweet basement with a movie theatre, bar, and a few more “man cave” type accessories. Instead of blasting it, I went and found a few local sportswriters. I tweeted to them and said “@sportswriterperson Check out this sweet house, sports fan dream home! linktothehouse.com #mancave”.

Do you know what happened then? He retweeted it. Then a couple other of his followers retweeted, and a few more responded and favourited. The house saw some action. In fact, that tweet was seen over 20,000 times and it was free!

By finding someone the content would be relevant to and tweeting to them about it, I got engagement. Using the overly cliche saying “I put the social in social media”.

Not everyone is going to be talking about real estate though. You don’t have to stick to real estate specifically. What are your hobbies? Talk to local people involved in things you like. Engage with them. Talk to them.

When you talk to them about something they enjoy they are going to look to see who you are. They’ll see you’re a real estate agent. If you keep developing that relationship they are more likely to come calling when it’s their turn. At the very least they may connect you with someone else.

How do you target local people on Twitter?

You can use tools like GroundSignal to target locations. With that, you can very effectively find people tweeting in very specific areas. There’s another great tool you can use. The Twitter search bar.

Click into the Twitter search bar and type in near:nameofyourlocation. In my town that would mean near: aurora. By typing that in, I’ll get every tweet sent out from the Aurora area. That means now you can only target people who live in your area.

You can take that one step further. What’s one of your hobbies? Personally, I like to mountain bike. Why not engage with other people into mountain biking? Now I may go into the search bar and type in “near:aurora #mountainbiking” That will pull up anyone near Aurora tweeting about mountain biking. Then I can just cut through the noise and start talking to local people interested in what I’m interested in and start building relationships. Work is a lot more fun when you’re working with people you enjoy.

You can build meaningful relationships on Twitter but it takes time. I recommend local politicians, business owners, and journalists. Engage with them. Don’t pitch yourself but engage and have conversations. Then when it comes time to for them to need someone in real estate, you’ll once again be top of mind.

If you want to use Twitter for real estate the right way, start engaging with people. Find people talking about local real estate, your hobbies, your interests, etc… Engage with them and build a relationship just like you would if you met them in person. Except now you can do it from the comfort of your own home without pants on. Maybe don’t tell them you didn’t have pants on, they might find that weird…or like you more…depends on the audience.