I've been trying to incorporate Twitter into my business. What are others doing with Twitter? Last time I tweeted, ti took over the counter medicine to stop the tweets.

I am sorry to say that I have joined the 70% of Twitter members who don't last past a month.

I don't really want to follow anyone - I don't need more interruptions during the day. I don't really have anything profound to say in one sentence either - so Twitter has fallen by the wayside for me...

I tweet about this and that - not very often. If some of my online friends are on at the same time as me, I'll comment on their tweets that interest me, or just say hi to them.

The reason I like twitter, and try to make sure my last post per day relevant to my business - if you google my name, the first google result is my twitter profile.

I don't post much stupid stuff, sometimes random stuff, new listings, virtual tours, what I had for lunch, my favorite restaurant nearby, an interesting article - just this-n-that. Some silly, some serious. On Mon, Tues, & Wed nights I tweet my reactions to 24 and American Idol as they are in progress. Some of my friends watch the same shows so it's kind of fun.

I think most people find that if they just add what they are currently doing most of the time, that can be the most effective tactic in finding and more importantly retaining contact with clients.

Most agents I talk to have found that simply adding a link to each of their new listing is not effective, talking about your 7 year old's soccer game can be though.

On that note though, I don't know many agents that have been able to successfully use Twitter to bring in any business. Facebook is another matter.

I am closing a deal next week with a client I met through tweeting.

I agree - don't just tweet postlets with your listings. The key is to let your personality shine through - your likes, dislikes, activities, etc.

I did have one woman get really ticked off with me over a political issue, and she replied that I needed to keep that to myself, that she was planning on moving to my area and that I just lost a potential client. My thought on that is that if you can't have your beliefs and personality, what good is working for yourself? If she didn't like my tweet, she wouldn't like me and I doubt I would want to work with her anyhow.

Just be yourself. There's going to be people that gravitate towards you for reasons other than that little house you just listed.

GOOD POINT. I do try to stay away from politics and religion for the most part in my tweets and Facebook posts though occasionally a few creep in. But I am also a "live and let live" kind of person - I won't dislike someone because they like President Obama nor will I love them just because they can't stand Al Gore.

If you're the type of person to become very angry and not want to work with someone who differs with you on an issue like that, then I really don't want you for a client. I don't care if you're a democrat, libertarian, republican, atheist or bible thumper - if you can't politely "agree to disagree" on something and put it aside, then chances are, we won't be a good fit AT ALL.

It hit me at lunch yesterday. I'll tweet when there's a new post to my Metro Atlanta Down Payment Assistance blog. I also went to other sites and provided directions on how to follow me both on-screen and via text message. Way cool. Now I just need to remember to tweet when I make the change.

I can see this also applying to communicating on listings. Just need to study that one over lunch.

I find that unless you have something very good to offer people don't want to follow you. But that being said, here in Lexington, KY we just hired Coach John Calipari for our new basketball coach. He has a Twitter account and nearly 30k people are signed up. My thought is...I have to find a way to be important and fun to follow. Keep that Top OF Mind philosophy. The neat thing is the Tweets can be sent to you via a text message. It is really cool because you can essentially text message an entire group of people all at one time. And again it keeps you Top Of Mind. The thing I have to find out is why would anyone want to constantly have my texts sent to them?

I have a bunch of people following me and I don't know why. LOL

Do you advertise it? Do you have a pic up? I've been on a while(no advertising or telling anyone) and I don't have crap but a couple friends.

Yeah, I have it on my blog and website and here or there - but I don't know why they've followed me - they could be other agents, people following me cause they liked something I said to someone they were following, or if they followed me from my blog/website.

No. Clue.

SOme are just random entrepreneurs looking to sell something - some are just "folks." I don't have time to check up on them all though I should.

There is a program that runs scripts and sets up the owner so it looks like they are following a bunch of people. In return those people will hopefully follow them.

The scripts actually take bits of other peoples posts and posts them as their own thus creating fake conversations. This is done with fake accounts.

The idea is to get a bunch of followers.

http://www.google.com/search?q=twitter+fake+followers&sourceid=navclient-ff&ie=UTF-8&rlz=1B3GGGL_en__176US231

Amazing the things people will come up with. If you're not actually twittering, I just do not see the point. That's like you and a friend setting up your emails to auto respond to one another. No purpose.

Potential first time home buyers, the single largest segment of home buyer for the most recent years would like to know about the changes and new news in Georgia down payment assistance. GeorgiaHomes is also much easier to put on a sign than my full URL.

I see that the several competitive real estate agents are also following me since my OP. I'll be contacting them about switching to our brokerage.

I'm thinking of setting up twitter (PMHValGal) to announce when we get in a bulk order of BPOs, so I can let my 'preferreed' agents know I'm getting ready to assign BPOs...
There are so many agents whose emails are bounced back from spam filters, and I am supposed to login to some website to get my emails accepted. Inside acompany, we can't do that without administration privileges so its very annoying -- I never click thru to get accepted. More often than not the agent gets a 'do not use' flag

What do you think of using TWITTER this way?

What percentage of your preferred agents use Twitter? I guess I'm an old fogie...I've never even been there...and from what I've read here about it, it doesn't seem like a place I'd like to go.

