Twitter is one of the fastest growing phenomena on the internet & it’s not just for the celebrities & politicians.

Lots of companies are now achieving great results by incorporating Twitter into both their marketing & their day-to-day online communications.

With people now spending more & more of their time on Social Media, it’s important that real estate agents & property managers start to become part of the online conversation.

What is Twitter & Why Is It So Good For Real Estate Agents?

Twitter is a micro-blogging platform that allows messages (tweets) of 140 characters or less to be posted up onto the web in real time.

It provides the convenience of text messaging but with the additional advantage that the messages are posted up onto the web for others to see, plus it’s without the costs involved with SMS, because Twitter is free to use.

How Can Agents Leverage Their Marketing By Using Twitter?

Did you know that one single message posted onto Twitter can also be automatically sent out across to numerous other Social Media sites like Facebook, LinkedIn, Friendfeed, Plaxo, MySpace, Blogger, WordPress, etc… all from just one single tweet.

Also, if other people on Twitter like your message then they will often share your tweet with their followers as well, and your friends on Facebook could share the message with their friends on Facebook too, etc, etc.

Which means that one tweet can not only be leveraged out across a number of your own Social Media accounts but they can also end up being shared amongst the Social Networks of your friends & followers to help you get your message out across the web.

For instance, there have been lots of times where I’ve posted a message onto Twitter which other people on Twitter have found interesting & subsequently they’ve shared the message with their followers by Retweeting my message.

And likewise there’s  lots of times where I Retweet other people’s messages that I think my followers may be interested in.

Here’s an example of how a retweeted message looks.

RT @GregVincent: Suncorp says Thank You Mr Hooker as they sell LJ Hooker to LJ Hooker ~ http://ow.ly/qQ6d

Sometimes, the people who retweet your message have only a handful of followers & others have thousands of followers who can potentially see your message.

And, this is only a small part of how Twitter can spread your message.

Here’s a snapshot of how Twitter works for me & how it could work for you.

As well as writing articles & posting them onto sites like GenYre = energy, each week I write the Real Estate Agent Newsletter for the Real Estate Agent Success Club & send it out to agents via email.

Prior to using Social Media, email was the only way that I could share my newsletters out across the web.

But now I can also share each of the Real Estate Agent Newsletters with my followers & friends across all of my Social Networks via a single tweet.

For example, here’s what I do each week.

Once I’ve completed my newsletter I email it out to my database. Then I simply post a tweet with a link to the Real Estate Agent Newsletter up onto Twitter for my Twitter followers to read. And then within seconds, that same tweet automatically appears as an update on my Facebook profile, Facebook Fan Pages, plus it also appears on my other profiles like LinkedIn, Friendfeed, Plaxo, etc.

On top of that, I also have a Twitter feed appearing on my websites which means that if someone is visiting my site then they can also read my tweets & potentially read the newsletter too.

Should Agents Have More Than One Twitter Account?

You may have noticed that the Twitter feed for this site appears on the right hand side about half way down the site & features updates from Twitter.com/GenYRealEstate & not my personal Twitter account.

Twitter also allows you to have multiple accounts & I’ve created a separate Twitter account specifically for this site.

The reason I’ve done this is because the GenYre site has been set up for multiple contributors & the contributors will also have access to update the GenYRealEstate Twitter account which enables them to share tweets that they feel may be helpful to the Genyre = energy readers & followers.

(Real Estate Agents could easily do a similar thing by having a personal twitter account for each staff member  & a company twitter account that each of their staff could tweet interesting real estate related content to.)

Since the Real Estate Agent Newsletter provides helpful tips for real estate agents which is good information for GenYre = energy readers & followers, I also send out a Tweet linked to each week’s newsletter via the Twitter.com/GenYRealEstate account simultaneously.

If you think this sounds a bit hard to do or really time consuming, check this out…

Now that I have this set up, all I have to do is write an article, email it to my database & tweet a link to the newsletter and within seconds I have shared my newsletter out to thousands & thousands of people amongst lots of different networks over the internet.

When I think back to what I had to do years ago to get thousands of people to read one of my articles & the expense involved, I have to say that spreading a message doesn’t get much easier or any cheaper than this.

Plus, there’s also an extra added bonus.

Because my articles now sit up on the web forever, people also come across them via Google, Bing, Yahoo and other Social Bookmarking sites like Digg, Stumbleupon & Delicious, etc.  People will often quote from my articles & link across to them from their own articles too.

If you’d like to find out more about how you can create a similar marketing strategy within your agency and how it all works, you may want to come along and catch up at one of the Social Media for Real Estate Seminars.

Here’s something else that works really well…

Before I go, there’s one more thing that I do with Twitter that I’ve found works really well & could work well for real estate agents too.

In a previous post I shared a YouTube video I did about The Password To Help You Achieve Your Goals & whilst it’s really easy to create & upload a video onto YouTube, the hardest part is getting a large number of people to watch it.

So, what I do is, anytime someone follows me on Twitter they automatically receive an email from me saying,

” Thanks for following me. Here’s a quick video tip I made that may help you to achieve your goals http://tr.im/lQg1 “

I set this automated email response up from my Twitter account about 4 – 5 months ago & before doing this I’d only had about 20 people who’d watched the video in the previous 2 months. Now the videos had over 650 views & I haven’t touched it since setting this automated response up.

So much of my marketing happens automatically for me now.

Note:  http://Tr.im is a URL shortening service that makes it easier to link to a website within the 140 characters available on Twitter & the links are trackable.

