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How to Use Twitter to Find Real Estate Investors
By Adam Gower Ph.D.
Twitter isn't just for celebrities, celebrity-watchers and politicians. It can be an invaluable way for you to get news about #realestate and locate new investors. Posting on Twitter is a valuable investor magnet and visibility-builder for you and your projects.
Did you see what I did there? I included the hashtag #realestate. Hashtags are used across social media platforms, but they're particularly useful on Twitter. You can use Twitter to get actionable information to benefit your projects. You can also use it to advertise your real estate syndications and attract high net worth investors.
Getting actionable intelligence from Twitter
Using hashtags and lists
One of the things to remember about social media, including Twitter, is that it's a two-way street. You can use it both to communicate your message and also get actionable information.Instead, these platforms are designed to help you extend your reach to places and people you wouldn’t have had access to before.
Twitter is fast. You can see what's happening in real time. Hashtags help you to do this. That's why you'll see conferences promoting their programs using hashtags. If you type a hashtag followed by a term in the Twitter search box, it will show you a list of tweets including the hashtag – and the hashtag list will update itself in realtime.
You can also follow accounts that will give you news you want, also in realtime. Twitter is nearly instantaneous and it's international. If something important happens, the news will almost instantly disseminate via Twitter's platform.
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Using Lists for Focus
Lists are another valuable Twitter tool. Instead of following many other accounts individually, you can add accounts to focused lists. Just select the accounts that offer you some interest and value, whether in news, investments, or other financial trends. Name your list and add them to it.
You can keep your lists private so that only you can see them, or you can make them public so others can see your lists. A couple of advantages of lists is that when you add someone to a list they will get notice that you did that. This can be a great way to attract the attention of someone important to you. For example, if you create a list called ‘Real Estate Thought Leaders’ anyone added by you to that list will get a notice that you’ve added them to this flattering sounding list and may be more responsive to your subsequent outreach.
Another advantage is more prosaic. With as much information as there is out there, as your personal connections start to mount up, your Twitter feed is going to move very quickly; important new and events may get lost in the sheer volume of posts. By creating a focused list that hones in no topics of particular interest to you, like, for example, ‘rent control’ or fed policy, you can stay tuned in to key issues with the latest news as it happens.
Finding Twitter influencers
One of your goals with Twitter should be to become an influencer with potential investors and others who can build your network. It also helps to be aware of who is a genuine influencer on the platform. When you're choosing accounts to follow or add to a list look for the kind of information they provide, first. Then see what their ratio of followers-to-followed is. Chances are you'll find more actionable information from accounts that have a significant number of followers.
But Twitter is also about ratios. The number of followers an influencer has can be balanced by the number of people they follow. As a general rule, true Twitter influencers with 80,000 followers don't also follow 80,000 people.
Looking at accounts you know will give you valuable information. From them, you can locate others you may not know -- because they're retweeting them or responding to them.So take a look at accounts you may wish to emulate or that are your competitors and take a look at their followers. If you’re raising money from investors and want to appeal to the investors of one of your competitors, then look at who is following them and start following those folk.
Locating credible, authoritative accounts
You already know some crowdfunding real estate websites and experts. How can you go beyond that? Start with news websites. You'll find some that are active and provide frequent updates. In real estate crowdfunding terms, you may easily find accounts with 1,000 followers or fewer that are providing credible, actionable information. You can also search for terms without a hashtag. Just type ‘real estate investing’ in the Twitter search box.
Look for "people" as well as tweets to guide you to the accounts you'll want to pay attention to by following or including on a list. [Check out this list here which is one I built that includes most of the major real estate crowdfunding websites and sponsors – it’s a great resource to see who’s doing what in the industry at any given moment.]
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Establishing your Twitter presence and brand
Don't feel like you need to set up your Twitter account and follow 5,000 accounts overnight in the hope of building a following. We're talking about how you can use Twitter to build your real estate crowdfunding business.
Like everything in digital marketing, the process is incremental and builds over time. Set up your account and start posting right away. You can automate your posts or you can manually post to your account and interact with other users in real time.
Either way, punching your content out on Twitter, as well as on LinkedIn and Facebook, is a great way to get noticed. Investors who have never heard from you before will find you when they are researching real estate investment opportunities, and those who have heard your name will find high quality, valuable information that will help them on their journey to getting to know you.
If you have only just started in real estate development, have completed no deals, have no email list, but know you want the freedom and wealth being a real estate developer brings, then I suggest your first step is to start evaluating deals so you can recognize a good one when you see it.
Here’s where you should start. You’ll learn everything you need to know – the different types of real estate, different development strategies, how real estate cycles influence the market, and all about due diligence.
If you want to find deals and raise money for them so you can start your real estate development business, then learning how to conduct due diligence so you can pitch your deals better to investors is a great place to start.
If you’ve already purchased one or more real estate project and are seeing more opportunities than you can finance, then now is the time to start building your investor network so you can finance all your next deals quicker.
You’ve already got some momentum; now start finding and educating prospects about what you’re doing so you can build an email list of people to pitch to when you’re ready to raise money for your next deal.
This is what we build for private clients all the time – it’s called the Investor Acquisition System and you can access the entire program right here so you can find prospects, and convert them into being deep pocketed, repeat investors in your deals.
If you are a seasoned pro with multi-cycle experience, a substantial portfolio, a decent deal pipeline, and find yourself spending too much time raising equity capital because you’re still doing it in-person, then it’s time you put technology to work for you.
The wonderful thing about doing this is that you’re not going to be doing anything different than you’re already doing and, guess what, you’ll never have to sit through investor meetings again.
Sounds crazy I know, but I lay the whole thing out for you in this white board workshop where I personally show you exactly what it takes for you to transform your equity raising into a fully automated, capital raising machine so you can find new investors while increasing commitments from your existing network.
