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The MOST IMPORTANT Twitter Blog Ever??!!!

By
Real Estate Broker/Owner with *ROCK REALTY|Broker|Realtor|Real Estate|WI Short Sale Agent* 55387-090

The TITLE says it all. This could be the most important Twitter blog you will ever read. This post could be the conduit that leads you to the land of Milk & Honey in your Real Estate career. This could specifically facilitate many closings in your future.

Trust me, this is not me tooting my own horn here... I'm extremely far from an expert in the Twitter field! This is an experiment that I thought of over the weekend. Network on Active RainIt could be very successful, but it will require your participation to work. It's possible that this may have been attempted before on Active Rain, but I have yet to come across it, so here we go.

We all know that to be successful in Real Estate, you have to build up a network or team. Communication and Networking is the key to finding buyers, sellers and deals. Originally, creating a large network and more importantly effectively maintaining it was a very difficult task. Those of you who have been in the industry for more than 15 years can vouch for that! Then came the Internet, and with it: email communication. It was now easy to quickly send out an email to all your buyers or sellers with ONE CLICK! I'm sure you can see where this is going. Most recently, we have Social Media, and more specifically to this blog, TWITTER. Everyone now has the ability to build a network of thousands of contacts! You can keep in constant communication with ALL of them.

 

I won't ramble on too much longer, as most everyone knows about Twitter at this point. Let's just say, that building a large network of QUALITY contacts is very important if you want to succeed.

One can quickly build a 'followers' list on Twitter, and there are many blogs that cover doing JUST that. But these leads are NOT quality leads to you an I. They typically are spammers or online salespeople attempting to sell you a PDF training manual of some kind!! You all know what I'm talking about! :)

So where do we get QUALITY followers?? Enter Active Rain. What an Amazing community!! Wouldn't you agree?? At the time of writing this blog, there are around 185,000 members!! You know what is so special about that number, people??! They are ALL involved in Real Estate in some way! Now THAT is the type of QUALITY contacts that I personally am looking for, and I'm sure You are too.

So how do we go about building a large Active Rain Following? This is my proposal. If you want to participate in this Twitter Blog experiment, simply type your Twitter Username in the comments section below. I will leave a comment myself as an example. In doing so, you agree to 'Follow Back' any Active Rain member that follows you. Check back often on the blog to see what additional members have added their Twitter Username in the comments section and follow them too. I would suggest that when you follow them, you send them a tweet to let them know you are part of Active Rain. That way they know to follow you back!

As you can see this process should lead to a large network of quality Real Estate Professionals. This new network can now follow your blogs and your current listings as you tweet about them. I'm hoping that something amazing comes of this for all of us! Can you see how it might? There are a few more things that you can do to make this really TAKE OFF!

First: I'm sure you have all seen the new SUGGEST button. This button lets the Active Rain head honchos know that you feel this blog should be featured. If the blog gets 'featured' more Active Rainers will see it. The more exposure the blog gets, the greater the chances for success. Please click the button above!

Second: ReBlog about this!  You MUST remember to turn off comments though and refer your readers to the original post.  This will ensure that we retain a master list of Active Rainers in one location!

Third: Retweet the blog to your current Active Rain Twitter followers. If we really want to make this thing viral and watch it soar, let your own followers know about it. People can comment anonymously with their Twitter Usernames if they do not have an Active Rain Account themselves. This will also bring even more awareness about the Active Rain Community!

Of course there is a chance that this idea flops, but I sure hope not! :) I see this as a project that can benefit each and every member of the Active Rain community. So let's make this successful together. Leave a comment below with your Twitter Username and spread the word!!

Regards,

Michael Collins - SFR - Broker - @RockRealty

P.s. Eventually this blog will be lost in blog-land, outdated and forgotten. Wouldn't it be nice to continue this Network-Building idea? Well, I just created a Group on Active Rain called "Follow Me on Twitter". Every member of this group agrees to 'Follow Back' any Active Rain member who 'Follows Them'. Feel free to post any blog you would like to this group. (Within AR guidlines of course) It will help the group get to know you better!

Comments (124)

Jill McTague
RE/MAX Andrew Realty Serfvices - Medford, MA
DebOnTheWeb & Associates - Medford, MA Real Estate

Count me in @DebOnTheWeb

Jun 25, 2010 08:21 AM
Matthew Mitchell
Buyer's Capital Real Estate - New Haven, CT
New Haven Real Estate Agent

Great post

@bchamden

Look forward to tweeting with everybody!

