by Brian Brady
Commercial Real Estate Finance Expert
Structured Debt and Equity
Licensed Real Estate Broker in AL, CA, and FL
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Sorry to go all Mike Ferry on you but at the end of the day, your time is better spent following would be home buyers, driving from open house to open house, with a carefully designed plan to “run into them” at the 7-11, every Sunday.
Sean Purcell says:
Brilliant! You’ve captured the problem with Twittledom and the Twittering Twits who dwell there. (Hey, that sounds like a great title for a post!) 🙂
September 21, 2009 — 1:30 pm
Genuine Chris Johnson says:
Stop it! You must use twitter as a honeypot to attract agents so I can sell them blogs! How dare you intimate that twitter is imperfect.
September 21, 2009 — 1:35 pm
James Kimmons says:
Twitter has value for business, just ask Southwest Airlines, Best Buy, Dell, etc. However, getting to the meat of the value for a real estate pro takes a little analysis, and you can’t spend huge amounts of time on Twitter.
But, spending huge amounts of time on any one marketing activity or using one marketing tool is just as bad. I am building local real estate followers on Twitter, and sending out automated statistical posts from my blog as tweets. I don’t spend even an hour a week to get that done. My Google Analytics show traffic back to the blog from those tweets. I can wait for it to generate business, and I know that it will.
Just as I won’t spend every day trying to meet prospects at 7-11 or an open house, I won’t spend hours a day with Twitter, or even my blog/website. But, as in life and diet, balance is important.
September 21, 2009 — 2:26 pm
James Boyer says:
I don’t do a darn thing with Twitter. For the Real Estate business I prefer, my website, my blog, my other real estate blog, my niche real estate blog, Facebook, and real face to face meeting people, but not at open houses, yuck!!!
September 21, 2009 — 6:26 pm
Ashlee says:
I am with James. I could care less about Twitter. Too much to think about. Facebook is enough!
September 21, 2009 — 7:29 pm
Brad Coy says:
Following this as advice would hurt my business a great deal, but like I’ve always said, “maybe that’s just me”.
September 21, 2009 — 8:03 pm
Greg Dallaire says:
Here’s the reality! There is no one magic pill to success in Real Estate or for sales. What i’ve realized you can easily become engulfed into all of this techno tools that promise to be the next best thing from sliced bread.
Our business is extremely simple when you think about it.
Meet people ask for business AKA (Generating leads) Then provide them with excellent service and build strong relationships and ask for referrals.
Now can we make a case for Twitter being a starting point to meet people. You betcha! I use twitter very sparingly but i’ve developed at least 5 IN PERSON relationships. I’ve also generated a significant amount of local traffic to my new website.
There is no magic pill! Hard work and a solid game plan is the only way I’ve found success!
September 21, 2009 — 8:24 pm
Barry Cunningham says:
This was classic…I mean absolutely classic! Besides, what are you going to glean from most agents on twitter? I would say something pithy…but you said it all already.
September 21, 2009 — 9:59 pm
Jody Cowdrey says:
…thought you were serious for a second. Actually for about a minute.
September 21, 2009 — 11:44 pm
Bill Lublin says:
Cute post – for some of us, twitter is a useful tool, for others, I guess not so much – but tools are neither good nor bad – its what you make of them
After all even an empty list can be a useful tool if you use it properly – (Isn’t that right Brian?)
🙂
September 22, 2009 — 4:18 am
Brian Block says:
I love this post!
September 22, 2009 — 5:06 am
Sue Zanzonico says:
I use twitter a small amount and sporadically. It has helped me to get to know various agents and people in other industries. I find it to be a useful resource when I have real estate, web, technology, etc…questions. Yet another opportunity for communication.
September 22, 2009 — 5:11 am
Jessica Horton says:
I tried to use Twitter like a chat application and it got on my nerves. I quit using it for a bit.
Now, I’ve quit following 3/4’s of the people that I started out following and I’m trying to adopt the Larry Kendall approach to networking on Twitter: I want 50 local people that I can really connect with. If I have 50 people and they each know 50 people, I have a pool of 2,500 people. If the *normal* turnover rate in my local area is every 5 years, that means that 20% of the market is up for grabs. Each house has 2 possible transaction sides and that would mean that 40% of the marketplace has a commission attached to it.
2,5000 people in my twitter network = As many as 1,000 transactions.
5% of the potential = 50 transactions…
So far, I’m working with 1 buyer from twitter and 1 seller. Both have brokerage engagement agreements signed, sealed and delivered. My problem is that many local people in my area haven’t discovered Twitter and it will take some time to get there.
September 22, 2009 — 7:39 am
Joe Spake says:
But Brian, it’s so much easier to follow folks “in the business” and talk esoteric (and cute) shop talk. Doing that will get you on those valuable lists.
To paraphrase Jeff Turner, I am hunting the deer, not the hunters.
September 22, 2009 — 7:43 am
Brian Brady says:
“To paraphrase Jeff Turner, I am hunting the deer, not the hunters.”
