I was running a little late with the first quarter Top 10 people to follow on Twitter for Australian Real Estate Agents for the First Quarter of 2010 but the future installments like this one should be on time.
It seems there was a little confusion out in the west with the last list but just to clear it up, this list is for Australian Real Estate Agents to follow. Whilst there will obviously be a bias towards Australian tweeters I will be including interesting people from around the world to follow if I think it can bring something to the list.
Most of the list will be tweeting about the real estate industry however occasionally I will include other tweeters that are still of interest to agents such as @mashable who tweets about social media and @smartcompany which is Australian business news.
Like always if you feel somebody should be on the list in the future feel free you can send me your suggestion to @glenn_batten via a mention or dm.
- @aussiehome
- @apmasphere
- @TRETCOMAU
- @smartcompany
- @peterfletcher
- @mashable
- @Larascott
- @GregVincent
- @Apimagazine
- @TomHopkinsSales
Edit: All the top 10 from this list, the past list and future lists can be found in my Twitter List http://twitter.com/glenn_batten/top-10-for-aussie-agents/members
15 Comments
Pete Richards
Sadly, I think a lot or agents tweet very badly. They focus the attention on themselves and the properties that they’re selling, rather than being an authority on their market or their suburb.
I read an article recently about an agent who set up a twitter account and only ever sent two tweets. One about the $4m house he had just purchased and the other about a $150k car he’d just bought.
Not a great way to win the hearts and minds of your local community and prospective clients!
I think one way agents could leverage twitter at a local level is to become the authority on the suburb they service. Start every tweet with something like “what I love about is _____”. You could tweet about new restaurants, great coffee shops, places to hang out, places to take your kids to on Sunday morning. Anything that will get your community engaged and interested.
Nick
Or better yet, pro actively seek people on twitter talking about the suburb and reply to them.
But that of course takes a bit of effort to do.
Greg Vincent
Glenn, thanks for the inclusion in the list. I appreciate being included amongst a group of such interesting & informative Twitter users.
I agree with Pete that posting information about listings all the time isn’t the way forward for using Twitter within real estate & only having 2 messages posted on a Twitter account will tend to do more harm than good.
I recommend that you have at least 10 interesting updates on your Twitter account before you go out in search of followers.
I always try to provide content that my clients (agents) should find valuable and often post tweets with specific keywords in them that clients/potential followers may happen to find me on. ( Like Pete suggests, including localised keywords within your tweets could help people from within or interested in your local community find you on Twitter ).
Twitter’s not just about what you post or about providing an easy way of communicating a message up onto the web or connecting easily with other Twitter users. As Nick pointed out, Twitter is also a search engine where you can see what others are saying very easily and start a conversation.
You can search on people talking about your local area and/or terms like House Hunting, Open For Inspection, etc to see who’s potentially in the market and you can localise your search via Twitter’s Advanced Search or sites like http://NearbyTweets.com
As Twitter is a search engine it is also important to keep an ear out about what others are saying about you or your company. (This can be done through Twitter’s Saved Searches function or by using sites like http://TweetBeep.com).
Lara Scott
Hi Glenn,
First up, thanks for the mention even though at the moment some of my tweets are focused around a recent ankle injury, ensuing DVT and questions of product placements in the circa 1962 Dr No. I am trying to get as many RE shares out as possible.
I have compiled a growing Twitter List of Australian real estate industry Tweets which people might like to follow also.
@larascott/RealEstate_Industry
Secondly I completely agree with the sentiment Pete Richards has expressed above and would extend it further and suggest that agents use this concept of ‘community expert’ as the driving force behind their entire Social Media Strategy. This is certainly what I am encouraging clients to do.
Cheers
Lara
Charlie
Many thanks for the mention Glenn; some deserving people there to follow; and yes I agree it’s not done well yet, but this is all very new. Being the ‘local expert’ is surely something real estate agents should be really good at – who knows the area better than them? Well tuned & interesting facebook pages and twitter accounts, maybe a blog, using foursquare .. all ways to do this; but they’re just tools, a means to an end.
Kylie Emans
I totally agree, I love twitter but a lot of agents just have no idea how to use it properly, someone has told them they have to be on twitter and they open an account and then all they do is twitter about an open house time or new listing. Boring!
Glenn Batten
With respect to Pete, Greg and the other comments there is no right or wrong way to use Twitter. There is no rule book. Some agents may “tweet” badly but Twitter is as much about listening as it is about the tweeting. Too many people have too much rubbish to say which is why I subscribe to the follow few but follow quality mentality.
If an agent chooses to use Twitter to follow useful and informative tweets and thats all they want to do then I believe Twitter is still a fantastic tool. This is what these articles about. IMHO over the next 30 days if an agent was to follow the 20 twitter accounts mentioned so far they will be introduced to more concepts, ideas, training and tips than they probably ever have before in such an easy manner. Thats a good thing.
To use Twitter to effectively market to your local area is going to be a very time consuming task. It also pretty skillful to perfect.