Jun 25, 2010 10:37 AM
Barbara Altieri
Better Homes and Gardens RE Shore and Country Properties - Shelton, CT
REALTOR-Fairfield County CT Homes/Condos For Sale

Count me in...I'm game!  @BarbaraAltieri

Jun 25, 2010 01:12 PM
Daniel J. Hunter
REALTOR® - New Port Richey, FL

I am coming up on 150 ARers.  If you would like to poach or just follow the list the link is

 https://twitter.com/#list/LoveTheGulfRE/activerainers

Jun 25, 2010 03:24 PM
Daniel J. Hunter
REALTOR® - New Port Richey, FL

When I reblog a post, I usually turn off comments and ask readers to go to the original blog post.  For future reference, I think that is a better way to get an idea to go viral.  K.I.S.S.

Jun 25, 2010 03:26 PM
Amy Jones Group
South East Valley - www.AmyJonesGroup.com - Chandler, AZ
4 Time BEST OF OUR VALLEY Winner

What a great idea!  Count me in!  @AmySellsAZ. I'll blog it too to help keep this active!  PS...my brother lives in Neilsville, that's not too far from Janesville is it?

Jun 25, 2010 05:36 PM
Michael Collins
*ROCK REALTY|Broker|Realtor|Real Estate|WI Short Sale Agent* - Janesville, WI
CDPE, SFR , Wisconsin Short Sale Specialist Realto

Thanks ALL for the continued help on this!

Cara - Thanks for the tip.  I did notice though, that when I follow a list only (one click) that it doesn't change my 'following' numbers.  It remained the same.  Does anyone know about that?

Daniel - good idea about reblogging with no comments!  I will edit the original here and allow reblogging :)

Amy - Great to have you on!  If you would like to re-blog this, the settings should be changed soon to allow that.  Remember to disable comments and refer back to this original list :)

Jun 26, 2010 07:56 AM
Lori Cain
Own Tulsa - Tulsa, OK
Midtown Tulsa Real Estate Top Producer

@LoriCainRE

Jun 26, 2010 09:18 AM
Daniel J. Hunter
REALTOR® - New Port Richey, FL

http://twitter.com/#/list/LoveTheGulfRE/activerainers has 200 active ActiveRainers including all on this post to date.   over 200.

to the neigh sayers - how can someone spam you unless you follow them?

following fellow ARers does not open you up to spam

if perchance someone jumps on the list and is a spammer you can block him and tell everyone on the list to block them.

by putting all these in one list (500 limit) or two etc.... you can go to a consolidated source of quality content on twitter, or refer a follower to someone on the list.

if you are just getting started you can either follow the lists already created by me and others, or you can view each list and follow/put on a list every person.

granted, if your only twitter contribution is "I just posted on ActiveRain yada yada yada" than you may find yourself dumped rather quickly

also want to mention that my alternate twitter site @FLh2oRealtor is  Real Estate news aggregator.  it tweets about every 5 mins.  That may be a turn off to some.

Jun 26, 2010 02:16 PM
Kevin Kauffman
Group 4610 Network - Tempe, AZ
Kevin Kauffman

I am in @KevinLKauffman

Jun 27, 2010 09:03 AM
Marilyn Boudreaux
Marilyn Boudreaux, Century 21 Bono Realty - Lake Charles, LA
Lake Charles LA Century 21 Realtor

this is great! I want to play I mean network!

@marilynboudreau

Jun 27, 2010 07:08 PM
Anne Hague
Rockville, MD

I think this is a great way to start networking, and am a full participant (@MRIS_Anne) BUT I think it would be beyond benificial to read my boss's blog post at http://bit.ly/b0SMu2 . She lists 10 reasons why people's social media efforts fail.  For example, you can't sound like a robot and keep posting the same thing over and over.  Following and being followed is just step one.  Remaining relevant interesting is step two.

