For the people out there who are still lost in time or are simply too busy to catch up technology, twitter is a micro blogging website that allows people to send out "tweets" whenever there is an update. These updates are all 140 characters long and are normally sent out to inform some major change or as they say, twitter-worthy material out there. The concept of blogs is not new, but micro blogging has just caught up recently.
Twitter as a concept has taken off only recently. It has a staggering 1,347% growth in users in the last 12 months. The tool is very useful for marketing real estate. There are a number of advantages associated with sites like twitter that real estate agents ought to exploit.
First, consider your investment in Twitter. It is zero, if you look at it directly. The only costs involved are your internet access costs, your computer and maybe a digital camera if you want to put up some pictures. Once you have established yourself on twitter, people will follow you and every time you post an update, they too will get to know about it.
So, if you look at it in its pure form, you are already roping in potential clients and all you need to do is to keep them hooked and send them small interesting real estate updates. That covers three important tasks that you would otherwise have to pay and do. One, you don't need to spend on advertising; it is free. Two, you don't need to follow up on your clients, they have already chosen to sign up with up. Three, you don't need to manually spread across some piece of information if you want to. A simple tweet will get the message across to everyone simultaneously.
Twitter is therefore a great tool to market real estate. For the money you would normally shell out, you can do a lot more and even have the same people made aware of it. It is easy to get carried away and be sucked into the twitter world. But, remember to not do that and avoid "hard selling" to your clients. This would be if you are forcing down something you want them to know against their interest. You might soon be blocked out and lose your potential customers in the process. Always remember to draw a line and stay behind it.
The other challenge is to put in something newsworthy in 140 characters. You should use a headline approach and not reveal too much or too less. You may think that there is barely any newsworthy thing worth reporting on twitter but you will be shocked when you actually get down to it. Twittering does not really have to do with pure real estate. Since it is a fun and trendy medium, you can actually use it to reveal something interesting and then maybe get more people hooked. The entire idea is to maintain visibility because if people want more information, there is always your website or the good old telephone. Ultimately, it is your decision to use the right tools to get the job done.
