Now that we’ve covered the Twitter Guide for Real Estate, let’s move on to tools and tips to super-charge your time spent on Twitter.

1. Advanced Twitter Search - this is where I would start in order to find people to follow. You can search for people you know, and by keyword and area. Follow some active Realtors® to see how they use it. Watch from the consumer’s perspective - is it obnoxious and spammy? Mundane life details? Or valuable content?

You can search by your local area, follow interesting people in the community and begin to interact with them personally.

You can even use keywords to develop relationships based on common personal interests, whether or not they are local to you. Your other followers will be watching, and begin to feel as if they know you, even if you haven’t interacted much.

2. Twellow.com - Twellow is like the yellow pages of Twitter. Not only can you search and find interesting people here, you can also create your own listing, giving followers a little more information about you as well as giving the search engines yet another place to find you. You can enter in your bio (which allows keyword-rich html links), and links to all the other places they can find you online - Facebook, LinkedIn, Pulse, Plaxo, etc.

3. Tweetbeep.com - TweetBeep is an alert system similar to Google Alerts. You simply enter in any word or phrase you want to track on Twitter, and you get email alerts whenever that keyword or phrase is mentioned.  This is a good way to track replies, your keyword, see what’s going on in your area, etc.

4. Tip - Come up with a way to stand out from the crowd and catch the attentio of your followers. Idea: Create a separate Twitter account (Something like @username_favorites) where you “bookmark as favorite” posts from your followers. Of course you can also sprinkle in your own favorites, but here’s the psychology behind this strategy… Your followers want to be recognized - no question about it. And YOU want your followers to be attentive to your Twitter posts. If you make it known that you POST great tweets from followers and promote these favorites, fellow tweeters will love you (and pay attention to your tweets). Great tip from @dhollings.

How to use it? Put the RSS feed in a widget from www.widgetbox.com, and add to your blog or website (the format for feeding your favorites out to other sites is: http://twitter.com/favorites/USERNAME.rss). Post a link to this separate favorites account every week, saying “Twitter love to some of my favorite tweets from the week.” You can even encourage interactivity, and invite your followers to submit their favorites for consideration.

5. TwitterSplit - a very interesting site that let’s you frame all the outgoing links in your Twitter feed with your own personal branding, allowing followers to remember who sent them to this cool site, as well as have a way to return to your site. Here’s an example. You do need to install a simple script onto your server, but it’s a quick process for anyone that’s somewhat familiar with the process (hint, your VA or webmaster).

6. Tip - Do more with your background. In the Twitter settings, you will see that they offer some pre-designed backgounds, or the ability to upload your own background. At the very least I would suggest changing to a predesigned background. But since you have a limited bio area on Twitter, why not make more use out of your background? Create a custom image with a logo or photo, some links to sites or a little more info about you. Many times potential followers will only visit your page once, so get them interested!

Keep in mind that monitor sizes vary, so a width of about 200 pixels is about the max. But a lot can be done with that space! A few good examples are Nik_Nik, Chris Brogan, and Mari Smith.

7. Jott.com - Some of you may already be familiar with Jott for other uses, but you can also use Jott to post to Twitter. Cool for when you’re on the road, and don’t have access to a computer.

8. Twubble.com - Twubble is a great tool that helps you expand and find more people to follow, based on those you already follow. This can help clue you in to those secret gems you might otherwise miss, that could be great for you to connect with.

9. TweetGrid - is another tool for searching and monitoring keywords. Here’s a How to use Tweetgrid video that can help you get the most out of this tool. The upside to this versus the Advanced Twitter Search is that you can see all the keywords on one page, letting you jump in on whichever one you want. One way that this can really help is by using it as a way to overcome writer’s block. If you’re sitting there about to write a tweet about how you just finished dinner simply because you can’t think of anything to say, pop over to TweetGrid and join a conversation instead. Not only does that give you something to say, it helps you connect with someone else. Plus, it may spark a creative thought on it’s own.

10. Tip - Feed your blog posts into Twitter. If you blog, take advantage of this additional source of content, and share with all your Twitter friends. There are quite a few tools that can do this. The one I use is TweetMyBlog.com. It automatically posts your blog post title and a link to direct people back to your new post.

11. Tweetlater - this is a service that offers two benefits: first, you can preschedule posts to go out on your Twitter account, even when you’re not around. While I don’t recommend overusing this tool, it’s a very handy way to send out less time-sensitive posts, or reminders about events that may be going on, or even retweet links you want to share. Second, it lets you set up an autoresponder to send a message automatically when people follow you. A great way to say “Hi, thanks for the follow”.  There are a wide variety of message types, so pick something that is “you”. Just remember, the quickest way to turn-off a new follower is to send them a sales pitch, so stick with something friendly, or a link to a site of value, not just your own.

12. Qwitter - Qwitter is a great way to monitor the effectiveness of your tweets. You simply sign up, and then receive an email anytime someone unfollows you. This can help you by letting you know if certain tweets seem to result in a larger amount of unfollows than others. Knowing this lets you tweet more of the tweets that your followers respond to (or at least, less of the ones they don’t seem to like!).

There are tons of tools out there, and I’m sure more are being developed every day. But adding these few to your Twitter arsenal can result in Twitter working for you, instead of you wasting your time on Twitter.

I’d love to hear from you on what tools you use, and what qualities you consider to make up a “good tweet.”

12 Twitter Tips and Tools for real estate