If you’re already marketing your real estate business on social media, then you know how important hashtags are, especially when marketing to millennials.
Hashtags—a combination of letters, numbers and emoji starting with the # symbol (e.g., #RealEstate, #AnnArbor)—categorize content on social media and make it more discoverable. Anyone who clicks on a hashtag or searches for it will see results with all the posts tagged with it.
There are some formulas that generally work when it comes to using hashtags within real estate. Take a look at some of these go-to suggestions, and then search for other posts with similar hashtags to learn what the tag of the moment is on any given day.
Basic Hashtags to Get You Started
Here are a few hashtags for real estate marketing to consider including in your posts.
#[your location]
Hashtagging your posts with your location is especially important if you post photos of your listings on social media. Start big and go small—hashtag your state, county, city and neighborhood. People searching for a new home in your area will be looking under all of these headings.
#[your location + school district]
Parents looking for a new home will be thinking in terms of school districts, so make sure you create a special hashtag for that. You can do some research to see if there are already hashtags with the specific school districts in your area on social media. If there are, use those—particularly ones with higher usage numbers. If you live in LA, for example, you might want to go with #LAUSD. If no relevant hashtags exist, you can create your own (for example, #WindermereCitySchoolDistrict or #WinderemereSchools).
#[local attractions]
If there are local attractions that are relevant to your listing, add a hashtag for them into your post. Just don’t get too spammy by adding hashtags for attractions that don’t relate to your listing at all. For example, if you’re in New York City and your listing is near the #EmpireStateBuilding, you could add that hashtag; if you’re in Denver and you hashtag #Rockies even though your listing is in the city center, you could be penalized for spammy hashtagging on some social platforms, especially Instagram.
#[area + style]
This specific hashtag works well if others in the area are tagging in the same way, so do some research first (or start your own hashtag if you know you’ll have many of the same style homes). If you sell a lot of farmhouses in Maine, for example, you might say #MaineFarmhouse. If you’re selling a beach house in Malibu, you could say #MalibuBeachHouse. If a buyer is specifically looking for a beach house in Malibu, they’ll be able to find you easily.
#[your brokerage]
Creating your own branded hashtag that you use on all posts can help searchers find everything related to your brokerage in one place. It can also be a tool that you get others to use when posting about your work. In general, it’s a good branding practice.
#[generic, relevant words]
Sometimes, to increase your reach, you’ll want to use hashtags that relate to your post and have many posts attached to them. Be careful with this, as you don’t want to get too spammy in your approach. There is, however, a way to use this method tastefully. For example, if you’re selling a mid-century modern home, you could hashtag #MidcenturyArchitecture, assuming that hashtag or a similar one had many other posts. You could choose to hashtag something like #DreamHome or #HouseGoals, or other trendy hashtags that could increase the reach of your post.
How to Research Hashtags for Real Estate Marketing
It will require a bit of work to know which hashtags will work in your social media marketing. A tool like Hashtagify can simplify your process by suggesting similar hashtags to the one you already know is relevant to your post. You can input your hashtag into their search bar and they’ll come up with several additional options—plus they’ll show you how many people are also using those options. Be sure to choose a hashtag that has a sizeable reach, but not one that’s so big you’ll get lost in the noise.
Be sure to check out what your competitors are doing with their hashtags. If they’re all tagging something similar on their posts, you’ll want to use the same hashtag so you appear in the same search results as them.
After you find a few relevant hashtags, create a list in your phone so you can copy and paste them into future posts. This basic list will save you a lot of time when you’re on the go—just be sure to keep updating it.
How Many Hashtags Should You Use?
According to an analysis by TrackMaven, Instagram posts with nine hashtags receive the most engagement, but Twitter posts with just one hashtag receive the most engagement. Let the content of your post inform how many hashtags you use—they should all be relevant to the content you’re posting.
For more real estate marketing and social media insights, visit the Career Hub at Real Estate Express.
Alexis Petersen is the director of Content at Colibri Real Estate, a national leader in online learning for pre-licensing, continuing education and professional development. For the last six years she has been educating real estate professionals on how to successfully launch and advance their career. She’s also a seasoned marketing veteran, with nearly 15 years of experience.
