Twitter Basics
Twitter is a large social media platform where people post “Tweets” that can contain photos, videos, links and up to 280 characters of text. Many people to quickly share useful information, read the news, and connect with others throughout the week. In this crowded space, it can be hard to express your brand and find people to connect with so we’re breaking down some of the basics with the platform.
Using Twitter:
- Signing up – To start using Twitter you will want to setup an account and you can find directions on how to here. We also recommend downloading the free Twitter mobile app to help make it easier to use the platform when you are away from your desk or computer.
- Posting replies and mentions – Replies and mentions are a good way to start conversations with your potential customers. This is a great way to provide people you haven’t met yet with useful resources, answer questions, or help them with a problem. Providing a little bit of free value to potential customers is a great way to get them interested in using your business. Here are some good directions on how to post a reply or mention. You can also like a Tweet that some one else posted as another way to start engaging with them.
- Retweeting & Quoting other Tweets – Most people find it hard to come up with original content to be posting about on a regular basis. Twitter allows you to retweet and quote tweets which are two ways of sharing someone else’s content. These are great ways to share useful and valuable information wile still giving appropriate credit to whoever provided the resource. To learn how to retweet and quote tweets here’s a link to their help site article.
- Posting Photos or GIFs – You can tweet both photos and GIFs using Twitter and both can be useful depending on what you are trying to accomplish. For some good step by step directions and FAQ’s for posting photos and GIFs visit their help site.
- Posting links – Twitter has a built in URL shortener which works nice when you are tweeting a link in a hurry. Remember you don’t have to only tweet about things you have created yourself, but can also share useful information easily on this platform so sharing links to useful articles can be very helpful to your potential and current customers. You can go here to learn how to post a link in a tweet.
- Using Search – You can use Twitters search engine for many different things including to help you find people tweeting about things related to buying a house or mortgage. Businessman and social media expert Gary Vaynerchuk references some great stories in his 2016 Inman Connect Keynote about this very subject. He mentions having friends who tweeted about looking for a home in an area and agents found them by searching on Twitter and that ended up in closing a deal. The key is to be creative in what you’re searching for and then be willing to provide people with value right up front so they look to using your business in the long-term.
- Direct Messages – Direct messages are a good way to start private conversations with people such as your current and potential customers, fellow real estate and mortgage professionals, and local business in your area. Here are the basics on how to use Direct messages on Twitter.
- Business Resources – Once you get your feet wet we definitely recommend to start digging into Twitter’s useful resources specifically geared towards businesses using their platform. Twitter has a lot of resources and eBooks for things like how to advertise on Twitter, drive traffic to your website, and how to analyze and measure your Tweets and ad campaigns.