You know about real estate hashtags, but if you’re like many real estate agents, you’re still a bit fuzzy about how to use them on social media. If you want to increase your online visibility, get more entries for your real estate CRM, and more home showing feedback for your listings, you need to solve the mystery of how to use hashtags. Read on to learn more.
The Real Estate Hashtag – Defined
A real estate hashtag is a word, preceded by a hashtag, which tells readers what your social media post is about. It also lets people find your social media posts by searching for the hashtag you used.
For example, #homeforsale is a real estate hashtag. People on social media don’t know that you used that tag, but if they’re interested in a home for sale, they may search for that tag on a social media platform to see what’s out there. If you used that tag, your post will come up in that search.
You’ll notice that there are no spaces between the words homeforsale. The hashtag only applies to the word it’s attached to. So, if you want to use a phrase, just run the words together.
Typically, you’ll want to use hashtags that a lot of other people know and use. You can also create a hashtag for your business. An example might be #TheAllenRealEstateTeam. If your tag uses a number of words, capitalizing each word as in the example will help people to make sense of it quickly.
Just make sure no one else is using the same one! With a unique hashtag, your community can quickly find what you’ve been posting by searching for your business tag.
You should use hashtags because they will help you establish a community on social media. Specifically:
- You’ll reinforce your social media presence by building a community around the topics you and your target market find useful.
- You’ll reach people outside of your community who may see your posts based on a hashtag search.
You’ll use hashtags differently on the different social platforms, but using the same hashtags across all the platforms will help to keep your marketing message consistent.
How to Use Real Estate Hashtags on Facebook
Hashtags started on Twitter, but you can use them on just about every social media platform today. Facebook was a bit late to the hashtag fever, but they will get you more exposure if used sparingly.
On Facebook, one or two hashtags per post will increase your exposure, while three or more will reduce it. People on Facebook consider a post packed full of hashtags to be spam, and that will reduce your authority as a Facebook participant.
How to Use Real Estate Hashtags on Twitter
Twitter posts with hashtags get more than twice the engagement as those without tags. One to two hashtags will receive an average of 21% more engagement as opposed to those with three or more hashtags. Therefore, just like Facebook, going overboard with three or more hashtags is going to reduce your post’s visibility – on Twitter, it will be reduced by 17 percent.
The exception on Twitter is for Twitter ads, which receive fewer clicks if you use a hashtag in the ad itself.
Interestingly, while some people seem to think that asking their community to retweet their post is tacky, it does work. If you ask your community to retweet your post to spread the word it shares, the result is an average 12 times higher retweet rate.
How to Use Real Estate Hashtags on Instagram
Instagram is a natural social media platform for real estate because it is image-based. Therefore, whether you’re sharing a photo of your latest listing, or directing readers to a blog post about home staging using an image example, Instagram makes a lot of sense.
Unlike other social media platforms, Instagram users just love hashtags. Research shows that Instagram posts with 11 hashtags receive the most engagement on average.
How to Use Real Estate Hashtags on Google+
Hashtags on Google+ have shown to be effective, also. There’s not as much research available about Google+ hashtags, but you can do your own experiment. Visit Google explore. Use the search bar at the top to search for something like #LAHomesforSale, and you’ll see all the posts using that hashtag, and there are quite a few!
Hashtags are just as effective on LinkedIn as they are on other social media platforms. Staying with one or two per post is best to avoid looking like a spammer. You can also use hashtags in your profile to get even more visibility.
Widely Used Real Estate Hashtags
The hashtags you use should always be closely related to the post you’re publishing. If your readers don’t relate your hashtag to the information you’re providing, they’ll stop trusting you. Here are some common hashtags used in different situations.
Promoting Listings
#LocationRealEstate or LocationHomeForSale: Both of these hashtags will attract people interested in the real estate market in your area. They could be buyers, sellers, or someone just watching the market.
#LocationHomestyle: This simple tag could attract a targeted audience. If you have a colonial listing in the Hidden Valley neighborhood, you could announce it with the tag #HiddenValleyColonial. This type of a hashtag may not show up on the list of most used tags, but the odds are that buyers might search for that tag on social media. Test it out to see what response you get.
#Amenity: Use this tag to promote anything that is critical to buyers in your area. The “amenity” could be the name of a school district that is high demand, or a park that attracts people to the neighborhood, or “CloseToI75” if that’s a big concern for buyers.
#HomeDescription: Use this tag to describe key features of your listing. Examples include: JustListed, LotsOfCharacter, Investment, CountryLife, FixAndFlip, Oceanview, RiverFront, RoomToRoam, MountainView, and many more.
Promoting Your Blogposts
#HouseHunting: If you want to attract homebuyers, and you’re writing blog posts that include house hunting tips, this hashtag would work very well.
#SellerTips: This one is pretty self-explanatory.
#FSBO: You do occasionally write blog posts aimed at FSBO sellers, don’t you?
#LocationRealEstate: You saw this hashtag under promoting your listings. But, you could also use it for local real estate market updates, or any information about what’s happening in your market.
How to Find the Right Hashtags
While there are some hashtags that people will probably search on a regular basis, it’s always good to make sure you’re using hashtags with a good bit of search traffic. On the other hand, make sure you’re using hashtags that are going to be useful.
For example, if you check the hashtag “realtor” you’ll find that gets an amazing amount of exposure. But, it won’t help you increase your community unless you’re marketing nationwide. If you checked “AtlantaRealtor” you’d find much less traffic, but the people who do that search are actual potential clients.
You’ll find a number of free websites online where you can check on the popularity of any hashtag.
Next Steps
If you’re not using hashtags now, starting to use them will provide you with a much higher level of interaction on your social media websites. Don’t be afraid to jump in, even if you’re not going to do in-depth hashtag tracking, using the most obvious hashtags is a great start.