How to Use Twitter to Sell Homes in Just 15 Minutes a Day

In the real estate industry, your website is a very vital aspect of your business. A well designed site helps you to create an excellent brand.

Twitter is everywhere nowadays, and everyone who’s anyone has an account. The network is proving its value to celebrities and politicians, companies and sports stars. In real estate, Twitter can help businesses and potential leads get together, as well as getting their brands seen and – of course – selling properties. Because of its short and sweet nature, just 15 minutes a day spent promoting your business on Twitter can be very effective. You have to do it right, though – work out a plan, and decide what to tweet.

Remember, interesting and engaging tweets will grab your target audience, but annoying and useless tweets will drive potential customers away. Here are some great tips to help you get the results you deserve.

Working Out A Strategy You need to do this first, before you begin tweeting. Ask yourself questions about your business – are you focusing on commercial properties or homes? Are you an established business or just starting out? How would you describe your target market? The right tweets for you depend on how you answer these questions.

Keeping Subjects Fresh And Varied Sure, you’re running a real estate business, but put yourself in your customers’ shoes – they don’t want to read about nothing but home listings, so give them a little variety. Give people a reason to follow you, for example by including photos of the local weather conditions, fun questions about movies and holidays, details of local events, etc. Add information about local personalities and where to rent ski equipment, or ask your followers where’s the best place to get a great meal in town.

Tweeting questions is good because you build up a two-way relationship, something that will make you the obvious choice when your followers do want to buy a home. Other things you could ask might include their plans for the coming weekend, what they hope to do in the summer, or whether they enjoyed the latest hit movie. Make yourself seem responsive to your audience by both asking these questions and responding to their own tweets.

The Compose-Edit-Reply Schedule Work out a schedule for your tweeting, and stick to it daily. Research carried out by Bitly, the bookmarking service, shows that it’s best to tweet Monday through Thursday, between one and three in the afternoon. A good tip is to set your phone alarm to ring each day at these times as a reminder.

When you’re ready, spend just five minutes writing your tweet, then another five minutes fine-tuning it to be the best one possible within Twitter’s 140-character limit. Don’t forget that a long username will reduce the space you have for the message itself. Once you’ve posted it, take another five minutes to respond to comments on previous tweets.

This dialogue is a major opportunity for you, so take advantage of it. Make your replies clear and thoughtful, establishing yourself as a leader in the field who it’s valuable to follow.

Tracking Success A web analytic service like Google Analytics can help you here. When installed, this will let you count the number of visits provided to you via Twitter. On top of this, you’ll get an idea of what visitors do when they reach your site. You can use the service to set up personalized goals – for example, to track whether visitors coming from Twitter submit their contact information or click through to a listing page. Measuring the success – or failure – of the campaigns you conduct through social media is important, so that you know what works best.

Twitter Burnout Otherwise known as writer’s block, this can be solved by listing the subjects you can write about. Take time to read the tweets other real estate agents make, and pick up ideas that way. It’s also great to be creative – some businesses have even set up Twitter profiles for the properties they handle. Don’t be afraid to experiment! But above all, keep that commitment to 15 minutes a day going. When it comes to social media marketing, consistency is vital.