The following is a ghost review from one of lenederama’s original contributors, Bill Rice at leadmarketwatch.com
Anyone ever heard of Twitter?
This vibrant community of buzzing 140 character messengers is quickly becoming an embedded part of many real estate and mortgage professionals’ business toolbox.
If you haven’t experienced Twitter yet or wonder what it is I will simply describe it in Twitter’s own words, and encourage you to give it a try:
Twitter is a service for friends, family, and co–workers to communicate and stay connected through the exchange of quick, frequent answers to one simple question: What are you doing?
But, why is this important to you. The easiest explanation might be to simply show you how your colleagues are already leveraging Twitter:
- @jburslem (Joel Burslem, Future of Real Estate Marketing), tells us that Twitter is a way to listen to your customers
- @ResPres (Jeff Turner, RealEstateShows.com), tunes into what customers are saying about Realtors and real estate
- @MortgageReport (Brian Brady, The Mortgage Report), tells us what the mortgage market is doing
- @mortgageporter (Rhonda Porter, The Mortgage Porter ), uses it to inform her clients and alert them to loan programs she is currently closing
This certainly shows that there is a lot of good information and alerts flying around the Twitterspace, but can you really get work done with Twitter. This is where I came up with an idea to turn Twitter into my contact management system. And, appropriately enough the seed for SalesTwit! was 140 characters and expressed on Twitter:
How much richer would your relationships/business be if randomly, for no reason, you call or email just one person in your contacts? Now.
The concept and application is very simple:
- Use your existing Twitter account,
- Follow salestwit,
- Sign-up at www.salestwit.com (use the invite code: lenderama)–of course it is FREE!
- Load your contacts from Gmail, Yahoo!, Outlook, Apple Mail, LinkedIN, etc.
- Starting getting simple reminders in your Twitter feed to contact folks via private direct message on you phone, IM, email, or existing Twitter client
The idea is simple, the results are amazing. As I was testing my account, I shocked old high school and college friends, past colleagues and clients, and even prospects that I thought were long dead leads. A simple “hi, how are you doing!” for no good reason will make your life richer.
Give it a try and tell us what you think. Oh, and follow me!
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{ 15 comments… read them below or add one }
There you go Bill, turning a perfectly good waste of time into something productive. :p
I played with this last night, and have to say it’s a pretty cool idea for twitter junkies like myself
I didn’t “get” twitter for quite a while…Brian Brady is actually who inspired me with his reporting of the rates. My clients are following me more than I know…which has been fun!
I hadn’t heard of this service. I am excited to give it a try.
I think getting your voice into the room (market) is key to broadening any brand, including your personal one.
And, in my experience the more daily tasks I can blend into one seamless workflow the better. That is what Twitter has allowed me to do.
Communicate with team members, clients, family, and now with SalesTwit! prospects too–all in one interface, my Twhirl Twitter client!
Rhonda, you and Brian do a great job and make fertile Web 2.0, business applied, examples.
I love the brevity of Twitter, but a good question arises which is how to use it?
I (as http://www.Movoxo.com) use it to push some news and headlines in very brief form out, usually about marketing.
we also have a seperate account for http://www.iSignature.com, which I’m using to push news..but obviously the most concise relevant parts.
Brian Brady pushing rates out is good; realtors should be using this for market news, new listings, wants/needs, and local events within the next 72 hours around their farm area… has anyone mashed twitter to google maps?
Sorry, everytime I see “Try Twitter, Its great” I go and have a look at mine, and I still dont see the benefits. I have read it so many times on so many great blog sites it must be true. I will go and follow you now and see where you take me!
Follow me as West Hampstead. Ive got the legendary Eric Bramblett following me.
Very interesting. I will try this in my new project. I’m excited about the results. Thanks!
If we all add our Twitter identity we could follow each other, boost each others traffic and maybe learn something; about other real estate businesses and about Twitter. I have just started but…
Follow me as LondonLettings
It is very nice and i am excited about the result.
Ok, since August a few of you must have spotted this and I now have 27 followers. I have looked at what they are doing whenever I go on, but are they looking at what I tell then I am doing. It looks like all followers are to do with real estate or London, but one US Realtor came to London, I posted a note saying ‘go here, see this’ etc but I sure there was nothing going on, and no-one benefitted. Plod on!
I’ve been hearing about this twitter thing lately. I’m thinking of giving this one a try. Let’s see where twitter will bring me.
No doubt. Think about it this way. Traditionally, if you had 5 connections…you had 5 separate connections. Not with Twitter. With Twitter, if you have 5 personal connections you actually CREATE 25 potential connections. Facebook actually does this a little better.
Now, if you only double your personal connections (I would assume that you understand that these should be people you personally know, add value to and interact with) to a total of 10…you will have exponentially grown the total number of potential connections to well over 100. Add only 5 more? It gets CRAZY!
Use Twitter right, you win. But like every powerful tool, most people use it the wrong way.
Hey, great article! I am in the middle of a new project and I found some great people to follow on this post. So thank you!
@dannyarrington
@creditrepairtv
nice article on twitter.thanks for sharing information.
kind regards.
There you go Bill, turning a perfectly good waste of time into something productive. :p