Twitter for Real Estate or Vampires?

Twitter almost doesn’t need an introduction. 

And since it’s a well-known social media platform, you might have wondered if, besides vanity metrics and getting likes and retweets, it can be used to generate real estate leads, and if so, how. 

So in this article, I will first discuss…

• What Twitter is and 16 current statistics. 
• Is Twitter Useful for Real Estate or Only for Vampires (Marketing Math)? 
• The Pros and Cons of Twitter for Real Estate
• How to Leverage Twitter to Generate Real Estate Leads
• How do other real estate companies and agents use Twitter

What Is Twitter? 16 Essential Statistics

Twitter is a blogging platform that allows you to post so-called “tweets” with a limit of 280 characters. This is also called “microblogging.” 

You can also use pictures and videos and text-based posts (tweets).

If Twitter users have exciting and engaging content, other users can follow them. 

Once you follow other users, you will see what they posted on your ‘timeline.’ So, the principle is similar to Facebook, LinkedIn, and other social media platforms. 

You follow someone and see more or less what they post on your timeline.

If you like a tweet that you see on your timeline, you can repost – or, in Twitter language, “retweet” it.

By the way, if you post something on your timeline and a particular number of followers can see it, it’s called organic reach.

And as happens with all social media platforms over time, Twitter is no exception and has already lost organic reach. 

I discussed this situation when I analyzed which social media platform is best for real estate agents.

To add insult to injury, Elon Musk plans to eliminate organic reach soon (source). 

Let’s keep this in mind for later.

Let’s look at Twitter statistics as the first step to answering whether Twitter is useful for real estate.

16 Essential Twitter Statistics

• As of April 2023, there are 372.9 million users on Twitter. (source).
• Almost half of users (48%) turn to Twitter for the latest news (source).
• There are 56.4% male and 43.6% female users on Twitter in the U.S. (source).
• 38.5% of Twitter users are between 25 and 34 (source).
• US Twitter users have a college degree in 33% of the cases (source).
• Twitter users spend 26% more time viewing ads than on other platforms (source).
• Using hashtags in your tweets gives you 100% more engagement as an individual and 50% more as a brand (source).
• If you read my article about videos in real estate, you won’t be surprised that tweets with videos get 10x more engagement (source).
• Using relevant images in your tweets can get 94% more views and 18% more clicks, and 150% more retweets (source).
• If you also use video in Twitter ads, they will be 50% cheaper in costs per engagement (source).
• The average cost per click for Twitter ADs is $0.38 (source)
• The average click-through rate (CTR) for Twitter ADs is 0.86% (source), and, unfortunately, the more followers you have, the lower your click-through rate (source).
• Paid ads from Twitter have much higher engagement rates ( 1-3%, source) than organic tweets (0.05%, source) 
• If you have between 50 and 1000 followers, you can get a CTR of 6.16%; between 1,000 and 5,000 followers, it is 1.45%; between 5,000 and 10,000, it is 0.55%; and for more than 10,000, it is 0.45% (source).
• The ideal posting frequency on Twitter is five times daily (source).
• Paying for followers with a Twitter account promotion campaign costs between $2 and $4 per follower (source).
• This anecdotal evidence shows you can gain between 1 and 100 organic followers daily, depending on your posting frequency.
• The average monthly follower growth rate is 0.37% (source).

Is Twitter Useful for Real Estate or Only for Vampires? Let’s Do Some Marketing Math

With the above information, we have a good basis to further determine Twitter’s worth for real estate marketing.

This is the primary data we use in the estimation calculation:

This was a mouthful.

What can we now do with this basic data?

Let’s establish a marketing goal, as I already discussed real estate marketing plans in this article.

I will use the same approach for our hypothetical goal:

• Annual profit goal (after corporate taxes of 21%): $150,000
• Annual revenue goal: $189,873
• Monthly revenue goal: $15,822
• The commission per $436,800 median home value 2023 after brokerage split (3%): $13,104
• Necessary homes to sell per month: ~1
• Assumed lead to sales conversion rate (depends highly on your follow-up/sales skills): 10%
• Necessary buyer leads per month: 10 (1 divided by 10%)

Okay, let’s focus on the ten monthly buyer leads and the assumed 10% lead-to-sales conversion rate, which depends largely on your follow-up and sales skills.

