What is the best way to use Twitter to put you on the path to dominate your hyper local area? I am convinced I live in one of the least techie places in the Western Hemisphere. The suburbs I wish, pray, and hope to one day dominate only have 38 people on Twitter. I am not complaining, I want to learn how to market to those 38 people as if I was marketing to 10,000.
A comment on this post yesterday got me thinking. I use Twitter. Do I use it to its fullest?
I have seen several of the contributors on here as well as a good number of the people I know who read this blog use it, and use it well. Often, when Brian Brady says to “Lock all loans” via a tweet, I call the mortgage brokers working on my deals and scream “LOCK!”. That right there proves that Twitter works. Across the United States the words of Brian are making a young real estate agent make his clients lock their loans. Why? Because he is trusted. Unfortunately, I was unable to attend Bloodhound Blog Unchained in Phoenix, where I understand Twitter was discussed a great deal, but I will see all of you in Orlando.
Currently, it seems as if I am marketing to solely other Real Estate Agents. I have gotten a referral that ended in a closed sell, yes. However, I want to be able to dominate my local market, once they get on Twitter. Of course, I have followed each and every person that comes to Twitter from my target areas, even if they are outside their target demographics. I do not only write about my blog posts, real estate, etc…I share funny pictures of my cats, dogs, and just general updates on life.
So, yall…what did you old Tweeters do on Twitter before your town, city, neighborhood etc came to be fellow Tweets?
Should I just follow the masses as they come here, search out for new faces for referrals in other markets, write about different things, or just leave it alone?
I know people have been at this point before, when Twitter, and other Social Media Platforms like it, were not widely used in your area. What did you do to build a relationship based network of followers in your area to increase and build your business?
Michelle DeRepentigny says:
First I searched for local folks and started following them. Many of them returned the favor, so then I asked for help! I was working on a relocation contest for Active Rain and I tweeted several post asking for video help and ideas about what they loved about our town. I got great help with the video stuff, some different perspectives on our town, and started building relationships.
There is a professor who teaches public relations in town who shares her ideas via twits & her blog and more importantly her fresh students. If I never made another local contact, this realtionship would make Twitter worthwhile to me.
It fun and can be educational to follow other re folks, but getting local is where it gets great.
June 27, 2008 — 6:55 am
Mark Eckenrode says:
hey hunter, i actually wrote a blog post on how to use twitter as a marketing tool.
Here’s 2 strategies to utilize:
initially identify influencers in your market and see if they’re on twitter. if not, that’s okay. use tweetbeep to see if anyone other twitterer is talking about them – if so, you may wanna follow.
pay attention to any news story or event the influencer is involved in. tweet about it (be sure to use them as your #hashtag) along with perhaps a blog review on the story.
if the influencer has a blog, comment on it with links to the twemes.com/hashtag page so folks can find your coverage.
this positions you as the expert reporter – good spot to be in. but it also trickles down from the influencer to a more local level.
another strategy is to create a twitter account for a property (twitter.com/123happystreet) and post running commentary & pics there regarding the property. use the twitter account in your marketing of the property.
as i’m writing this i realize i just don’t have enough space to share more however i hope you get the gist of what i’m talking about. visit the post i linked to above, that’ll point you to some of the tools i’ve talked about here, too.
June 27, 2008 — 8:53 am
Michelle DeRepentigny says:
“another strategy is to create a twitter account for a property ”
I really like that – in fact I’m off to try it now! To add to that thought process, what do you think of a room named for the property at FriendFeed?
June 27, 2008 — 9:19 am
Hunter Jackson says:
I think the twitter account for a home is absolutely brilliant. Thank you for that!
June 27, 2008 — 9:22 am
Brad Coy says:
Hunter,
If you are way ahead of the curve where you are at locally with twitter, I would set up an rss feed with http://www.twitterlocal.net/ to keep an eye out for new users. Beyond that, unless you are getting some value out of the “water-cooler” aspect of using the utility with others in RE, I would leave that alone.
We’re probably a LONG way from dominating anything with regards to RE on twitter, but it’s a great way to leverage communication to connect with those who share similar interests.
Also, another way to keep things interesting for those following you is to set up twitterfeed to push-tweet posts from your blog.
The idea of using twitter or friendfeed for a single listing does not sound that effective really. For the user base I think it’s too far reaching IMHO. Both utilities are used as a personal means of communication and although some subscribe/follow intimate “friends” for news, I think the idea is best served through your personal voice – building community instead of putting up walls around parts of it. Again, that’s just my opinion. Mileage could vary depending on where you’re located and how people are using these utilities.