Twitter is full of real estate professionals. Hope on board before it's too late.

start following PMH Financial, and we'll see if it works....

How do you find out if your assignements are getting bounced back by spam filters? OMG...getting put on a "do not use" list because of your computer's spam filter...I have to check...I haven't heard from some companies in a while and they tell me I'm not blacklisted...can someone out there shed some light?

Check your spam box periodically. I missed an assignment just this way once upon a time. Yikes, I just peeked at mine! There are 1,645 items in my spam folder. Doesn't seem like that long since I dumped it out! Realtors sure seem to be an easy tarket for spammers.

I tweet local news and listings every once in a while. Not really into it but trying.

In order for it to really work, you need to find other tweeps and interact with them. Just blasting things, without ever interacting, is like standing in a crowd and calling to the passers by. Some will hear you and stop & listen, but most will just go right on by.

That makes sense. But who do I interact with.?...just whatever interests me and hope it leads to real estate? I am SO clueless....

Makes sense to me but I am not that social, well okay I go on lock-outs, to think there are tweets in my area I would want to chirp at.

We mostly tweet about our new blog posts. We will sometimes tweet interesting facts about market trends that we find while producing our monthly national market analysis.

The biggest challenge facing individuals on twitter is acquiring followers that are actually interested in your particular topic. They are most likely to "retweet" your postings, thus forwarding your content to their followers. This is the big win, since hardcore tweeters can increase your reach exponentially.

Be wary of random followers. Take a moment to look at their tweets and figure out what they are usually talking about before you reciprocate with a follow. Often times, your following list will grow quickly, while your followers remains stagnant due to follow invite smash and grabs.

Also keep in mind that by following someone, you are opening yourself up to private messages from that users, so watch for spammers and don't follow them.

All I use Twitter for is the 'share on twitter' link on my blog. It helps me get a ton more views. I also don't know how the heck I have so many followers, especially since I don't advertise twitter anywhere and I'm not following many people either. Talk about a massive waste of your day. I signed up then forgot about it until recently with the blog thing. I was still getting followers even though I posted VERY rarely. I just cant do the whole 1 sentence thing. I have too much to say. And the whole '@' thing is annoying as hell to me.

Hi Greene, Twitter is only a communication tool. What interests your audience? What kind of things will help them? What do they want to hear? Answer those questions, tweet them out, and you'll have a good interested audience. That's the hardest part. Every audience is different so I can answer your question with a broad stroke.

Dear folks,

I couldn't help notice that some of you are down on "tweeting". It is perfectly understandable. However, if you see and notice big corporations using this type of marketing channel, then there has got to be some merit to it. It is just like real estate investing, if you see McDonalds, Walmart & Home Depot being built in a particular area, it is safe to say the real estate values in that area will probably rise. Corporations have huge teams of people that do tons of data research on this stuff, so they make less mistakes than the rest of us.

When you see, TGIF, NBC News, and Lowes with Twitter and Facebook logos on their advertising, you can be sure that the Twitter marketing channel is worth something.

The setback to social networking sites is the word "WORK". As you already know, in marketing there are learning curves and time that must be put into any channel of marketing, whether it is direct mail, email marketing or just writing a phone book ad.

It takes time and consistency to build a herd on one of these sites. The other thing you have to do as a real estate professional, is that you have to grow the herd in the geographical area that you are in. When you make friends or contacts in your circle of Twitter or Facebook friends, you need to do searches for contacts in your geographical area. Why? Because, if you are having an open house then you could "Tweet" people on your list that are in your area. Or you can daily post listings on those sites and people in your city or town that do "tweet" and "Twitter" will see your messages.

Go to amazon and check out some of the books on marketing in this arena, I'm sure that you will find great ideas and references there on the subject of TWEETING! Ooops! The birdy just belched! :rockon:

Mark Ellis
Real Estate Marketing Consultant
ExpertRealtorWeb

You actually got a client from twitter? That's interesting... what exactly got the client to get in touch with you? Was this a pastclient/COI?

I've gotten a few leads from Twitter....but neither were listings I wanted to take (seller needed way more than they were worth)

[quote=Perky_REALTOR]I've gotten a few leads from Twitter....but neither were listings I wanted to take (seller needed way more than they were worth)[/quote]

When you say a few leads from twitter... what do you mean? Past clients/COI or something you tweeted (like a listing or something) that caught some random person's attention?

Followers and/or people I follow contact me by DM asking me for real estate info. They were not people I knew at all in real life. They were local people who I found and followed on Twitter and who followed me. I made sure to engage with them a few times by commenting on their tweets to establish a relationship. I didn't blast twitter with all real esate stuff, just some random general interest stuff w/ real estate thrown in

that said I dropped the ball w/ twitter. had to let something go...twitter was it. my last "twitter lead" came long after i dropped twitter. in fact, that guy was also a facebook friend, and my facebook updates were probably what kept me on his radar. too bad he needs more money than his house is worth.

interesting... to be honest, I find it amazing that you were actually able to get some decent leads to begin with.

I don't tweet, I facebook. [Not to be confused with mycrap].
I just don't see the point in tweetering all day long. No one wants to be bugged all day long with your updates on everything you do. Right? Ok, maybe some people are desperate for entertainment but I'm not one of them. lol. I have enough to keep me occupied throughout the day.