Calculating the Organic Twitter Route

We take the content marketing-based organic Twitter follower route for the first calculation. 

We know from earlier that the average CTR (click-through rate) for organic tweets is 0.45%, and the average landing page conversion rate is 2.35% (source).

So click-throughs don’t equal conversion, meaning it’s just followers being engaged enough to click on your tweet and visit your real estate landing page. 

Some equal engagement rates with conversion rates, which I find inaccurate.

Provided you did an excellent job with your sales copy and other conversion rate optimization tactics, they convert into buyer leads.

So the organic tweet to landing page conversion rate is ~0.01% (0.45% CTR x 2.35% CVR).

To generate ten buyer leads, you would thus need 100,000 monthly clicks (10 divided by 0.01%)

Now, let’s calculate how many followers you need per click by applying the 0.45% CTR to the 100,000 clicks.

The click-through rate is the ratio between the number of clicks and the number of times shown (to followers).

Applying some math here, you get the necessary number of followers by dividing the number of clicks by the CTR of 0.45%.

Which is 22,222,222 followers (100,000 divided by 0.45%).

Just as a comparison, you would have to gain as many followers as Bill Gates has (source).

Getting a Twitter account from 0 to 22,222,222 followers (unless you are already a celebrity or already quite advanced because you started getting followers right in the beginning stages of Twitter when the organic reach was higher) may take 1,205 years with the average numbers, provided everything stays the same.

Remember, the required number of followers resulted from applying the average 0.45% click-through rate.

So increasing the CTR is the difference between the organic route being viable for humans or only for vampires.

So let’s calculate three scenarios to show you what will happen if you stay within the average ranges… 

In the first, you have barely any followers yet. Maybe your family and some good friends. Let’s say ten (e.g., your mother, brothers, and some friends).

In the second one, you already played around with Twitter in the past and now have 500 followers.

And in the third scenario, you could take advantage of Twitter’s better organic reach in the first years and already have roughly 2,000 followers but have abandoned Twitter for several years (that’s me, by the way).

Why the three scenarios?

They will better illustrate when it’s only viable for vampires to grow the Twitter following to 22,222,222, staying in the average CTRs, and when you still have a shot as a human during your lifetime and Twitter’s, of course.

From the earlier stats, we can assume an average monthly follower growth rate of 0.37%.

So the annual growth rate (think interest rates) is 4.44% (12 x 0.37%).

Calculating the First Scenario

We’ll use the following compound interest formula to solve for the number of years (t). 

Let’s plug in the numbers:

22,222,222 followers = 10 followers you already have * (1 + 0.0444/12)^(12t)

First, we’ll divide both sides by 10 to isolate the right side of the equation:

2,222,222.2 = (1 + 0.0444/12)^(12t)

Next, we’ll take the natural logarithm (ln) of both sides to remove the exponent on the right side:

ln(2,222,222.2) = 12t * ln(1 + 0.0444/12)

Then we’ll divide by 12 * ln(1 + 0.0444/12) to isolate t:

t = ln(2,222,222.2) / [12 * ln(1 + 0.0444/12)]

Now let’s calculate it. Note that ln is the natural logarithm (logarithm base e), and it’s a common function found on many scientific calculators:

t ≈ 1,086.35 years

So it would take you 1,086 years to reach the 22,222,222 followers.

By the way, I had some AI help speeding up the solution to this equation since my algebra is a bit rusty.

Calculating the Second Scenario

Again, we’ll use the compound interest formula to solve for the number years you will need when you already have 500 followers to reach 22,222,222:

22,222,222 needed followers= 500 followers you already have * (1 + 0.0444/12)^(12t)

First, we’ll divide both sides by 500 to isolate the right side of the equation:

44,444.444 = (1 + 0.0444/12)^(12t)

Next, we’ll take the natural logarithm (ln) of both sides to remove the exponent on the right side:

ln(44,444.444) = 12t * ln(1 + 0.0444/12)

Then we’ll divide by 12 * ln(1 + 0.0444/12) to isolate t:

t = ln(44,444.444) / [12 * ln(1 + 0.0444/12)]

Now let’s calculate it: t ≈ 304.59 years

This time you would need “only” 304.59 years to reach the necessary follower numbers. 

