Twitter for Real Estate - How to get started

Great post and so very timely.  I look forward to becomming a better twitter. 

Great info, I'll sign up on twitter.

Yes i am starting to use twitter as well, It is become more popular every day.

Wow, great post Carolyn!

Thanks for the mention Carolyn.  Twitter's simplicity is the key I think.  To that point, I think a lot of people don't emerse themselves enough to understand the true value.  The more we talk about it the more they will come to understand.

It's a great chit-chat platform for realtors who like this stuff, but how do you actually sell a house with this thing or get a listing from a prospective seller other than referrals from another realtor? I think serious buyers will still be looking online to purchase a house and sellers will be driving around the neigborhood to see who can list their house rather than looking at some Twit.

Tampa4u I think ultimately real business will come from making connections with your local community but while we are all learning there is also a great power with talking/networking with each other.  Knox just wrote a great article on this issue that everyone should check out: http://www.ebaspace.com/2008/11/04/twitter-makes-communities-tighter/

@tampa4u - I felt the same way, but now I see that you can get followers from most anywhere. If you for example ended up with local Tampa followers and you gave out a tweet linked to a new listing, you have potential of picking up a buyer (or seller). The trick here is picking up followers and thanks to Carolyn's post I found that twitter followers can search for local terms like "Tampa".  I've only been on for a day, but the relationship building (REALTOR and otherwise) has much more potential than I imagined.  Put the twitter application in your Facebook and see if that brings any more followers (and followers begat folowers).

Point well taken on both. Thanks - I'll keep an open mind on this.

I think that keyword optimization is key in thought process to get followers.  And you only have a sentence or 2 to do it in.  I just tweeted "Tweeting for Mississippi twitters - who's out there?"  Maybe will connect with friends from old home state that search "Mississippi" or may pick up followers that search the same and vacation down here on the Gulf Coast.  Give it a try and give a little feedback. 

Cal even if that tweet doesn't get immediate results, it could show up later in a search including big G.

I just set up about 3 blogs to feed new entries to twitter - http://twitterfeed.com/

Carolyn ~ I am with you 100% on Twitter. There is a lot to be said for a website that allows you to potentially contact 20,000+ people in 140 characters.

Very nice post Carolyn.  Glad I have gotten to know you and others better due to Twitter.  See you on the flip side and keep up the great work.

Rob

great post Carolyn . Wish I'd read it before I began making a more concerted effort to tweet on Twitter. I was one of the people who joined when Twitter first came out *and never gave it a chance*. Thanks to people like Carolyn, Cal & Rob I'm now well on my way to becoming twitliterate (just installed my 7th twitter client ... trying them all). I can be followed @CalgaryRealtor

Thanks for the helpful post!  I started to use Twitter before - now, I will try again
 

Hope all is well!

Dave

Thanks Carolyn....I will try again.

Dave, I think there are a lot of ways YOU could use twitter to network and huge opportunities for your team.  Let me know if you want to chat sometime, info too good to share with everyone (lol).  Seriously, with a little effort it might be something to help build business for your team.

Sue, I would love for you to try twitter again. One way to ease in seems to be to follow a number of people and then just have twitter open on your computer while you're working on something else.  Download tweetdeck and just start to follow along. You have lots of friends there already.