 

@MRIS_Anne

@MRIS_REal_News

Jun 28, 2010 05:21 AM
Bill Hills, CMPS®
MSI (Mortgage Services III, LLC) - Chicago, IL
Luxury Mortgage Banker

I like it!  @BeFoundSimply

Jun 28, 2010 08:55 AM
Michael Collins
*ROCK REALTY|Broker|Realtor|Real Estate|WI Short Sale Agent* - Janesville, WI
CDPE, SFR , Wisconsin Short Sale Specialist Realto

Thanks for the continued support everyone!  Don't forget to follow back those that follow you!! :)

Jun 28, 2010 09:13 AM
Jeremy Blanton
Myrtle Beach Homes Blog - Myrtle Beach, SC
Myrtle Beach REALTOR®- myrtlebeachhomesblog.com

Corinne at #26 makes a good point.... How does adding more AR members to my twitter list help me?  I already have connections to you here on ActiveRain.  There is zero benefit on them being my friend on twitter too.  You can contact me here if you want to network.  When I tweet, their followers aren't going to see the stuff I say. Also, if you reply to me but none of your friends are following me, it won't show up either to them when you do an @jb140.  If you put a word before my twitter ID then it will, but most don't do that.

I would also tend to agree with Maureen at #58-  So many times the RE industry follows everyone else in the RE industry.  Then the only thing they use twitter for is to talk to each other and never get into building a followers that are potential buyers/sellers.  Or searching for them through some of the different twitter clients that are out there.

Inna at 71 makes another good point... please don't be spamming the listings out.  It is a terrible practice that so many are doing.

Daniel in #114- the spam being referred to is the persons who are just doing the just posted on AR, or stuff that is all auto fed from twitterfeed & other API sources, or the tweetlister stuff.  I have seen way too many people doing that.

I think having a good network of friends on twitter is important, but it is more important to follow people that are going to enhance your biz.  So many times we sign up on a new network & just enter our email database & follow all that are in it.  Do I really need to be connected to the same person on FB, twitter, their blog, youtube, Linked In, friendfeed, posterous, etc?  Not really... I use the different networks to hopefully appeal to those on that network that may not connect on another. 

While I think you have a good idea in theory Michael, the biggest thing is that many focus on quantity on twitter & not the quality.  As I typed up this comment I saw Garyvee post on twitter: "If u are seeing this tweet I have one simple thing to say : THANK YOU, it stuns me that people care about the # of followers, if u have 1 :)" to which I responded, why worry about more followers instead of figuring out ways to take care of the ones you have?  Focus on the few, they will grow your list, and that type of growth will bring you the benefits you are looking for.

Jun 29, 2010 04:35 PM
Michael Collins
*ROCK REALTY|Broker|Realtor|Real Estate|WI Short Sale Agent* - Janesville, WI
CDPE, SFR , Wisconsin Short Sale Specialist Realto

Jeremy - Thanks for dropping by.  I do have to disagree with you on this one.  Before doing this blog, I only followed a few Active Rainers on Twitter.  I now follow well over 100 people.

Twitter is great for getting a snapshot of what people are doing right now.  Through Twitter I get a much better idea of what people are like, because they only have to write a 140 character synopsis, not a spell checked, SEO optimized blog with pictures. 

When subscribing to blogs on AR, you don't get the blog titles of what they posted.  You only get a 'Last Posted' date.  Twitter is far better, as I can quickly scan the titles of blogs to see if any are of interest to me.  Using Twitter and AR together has been great at finding valuable information.

Yes, all of this does rely on a quality, real person, Twitter account.  We have had a couple Twitter accounts posted here that were 'autofed'.  Since we are looking to connect real people with real people on this blog experiment, I emailed those AR members to ask them to remove the username from their comment.  I then unfollowed and removed them from the AR follow back list.

So in conclusion, I've decided to subscribe in AR to my favorite blogs only, but connect with any AR member that is offering good material and real conversation on Twitter.  So far it's been a lot easier to just 'talk' on Twitter.

Jun 30, 2010 02:42 AM
The Somers Team
The Somers Team at KW Philadelphia - Philadelphia, PA
Delivering Real Estate Happiness

We have 3 twitter accounts - @thesomersteam and @phillyrealty and @accessphilly

What a great experiment !

Jul 04, 2010 02:40 AM
Patsy Overton
Patsy Overton Interiors, Atlanta, Georgia - Duluth, GA

@patsyoverton

Jul 05, 2010 02:50 PM
Michael Collins
*ROCK REALTY|Broker|Realtor|Real Estate|WI Short Sale Agent* - Janesville, WI
CDPE, SFR , Wisconsin Short Sale Specialist Realto

@patsyoverton @thesomersteam and @phillyrealty and @accessphilly 

Welcome!  Added to the list, thanks for commenting!

Jul 06, 2010 03:02 AM
Rebecca Gaujot, Realtor®
Lewisburg, WV
Lewisburg WV, the go to agent for all real estate

@RebeccaGaujot .... from Lewisburg, West Virginia :)

Jul 21, 2010 04:36 AM