Twitter Prospecting

I must say that I love the Twitter technology. Thanks to Iranian elections, it has reached critical mass which means that most of your target clients are not on the network. I routinely use the technology to offer discounts to the RedX service and to provide updates on dedicated the dedicated listing URL service, and know that for a REALTOR, it can be a very large source of leads.

So as a real estate agent that is new to Twitter, how do you use it to get sales leads? Well, the service provides a window into your client’s mind, and ancillary services give you instant notification when your client is thinking about real estate. You can then connect with that prospect online to direct them toward your services. It’s sort of like someone making the announcement in a crowded room that they are looking for a home, and you responding to them by saying, that’s great because I have one to sell. So how do you get set up to use Twitter as a lead generation tool? My recommendations would be as follows:

1) Register for a Twitter account, upload your picture, add your website, change the background, and make yourself at home.

2) Register for notify.me which is a notification service that will let you know if someone adds a post that includes your search terms.

3) Choose the methods by which notify.me will let you know when a search term comes up. I use google chat for my desktop and the mobile text function for when I am out.

4) Set the system to notify you when someone looks for a specific phrase that would be unique to your target clients. You can also add filters to better limit the notifications that are not pertinent. For example, use the search terms “moving to” “salt lake” and filter our terms that include words such as “planning rent.” With that phrase, you will likely get tweets from people moving to salt lake, that are not planning to rent. You can add multiple search phrases to keep track of and the notices simply popup on your desktop.

5) When a notice is received, follow that person, reply to their tweet, and offer your services. It is really that simple.

Real Estate Leads from Twitter

I have been spending time on twitter learning about its ins and outs and using the site to promote the RedX lising lead, fsbo and web marketing service, with some success. In my learning about the tool and how it is used to promote your business, it occurred to me that Twitter may be the best lead generation tool in existence for REALTORS. Where else can you get a real time notice from a total stranger that they are looking for a home?

Imaging being at an open house and getting a tweet from a someone that you don’t know or follow that is driving around six or seven miles away. The post in your phone reads “shopping for houses today, doing drive by’s” Simply by texting them back you can respond and ask them if they need any help, if they would like to stop by and check out your open house, or any number of other appropriate responses.

So what tools are available to get real time notification that a person in your area is looking for a house? In my original search, I couldn’t find an application that would perform these activities. In fact, I was legitimately planning to create the application myself. However, I did find one application that may do exactly what I was suggesting.

The Twitter Application is called EasyTweets. What it does is continually monitor Twitter for a specific keyword and immediately sends you an SMS message with a copy of the text. From there, you can respond to the person that posted the tweet by SMS or through your standard Twitter activities.

Here is the link to EasyTweets. My recommendation would be to set up your account and be very targeted using phrases you know your target clients will use. Every a fresh lead comes in, respond immediately and get the dialog going

SEO for Bing, The Jury is Still Out

I haven’t quite formed my opinion about Microsoft’s new release of their Bing search engine. In reading the reviews, I am not alone. I have spent a little time this afternoon trying to get a feel for what where my real estate listing lead site and associated links lay in the ranking. What I found is that this “because it’s not google” search alternative has a completely different algorithm which will likely require a completely different SEO strategy for your real estate website.

I am not sure if this new search engine will give google a run for its money in search engine terms. As Seth Godin put it, “Bing is trying to be the new Google. Unfortunately Google is the new Google.” However, it does have some interesting features.

Now for those of us who are trying to get our real estate website to the top of the ranking, optimizing for bing may require a different strategy. In fact, in looking up the search terms that index my site well on google, I there is little success on bing. The Expired Listing Lead term did return back my link to the RedX as the top link, but the multitude of other sites that typically show up in reference to me did not. For my Agent Online experiment, the site was not even indexed, and similar to google, real estate country did not return a link to my page, even when I typed in the exact URL. Even my wife’s’ “prenatal vitamins” page did not get indexed.

From what I can determine with the very limited experience that I have had with the site, it uses an algorithm similar to google’s but puts a high weight on sites that have been around a while along with those that are well linked. Unfortunately from an SEO standpoint there is not much that you can do to age your real estate URL.