Last week I presented at A Morning with Australia and New Zealand’s Top Agents and had the absolute pleasure to catch up with my friend Julie Ryan, whom I regard as one of the world’s best real estate trainers.

When connecting with Julie on LinkedIn, I happened to notice one of her recent presentations was available on SlideShare and thought I’d share some of Julie’s insights with GenYre = energy readers.

Whilst I appreciate that the SlideShare presentation isn’t anywhere near as effective as it would be with Julie presenting it, I believe that you can still gain a lot out of her presentation slides.

There are some great points that Julie shares about appearing different in your market place. She is also a big believer in using the internet more effectively to help build your profile and make the right first impression.

Julie has also included some very interesting stats about Social Media and a great insight into Dominant Buyer Motives,  plus lots more…

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Are You Using One Of The Most Powerful Tools On The Internet – Twitter? If you’re not, then I hate to tell you but you’re missing out on something that can have a massive impact on your online success & help to spread your marketing message out all over the web at the same time.

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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Australia’s Number 1 Real Estate Franchise, Ray White have decided to open their doors to The 2009 Ray White Wealth Conference by allowing agents from outside of their network to also attend their premier 2 day event  (normally exclusive to their franchise members only).

Some agents outside of the Ray White network will see this as a great opportunity to catch a glimpse of where Australia’s number 1 franchise are heading into the future.

On the other hand, there will also be some of the Ray White members that may feel a bit uneasy about this decision, but in my opinion I feel that this is a great initiative.

By opening their doors, Ray White are displaying some refreshing foresight & the sort of abundant mindset that a lot of franchise groups will need to start embracing as our industry keeps rapidly moving forward.

The invitation has been extended out to any member of apmasphere.com.au ( a free website designed to help property managers & real estate agents) whether they be part of the Ray White Group or not.

Ray White said, “This year’s Wealth Conference is focused on growth and the future of our industry. And so it is appropriate that this year we are exploring some new ideas, like inviting apmasphere members to attend the conference.

Some have wondered “how can that work?”. For us, it’s pretty simple – we know that what we are going to talk about is relevant to everyone in our industry, and that Ray White property managers can only benefit from having some of the other forward thinking property managers in our industry be part of our conference.”

Embracing collective thinking is definitely the way forward for our industry & by allowing others to experience first hand what the Ray White network has to offer displays a sign of strength, belief & an open-minded approach towards moving forward.

It will be interesting to see the post-event feedback from both apmasphere members & the agents attending from within the Ray White network.

To learn more about this event, you can read Brian White’s invitation to apmasphere members here.

Disclaimer: I will be speaking at this event about Social Media, but it wasn’t until today that I found out that agents outside of Ray White could also attend.

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I don’t know if you find the same thing, but nowadays, we seem to have so many logins & passwords that we have to remember, so to help you, here’s a simple concept that can not only help you to remember your passwords but it can help you to achieve your goals at the same time.

Everyday there seems to be one time or another where we need to provide a password or PIN number to gain access to an account, chat with friends on Facebook or even hire a video.

Remembering these passwords can sometimes drive you crazy & can become very frustrating.

Over the past few years I’ve found a simple way that I can choose a password that is easy to remember & it’s helped me to succeed at the same time.

Here’s a video explaining the simple concept…

As an example of how this could work for you: Let’s say that you’re planning an overseas holiday to Fiji & you wanted to go in say February next year, then using this strategy you could create passwords like fiji0210 or fiji1002 to help you stay on track.

Most success trainers will agree that goals must have a deadline attached to them & short term goals should be reviewed daily.

Whatever you set as your goal, this simple strategy will provide you with a daily reminder of your goal & it will help you to stay on track.

3 Simple Goal Setting Steps
1. Establish a short term goal & write it down.
2. Set a deadline for achieving the goal.
3. Create a password to constantly remind you of your goal.

I know this works & I hope it helps you to achieve your goals too.

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