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

Save Time Posting With a Great Online Marketing Tool

I know that I am a bit tardy in my usage and adoption of Twitter.  After all, I saw that it is being used by TMZ on TV.  However, I did find a pretty cool tool to streamline posting on twitter and numerous other networks.  The tool is ver useful, especially if you are using multiple sites to attract real estate listing clients.  I have been using it to promote our discount offer for the the  Listing lead program from RedX service for some time.  

Ping.fm allows you to post a comment once and it will be propagated across the web to update your status on Twitter, Facebook, Myspace, Furl, and numerous other posting sites.    It is a fantastic tool to do some effective grass roots promotion. 

On a completely separate note, for the real time update on getting my site to the top of the search term Agents Online  the site has not yet been indexed by google.  It’s only been a couple of days, so patience is a virtue.  Real estate country is also lagging still

Twitter and REALTORS

Because effective Twitter marketing means attracting as many followers as possible, setting up an autofollow, auto-responder and auto-reciprocate tool is a great way to improve your reach and campaign effectiveness.   I am doing this currently with Real Estate Country The tools that help in this process are Tweetlater.com which allows you to autorespond followers with a direct message as well as automatically reciprocate follows.  Combine Tweetlater.com with the keyword autofollow power of Twollow and you can automate most of the marketing with the exception of actually posting content.  There are rss twitter autopostng services that allow you to post content as well, but we won’t go into them in this discussion.  

For those people who follow you, you have three opportunities to create a relationship and there is a free online tool that automates this process.  After you have set up your Twitter account, uploaded your picture, profile and customized your background, go to Tweetlater.com.  This tool will allow you to automatically follow anybody who chooses to follow you, as well as create an auto-responder for anybody who chooses to follow you.  Using TweetLater, you can quickly automate the process of following those that follow you as well as create a short message that automatically goes to your follower.  Generally, this response is a “Thank you for the follows” message along with an invitation to visit your real estate website. 

The other tool that you want to take a look at is Twollow.  This tool will allow you to automatically follow individuals for a given keyword.  By combining Twollow, TweetLater and periodically cleaning out your account with Twitter Karma, you can attract a large number of followers within just a few days.  Each of whom you can promote your real estate services too.