Online Real Estate Technology

Effective Blog posts ahead

Every day I can guarantee that you will be impacted in some way by social media, there will be experts telling you, you need a profile on social networks like Facebook, and that Twitter is the best thing since sliced bread was invented, so you create a profile and you start to tell everyone and anyone who will listen about your latest listings and open homes, but is that really the way to approach social media, doing the same thing you do every day on more traditional mediums?

Taking this approach to your social media strategy will do nothing more than waste your precious time, time that could be spent prospecting for new listings and working with your clients face to face.

I know some younger agents who think that social media and the Internet will replace face to face contact, the reality is it won’t, however the very same principles you use face to face, apply to social media, the only difference being the method of delivery.

I know of some real estate groups who have launched their social strategy with profiles on this site and that network, yet  their sites are full of their member offices congratulating themselves on such forward progress, but where is the consumer?, where is the engagement factor?, where is the interaction with the people that count the most, your customers. This should be the reason you create your social media strategy in the first place, to create the local expert, the trusted advisor role, create and engage your community and to provide information and advice for the long term.

One question to ask yourself is, why do people interact within social network sites in the first place? Is it to get your latest listing, or to find out about your open homes, or to get an appraisal? No, No, No, they are there to connect, to engage and interact with other like minded people, to share experiences, to share activities and create a sense of community and to stay in touch with family and friends.

You as a business person need to understand this motivation and work with it to really maximise the return on your investment of time in creating a social media strategy for you and your business

So what is the best way to approach a social media strategy, firstly you need to work out why you want to have a presence on social networks, is it because everyone else is doing it? Is it because your competitor down the road is doing it so you should as well right? Well wrong actually, do it because it gives you another advertising medium to capture the attention of prospective customers, do it because it is a huge billboard of opportunity to take your message to the masses, do it for you and the exposure it can bring you and your brand, do it because you are an expert in your field and do it because people are looking for an expert to advise, coach and motivate them.

Start by doing a business and digital media strategy and look at ways in which you’ll start to build an audience, do you start a blog first, do you jump on Facebook and MySpace or do you start using Twitter and on what network sites do you create a profile.

How do you declare your brand identity? Remember, you should be focused on how you and your team help other people, being the agent to call when listing a property and raising the profile of you and your office on the web.

The first Step, is create accounts on Facebook, Twitter, Linkedin and YouTube. Check in and see where you fit in to the community, upload or add all of your contacts into Facebook and start a routine of regularly adding “friends” to your page, the goal is to get your personal contacts engaged and to start to follow and engaging with other local businesses, build a schedule so that you can allocate time each week to this, otherwise you will find yourself becoming overwhelmed with trying to keep up with all the conversations that happen.

As you become more familiar with the sites you learn that Linkedin or Twitter may not be for you, that’s fine, at least you are now more informed than you where when you started. You are learning, next you can start to build your blog, your blog web site is your central hub with all roads leading to it, and everything you do should be designed to get people to your blog and interacting with you on your territory.

It’s great to have a Facebook page but even better when you have both working for you; you are in a win win situation.

Remember, with your blog comes responsibility, you’ll need to add content to it regularly and this takes time, so you should allocate at least 2+ hours a week.

Use the same strategy for all the social network sites you use, allocate time each week in your plan to update your sites and remember it’s about engaging your community not only about promoting your latest listing.

We can help you save time and money in building your social media business plan and setting up your pages and blog, we provide weekly coaching clinics that provide information and advice on content and tactics for social media. If you’d like to find out more about our social media integration plans and coaching clinics contact me at Mike Andrew Consulting and we’ll design and set up a coaching plan for you.

Watch Out for the Twitter DM Hacker

Watch out the Twitter DM hacker has struck again, having been a victim myself only last week please make sure you log in to Twitter and change your password. Don”t be tempted to share your Twitter log in details with any third party software program that you don’t trust.

The DM spam attack, presumably being spread by hacked Twitter accounts, contains unknown but dubious content, and we advise you to avoid clicking on anything that appears suspicious. Be on the look for tweets like, “hi, did you do this quiz thingy.”

I lost a few followers last week because of these hacked DM’s so please be warned and be careful. If you’d like to check the latest on these, search “dm spam” on Twitter.

Creating Your Real Estate tweet Plan

Twitter is the flavour of the year and a lot of you will be starting to use Twitter for the first time, and using it correctly to not only build your following but to get your followers to go where you want them to and to get buy in from them is not easy,even though there’s lot of people using the micro blogging service, you still need to have a plan to get the most out of the site. For those of you who have been using Twitter for awhile, this article will also help you get more response for all your efforts.

