by Brian Brady
Commercial Real Estate Finance Expert
Structured Debt and Equity
Licensed Real Estate Broker in AL, CA, and FL
If you don’t know who Tony Hawk is, you either:
- aren’t a “skater”
- don’t have teenage boys
- don’t have kids that watch Zach and Cody
I hadn’t been on Twitter in a couple of months so I checked out my Tweet stream the other day. I don’t know how I found him but I saw @tonyhawk and decided to follow him (he’s local). I logged into Twitter again tonight to follow back people following me.
In my Tweet Stream was a message from @tonyhawk. As I scrolled down, I noticed that he was having an “Easter Board Deck Hunt“. Tony autographed skateboards, hid them around the country, and was “tweeting” clues for people to hunt them down. Tweetpics of lucky kids in NYC, LA, NorCal, and TX were popping up. Then, I saw this Tweet, from @tonyhawk:
- http://twitpic.com/38w0b – NOBODY knows where Del Mar Skate Ranch was!!?? I’m sad. Well here is another picture clue.
I started thinking that I recognized that picture; it was near Pelly’s Mini Golf. I googled “Del Mar Skate Ranch” and found out that it was less than a mile from my house. Immediately, I clicked through to the twitpic clues, grabbed my wife and daughter, and hopped in the car to find the elusive Tony Hawk board deck. When we arrived at the site of the old skate park, a dozen fathers and their kids were running out of their cars and hunting through the vacant lot.
I didn’t find the last Easter board deck; a cute kid around my daughter Maggie’s age did. It was a fun and frenzied hour.
What can we learn from this? Tony Hawk has some 300,000 followers on Twitter. Can you imagine using his celebrity in your promotional efforts? How about someone else? I once suggested that Shawna Ebersole recruit Peyton Manning to promote her new site. What if he “tweeted” links to it, once a month? (he’d have to sign up first)
Shaq tweets. Perhaps Greg Swann could have arrange for Shaq to sit an open house with him to sign autographs. If Shaq tweeted the address to his 600,000 followers, the place would be swamped. Okay… I’m over the top here but I’m brainstorming. If YOU have some ideas, add them below.
Dan Kennedy talks about celebrity endorsements all of the time. A celebrity with a huge social media following might be a useful promotional tool.
Maybe Twitter ain’t so bad, after all.
PS: I wish we won that board; Tony is revered in San Diego. I could have used a few thousand extra followers…if I can just get him to ask @mortgagereport “what are mortgage rates doing today?” .
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PSS: If you want to actually try to integrate celebrities into your Twitter conversations, here is a comprehensive list of celebs who Tweet. I suspect it would be difficult to engage them in conversations but it doesn’t hurt to try.
Missy Caulk says:
…and I think Maureen Francis won the make-over contest at Inman NYC because Kid Rock endorsed her blog being made over.
Like golf outings, celebrities are a huge draw for fund raisers.
Hummm….thinking of celebrities in Ann Arbor.
April 13, 2009 — 4:55 am
Chris Brown says:
It amazes me how creative people can be – this is great! Thanks for sharing it Brian. Say HI to Sean for me.
Chris
April 13, 2009 — 5:28 am
Teri Lussier says:
What I find so interesting about this, Brian, is that most of what I read about using Twitter is how to become your own Twitter rockstar to the masses, which never made any sense to me. I could become an RE.net twitter rockstar, I suppose, I mean how hard can that be? But how useful to my bottom line would that be? Yes, it’s different for lenders and vendors, I get that. But for a single house agent in Dayton to spend time twittering, in order to sell houses quickly and efficiently? Prolly not so much at this point in time.
But you are looking at this and thinking of rockstar endorsement-type twittering. Would it work? Who knows, but I do like your twist to the standard twitter party line.
If Dayton tweeted, or I lived in a city that tweeted or housed rockstars, I’d definitely be having conversations with those rockstars, politicians, and business owners about things that are going on in the city, you’d better believe it. You don’t have to get an endorsement to draw attention, you simply have to have an intelligent, thoughtful conversation about something of value to *other* people. People will click over to find you and they will follow and they will join the conversation. That’s all twitter is, after all, conversations.
If you can use twitter for conversations rather than broadcasting, you can make connections. Unless you are a rockstar, but even then, Tony Hawk was broadcasting something of *value* to his followers. I’m going to have to incubate this for awhile…
April 13, 2009 — 5:35 am
Genuine Chirs Johnson says:
You don’t need 30,000 people, you need 500 that run through walls.
April 13, 2009 — 6:16 am
Chris Brown says:
Actually – you only need 10 according to Seth –
http://sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog/2009/04/first-ten-.html
Chris
April 13, 2009 — 6:39 am
Al Lorenz says:
That kicked me into creative thinking this Monday morning! Thanks!
April 13, 2009 — 8:19 am
Laura Evans says:
Sounds like a version of Geocaching, which is global and has been around for years. If you liked your twitter hide and seek, get out your GPS and go to geocaching.com. It’s fun and addicting (and another social network).
April 13, 2009 — 11:12 am
Kevin Sandridge says:
Brian – awesome post. I wonder sometimes exactly when Twitter will become a spam fest – but I truly do rely on it to help get the word out to my followers about what I’m up to, what I’m reading, have written, etc.
April 13, 2009 — 11:49 am
Tony Sena says:
This is a pretty cool idea. Wonder who I could find in Las Vegas…..Wonder if Wayne Newton Twitters?????
April 14, 2009 — 10:33 pm
Greg Swann says:
Tony Sena passed his broker’s license test yesterday. One more hard-working dog off the leash. Bravo!
April 15, 2009 — 6:35 am
Brian Brady says:
“Wonder who I could find in Las Vegas…”
Find @Elvis- he lives
April 14, 2009 — 10:36 pm
Shane Pollock says:
Great post Brian. The creative ways celebs are using Twitter is amazing. I really like the ticket giveaway Shaq was running. The response to these marketing events are a testament to the power of Twitter. It will be a good challenge to integrate celebrity into our RE Twitter activities.
April 16, 2009 — 8:36 am