How can mortgage advisers use Twitter for effective marketing?

Social media has become big business in recent years, with the number of social media users worldwide expected to hit 3.02 billion active users per month by 2021.

While some mortgage advisers may think that the traditional ways they engage with clients isn’t suited to social media, others are adapting their business to reflect advancements in technology.

The evolution of the industry means social media can benefit advisers and brokers in a number of ways, such as:

Allowing you to create a brand image

Twitter is a great example, boasting unique capabilities that – unlike other social media platforms – allows both brands and consumers to build relationships and optimise engagement.

If your business isn’t making the most of Twitter, your brand is likely missing out on future growth opportunities. But how can mortgage brokers/advisers use this platform to effectively market their business?

Follow relevant financial institutions

Whether you’re a seasoned ‘tweeter’ or are just beginning your social networking journey, it’s a good idea to review your following to see how you can broaden your engagement.

Following numerous financial institutions – there are thousands on Twitter – will allow you to connect with others in the industry and receive updates about the latest issues that impact mortgage brokers.

Utilising Twitter to obtain up-to-date information from authorities and financial institutions means you can share your own insights and position yourself as a leader in the mortgage industry sector.

Use hashtags (but not too much)

Hashtags are an ideal way to expose your business to new audiences who may be interested in what you are promoting.

Tweets with hashtags typically get double the engagement than tweets without hashtags. However, it doesn’t mean you should squeeze every hashtag into a tweet. Use hashtags sparingly or limit them to once or twice per tweet.

When deciding which hashtags to use, consider searching keywords relevant to your industry and seeing which tweets encourage the most engagement.

Twitter analytics and peak times

Twitter analytics enables you to see how many views and how much engagement your tweets receive.

When looking at your analytics in detail, you can learn what your audience responds to best. Do you typically get more interactions on image posts, videos, or links? If so, utilise these more in future.

Finding the right time to tweet is also important. By identifying the more active periods, you can gain more impressions, boost engagement and receive more clicks.

Of course, given the nature of the mortgage industry, your prospective clients are likely to be active between 8am and 6pm on Monday through to Friday. Be sure to keep this in mind when posting.

Regularly engage with clients

You needn’t be a prolific writer to take advantage of Twitter – so long as you can create engaging tweets in 280 characters or less.

However, you’ll see the best results by tweeting on a regular basis and re-tweeting messages from others who share your interests and beliefs.

One of the best strategies is to follow other prominent profiles in the industry and regularly re-tweet their tweets. Being seen as a reliable portal for important information will boost your brand image and ensure that people will want to see more from you.

Utilise Twitter ads

Using paid ads on Twitter is a great way to reach your audience in a more direct way than waiting for organic reach.

When using a promoted tweet, they will show up on people’s timelines who share interests with your audience, allowing users to discover your profile even if they don’t follow your brand or hashtags.

While users will be aware that it’s a paid ad, mortgage brokers and advisers can use them to advertise their business – further driving traffic to your website.

Using social media to your advantage

Social media has long been recognised as the perfect tool to help grow your business and your network of trusted contacts and specialists.

By showing yourself to be an expert in your field – on or offline – you are likely to earn the trust and respect of your audience.

Ensure that you share interesting, unique content that adds value to your followers, and dedicate sufficient time to build an audience on each network.