To be successful using Twitter you need to offer value to those following you, and you need to create what I call the “Trusted Adviser” role for yourself, once you have created this role and others see your expertise on a subject, they will follow you to get information and advice, but first you need to work very hard to create this persona.

Creating your Tweet plan and then following the strategy you have set up for yourself, will help you keep your plan on track. Just posting tweets about your product or listing is not engaging your followers nor is it creating value, it is just plain boring.

Setting out to become a trusted adviser means you need to listen,respond and broadcast and build your community, that’s what your followers are, your community, and you need to offer value in what you do to get engagement from them.

Creating your topic list is a good place to start, define your area of expertise and start to build that trust.

Some of the topics you could include if you are just starting out would be:

1. Your Expertise

2. What are your passions

3. Stats in your market – Good for those in real estate

4. Share your interests

5. Tweet what you are doing

6. Updates on your listings – real estate again

7. Share links and helpful information

So now you’ve worked on your list of topics, it’s time to create your tweet plan:

1. Make a list of topics

2. Identify your resources – sites to turn to, to get information

3. Schedule drips – spread your tweets out throughout the day

4. Be spontaneous

5. Follow other twitters of like minded interests and retweet information

Once you have your tweet plan worked out, you then need to set up your Twitter profile:

1. Create you Twitter background and personalise your profile

2. Complete your profile – serious followers always check out your profile before a follow.

3. Use monitoring and measuring tools to check your tweets – Use URL shorteners such as Bit.ly/Cli.gs/Hootsuite

4. Add video to your tweets by using Bubbletweet.com

5. Use Tweetlater.com to add an auto welcome  message for new followers

I hope that you find the above information helpful, particularly if you are just starting out with Twitter, and by using the tools I’ve suggested, it will give you the basics to start building your following and help you create the trusted adviser role.

Some helpful Twitter tools you can use to start building your Tweet plan:

1. Tweetdeck.com

2. Topify.com – Uses email notification for new followers

3. Hootsuite.com

4. Tweetlater.com

5. Tweetmeme.com – Search and retweet the hottest stories on Twitter.

Now to final the tip for you, using social media sites as farm areas can generate new sources of leads for you, particularly as you can tap into the conversations taking place right then and there. A great site for you to use is www.demandspot.com, it is a real time lead generation tool for real estate agents that taps into the conversations on Twitter, you enter the suburb or state into the site and it will give you the details of all conversations taking place about real estate in your selected suburb including contact information, you can then join in the conversation.

One word of warning though, please be careful how you use this tool, ramming your listings or services at them will not make you friends, the best way to engage these people, is to create the handshake and enter the conversation quietly.

Good luck.   

Image via CrunchBase

I don’t know about you, but I’m a little over the Twitter fad, I haven’t yet found it a successful advertising or promotion medium and it pails into insignificance when you compare it to Stumbleupon for promotion of blog posts and actually driving readers to your blog or web site.

There are those that will say it works really well for them, but in the last few months I’ve been tracking all the referrers of traffic to this blog and Twitter does not even rate, so either there are a lot of passive followers or as new research indicates very few advertisers think it an effective promotion tool. The survey carried out last month by linkedin Research network/Harris Polls found out of advertisers surveyed only 8% thought it effective.

The study also found that advertisers are more likely than consumers to know about Twitter and are more likely to believe in the microblogging tool’s future power to help promote products and services.

The research, which included surveys of both advertisers and the US public at large, revealed that just less than half of advertisers (45%) think Twitter is in its infancy and its use will grow significantly over the next few years. In contrast, 21% believe Twitter will not move into the mainstream and it will remain something mostly young people and the media will use.

Among consumers, the study found a different picture, especially in terms of awareness. A large majority (69%) say they do not know enough about Twitter to have an opinion about it, 12% think it’s in its infancy, 12% say it is just something that young people and the media use and 8% say it is already over.

Consumer Research Twitter

Effectiveness of Twitter

Among those who have an opinion about Twitter, feelings about the effectiveness of it for promoting products and ideas are lukewarm among both consumers and advertisers:

Among advertisers, just 8% say Twitter is very effective for promoting products and ideas while half (50%) say it is somewhat effective. One-third (34%) of advertisers say it is not that effective and 8% believe it is not at all effective for promoting products and ideas.

Only 8% of consumers say Twitter is very effective for promoting ideas and products and 42% believe it is just somewhat effective. Three in ten (31%) consumers say Twitter is not that effective and 19% feel it is not at all effective for promoting products and ideas.