Jeff (and I) hunt the hunters, not the deer which is why it is in our best interest to ask y’all to stop following other real estate agents and go find customers. Without successful REALTORs, Jeff and I are dead in the water, Joe.
September 22, 2009 — 8:08 am
Todd Carpenter says:
Creating a list of influential/important/blah blah blah people is a great way to get noticed by those named on the list.
Then those influential blah blah blahs will brag to all the people they influence that they are on that list of influential blah blah blahs.
Then, those who made the list of influential blah blah blahs get link love and whatnot. Thus becoming more like to be on someone else’s list of influential blah blah blahs.
“Remember that a man’s Name is to him the sweetest and most important sound in any language.” – Dale Carnegie
September 22, 2009 — 8:32 am
Bob Gibbs says:
I agree that Twitter can be misconstued as a lead generating tool. In fact the best use of Twitter is to engage in conversation with others. I feel that it is basically replacing instant messenger. I don’t tweet frequently but there are many who do tweet me. It is just another form of communication.
September 22, 2009 — 10:25 am
Doug Quance says:
😆 @tcar
September 22, 2009 — 11:53 am
Lori Bee says:
I would not eliminate my R.E. net friends for a Million $’s… Ok maybe a billion… LOL. But I will say that a lot of us get caught up in talking to each other, and not helping those in our COMMUNITIES or those with similar HOBBIES. Those are big $ columns in my Seesmic Deck.
Another matter, is how much IRL networking are people doing with their peeps? I do quite a bit here locally. Again, very valuable.
I think it is advice well taken that we shouldn’t ignore people outside of our industry, but to completely ignore those within our industry… Well, that would just be plain foolish too. I have received a number of referrals from my real estate peeps that I otherwise would not have received.
While I agree with the quote that @TCAR has and that everyone loves their ego boost once in a while, I know I have found some valuable Peeps on these lists. And some precious FRIENDS.
Oh and I might point out that you wouldn’t have a lot of comments here with your RE.net friends boosting your SEO so your customers can find you. (*Clearing throat!*)
Once again… riding both sides of the fence on this one. But to each their own! C’est la vie!
September 22, 2009 — 2:43 pm
Robert Worthington says:
I had to laugh once I said this post. Brian, I like the Mike Ferry style post. I’m still smiling from ear to ear. Ok now seriously, I do believe as mentioned above in some comments that facebook has more value than twitter, which I agree. If an agent spends one minute or less on twitter doing any post maybe everyday or every other day. ok cool. Otherwise, twitter is not for me.
September 22, 2009 — 4:41 pm
The Harriman Team says:
And now, a word from the Proletariat:
We follow a good number of RE.net people, not because someone tells us to, but because it’s just the right thing to do, for a number of reasons:
1) We learn from them – some of these folks got some serious smarts when it comes to selling homes and building your business, and when you see something in one of their tweets that makes sense, we apply it to our business to see if it makes sense there, too. Most times, it does.
2) We network with them – building relationships is not confined to your clients, but extends to your peers as well. When engaging them in conversation on Twitter, you’re laying the foundation for potential referrals, possible introductions to people you may not know, and maybe even cultivating a friendship or two.
3) We learn about them – The way these people present themselves in social media is like having a front row seat into their lives. From Teresa Boardman’s fabulous photographs of Minneapolis architecture, to Ines Hegedus-Garcia’s mojito reviews, to Lani Anglin-Rosales’ funny and playfully in your face commentary, to Jay Thompson’s no-nonsense, down to earth manner, they all say the same thing: this is who I am, genuine and transparent, and by being that way they invite you to be the same, engage them, join the discussion. How can you help but not follow them?
Now, having said this, we don’t really spend a whole lot of time on Twitter. Why? Because we’re taking care of our clients. That’s our priority. We’re very busy and there’s just not a lot of time left in the day to go on Twitter (or Facebook for that matter), but we do try to set some time aside to do it. But rest assured that when we do, we don’t just sit in awe of the big name RE folks. We engage our clients there, too. We’ve seen a marked increase in business coming from Twitter and FB, and it’s exciting. We’ve gotten about a dozen or so clients from them, and got a rental client yesterday by way of a TweetBeep Alert we have set up for our market. This social media stuff really works, yo!
Anyway, sorry for the ramble, but while we agree that lists of followers in and of themselves are perhaps a bit superfluous (yeah, we put out a list of RE people to follow, too), we have to agree with Lori Bee. We won’t be unfollowing any of our RE.net friends anytime soon. But we’ll be engaging clients more, too. After all, they’re the ones who need us the most, and we need them even more. “Have a drink with the hunters and graze with the deer.”
September 23, 2009 — 2:39 pm
Jeff Mix says:
I was happy to see there was no one on the list! I have twitter myself and have not really figured out how it will help sell a home! I thought I could set up a twitter account for a short sale seller and tweet lender updates to them, but other than that who cares that you are sitting on the porch. No one!
September 23, 2009 — 4:20 pm