Twitter is a relationship tool
Yes, Twitter assists you in keeping in touch with friends, family, and business acquaintances, there is no doubt about that, but so does the telephone. As a relationship tool, it can be either very helpful, or very harmful to your business depending on the way you’re approaching it, just consider the day we began using the telephone to telemarket the same as we consider using new media to spam- ‘unfollow’ is the new ‘click.’
Some argue that having a strategy in social media is a sin and treating it like a toy is the right way to go, and if that’s truly the case, then that is your strategy. Being human in social media, not selling, and simply going with the flow as a conscious decision is a strategy.
Define your motive, everyone has them
The bottom line is that with anything you do in business, you should do with a purpose, otherwise, it’s a hobby. Have you ever taken five minutes to read one of the trending topics on Twitter to see just how much consumers care about your online etiquette? The truth is that they don’t, they’ll simply follow who they want to follow until they don’t. It only makes sense to engage these folks on a human level to garner some other interest than a product they may or may not buy today.
In fact, for this very reason, most of the businesses I work with outside of real estate are primarily interested in the tribes that form in new media spaces, not individuals. They’re depending on you to rainmake for them within your own personal tribe of followers through recommendations, blog posts, or mere conversational mentions- this is the overall strategy.
Real estate in social media would in fact be a tribe with varied sects, and it is important to recognize who the influencers are in each and every one of them. Influencers are simply those folks that lead the pack in developing the tribe, in other words, those that follow the tribe leaders and receive the recommendations or take indirect calls to action. Influencers are typically community builders either by trade, or by a natural born gift. They lead by example, early adoption and/or expertise, or by promoting others that are successful in order to appear credible within the tribe themselves by indirect relation- this is a tactic for growth.
It’s all about the numbers
When you reduce the online real estate space into numbers ($), it’s easy to see why they (as a vendor) would want to insert themselves as an influencer into the space to indirectly sell product, such as a conference, paid online newspaper, seminar, virtual tour, brokerage, or whatever else you can imagine that is destined to land on a Realtor’s to-buy-list. The tactic the vendor uses is to provide content and other things to buzz about that indirectly bring numbers to themselves, the vendor.
You as an agent practice these same strategies and tactics offline, so it’s not easy to complain. You spend a lot of time inserting yourself into committees, clubs, charities, government, among other varied tribes for the opportunity to indirectly promote your business- you’re volunteering your time, connections and resources (rather than written content) for an opportunity to indirectly sell your product or service, and you’re now doing this same thing online to build your SEO, to learn, and/or otherwise insert yourself into conversation on the off chance you might influence a transaction.
This isn’t a sin, this is networking, and folks have been doing it for centuries.
Insert Twitter (New Media Spaces)
What Twitter and new media spaces are doing to change a timeless practice is allow you to bundle your tribes together online, not only for vendors, but those within tribes such as real estate and other industry professionals. You can now mingle with and expand all of your offline networks online, and vice versa at the same time.
As for the strategy, we’ve simply exchanged a business card in the online world for a ‘follow’ and renamed a contact or lead to ‘friend’ and begun the conversation of converting ‘opportunities’ now acquaintances into referral networks and or potential clients. The strategy is within the insertion of the influencer and the tactic is within the indirect marketing of content as a product, and how we build buzz within the tribe, not the act of making friends. But I think some will certainly argue that there is even a strategy to making friends, after all, we’re targeting common interests, goals, lifestyles, and we have conversation to vet ideals and standards before making a choice of doing the business of investing time in the conversion to friendship, although even I would agree tactics in this case would be ill advised if you’re seeking a long-term friendship.
Semantics
Some in the real estate world spend a lot of time preaching semantics for attention, in fact, show me one person who says they join a committee because of their passion and I can show you 10 others who joined it for referrals. Show me an agent who blogs about real estate for fun and I’ll show you 10 that blog for conversion. Show me someone who really argues the philosophies behind networking, and I’ll show you semantics.
Ken Brand
October 1, 2009 at 12:39 pm
A thoughtful approach, as you’ve shared is WISE.
For me, it’s a broadcast platform, fun, learning, sharing and keeping my mind and my eyes on the future. The thing is, nobody knows what new unexpected feature will make Twitter and all this new stuff, a killer, must have.
If we wait around until it’s proven evident, then we’d be behind the curve, scrambling to rush through a crowded doorway. If we engage now, we’ll be in the party room, while others jostle to get in.
There’s been buzz about recent lists of “who to follow”. Imagine the power or whatever when Twitter enables this Sharable List Feature. What then? Where then? And, what’s next?
https://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/twitter_groups_and_lists.php
Thanks Benn
Matthew Hardy
October 1, 2009 at 1:47 pm
Since SM began, I’ve been saying that many proponents, while bashing the very concept of selling, are in fact, doing exactly the same thing by other means. A rose by any other name… and a little like Michael Moore deriding capitalism while getting rich off it.
