Consistent Clients – Real Estate Marketing

So if you’ve spent much time networking online, you’ve probably heard of Twitter. Not sure how to use it? Here’s the scoop, and we’ll start from the beginning…

What is Twitter?

Twitter is called a micro-blogging platform. Essentially, it works the same way as a blog. But there are two main differences:

1. Unlike blogging on your own blog, you are blogging on their site, and your posts, or “tweets” join the public stream.
2. You are limited to 140 characters. While that doesn’t sound like much, you can say a lot in that space. And it certainly keeps you on topic!

Here’s an example:

The Lingo:

Tweets: your 140 character post

Followers: the people that choose to subscribe to your updates. They are called friends in other services, but on Twitter, they’re followers. You can “follow” other peoples updates by clicking the “Follow” button underneath their photo. You can follow them without them following you, and vice versa, but many people will mutually follow you as long as you seem fairly interesting.

Tweeps, Tweeple, Twitterverse: individual or groups of people using Twitter

Retweet, RT: reposting another persons tweet to share something interesting with your followers or help someone expand the reach of their message.

Reply: Replying to someone’s tweet by including an @ symbol and their username. It also lets you nudge someone to let them know you mentioned them, or to let your followers find another interesting person to follow.

Direct Message, DM: A private message to another user. This does not show up in your regular Twitter stream. The person must be following you in order for you to be able to direct message them.

And the biggest question of all…

How do I use this in my real estate business?

The nice thing about Twitter, is that you can use it at whatever level you like. It can be mostly personal, and let you connect and develop relationships with other likeminded folks. It can be mostly business, and provide insights into the market, links to new listings, etc. Or, it can be a mix of both.

For me, I think the mix is the best way to approach Twitter for real estate. You share your knowledge, your business updates, what’s going on in your business life so that people know what you do. And you connect with them on a personal level so that when the time comes, you’re the Twitter friend they think of for real estate.

So a great way to do this is to get involved with other peoples’ conversations. They mentioned their team is in the big game? Cheer with them, or “tease” them gently if you are on the other side. Someone mentions a hobby of theirs that you enjoy also? Recommend a good store for supplies, or a great article you read on the subject. They post a link to an article? Comment back via Twitter on your thoughts.

Our next post will go into the wide variety of Twitter tools that are out there to help you create searches for keywords, find local people to follow, and generally increase Twitters’ potential even more.

But for now, if you haven’t signed up already, start there. Right now, the Twitter people search isn’t functional, so you’ll either have to import your email list, or just use the search.twitter.com function to search for keywords or names that you’re looking for.

Oh, and feel free to follow me at www.twitter.com/ConsistentIdeas

Technorati Tags: Rich Rogala, Twitter for real estate agents, Realtors using Twitter, real estate social networking, real estate blogging