Twitter is taking the Australian real estate industry by storm at the moment and I have to apologise about another post on the topic in such short time, but I think this is very important. Whilst its potential to do good is huge like most powerful web applications it has a dark side just waiting to come out and bite you for the wrong reasons. Social networking and the internet in general has allowed a voice for everyone including your biggest critics.
I searched all major real estate groups on twitter to see what they are doing on Twitter and two things really stood out.
LJ Hooker is getting really hammered on twitter right now. As at 8:48pm tonight , the 27th of May, searching “LJ Hooker” on Twitter (http://search.twitter.com) provides a total of 16 results. One of these had no relationship with LJ Hooker Real Estate and four where by LJ Hooker offices themselves. That leaves 11 posts by third parties nad 6 of those were negative damning comments. That’s more than 50%.. hell that’s still nearly 40% of all posts returned being negative. That’s got to ring alarm bells for somebody at LJ Hooker HQ. It may turn out to be an anomaly but they need to monitor it to find out.
Just in case anybody questions the results here are the screenshots.
Another thing that stood out was a campaign being run by a solicitor in Frankston under the twitter name of @frankstonowners (soon to be renamed @baysideowners apparently) who is a “Bayside Homeowners Group.Exposing Bad Practices in the local real estate communities of Frankston (E,N,S), Seaford, Mt Eliza, Patterson Lakes,Carrum & Chelsea”
What’s particularly interesting here is that this last post clearly infers that they had to censor their own posts and that those posts might not have been polite or HONEST. That’s a little dangerous and irresponsible don’t you think? I wonder just what the deleted posts contained. Anybody who has used Twitter for 5 min or longer knows that a Tweet’s lifespan is counted in minutes so the damage to somebodies reputation was done well before it was deleted.
The thing that confuses me with this is that Grade 10 maths will teach you that for every property sold OVER the median there will be one sold UNDER the median. Its just impossible to sell every property over the median unless its over last months or last quarters median price and prices are on the rise.
I don’t think any agent in Australia would try to convince you that that the whole industry is a totally full to the brim with saints, but neither do I think every agent in the district of Frankston are shonky. If you give everyone a voice something like this bound to happen.
The best way to monitor your profile, and that of your real estate group is to use a service like Twilert. Watch what people say about you and protect your reputation…. and don’t forget to thank the people that praise you on Twitter as well.