Calculating the Third Scenario

Let’s continue with the third scenario, where you already have 3,000 followers. 

Let’s see if you would have still a shot in your lifetime to reach the 22,222,222 followers, provided Twitter survives during this time, and nothing else changes.

The same compound interest formula applies, and we get…

22,222,222 = 2000 * (1 + 0.0444/12)^(12t)

First, we’ll divide both sides by 2000 to isolate the right side of the equation:

11,111.111 = (1 + 0.0444/12)^(12t)

Next, we’ll take the natural logarithm (ln) of both sides to remove the exponent on the right side:

ln(11,111.111) = 12t * ln(1 + 0.0444/12)

Then we’ll divide by 12 * ln(1 + 0.0444/12) to isolate t:

t = ln(11,111.111) / [12 * ln(1 + 0.0444/12)]

Now let’s calculate it:

t ≈ 249.35 years

Also, in this third scenario, if you already had 2,000 followers, you would need 249.35 years to reach 22,222,222.

So how many followers would you need initially to grow your Twitter account to 22,222,222 followers within five years?

After doing additional AI-assisted number crunching (I will spare you this now), it resulted in 18,010,886 initial followers you would need to reach 22,222,222 followers within five years. 

So this doesn’t look good, at least if you have a shorter-term goal.

And I didn’t even factor in the actual costs per acquisition or sale, as mentioned, the dropping organic reach and changes that may occur to Twitter.

You would have to also consider all the hours of content, Twitter engagements, and more that you would have to invest to gain those followers.

The only chance of making this viable would be to post such engaging tweets that you significantly increase your CTR and, secondly, skyrocket your landing page conversion rate.

But if you stay within the average marketing performance indicators, using Twitter for the earlier established goals is unviable for normal people without fearing sunlight and hate for garlic and crosses.

This looks bad, and by looking at these numbers, I conclude that the organic route isn’t feasible, at least if you start at zero or with a low follower count, stay within the average Twitter CTRs, landing page conversion rates, and maybe want to reach this goal within a year.

Calculating the Paid Ads Twitter Route

Let’s check now how the picture paints with the paid ads Twitter route.

To achieve the revenue/profit goal from above, we still need our ten buyer leads per month.

Applying the same landing page conversion rate of 2.6% for real estate, you would need to buy 385 monthly clicks (1 divided by 2.6% x 10 required leads), costing you $146.30 (385 clicks x $0.38). 

Your cost per lead would be $14.63, provided you stay in the average range regarding your landing page conversion rate.

With a closing rate of 27%, you would need 3.7 leads to earn one commission.

So the cost per sale would be $54.13 ( 3.7 x $14.63).

You would profit with a commission of $13,104 per sale, not factoring in other costs.

So, this paid scenario looks much better than the organic Twitter route.

However, the closing rate of 27% maybe by too optimistic since we are talking about Twitter leads that may not have a high product and service awareness level and are likely lower quality.

Still, even if the closing rate would be at only 2.7%, you would profit, although you would have a ten times higher cost per sale of $540.13

Regarding the time required to reach the lead generation goals, it looks good, though.

So this marketing channel would be viable by the sheer average numbers, provided you have the capital to spend on Twitter ads. If you have it, results could be instant.

Compared to other Ad Platforms such as Google Ads, LinkedIn Ads, and Facebook Ads, it would be the lowest cost per sale. 

In my article about LinkedIn, I already compared the costs per sale of these platforms. 

Still, I will provide them to you again below in a table.

Is Twitter Useful for Real Estate? 

When generating real estate leads, Twitter can be useful as long as you focus on Twitter’s paid ads platform. There, you can bank on a cost per sale of $54.13.

The situation is quite different when you want to use it to generate leads by first building an organic reach with many followers.

Don’t bother that much with generating a huge following on Twitter for your real estate business.

I would instead focus on using the Ads platform to generate real estate leads.

If you use this route, I would say that Twitter is good enough for your real estate business to generate profitable leads, provided you have the budget.

Although going the organic route looks pretty pointless, there are still several benefits to using Twitter, not for the sole purpose of generating leads. 