I’d be interested in your thoughts on this survey either from a Twitter user or follower, just leave me a comment.

Well, it may be the flavour of the year, but new research from Hubspot has shed light on some interesting stats on those that use Twitter.

According to the survey 53% of users who have registered with Twitter, have no followers, 56% are not following anyone, and 55% have never even tweeted.

The companies “June 2009 State of the Twittersphere,”  found that more than 9% of Twitter users are completely inactive, meaning they have fewer than 10 followers, fewer than 10 friends and fewer than 10 updates.

Additional findings:

• 80% of users failed to provide a homepage URL
• 76% have not entered a bio in their profile (vs. 20% last year)
• 69% have not specified a location

Active Users are Regular Tweeters

In contrast to those who don’t use Twitter much, HubSpot did find that a large portion of individuals who are actively using Twitter have embraced it, and are tweeting on a regular basis.

Usage findings:

• The average user tweets .97 times per day
• The average user has tweeted 119.34 times in total
• The average user has a following-to-follower ratio of .7738

These stats are really interesting but lets take a look at the information and/or quality of what is being tweeted on a daily basis, looking at the research it shows that users frequently answer questions and communicate with other users rather than just answer the “What are you doing” question

From a location point of view, Twitter appears to be more popular in english speaking countries and cities such as London, larger US cities and Canada.

On doing some research of my own and looking at the stats of those that I follow, I’d have say only about 70% of them tweet on a daily basis, the rest are very passive and some I never even hear from, maybe time to do some culling and have a good ol’ clear out. 

This survey is really interesting in that it almost backs up the Nielsen report released in April of this year which estimated that 60% of Twitter users quit after their first month.

I just wonder, how many of Twitter users who are registered are genuine anyway, It’s not that hard to register a user name, it could even be yours if you haven’t thought to register it, maybe your competitors or a well known brand that’s been slow to catch on to the social media band wagon and just sit on it, that’s why you should read my post on grabbing your social media user name before your competitor does.

CoTweet Logo

Over the past 2 days I’ve had the chance to use a new Twitter application called CoTweet, and having signed up for a private beta testing account and being amongst the first users to play around with the site, I thought I’d give you a rundown of its capabilities.

At the moment it is still in private beta testing but i found it performed very well, apart from one or two little niggles such as getting a message “There was an error loading messages” when refreshing and the site occasionally sent me back to the main log in screen when navigating between screens and functions, that I’m sure will be worked out once testing is finished.

CoTweets main aim is to be a platform that helps companies reach and engage customers using Twitter, and the site has loads of great features that business can use. For example CoTweet allows for multiple users,which is ideal for companies wanting to keep control over what and who is using Twitter, particularly when representing your brand.

Some of the highlights on CoTweet, you can manage up to 4 Twitter accounts during the private beta period. You may share Twitter accounts with others (i.e. invite them to CoTweet with you through the same Twitter account). Or you may keep them unshared, so that only you may tweet through them. The way you might use this feature is people managing a shared account (perhaps for their company) as well as their personal account through CoTweet. Managing multiple accounts through one interface makes life so much easier.

CoTweet Main Screen

With one click you can view the profile of the person you are following as well as all conversations and updates and you can add notes and then allocate that note to other users on the site, this appears on the right hand side of the screen making it very easy to see the information of the person you are following. Another nifty addition is the use of CoTags, so what are CoTags? CoTags are short signatures that allow you to identify yourself as part of a message while sharing an account with multiple people, EG @CoTweet.

CoTweet User Screen

You can also integrate it with a Bit.ly account to shorten your URL’s and links, posts can be delayed which allows you to stagger your posts across the day, or scheduled to go live immediately and you can assign posts for follow up to other users.

Another very nice feature, is OnDuty, a system that keeps your team informed by sending email updates when new @replies and direct messages come in. Unless you’re glued to your Twitter client all day, it’s easy to lose track of messages and the value that immediate responsiveness brings to your brand.

OnDuty keeps you and your team in the loop and allows you to jump in on things as they progress. In the new updates you can not  only change your own OnDuty status, but also that of your team members as part of a new channel menu. Users are able to decide what happens when they’re set to “on” via their settings. At the moment, CoTweet only offer email notification but are looking to expand to other notification tools soon.

The only way to really know how great this application is, is to apply for a private beta test account and start using CoTweet. It’s a great application for companies and another great social media tool.

As a follow up to my post yesterday on Facebook vanity URL’s, it seems there’s a little more to this than I first thought. On reading the FAQ’s for Facebook user names, there are a few revealing terms about how you can go about claiming your URL and more importanlty a number of restrictions on you doing it. Firstly you have had to have a live page prior to May31st which is the cut off date and you have to have a minimum of 1,000 fans as of May31st.