As of today I’ve had 339 people click open the link directly from the automated emails sent to my new followers. I don’t know where the rest of the other 300 views have come from. They could be from the previous blog post or from people simply watching videos directly on YouTube.  I’ve done the video once & the rest just happens.

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And in Nielsen’s March 2009 report on Social Networking’s New Global Footprint, their research showed that “time spent on social network and blogging sites is growing at over 3x the rate of overall Internet growth & the total amount of time spent on Facebook increased by 566%.”

Yet with such overwhelming statistics, it’s surprising to see that there are still a lot of real estate companies that don’t appear to be embracing Social Media at all.

If you’re not currently part of the conversation on Social Media you may think that ignorance is bliss, but it’s not.

With over ¼ of the US & Australian population now using Facebook, then I’m sorry to say that by ignoring it, agents are missing out on an opportunity to engage personally with an enormous part of their market.

For example, I recently did an internet marketing campaign that was sent out exclusively via both email & Social Media and the results were quite staggering.

43.4% of the traffic came from Social Media sites like Twitter & Facebook and the remaining 56.6% came via email.

Whilst email is probably the only thing that hasn’t changed very much over the past 10 years, there are now much better ways that you can re-purpose the same email marketing message & leverage it out to a much larger audience.

And in a recent experiment conducted by Nielsen, “it actually appears that Social Media use makes people consume email more, not less.”

If you’re still not convinced about embracing Social Media, then check out this incredible insight from Socialnomics.

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There are lots of ways that Twitter  can help you in the day-to-day running of a real estate agency, but one way is by creating a Private Twitter account.

And the great news is that establishing a ‘Private’ Twitter account takes only a couple of minutes to create & it’s Free.

Twitter is a micro-blogging platform that allows you & your team to post messages up onto the web in real time but with a ‘Private’ account you can decide who sees your tweets.

Rather than sending out a bulk text message to your team, you could send out a Tweet that is broadcast out to anyone who has access to your Private Twitter account.

It could become an important part of your messaging system. You can also upload photos or videos and tweet them privately through the account to any member of your team.

You could also use it for a secured Brain Storming session where you can have people tweeting their thoughts or ideas in real time and all the data from this collection of thoughts remains up their on your ‘Private’ Twitter account to recall whenever you need it.

It will also provide a way that people can tweet their thoughts & ideas well after the Brain Storming session.

All you need to do is decide on a name for the Brain Storming session, say genyre. Then insert a #hashtag in front of the tweets, to make them #genyre & then all of your tweets will be grouped together & can be found very easily on Twitter in the future.

To give you an example of how a ‘Private’ Twitter account works I currently run a couple of ‘Private’ Twitter accounts.

One for the attendees of my Twitter for Real Estate Workshops & the other one is an account based around a marketing strategy that I’ve developed called ‘The Area Monopoly Strategy’.

As a part of launching this concept I decided to create a ‘Private & Strictly Real Estate Agent Only’ Twitter account.

I did this because there are some parts of this strategy that I needed to be able to share with agents exclusively & weren’t for public viewing.

Now, if you are an agent & you’d like to join in then you are most welcome to send through a request for access, but you don’t have to if you don’t want to. This is just a live example of how one of these ‘Private’ Twitter accounts works for me.

Here’s how it works.

To join in go to http://www.Twitter.com/AreaMonopoly and send me a request as seen in the picture below. Then once I’ve confirmed that you’re a real estate agent I’ll manually go in & authorise your access to the account.

Note: To see the Send Request button in the image above you must be logged into your Twitter account.

Now if you don’t have a Twitter account, then this may provide you with a good excuse for why you should go to http://www.Twitter.com & register your Free Twitter account right now.

Once I have approved your request you don’t have to wait for me to send a Tweet. You will be able to go in & read all the previous Tweets that have been sent out via that ‘Private’ Area Monopoly Twitter Account.

I recommend you go into Twitter & set up a ‘Private’ account for your company & give it a go. You’ll be amazed at how simple & effective it can be.

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The GenYre = energy blog is here to provide a voice for Gen Y, who are now the driving force of the real estate industry.

Agents, property managers & staff members can use this site to share ideas & knowledge that will help all of us understand a lot more about where the real estate industry is heading with marketing, training, customer service & technology.

There has never been a generation that has had a greater impact on the world & now the future of the real estate industry is in the hands of Gen Y.

For the first time in history older generations are looking to the younger generations for help with understanding & embracing the new world of technology & many of the Gen X’s & Baby Boomers are really struggling to keep up.

The majority of real estate agencies are owned & operated by Baby Boomers & Gen X’s, yet the old-school ways of doing business are fast becoming irrelevant & out-dated.

The ‘New Age’ of real estate is here & Gen Y is going to have a huge impact on the real estate industry.

After the past 20 years in real estate I’ve seen a lot of changes take place, but these changes are nothing like the massive real estate 2.0 changes that have already begun changing our industry.

This blog should help to fill the gap for some of the agents that are currently struggling with technology & assist them to understand what today’s online real estate customer wants & expects.

I am really excited to see what new ideas will develop along the way.  I’m also looking forward to seeing what some of the contributors will be sharing with us along the way.

Whether you are from Gen Y, X or a Baby Boomer, this blog will always provide information to help you.

If you have any thoughts or opinions about anything posted on this blog please feel most welcome to comment, but please don’t openly promote your business.

If you would like to apply to be a contributor please email your request/submission here.

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