[svrpaul]

Interestingly I set up a profile on Twitter a couple of months ago and did nothing... in the past month I've been getting more and more followers and still have not used it. I've been meaning to use it... but not sure how to use it yet. (The most effective way instead of just twitting like a Twit.)

Thanks for the tips on Ping.fm ... I'll have to look into that... sounds a lot easier and a better way to leverage the little time we do have.

[jessiesc]

Originally Posted by svrpaul

I've been meaning to use it... but not sure how to use it yet. (The most effective way instead of just twitting like a Twit.)

Same here. Haven't even figured out how to use it let alone use it.

[Joelrunner]

recap:
Twitter is a fantastic way of entering into relationships that simply isn't possible via door knocking, cold-calling, or with any email campaign.

(Imagine how irritated people would get if you sent them an email every time you went out to eat. But with twitter, you can send a tweet, and you'll get responses like "how was dinner? I've been meaning to try that place out but haven't been able to.)

[Joelrunner]

I've been working on a tutorial for my agents to start using because I believe it's a truly valuable tool for establishing yourself as a local expert.

1) Start using it casually. "Going to dinner at ___", "writing an offer", "Just wrote a new blog post at ___" The biggest rule for step 1 is NO SOLICITATIONS or spammy content.
2) Set up a twitpic or ping.fm account, and find out your twitpic/ping email address. Start taking pictures of homes you're showing & send updates. ie: "Showing $249K home. Good value for the price. Attach picture & ping/twitpic will convert it to a clickable URL. (This will be VERY intriguing to your followers. They'll want to follow along so they can see houses in the area.)
3) AFTER you've completed steps 1 & 2 and have at least 15 or 20 NON SALSEY tweets, start following people in your community. (Go to https://twitter.com/invitations and hit the "search for people" tab.) Start following them and engage in their conversations. (Again - NO sales pitches. Just engage in normal conversations when appropriate.) If you offer up good advice, they'll begin to follow you. Eventually, people who follow them will start to follow you, and you'll have a great list of people in your sphere who will help build your business.
4) After you've got a good list of followers, you can start to throw in tweets that announce some sort of promotion, but DON'T overdo it. Try to follow a rule of 10 "personal, what are you doing" tweets for every 1 promotional tweet.

It becomes addicting after a while. ESPECIALLY once you start to get to know others in the community who might eventually end up being clients (or who will refer clients)

[loudog]

I am following everyone on this thread now. Look for me

[rmasse10]

Originally Posted by loudog

I am following everyone on this thread now. Look for me

Hard to find you hidding down there

[SEO Nick]

That's actually a pretty cool feature. If I had more use for Twitter, I would do that. But it seems like a hassle when I could just log in to Facebook and do it from there.. and check everything else while I'm at it.

[realspace]

Haha, true...I LOVE twitter though. I kind of watched from the sidelines for a while to see what was going to happen with it but I'm just now getting into it and it's an extremely powerful marketing tool (plus it's a lot of fun). I like facebook too, but I see them as totally separate platforms.

[loudog]

@andrew - What is it called?

[realspace]

It's a twitter app built into facebook, go to facebook apps and look around for twitter, should be there