For the most part, real estate professionals don't know exactly how to network within social media applications like Twitter and Facebook. They join and end up saying "What I am doing here?" The answer: "Meet your community".
Twitter makes it easy to meet people you want to meet:
- FIND YOUR LOCAL COMMUNITY TWITTERERS - Go to Twitterlocal.net and follow Twitterers in your area. Follow those who are influential in your community: business leaders, councilmen, chambers of commerce, employees of big companies in your area.
- ACKNOWLEDGE - If you follow somebody on Twitter you would like to develop a relationship with, retweet their good tweets and/or add commentary to them. They will notice.
- COMMUNICATE - Once your retweets get their attention, start participating in their conversations.
- SHARE INTIMACY - Be on the lookout for matching interests. Sharing arcane references puts you in a special “club”. I like to share the secret that I know jazz and salsa music, and basketball to those who can appreciate it.
- MAKE BUSINESS CONTACT - Once you develop a Twitter rapport, make a simple proposition that is not real estate related. Tweet with a request for 5 minutes over the phone for introductions. The proposition is best an idea that you’d like feedback on, or a question that your new contact can answer… not a blunt “Are you looking for a house?"
- PREPARE RELATIONSHIP - When you ask for the 5 minutes, also send/tweet a link to your LinkedIn profile to the contact to show you mean business. LinkedIn works like a resume, and your contact may intuit the reason for your show of interest.
- DON’T BE PUSHY - Do not create obligations at the beginning of a relationship (a standard social rule) - no asking for retweets, follows, money for causes, or introductions to others. Let your contacts offer them.
- BUILD BY ADDING VALUE - Continue offering streams of ideas and links to appropriate, interesting articles to your new contacts. Build the relationship!
- STAY SOCIAL - The nice thing about Twitter is that interactions only take minutes, phone calls and emails take more thought and time.
- REALLY MEET! - Be sure to meet face-to-face when a conference, Tweet-Up or other neighborhood opportunity exists.
Domus Consulting Group is starting its next
Social Media Marketing webinar workshops the week of February 16. Learning to connect through Twitter is only one of the dozens of tips and techniques we teach to make social media an effective and fun way to boost your business by a quantum leap. Ask any of the 300+ Active Rain agents who have attended our courses over the past 5 months.
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Many people have trouble grasping what is possible with Twitter and quickly dismiss the microblogging platform...only to return once they understand what you've outlined above Pat...