What are these hashtags, you ask

 

Recently there has been a sudden surge of Estate Agents signing up to twitter in an attempt to harnesses the sheer power of social networks and social media to pull traffic towards their Estate Agent website.

We’ve covered social media a lot with articles on ‘Don’t get lost in the social media jungle’ and ‘Become a twitter spy’. The point of this article is not to promote Twitter, but to inform Estate Agents on the proper use of hashtags in Twitter.

Hashtags are actually a very simple tool to use, but a few users out there get it magnificently wrong.

Twitter defines hashtags as a helpful way to add tweets to a category tweets. When you place a # in front of a word and tweet it, you will notice that it is highlighted. This means that Twitter has recognised it as a hashtag, linking it to a twitter search for only that hashtag.

For this reason, the hashtag has become very popular for events and breaking news.

So what can Estate Agents do about hashtags?

Firstly they can look for hashtags that are trending in their local area. As mentioned above, Hashtags will occur with local news and festivals or events. Estate Agents should not simply ride on these trends and use them to promote – any monkey can do that – what Estate Agents should do is use these local trends to engage with the local populous.

Try third party websites such as hashtags.org and trendistic.com to watch the popularity of trends global and national trends. To truly see hyper-local trends, keep your eyes and ears open for events that are being marketed through twitter whilst also watching your local followers.

Secondly do not overuse hashtags. Hashtags have their use but can quickly look like spam if overused. For example, using hashtags for every single word, or most words, it will look like spam. It’s obvious but anything that looks like spam will simply be ignored or unfollowed – you have been warned.

Lastly, have you noticed a local incident without a hashtag? Think about the types of hashtags that could be created. Any insightful, funny or clearly missing hashtag will simply be adopted.

James Coyne eMarketing and Social Media Consultant