So…
If you have a minute, please go follow Twitter.com/229RockGlen.
Over the next few weeks, this clever little property is going to automatically follow a whole bunch twitterers in the Philly area, systematically inviting lots of local folk to take a little tour inside.
Go ahead… follow the house to see what I mean….
Keahi Pelayo says:
I guess practical is in the eye of the beholder. It will be fun to see if its use leads to sales and income.
Aloha,
Keahi
October 7, 2009 — 12:48 pm
Ryan Hartman says:
Good point… I’ll post analytics… again, these twitter folk are way down the quality totem pole.
But if 100 click through to a blog post about the individual property on your blog, and if 1 of those 100 becomes an opt-in to your lead capture offer, and if 1 in x of those become transactions….
Then we’re talking about practical. For a 20 minute setup you can have:
1. Another bullet in your listing presentation
2. A passive way to promote the listing and your blog.(I’m sure someone’s going to ask me how this account will “autofollow?”)
3. Measureable results – time spent vs. income generated.
More practical than how most are using social media these days?
October 7, 2009 — 12:54 pm
Steve Holben says:
I can see where this could work. I’d suggest adding the neighborhood to the twitter title or some such broader identifier. I think I’ll try this with one of my new homes in Wellshire here in Denver. It is one of the nicest neighborhood in the city, but people don’t realize there are new homes in there.
October 7, 2009 — 1:08 pm
Steve Holben says:
This is an interest site. Seems to be a combination of residential and commercial, which make it a good place to ask anybody why more commercial brokers don’t try to dovetail their commercial work with selling occupants of their commercial space homes. There is increasing activity in SE Denver office space, and when I suggest this to the brokers in commercial they behave like I’m suggesting they kill their family or such. It wouldn’t be that difficult to developa relationship with broker or builders, make a referral, and get a commission.
October 7, 2009 — 1:17 pm
Greg Dallaire says:
Ryan if it’s extremely low cost and takes care of itself well then it’s a pretty impressive tool just wondering how much it costs to do this?
Isn’t this the type of thing that would make twitter kind of annoying? I’m very careful of what I do on facebook and twitter I do post majority of real estate oriented stuff but don’t you think they still want a person associated with it?
October 7, 2009 — 6:52 pm
Amanda says:
I’m not a fan of people who use twitter for their own promotion however I suppose in some case it works. Will be interesting to watch what happens.
October 8, 2009 — 1:37 am
Cheryl Johnson says:
Ryan, good idea! But shouldn’t each tweet contain a tiny url linkback to the property’s web site, or a video page? 🙂
October 8, 2009 — 3:24 am
Ryan Hartman says:
Greg — I’d say unless you have patience to manage your account, twitter’s already annoying 🙂 So why not join the merry band of spammers and get some exposure for your listings in the process?
Cheryl — Yeah, I forgot the links. Figuring folks will click the property address for more info/pics. But as I schedule my tweets with Tweetspinner, I’ll be sure to include links…(plus, of course, the urls will be trackable via bud or bitly, etc..)
October 8, 2009 — 5:35 am
Steve Holben says:
My wife has a successful PR company, and has learned to use social media VERY productively, including Twitter. She has 10,000 followers whom she’s vetted from the vast legions of spam followers that irritate us all, and now can have releases about her clients to relevant media all over the world with the push of a button. She’s extraordinarily bright and tech savy, and drives her competitors nuts with how effective she is. Having seen what she has done with it, I think we in the real estate and building biz best put our clubs down, come out of the cave, and tech up; including Twitter.
October 8, 2009 — 8:52 am
Mark Madsen says:
Ryan, I have several Twitter accts, each with its own purpose. They are all easy to manage through http://www.hootsuite.com, especially if I integrate my Twitter activity into my daily GoogleReader, Posterous, FB and Tumblr routines.
Have you considered creating an individual tag or category on your blog for each property, and then auto feeding them (with tiny url) back out to the targeted twitter accts?
While the actual property details may be a component of what people search online for, I believe that buyers also spend their time researching neighborhoods and culture.
Once you’ve blasted each property Twitter acct with the size, rooms and listing price, you could probably update several listing feeds at once by including posts on your blog about relevant items that fit in the same category… or something like that.
Obviously, an “online social networking” agenda focuses more on relationship building, but I also try to take advantage of all the tech tools that allow me to leave breadcrumbs back to specific info “landing” pages on my various blogs.
Regardless of how well we pretend to know exactly what our potential clients want, it is amazing how many odd search phrases and online roads lead them back to our sites.
Either way, I’m looking forward to hearing more about your stats as you work through this strategy.
Thanks
mm
October 11, 2009 — 12:02 pm