Therefore, I will give you the overall Pros and Cons in the next section.

The Pros and Cons of Twitter for Real Estate 

The Pros:

• Organic followers can still drive some traffic to your website and increase brand awareness.
• You can keep yourself well-informed about local events and influencers.
• Twitter Analytics can help you determine the type of content you should focus on in other marketing channels.
• You can engage with other users by using advanced search and hashtags.
• You can also use it as a customer support platform for existing leads, answering specific questions, and building your reputation.
• Sometimes, you can reach out better to industry leaders and potential partners via Twitter than through other communication methods.
• It’s overall easy to use, and messages are straightforward to post.
• Offline Tweet-Ups allow you to share information with users in a particular area, schedule virtual meetups, or arrange to meet your followers in a specific area.

The Cons:

• It can be time-consuming to constantly post, create content, and engage, especially if you want to build a huge organic following, and you would have to be at the top of your game right from the start to compensate for the low engagement rates to make it viable.
• You may be perceived as spam when posting too much and engaging too little.
• The 280-character limit can be a challenge and impede you from communicating effectively.
• Tweets must be timed well and posted when most of your target audience is online; otherwise, they can be missed, and your work will be almost for nothing.
• It can be easier to get complaints online, which can harm you.
• Due to the daily increase in the number of users, your content is less likely to be seen.
• Engagement rates will likely continue to go down, making it even more challenging to use as a viable real estate lead generation method.

How to Leverage Twitter to Generate Real Estate Leads

The Organic Twitter Route (How to Build a Brand)

If you, after all the earlier calculations, still see some value in organically using Twitter to generate real estate leads and increase the reputation of your real estate business, here are eight tips for that:

1) You want to know your real estate brand and what it’s about. 

This includes knowing your ideal clients and how you are different.

And knowing your branding is especially difficult when you start, as I discussed in my past article.

Why? Because you don’t yet know which emotions potential clients feel when thinking about your brand. 

2) Set up your Twitter profile and use a profile picture consistent with your brand. 

You also want to design a header image that represents your brand in a visually appealing way.

3) Regarding your Twitter profile, you also want your bio to clearly communicate who you are, what you do, and the value you can provide. 

Here you can also use keywords relevant to your real estate niche so you get discovered more easily.

4) Have a content calendar to plan your tweets so you can post consistently. 

You can use your own content based on your overall real estate content marketing strategy. Or you can syndicate relevant content.

The key is to be able to tweet regularly because, as you can read in the stats above on Twitter, you have to up your posting frequency significantly (five times daily). 

You may also have to share the latest news, trends, and data in the real estate industry so you not only have to resort to your already produced content. 

Unless you have a lot of time or already a content marketing team, this well of already-produced content to recycle on Twitter in small tweets may dry up quickly. 

So you increase your odds of establishing yourself as a thought leader in your niche.

5) Make engaging a habit, like regularly commenting on and retweeting others’ posts. 

You can also use Twitter chats to engage with your audience and others to ask questions to drive engagement or respond to their tweets.

You can also use this engagement habit to network with potential partners.

6) Take advantage of visuals. 

From the statistics above, you now know that, for example, videos get 10x more engagement, and pictures get 18% more clicks.

So you want to focus on this type of content to get the most out of organic Tweets’ already low engagement metrics.

7) Use Twitter analytics tools such as Twitter’s native Analytics to learn which content type is most popular and then double down on what works.

There are many other tools, such as Brandwatch, to find out what people are asking questions about and create tweetable content accordingly.

Using analytics tools is essential when climbing this low engagement rate “Twitter-mountain” because your priority is to increase your click-through rates significantly above the averages so you don’t stay in this losing position, as analyzed earlier by my calculations.

8) Using Twitter productivity tools is another essential thing you want to do since this required high posting and engagement frequency can easily become a big time drain (as social media tends to do), and then who will do the lead generation tasks that have a better chance of success or the actual important daily real estate business stuff?

Tools like Sprout Social, Buffer, and  Social Oomph can help you manage your posts, interact with followers, and monitor your brand.

Using Twitter Ads to Generate Real Estate Leads (The Paid Route)

1) Use the Twitter Ads Platform. 

