How estate agents can build a local social media community on Twitter

We’ve heard a lot of estate and letting agents say that they find Twitter is great for speaking to their fellow agents and other industry professionals but they don’t often engage with their customers in 140 characters or under.

However, it is possible to find people on Twitter who are looking to sell, buy, rent or let their property in your area – and we’ve found a free and easy app that helps you connect with them. The Twitter growth app called ‘Crowdfire’ will take the hard work out of finding your target audience.

Here’s our top 5 reasons why Crowdfire could change the way estate agents do Social Media:

 

• You can find people in your local community by going to the ‘Nearby’ tab. Enter your local area (or narrow down as far as a street) and the app will show you users who have tweeted in that area, perfect for finding people of your local community (you can see their profile bios to see officially where they are based). You may want to connect to these residents to get your brand on their radar, for when they may look to move home in the future. You can also add a hashtag to find people who are tweeting from this area, talking about certain topics, for example, you could search #movinghouse or #property #towerhamlets to connect straight with potential customers.
• Monitor who is following and unfollowing you to make sure you’re not following people who aren’t interested in connecting with your brand, and you are following followers you’d like to interact with. This is great for keeping your profile relevant and concise and will build your conversations and relationships with the following you do have.
• Easily view followers of other local channels by going to the ‘Copy Followers’ tab. Here you can put in local businesses or residents who may have a bigger or more established following in your area and it means, again, your content can be hand delivered your potential customers.
• A great feature of the app is that you can schedule auto-replies so that you don’t ignore new followers but equally don’t have to reply to each new follow personally. You can auto-reply a message which says something along the lines of, “Thanks for following! If you are looking to let or buy property in Rotherham, please feel free to get in touch. In the meantime, enjoy the tweets!” You will be surprised how many leads you’ll get off the back of that first interaction, and how many conversations you’ll strike up!
• Lastly, the app will send you weekly email updates with your stats overview – an easy way of knowing how your Twitter channel is doing, without having to go searching for analytics.

 

That’s just a brief overview of the app. It’s free to download, and you only have to pay if you want additional add-ons, so it is well worth checking it out.

Twitter is a brilliant platform for finding, connecting and interacting with potential customers and your local community – and ‘Crowdfire’ offers a way to do it that minimises your time wastage and will help you grow a relevant, strong and local following.

Give it a go and let us know how you get on!

Anna Duggal is our Social Media Executive at Rightmove and you can ask her your questions about how estate and letting agents can make better use of Twitter by tweeting @rightmovepro