Strategic use of social media hashtags can help increase your property’s visibility and grow organic reach on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram.
You’re likely to be vaguely aware of hashtags, at least in your personal social media life. But perhaps you’re not intimately familiar with how they can play into your real estate marketing strategy. Whether you #lol at it or not, using social media hashtags wisely can actually be a major boon to your social media marketing efforts.
What is a social media hashtag?
Before we dive into too much detail, let’s take a moment to establish what exactly a hashtag is.
While you may remember it as a pound sign (or “sharp” sign, or number sign), this symbol’s meaning has radically changed in the past 15 years. In fact, its new definition has even been added to the Oxford English Dictionary.
A hashtag, according to the OED’s American counterpart, the Merriam-Webster Dictionary, is “a word or phrase preceded by the symbol # that classifies or categorizes the accompanying text (such as a tweet).”
Essentially, the hashtag has two concurrent functions: It places content within a specific area of interest or keyword, and it facilitates a search for it.
How to use hashtags in social media marketing
You may already see how using hashtags can help your social media content’s visibility.
Hashtags automatically function as links. For example, if a user interested in San Diego real estate clicks on #sdhomesforsale, all public posts labeled with that hashtag will show up. This is true of Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook.
Using hashtags in your social media content allows you to:
- Categorize your content
- Draw attention quickly and easily
- Drive conversions
- Harness the power of topics on social media
- Increase visibility
- Grow organic reach
Hashtag dos and don’ts
As you start experimenting with adding hashtags to your social media posts, here are a few dos and don’ts to think about:
Do:
- Use relevant terms
- Research trending topics as you chose your content
- Create your own hashtags to match your brand
- Make sure the audience setting on your posts is “public”
Don’t:
- Use too many hashtags per post. Too many hashtags make your post look unpleasant and difficult for your followers to read.
- Repeat your hashtag multiple times in the same post
- Use hashtags that are too long or confusing to for readers (Tip: if you have a long hashtag, try capitalizing the first letter of each word)
- Put spaces in between words within a single hashtag
To help get you started, here are a few hashtags that real estate marketers might want to use. These are just a jumping off point! Getting creative can be fun.
- #photooftheday
- #realestate
- #properties
- #househunting
- #homesearch
- #justlisted
- #broker
- #realtor
- #igers (short for Instagrammers)
- #throwbackthursday and/or #TBT
- #transformationtuesday
- #behindthescenes
- #photoshoot
- #videogram
- #videooftheday
- #interiordesigns
Which social media hashtags are you using in your real estate marketing?
Related posts:
- Social Media Can Be a Strategic Weapon in Real Estate Marketing
- 4 Real Estate Marketing Trends 2018
- Why You Should Always Respond to User Reviews