That is no mean feat for most small business owners, let alone people like myself who don’t have anywhere near that many friends or followers. This rule will affect many operators who want to have their own vanity URL, just like Twitter and other sites allow you to do. The reason as I understand it from Facebook, is to stop squatters and people creating accounts just to take advantage of reserving a user name.

Squatters pose a real risk to the vanity URL issue going smoothly on Saturday, so it is good to see Facebook make a positive step to try and stop this happening.  

I’m aware that Facebook’s restrictions could create a situation where the primary desired name gets snatched up when the names are released on Saturday, But Facebook has already addressed this to an extent. If you’re at all concerned about your trademark or intellectual property being registered, you can almost be assured that you’re protected. You can submit this form now to prevent individuals from using your trademarked name or request removalafter the fact. However, it’s still unclear as whether or not those efforts will net you the user name of your choice if you don’t meet the fans requirement.

If I have any additional information to add to this before Saturday I’ll post an update for you.

Whilst Twitter & Myspace already provide vanity URL’s for users, Facebook has not until today, well actually from Saturday the 13th June,because that’s the date you’ll be able to get your vanity URL on Facebook. The vanity URL is an important part of social media, because it allows you to create a common theme across all the sites and it makes it easy for your followers to find you.

To get your URL, you’ll need to visit the following link on Saturday, http://www.facebook.com/username/, on the page you’ll find instructions on how to claim your URL or create your own, you will only be able to use numbers, letters & periods , no hyphens or underscores will be allowed. Once you have selected your URL you will not be able to change it.

I would think there will be a rush for names on Saturday so If I were you, I’d make a note in the diary and get in in as soon as the site goes live.

Good Luck   

Twitter Social Media

I’ve been following for a little while now the number of tweets that are appearing on Twitter from some users offering big numbers of followers that can be achieved by signing up to  third party applications and auto follow applications.

Some are free and some charge you for the privilege of using their applications to build followers, but I can’t help but feel that this is not what Twitter is all about, it’s just an ego trip of getting big numbers of followers that in reality have no interest in what you do or say.

I first wrote about this back in March, and since then I’ve seen my following grow slowly, I’ve not tried to push the growth just so I could claim a huge following. To me organic growth that happens because people like the information I provide or they find it useful is far more important to me than having a huge following that never interacts with me. Now I know there are some using Twitter, that by the nature of what they do will always attract a big following, celebrities such as Ashton Kutchner for example, but for me I’ll continue to try and build a following based on good quality links,information and updates, and I’ll be pleased that the followers I have are there because they want good information which is helpful to them in running their business, not because some auto follow system drives them to me.

To those of you who are new to Twitter, build your following on providing good quality links and information, communicate with your target market and to do this, the best advice I can give you is to:

1. Follow
2. Create
3. Engage 

To me this what social media is about, not what Twitter is becoming.

I’d be interested in your comments on this subject.

TwitterJobSearch Logo

There are a lot of third party applications available for Twitter to enable you to use the site better, and as those of you who use the site all the time will know, there is lots of information or links published in Tweets. As I mentioned in my last post, Twitter is launching new search capabilties with an improved search engine to allow you to find all those links and then group them, making them easy to find. When I search Twitter I use #tags, so that I can follow emerging trends in areas that I’m interested in and this allows me to keep up with the latest Tweets on that subject, but I’d never thought about using Twitter to search for jobs, until now.

A new search engine called TwitterJobSearch uses semantic intelligence, link crawling and crowdsourcing to track job and recruitment tweets. It searches Twitter and pulls out tweets it believes to be job adds, meaning you can search for any type of job in any location and the search engine will display the tweets that are relevant to your query. By searching for sales jobs, IT or accountants you’ll get a list of jobs vacant. It is not perfect, as I searched for sales jobs in Brisbane and got a news story in the results, it was still very good.

TwitterJobSearch Job Search Results

TwitterJobSearch claim that “over a 180,000 jobs have been advertised on Twitter in the last 30 days and indexed by them” so this makes it a comparable alternative to the major recruitment web sites.

If you have never thought of using Twitter as a free recruitment site then now is the time to try, if you’re looking for new sales staff or to fill any role you have vacant then this is a free resource for you, you’ll not only be promoting the job to your followers but it will also be picked up by job aggregators such as TwitterJobSearch.

So go forth and advertise.

You can follow Mike on Twitter here and get all the latest on social media and real estate marketing