I know we don’t do it properly and I have yet to find someone who does it really well although I am a sure they are out there somewhere. There are plenty of agents with lots of followers out there but when you look at them they are mostly other agents, porn spammers, affiliate marketers and people from around the world let alone the same city or state. For the most part only a fraction of their followers are real local residents to their agency.
In essence Twitter is a social media therefore it can do information exchange but even if someone uses it primarily as an information resource through a one way flow of information isn’t that better than no exchange of information at all?
I like twitter but IMHO it is better used in our industry as a B2B tool rather than a B2C tool at least for the majority of agents.
Peter Fletcher
I love Lara’s idea of following lists. They provide a feel for how people use Twitter without cluttering up your tweet stream. If it helps I’ve curated a list of Aussie agents at http://twitter.com/peterfletcher/aussie-agents.
There are a couple of accounts that do it well. @eldersmandurah–I think @aussiehome mentioned this to you on Twitter Glenn–and @stockerpreston. Both stay pretty clear of real estate–the occasional listing–and stick with community based info such as wine tours, surf reports, carnivals and the like. I’m yet to see an agent do it much better than @eldersmandurah.
Having said that, and as Glenn points out, there’s no perfect way to use Twitter.
Greg Vincent
Glenn, Twitter has lots of uses.
It can be a research tool as well as a publication tool. Agencies can also use a Private Twitter account within their office as an IM tool or Brainstorming tool using #hashtags to collate staff member’s thoughts on a topic.
They can use Twitter for prospecting (looking to engage with potential clients). It can be used a knowledge centre or simply a way of conversing via 140 characters at a time. (just like you would with SMS but rather over the web).
Yes, it can be used for posting listings and notifications about when a property is Open For Inspection or when an agent will be showing a particular property. (but it’s not the only use for Twitter)
I’m not saying don’t post listings. I know an agent who tweets about when he will be showing a home & he regularly gets 2 or 3 other buyers showing up to the inspection. It’s how he does it that gets him the results.
Twitter can be leveraged via plug-ins into blogs so that people can read your tweets when visiting blog articles. Tweets can also be automatically updated onto other Social Media platforms and blog posts like this one can be automatically submitted onto Twitter.
There’s so much more to Twitter than meets the eye & whilst I agree that there is no right or wrong way to use it, I believe that agents should try to get the most leverage out of using it that they possibly can.
Glenn Batten
Of course, if you can tweet creatively and build up a local following that is the best result of all! It just might not be realistic for most agents, at least without some help and guidance.
Services like Sobox might change that though.. but more on that soon 🙂
Lara Scott
Damn. Just re-read my comment and sounds like I am agreeing to the “agents twitter badly bit” and this is not what I meant. Curse it when I have more than 140 characters.
As a mute point I would be interested to hear people’s opinions on the outsourcing of corporate (Twits come from 3rd party providers) and personal Tweeter accounts. Please don’t shoot the messenger here just curious it there is an established industry mood on it.
Glenn Batten
Lara,
I think Pete had it right when he said agents tweet badly… its just that I think there is more in Twitter for the average agent than tweeting to get buyers which is unfortunately all what many seem to be interested in. As these lists show there is a wealth of information at their finger tips and they dont have to send out a single tweet.
Lara Scott
Good, bad, ugly.
I think the issue is larger than just Twitter as a vehicle and think that broader social media strategic guidance is definitely something most agents should be looking into along with using the resources that are readily available. Time management and budget allocations are also factors in any debate.
Glenn Batten
Peter and Charlie,
I checked out EldersMandurah like you both suggested and agree they are tweeting really well. Good topics, consistent and engaging their followers.
HOWEVER
I manually went through about 10 pages of there followers and found virtually no local consumers following them. I think we all agree that ideally a real estate agent’s followers should be members of the local community.
Despite great content they are being followed primarily by :
1/ Local, interstate and international real estate agents
2/ Associated businesses trying to connect with real estate agents such as photographers, industry trainers coaches, portals, web designers etc etc
3/ Affilliate marketers and spammers.
In short virtually all of their followers are on Twitter for a commercial interest spewing out links and trying to drive traffic to their own website. Lots of Businsses but very very little real consumers. Everyone following them is trying to use Twitter to make a buck.
Go through the list and pass a critical on each follower like I did and in the last 200 followers I was lucky to find 5 or 6 accounts who could “possibly” be genuine locals who were not trying to flog their business or product.
I know you will probably say that some of those followers like yourselves are locals as well and that is right to a point, but to make it work like say Altitude does for Facebook we have to have real followers from the community. Altitude has a ton of agents “liking” (since fans are now gone!) on Facebook but there are massive amounts of locals there as well.
So yes whilst they tweet good I don’t think they have quite cracked the formula just yet to make Twitter successful for a typical real estate agent. They are certainly getting something right, but they are still missing something. I have no idea what that is though or else we would be doing it 🙂
I hold out hope but till we find someone that has the right recipe I honestly believe that Twitter is best as an information resource for agents from sources like yourselves.
We will all keep trying though 🙂
Melissa Gaultier
I really do not think that Twittter is an efficient tool to sell properties, especially in a regional area,{i am an agent based in Bundaberg}, but Twitter is very good to post updates and comments for all the people following you/ your blog/ your website