Twitter For Property Professionals – A Thumbnail Guide

Twitter may be a toddler in terms of age, but when it comes to purpose the microblogging site has managed to become the most useful utility for keeping up with news and hot topics as they happen. It is huge. And growing incredibly fast.

This seemingly frivolous social networking site has become one of the biggest juggernauts in the social media pantheon. And in the world of property, most professionals are all over it – some deftly, others not so much.

Twitter allows vast, disconnected networks to brush up against one another. In short, it allows you to make fast, fresh contacts with tons of new people. Of course, with such a wide-open and loosely structured communication model, there is plenty of white noise. People post all kinds of nonsense on Twitter. And – yes – they waste a lot of time.

But the fact remains: Twitter can be a hugely useful networking tool, and it has emerged as the clear leader in the rising groundswell in online communications. So if you want to hear what consumers are saying, you’d better be there.

And Twitter can, in fact, be surprisingly focused. If you follow users who are of interest to your demographic, the network you build will be consistent with your target audiences. And search tools make finding these specific users – and their extended networks – that much easier.

We thought we’d take a moment to share what we’ve learned about using Twitter for property marketing;

1. Make your bio count
   
   Optimise your Twitter page’s “Bio” line so it includes the most important, mission-critical phrases for your brand. Take advantage of all 160 characters! (Yep, that’s right: They give you 20 more characters than a normal tweet.) Your bio is consistently indexed so its contents are what provide your Twitter page with its core relevance.
2. Select the initial characters of each tweet carefully
   
   The “lead-in” of each tweet appears to be important for SEO as it will determine what appears in the tweet’s title tag when it shows up as a search result on Google. Approximately 42 characters are factored into each tweet’s title tag, including the account name, as well as the initial characters of each tweet. Keep in mind that your full tweet and all its characters are still being indexed by major engines.
3. Good Lord, Don’t Sell Too Much
   
   We all know what your prime objective is – to promote your services/homes. Twitter is a conversation. Let it unfold a little. Then drop your sales message in, here and there.
4. Be Yourself
   
   Now, obviously there are some limits to this. You do want to maintain decorum. But no one wants to talk to a boring company representative, whether in real life or on the internet. You’ve got to include some of your genuine personality. Everyone has a different formula for this. Find your balance, and try to stick to it. But be real.
5. Offer Something of Value to Your Network
   
   Relevant news stories. Great restaurants in the area. Industry-specific facts. There are infinite ways to position yourself as an authority – and win more loyal, attentive followers in the process.
6. Connect With Others
   
   This is a conversation, not a soapbox. You have to actually read others’ tweets. Find kindred spirits, and form alliances with them. It’s all about quality, not quantity. There’s no point having the most followers if they’re not remotely interested in what you’re doing. Get in there – and be there for the long haul.
7. Use different accounts for general business, personal and listings tweets:
   
   You want to build followers with Twitter, so it’s probably not a good idea to set up one account and tweet everything to it, such as your latest new listing, what you’re doing this weekend, and breaking real estate news. Each of these type of posts are likely to appeal to a different segment of your followers. You risk alienating and losing followers unless you separate these into accounts they can follow for what they want to see.
8. Stop importing your Twitter feed into LinkedIn indiscriminately
   
   Yes you can be more productive by linking your twitter feed to LinkedIn, but you need to set it to ‘selective linking’ so the tweets only turn up on your LinkedIn profile, and my home page, if you have included #li in the tweet. If there’s no business value in your tweets, (just happening conversations) then your contacts might choose to unlink from you to clean up their LinkedIn status stream. So, you might even be risking network connections by threading Twitter into LinkedIn.

   Just because you can doesn’t mean it’s a good idea.

9. Think about how you can best use extra Twitter related applications.
   
   There are many such as: tinyurl.com, budurl.com, tweetdeck.com, twitterfeed, Twitter for mobile, twitpic.com, ffwd.com’s Twitter Connect for Video, or Facebook’s Twitter function.
10. Be Patient
    
    Twitter takes a while to get into. And even longer to yield value in terms of positive attention, buzz – and, ultimately, sales. But people are there. If you are too, and you’re genuine, they will sense that. And you will come out ahead.

But overall, just enjoy it.

Follow Midas Property Consultants on Twitter

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