As I found out above by doing some marketing math, it is the more economically sound thing to do. 

Besides that, according to the statistics, users spend 26% more time viewing ads than on other platforms.

2) Know your goals and constraints because, based on that, you may realize that Twitter Ads isn’t a viable marketing channel for you, for instance, when you don’t have a sufficiently high monthly ad budget.

Goals such as brand awareness or lead generation will inform the structure of your Twitter Ads campaign and your monthly time and financial budget.

3) As always, know your target customers regarding paid ads. 

Using Twitter won’t make much sense if your ideal real estate clients are baby boomers. 

However, it makes more sense to use it if you target Millennials or Generation X.

4) The Twitter campaign type should align with your goals. For instance, if you’re looking to generate real estate leads, consider a conversion campaign.

5) Crafting persuasive ad copy is the next crucial thing. This is crucial in any paid ads campaign, but more so on Twitter, where engagement rates are pretty low.

The better your ad copy is, the higher your chances are to increase the engagement rate, thus lowering the number of followers or traffic you need to convert them to leads.

The same as with organic tweets applies. Make sure to include visually appealing images or videos to draw users in.

6) Another factor that can increase your conversion rate with Twitter Ads is having the audience targeting on point. You can do this based on demographics, interests, location, etc.

For instance, in real estate, you could target people who have recently tweeted about house hunting, live in a certain city, or follow other real estate accounts.

Another targeting option is keyword targeting, which is based on what users search for or use in their tweets (e.g., “home for sale,” “real estate agent,” etc.).

As a caveat, you want to think about the intent. For instance, someone using “home for sale” isn’t necessarily the direct seller you want to target but could also be a competitor.

So you want to select keywords not too hastily.

7) Have a large enough marketing budget to conduct tests over several months until you achieve profitable results. 

As some marketers say: “It’s not failing. It’s testing.” 

I discussed the importance of testing paid online advertising over several weeks and months (depending on your budget) in my detailed articles about Google AdWords for Real Estate and Facebook Ads here and here. 

Especially with Twitter Ads, you will need a good runway and a large enough budget to not run out of money before the first positive results drip in.

8) Once you generate leads, following up promptly is crucial. 

So as discussed in my follow-up article, you want to reach out to potential clients with personalized messages, valuable information, or offers. 

If you do this right, you can also drive your costs per lead down.

The goal is to move them down the sales funnel and, ultimately, to convert them into paying real estate clients.

How Do Other Real Estate Companies and Agents Use Twitter

Ending this article, you might also be curious about how other real estate companies use Twitter, so I collected a list of them below:

• National Association of Home Builders
• Leigh Brown (Realtor)
• Inman News (Real Estate News)
• National Association of Realtors
• Bigger Pockets (Real Estate Investor Resource)
• New York Times Real Estate
• Mortgage Bankers Association
• HouseLogic (Resource for Home Owners)
• Placester (Websites for Real Estate)
• RISMedia (Real Estate News)
• REALTOR Magazine
• Houzz (Home Renovation)
• Keller Williams (Real Estate Broker)
• Urban Land Institute
• Curbed (Interior Design)
• Sean Carpenter (Realtor)
• REtipster (Resource for Real Estate Investors)
• REMAX (Real Estate Broker)
• Realtor.com
• Coldwellbanker (Real Estate Broker)
• Nobu Hata (Realtor)
• Amy Chorew (Realtor and Real Estate Investor)
• Debbie Drummond (Realtor)

This article has been reviewed by our editorial team. It has been approved for publication in accordance with our editorial policy.

• Author
• Recent Posts

Tobias Schnellbacher

Tobias is an internet entrepreneur with a passion for digital marketing and copywriting, particularly in the real estate sector. He also likes cats and fitness. For nine years, he operated an international online referral real estate agency serving U.S., Canadian, and German sellers and buyers, which resulted in multiple seven-figure property sales.Learn more

Latest posts by Tobias Schnellbacher (see all)

• Why Real Estate Conversion Rates Are 6-Times Below Average - March 21, 2024
• How to Manage Your Apartment Advertising Campaign - February 23, 2024
• Finding Marketing Channels for Apartment Advertising - February 12, 2024