Earlier this month I decided to take a second look at Twitter. I was still unsure about what this little utility could do, but saw some potential with social networking. The 2007 REALTORS® Conference & Expo presented a great chance to test it out, so I set up an account and began following a few people from ActiveRain.
During the conference there was a lot of activity as Twitterers shared highlights from breakout sessions, great finds on the Expo floor, lunch and dinner invitations, or just quick quips. It was a great opportunity to connect and learn with others, or just get a glimpse into another facet of their personaility.
Want to see some examples?
Here are some of the insightful, thought-provoking, and humorous tweets from people that I follow on Twitter. And if you like what they have to say in 140 characters or less, I encourage you to visit their sites!
Joel Burslem
Future of Real Estate Marketing
"Plane broken. Bad news for us ..." followed by "Good news! Swapped planes. We're in the air at 3:15pm ... fingers crossed."
"Just finished panel to Homescape crowd of newspaper execs - takeaway: newspapers are looking for new ways to partner with agents."
"Realty Alliance marketing and IT folks get Web 2.0 but are overwhelmed by options - looking for ROI."
Kristal Kraft
Denver Dwellings
Kristal Sells Denver
"OK there's a downside to staying at Treasure Island. The pirates are having a battle right outside my window; cannons and all!""Julie Ryan is fantastic. I can hardly wait for her session, it will be worth the price of NAR admission alone! http://www.julieryan.net/"
"One minute vacation=make a video slide show of a very nice place. Send it to clients on a bad weather day."
"Historical chart of local market helps bring sellers into the NOW not 2 years ago. Impact of reality. Answer emotional with facts and data."
"Best quote as per ResPres (Jeff Turner): is real estate driving technology or technology driving real estate?"
Dustin Luther
Rain City Guide
Move Trends
"What happens in Vegas, stays in Vegas... Unless it gets tweeted.""Seth Godin: Realtors get paid to spread ideas."
"No one should be forced to eat cheesecake on a stick."
"Buying newspaper ads is like fishing in the desert."
"Lesson learned: roll-the-dice for a cady is infinitely more interesting than blogging."
Daniel Rothamel
RealEstateZebra
"Seth Godin: to someone who doesn't know they have a problem that you can solve, you are invisible."
"Lou Holtz: the first thing a football coach looks at in a house is resale value."
[utterz] http://tinyurl.com/2xhfnx NAR2007 Day 2 Recap (in Stripes): Today, I am going to try and "be remarkable."
"breakfast, pack, airport, filght, Dulles, 2hr drive home at 11pm. Gonna be a long day..."
Jessica Swesey
InmanBlog
"Who's twittering from NAR next week? I'm going to give it the old college try."
"From Sherry Chris: brand awareness not as important in advertising today as driving traffic to Web site."
"45% of new home buyers in the last year made no downpayment. Should we be worried?"
Jay Thompson
PhoenixRealEstateGuy
"Chatting with the Google guys. G Earth Pro is cool."
"New blog post: Why Are You Wearing That Zillow Shirt? They are the Enemy! http://tinyurl.com/26cjvj"
"3rd place in poker tourney. Payout of course was 1st and 2nd..."
Convention quote of the day: agent walking by sign says to friend, "what is 'Wi-Fi'?" Friend says, "something technical probably"
"New blog post: Experimental Business Card #1 http://tinyurl.com/39wnrr"
Jeff Turner
Jeff's Utterz site
NARUpdates.Wordpress.com
RealEstateShows
"Learned new acronym... PUPPI's - People Unable To Purchase Property Independently... a gen y thing.""(utterz) http://tinyurl.com/2x2gw5 Jackie Colson-Miller on Blogging: Jackie Colson-Miller talks about the positive benefits."
"Consumers have no idea what the value propositions of real estate brands are."
"(utterz) http://tinyurl.com/2dn7by The Ranch Broker Network: I just loved the story of how this website got started."
"Two hours of sleep, I'll be surprised if I can see the keys on my iPhone today."
Bill Wendel
RealEstateCafe
"Booth Sleuth: If MacDonalds & Burger King have 99 cent menus, why not a $99 "a la carte" menu for buyers & sellers? Watch for Tweets."
"Just drove by "Say I do" Wedding Drive Through in Las Vegas. Looks as gimmicky as designated dual agency. Divorce RE commissions?"
"Booth Sleuth: http://postyourlisting.com/ makes this buyer agent wish I listed property. Maybe I'll input FSBOs?"
"Twitter synergy: 4 RE agents comparing memories of Habitat builds, Good Neighbors Awards, talking about mapping local charitable initiative."
Getting started with Twitter is easy. Just visit www.Twitter.com to set up your account, and then start posting your own 'micro-blogs' and building your list of people to follow. Sometimes the greatest accomplishments begin with just a simple thought or remark. Start using Twitter today and see the possibilities!
Someone AT a convention actually asked "What is wi-fi?" ?????? My goodness...........
Guess I better check out Twitter, it sounds like!
John,
Nice to meet you at NAR, first online via Twitter, then in person. Doubly grateful that you included some of my Tweets from NAR in your post above. If readers are wondering what to do with Twitter, here's a wiki showing more examples of B2B (business to business) and B2C (business to consumer) tweets from the NAR convention and beyond. My original goal was to come up with 20 ways for real estate agents to use Twitter, now I think 200 ways are possible with wiki posts from fellow agents, home buyers, and sellers.
One more note, if readers want to know more about the "Twitter synergy"...
...here's a social networking site real estate innovators can use to share fund raising ideas and map their own "micro-philanthropy" efforts:
Want me to follow you on Twitter? Let me via http://twitter.com/realestatecafe
Bill - Great to meet you, too ... much better than sitting in a traffic jam. :) Your Wiki really shows the innovation, creativity and personality of the Twitter community. I like your idea of micro-philanthropy. Changeagents should be a very popular site. Thanks for your insights!
Mariana - That's just how I was a couple of weeks ago. Twitter? What?? My NAR experience really showed some great possibilities. You would have loved following all of the live-blogging from Seth Godin's presentation. Today we're tweeting about Squidoo.
Start by following just a few people, and I know it won't be long before you're adding some great content to the conversations. Get out there and tweet!!
John,
Thanks for your vote of confidence about ePhilanthropy and Cause Marketing in Real Estate. Also, glad to read that you've already begun to write about "micro-philanthropy":
Any ideas about how to build traffic for http://changeagents.ning.com? Personally, I'd like to see the industry create a real estate version of (product)RED. Here's an idea starter for a friendly fund raising competition for AIDS orphans. Anyone want to participate in a webinar before World AIDS Day (12/1/07):
Maybe we can get Bono to make a cameo appearance as he did in Boston a month ago:
My understanding is that he is an investor in Move.com
Bill - Micro-philanthropy is an intriguing concept. Reminds me very much of Muhammad Yunus' micro-finance. You could draw AR attention to changeagents by writing a post about social networking and using the site as an example. For widespread coverage I think it will take a combination of Facebook, Gather, LinkedIn and even MySpace. I'm sure that Jeff Turner will have some thoughts on this, too.
Mike - The Zebra (Daniel Rothamel) takes his branding real seriously and has fun with it at the same time. I saw that first-hand at NAR. I think 'Twitter' was chosen because it sounds innocent and non-intrusive. Give it a try! Thanks for reading my blog!