Google CEO Eric Schmidt, who not too long ago dismissed Twitter as a “poor man’s e-mail system,” also now admits that Twitter does a “great job” at doing realtime search.
As you know Twitter is a tool that people from all over the world use to express their thoughts at any given moment, on any subject, in 140 characters or less.
If you haven’t done a twitter search for your market, you should. You might be surprised at what you find. I sure was.
I decided to do a search for various real estate phrases and I was amazed at what I found – and what I didn’t find. I searched for “homes for sale in Orlando, Florida” and I didn’t find one tweet. Then I searched “real estate in Orlando, Florida” and got one page of results. One tweet was a day old and the others were two, three, five and 11 days old. When searching for “real estate agents in Orlando, Florida,” I found only one post from an agent and it actually turned out to be a link to an international search engine.
I then decided to do one more search – “real estate in Florida”. The realtime results showed me numerous findings such as: listings for sale in Florida, local brokerage information, and how the $8,000 tax credit can be used for a down payment. But, what really surprised me was that there were two tweets from individuals recruiting agents, and a post for an accountant position at a real estate company.
Over the course of my searches, a light bulb went off. In general, our industry has not yet embraced Twitter as we could. We need to be where our customers are, and that is on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and other social networking sites. So, how should we use Twitter to market our company, our listings, job openings, and to recruit new agents?
STEP ONE: Do your homework. Learn how Twitter works and how you can use it effectively. Check out this video from CommonCraft or this post on DoshDosh, 17 Ways You Can Use Twitter: A Guide for Beginners, Marketers and Business Owners.
STEP TWO: Set up a Twitter account for yourself or your company (check out @southwestair, this is considered to be one of the best and most useful to customers). Company executives should also have the appropriate staff members tweet for their area of expertise. Remember that customers, clients and recruits usually prefer human interactions over the corporate stuffed shirts.
STEP THREE: Determine how frequently you’ll use Twitter, and research and decide which keywords (or keyphrases) will work in your market. Just a reminder, the activity on Twitter is in realtime so daily alerts are recommended.
STEP FOUR: Make sure that other forms of communication you regularly use – email signatures, websites, newsletters, blogs, etc. – incorporate the Twitter icon with a link to your twitter profile so that your contacts and visitors know to follow you.
It’s that simple! I encourage you to embrace this new and effective technology and begin today taking advantage of Twitter. When you realize your first result – connecting with a potential client or new staff member – you’ll know it was worth the work!
Happy Tweeting!
