Tweet Us Better Mr. Liniger! — When In The World Is RE/MAX International?

by Ryan Hartman

Retechulous...

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Woe is me. I’m feeling rejected, ignored, and well, sorta “LOST.” Where and “When” the heck In the World  is RE/MAX International?….

Denver?

1977?

Here’s the thing. I’ve controlled “Twitter.Com/remax” for over a year now and I still haven’t received one email from somebody at International asking me to forfeit the identity. I expected they’d shut me down due to a corporate policy that stipulates I’m not allowed to use the RE/MAX name online.

I remember that when I grabbed the handle on a lark I was thinking, “well with the popularity of this Twitter thing (whatever it is) I’m sure mother RE/MAX will be in touch soon to snag or perhaps even buy it away by grandfathering me in as a 100 percenter or something”.  Wishful thinking. Nothing happened and I forgot I even owned the identity.

So when I recently noticed I’d been picking up “followers” out of the blue, I decided to lob a few tweets as an experiment of sorts to see what the reaction might be.  I posted mostly recruiting and company website plugs for the RE/MAX I’m currently at, and picked up 70 or so more followers over the span of a few weeks.  But still, no response from the Big Balloon.

The only thanks I got for my effort was my new broker calling a few weeks ago to ask why I had porn on the site.  I guess I’d accidentally followed or reciprocated on a follow request from a Philly area escort service, and a colleague of ours pointed it out to him. I apologized and zapped the pretty lady off of the profile, and that was that.  (At least I think…)

Anyway, I don’t know why, but this Twitter.com/remax thing has really been on my mind a lot lately for some reason. Isn’t Twitter a big enough deal that someone at RE/MAX, maybe even one of my recent RE/MAX colleague followers would have dimed me out to the appropriate department in Denver?  I mean, I think I sorta deserve something for my efforts. Maybe at least rebuke from International for using the corporate name in vain?

You see, I  want to know that the huge flying orb I’ve aligned my career with is hip to all this game changing web 2.0 stuff. And I think RE/MAX Associates wordwide are certainly free to have some doubts about the company’s committment to technology with how badly the super well intentioned but grossly unusable “Lead Street” back-end has been ignored over the past few years?

(RE/MAX friends, please feel free to show your support for this last statement by listing your beefs with the LeadStreet “CRM” in the comments here.)

That said, even if we grant that LeadStreet is really ENeighborhoods’s fault, there’s still this failure to set a good example and at least pretend to adopt this social media stuff!  If RE/MAX doesn’t have or doesn’t feel the need for a social media manager, it’s all good.  (I guess Greg probably approves .)  But I still think they should set an example for their 100k + associates worldwide and at least hook up a respectable Twitter presence. It’d really cost virtually nothing in time or resources.

I mean, come on y’all! Even Twitter.Com/Weichert has 900 or so followers on on 37 tweets.  Yeah, Remax brethren. Yellow-Ass, Balloonless Weichert is hip… and we’re not! (Ok, I guess maybe we shouldn’t feel too bad.  Thriving competitors like Sotheby’s, Era, Coldwell Banker, and C21 are all also missing corporate twitter profiles from what I can tell…)

I guess maybe I’m going a bit long here and could probably cut off my first post as a pup with that last little rip, but man this is just too much fun!

So here’s just a little more…

Open letter to “The Man”

Dear Dave,

I mean… Mr. Liniger Sir,

(I really do think you’re the man despite the ribbing above…)

Allow me to lend a helping hand.

Let me show you how RE/MAX International can spend almost nothing and help its franchisees recruit hundreds, maybe thousands of nervous Realogy-heads while spurring on a modest, though profitable spike in traffic to corporate web projects like remaxbeta.com.

Step 1. Smack me down and claim Twitter.Com/REMAX. It’s yours–email me for the password, login, and take control. I’m too nervous to really use it anyway.

Step 2. Tie the “Dave’s Blogstreet” feed to your new Twitter Profile using a service like twitterfeed.com.  For better or worse, more syndication will make you more famous (as I’m guessing I’m about to find out firsthand.)

Step 3.  Every morning have your secretary tweet this: “JoinRemax.Com. We Cool, and We Ain’t Got Bankruptcy Rumors”.  Thousands of nervous realogy Twitterers will find the controversial link.  I’m guessing a good number will happily jump on the balloon after realizing they’ve spent years being pimped out for ridiculously low commission splits.

Step 4. Tweet something weekly like: “Psst.  Peep RemaxBeta.Com. What do you think? Pretty hot eh?” Even use proper English if you’d like. Just be sure to link back to a RE/MAX Web entity early and often. The resulting traffic from promoting RE/MAX related sites will eventually translate to a bunch of 1% blips for international. Trust me, this stuff just works.  And the bigger you are, the more profitable 140 characters a day is likely to become.

Step 5. And now that you’re having fun, please forget about Twitter. It’s primarily a time waster for most of us, and really isn’t worth any more of your attention. Dare I even say you can delegate the tweets to a pretty Denver twit (er..er..?)  Instead, buy a ticket to Phoenix and head to Unchained for the good stuff in late April. We’ll all be psyched to meet you there.  You’ll be an honored guest amongst this merry band of bawldguys, wanna-be vendorsluts, and  hacker bloodhounds!

(Man that was a whole lotta fun! Thanks Greg, for the opportunity…)