The Best Hashtag Practices for Realtors

Hashtags have long moved past ironic misspellings of words and cheesy phrases to describe a picture. When used properly, they can be a powerful tool to boost content views as well as find other audiences to target. Here are some of the most effective hashtag practices for realtors to employ.

Use a Mix of Generic and Specific Hashtags

When brainstorming hashtags, keep in mind that you should be promoting the town, not just the house. Using a mix of generic and branded hashtags can help interested property buyers find your listings as well as attract other people who may not have been looking in the first place. While it’s okay to throw in some generic hashtags like #justlisted, including more specific hashtags about the specific location (i.e. town, school district, local attractions, etc.) can make your listings more accessible for people looking to live in that particular location. Listing hashtags of local attractions, for example, can encourage locals to share snippets of their personal lives and showcase life in that town from a perspective that’s more credible to potential buyers. Think of what kind of lifestyle is prominent in that particular location and tailor your hashtags and content to what people looking to live there might look for.

Highlight Your Listing’s Strong Points

Hashtags are also a great way to showcase your listing’s best features. For example, including hashtags like #fireplace or #lakesideviews could be effective for listings in secluded lake houses. Including hashtags about prominent features in your listing can also bring you traffic from those who have similar interests in architecture or interior design. The same can be said for using hashtags to entice buyers that are looking for a specific style of house (i.e. #modern, #beachfront, etc).

Create a Consistent Brand Hashtag

Devising a personalized hashtag to include in all of your posts creates a personal portfolio that potential buyers can peruse. By having a personally branded hashtag to represent your company, users can simply view all of your listings in one place without leaving the platform. This is especially useful for Instagram where you can include hashtags in your personal bio that people can simply click and be led to your content. In the beginning this hashtag may simply be a link to your own content, but once you gain a following, satisfied customers can use it to log their own testimonials.

Find Relevant Users & Communities

Sites like Hashtagify are great for finding relevant hashtags that can connect you with similar hashtags and, in turn, other users and communities. It also helps you to see which tags are popular and which are more impactful than others. Say, for example, you use #duplex to describe your listing. A simple click on this hashtag will lead you to a page featuring other posts that used this hashtag. From there, you can easily sift through other posts to find other tags to use as well as other potential buyers that you can rope in to view your listings.

Check Up on Your Competitors

Clicking through different hashtags is also an easy way to see what tactics your competitors are using. From there you can brainstorm newer methods to share your content as well as stay ahead of the game. While this is, by no means, any form of encouragement to rip off your competition, it’s an effective way to help you test hashtags and content strategies.

Use the Right Number of Hashtags for the Platform

And, finally, the question I’m sure you’ve all been asking yourselves: how many hashtags should I use? While you are able to use up to 30 hashtags on Instagram, you don’t need to spam your post with them for your reach to be vast. With hashtags, it’s quality over quantity. Relying solely on hashtags that are too generic and popular, for example, may not give your content priority in users’ feeds because of the high volume of posts also using it. Instead, try including more specific hashtags to target the needs of your intended buyers in addition to some generic ones. Also, hashtag usage norms vary depending on the platform they’re being used on. For example, Twitter doesn’t encourage spamming with hashtags the way that Instagram condones it. With platforms like Twitter, fewer, more witty hashtags are more pleasing.

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