Social networking. Social marketing. That’s the ticket. If you have children, you’ve probably heard of MySpace. If you’re a grown up, you’ve probably heard of Facebook, LinkedIn, and the like. There’s no shortage of Realtor Magazine articles telling Realtors that “social marketing” is the ticket – win tons of business through your Facebook page, etc. Well, I have s Facebook page, but about the only thing I get from it is “friend requests” from other Realtors, mortgage brokers, and folks in related industries who want to network with me.
I’ll be honest. I don’t send a whole lot of referrals to Raleigh-Durham. And when it comes to working with a lender, I prefer to refer my clients to someone who they can actually go and have a coffee with, sit down, and discuss face-to-face while looking at the same piece of paper how all the numbers work.
There’s a new kid on the Social Networking block, and it’s called Twitter. Have you heard of it? It’s all the rage in certain circles. It’s kind of like instant messaging, a bit, except that instead of talking to just one person, you’re talking to everyone who is following your “twitter feed.” The idea is that you send out “tweets” telling folks what you are up to. I use a Macintosh (don’t you?), and I have this cool notification plug-in called “Growl” which sends up these little, evanescent floating windows with twitter notifications from other people I’m following.
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For example, tech legend Guy Kawasaki has a twitter feed, and he posts to it dozens of times a day. A lot of what he does is direct traffic back to his new web venture, Alltop (which is kind of cool, check it out). Guy has thousands of people who subscribe to his twitter feed, and they all get these little messages, all day long.
I know, “Stick with the real estate!”. So here’s an interesting thing I found on Twitter: there’s some kind of (ro)bot that sends out notifications every time there’s a new rental in Santa Cruz. Here’s a link to the Santa Cruz Rental Twitter Feed. This is pretty cool, if you are looking to find a rental in Santa Cruz – a pretty good example of what this technology might do for you.
What do I use it for? Well, for example, I just sent out a tweet: “Writing a blog entry about how I use twitter. Check it out in a few minutes.” And I gave the URL for my blog here. Hopefully, that’ll drive some traffic to my site, and maybe I’ll pick up a new blog subscriber or two. I also send out notifications when I write blog entries (usually), and also when there’s some breaking Santa Cruz news that I want everyone to be aware of.
I think twitter might be just a passing fad. Or it could be the genesis of something great – who knows what it might evolve into, one day? But for now, I enjoy seeing everyone’s tweets and posting some of my own. We’ll see what comes of it.
Meanwhile, check out my Twitter feed.
Everyone wants to know…