June 27, 2008 — 10:50 am
Mark Eckenrode says:
the idea behind the twitter home profile is not so much to build a friend network around the profile but to use it in conjunction with the listing website and to introduce local market to twitter and you.
of course, the twitter home profile has a link back to the listing, but also to your own personal twitter profile.
post property blog posts to twitter and vice versa. this is where it’s kind of cool… you may not write a blog post that you’re meeting the home inspector but it’s worth twittering (which show up in your blog sidebar). same thing with random snapshots of the home… twitter worthy but maybe not blog post worthy. still shows up in property blog sidebar.
this approach adds a new level of transparency to the listing and to you as a realtor (your sellers will dig it, i’m sure). it also introduces the un-twittered public to twitter – and you were the ambassador.
June 27, 2008 — 11:42 am
Todd says:
Mr. Jackson you may wish to start with one of the Twitter listening tools first, like Summize or Get Satisfaction
http://summize.com
http://getsatisfaction.com/for_companies/overheard
I actually find more utility in listening to Twitter, than merely broadcasting what I am doing. Either personally, or for business, being able to analyze what four million people are talking about at any given moment is very valuable resource. You can define key words and phrases, then create alerts ( “need agent” “Phoenix” ) and your mobile phone with get a text message letting you know there is activity in your area of interest. Neato!
To answer your “Who should I follow?” question, there is ( drum roll please!)…http://whoshouldifollow.com
The complete list of all Twitter apps is here:
http://twitter.pbwiki.com/Apps
June 27, 2008 — 1:26 pm
Lori Gilmore says:
I feel your pain. . .in my area there are 25 users many of which have not updated. We got prisons in Joliet but no geeks!
I love the twitter account for the property, great idea.
June 27, 2008 — 1:36 pm
Artur | Phoenix Real Estate says:
Twitter may be a nice tool, but it’s useless if it does not work. Over the last week, more often then not its been over capacity, thus useless.
June 27, 2008 — 1:43 pm
Hunter Jackson says:
Artur, I do agree. If it would quit stressing, i would be happier.
Todd, thank you so much for those resources. Who knew that there were so many twitter sites like those!
As well as brad, thanks for the twitter local recommendation, should help a lot!
June 27, 2008 — 2:55 pm
Todd says:
@Artur
Ahhhh, yes but Twitter’s reliability issues will soon be over! now that Jeff Bezos has given them $15,000,000.00 in cash and moving all of Twitter to his awesome Amazon Computing Cloud. Lots of detail on Twitter’s blog:
http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/amazons_bezos_invests_in_twitt.php
Hooray for a 99.99999% Twitter uptime.
June 27, 2008 — 3:10 pm
Mark Eckenrode says:
@todd: wasn’t twitter running on some of amazon’s services prior to this windfall?
June 27, 2008 — 3:29 pm
Brian Brady says:
“Often, when Brian Brady says to “Lock all loans” via a tweet, I call the mortgage brokers working on my deals and scream “LOCK!”. That right there proves that Twitter works”
Wow! Thank you, Hunter and welcome to BHB.
The pups have already grown up on the first day. While I expected lots of “I don’t know posts” I read a dsicussion about blog platforms, advice on how to use Twitter, and a great week-in-review analysis about the Fed announcement (which may have been the most important meeting this year). Proof positive that BHB raises the bar and the contributors, new and old, jump over it and reset it.
June 27, 2008 — 6:47 pm
Vance Shutes says:
Hunter,
I look forward to reading your posts here on BHB. It wasn’t until Unchained that I knew enough to dip my toe into the Twitter waters. Now that I’ve done so, I used the old saying “I should have done this a long time ago!” Be that as it may, the first thing I did was use TwitterLocal to find local Twitterers, and follow them. When I learned what they were tweeting about, I could join the conversation and follow it where it led. From there, I’ve clicked through my follows to see who they follow, and grow my network.
June 27, 2008 — 7:03 pm
Mike Lefebvre says:
Hunter,
I come down out of the woods of northern New Hampshire to find you’re one of the newest in the litter of pups at Bloodhound! Congratulations!
N. Hunter Jackson: The only man I know south of the Mason-Dixon that can sell you a home AND tell you more than you ever wanted to know about African Tortoises! Looking forward to reading your posts here as well, and enjoying some “juice” of a different variety together in person later this year in Orlando.
Keep it up, brother!
@RealtorLefebvre
June 30, 2008 — 7:38 am