I also felt that good ol’ fashioned money-making would clarify the thinking of many — leave it to Benn to calm the consternation of the still-confused. We enter into business relationships to give and get value. And that’s good. Benn’s right, it’s “networking, and folks have been doing it for centuries.” My bet is that when all the SM gurus are old and gray, they’ll be chuckling at some new generation who is *sure* their new semantics are better.
Joe Loomer
October 1, 2009 at 3:16 pm
I must confess that I took the advice of an otherwise brilliant tech geek and focused on Facebook vs Twitter because this person believed (based on late 2008 Compete.com stats) that Twitter’s lack of additional features would destine that site to fail in the long run.
Now, according to Compete.com – Twitter’s user numbers are up an eye-popping 802.7% this year, while Facebook has posted an impressive 196.79% increase.
Since none of the folks like my daughter’s fellow 9th graders have bought a home from my Myspace efforts (down 4.78%), I think I’ll have to finally reverse my rectal-cranial inversion and GET HOT ON TWEETING!
Navy Chief, Navy Pride
Matt Stigliano
October 3, 2009 at 10:15 am
Benn – I think the problem with “strategy” isn’t so much with being strategic as it is with lacking “fluidity.” People expect that their strategies (whether good or bad) will work. They spend their time crafting it and then let it loose on the world.
My Winning Strategy
Do A 10 times a week
Do B three times a week
Do C once a week, but twice when B provides results
Do D as often as possible, but never on weekends
(…and so on…)
What we often miss is that B may have become the “uncool” thing to do, so now B is actually working against you. Because C relies on B, now we have two items that may not be providing results. Instead of dropping B in favor of doubling our efforts on E (which is what is working best right now), we stick with our strategy.
When it fails, we don’t question the strategy, we question the product/effort we built our strategy on. When we allow for fluidity in our strategies, we create what sometimes may not look like a strategy, but there is calculated thought and effort behind it – a strategy. A strategy is only as good as the outcome it produces. If your strategy sucks, so will your outcome. If your strategy needs a shift in order to produce the outcome you’d like, then you need to take that shift rather than saying “I have a strategy and will continue to work it until it produces the outcome I planned for it.”
I’m actually dreaming up a post that will apply to this in some sense revolving around my recent “Get Me To REBlogWorld” efforts. Not only was it a contest that I wanted to win, but I also saw an opportunity for a small experiment.
Benn Rosales
October 3, 2009 at 10:26 am
@rerockstar Most of the raw dive-in strategies I’ve seen are more like hourly investments per week, that being said, most will go far beyond that plan initially because that strategy has no real strategy to convert. Multi-tier strategies tend to work more more effectively and it’s hard to see that before you’ve dropped 50 hours in a month into a given network- suddenly you’re right, it’s the networks fault.
Looking forward to your case study!
Benn Rosales
October 3, 2009 at 10:37 am
Matthew, you said “Since SM began, I’ve been saying that many proponents, while bashing the very concept of selling, are in fact, doing exactly the same thing by other means.”
We’ve bashed overtly selling anything and still remain firm on that point. To log on and say buy my product is just a commercial ad, but to simply remain present and add value within the community gives your brand staying power and appreciation from the community. Over time I have a feeling that this approach will be overrun with businesses that simply don’t understand that it’s not what you said, it’s how you delivered it that gets you hung up on. Even I have given into a telemarketer with the right approach, just like agents still enjoy success from calling expireds.
We find the biggest failure in sm right now are folks that do not remind others that they are in fact open for business. Even consumers do not want to bother business people that appear to busy with their business- it’s just human nature. Subtle reminders from agents to followers that they do in fact practice and are interested in helping is a good thing, but again, it’s a nuance, not a written script nor a new semantic the same way it happens offline.
Matt Stigliano
October 3, 2009 at 11:36 am
@BennRosales – I think everyone likes to put a step-plan strategy to work. Do A, get B; get B, do C…perhaps there’s a bit of human psychology in there. We like structured result-based plans? Either way, I admit, I didn’t get Twitter at first. Your very own wife made me join and pushed me to use it more and more. Look back in time and you can see at first I was just using it to “chat” – overtime, I began to understand why I was chatting and what the effects were. I then learned how to bring in elements of business without the “pick me pick me” shouts that I think will never go away. I am still building a “strategy” and learning what works and doesn’t work – both for my business and for me (I don’t want to be anything other than genuine in my social media efforts – if it doesn’t fit who I am, I won’t do it).
One of the things I think Twitter (specifically) could benefit from is getting rid of the “What are you doing?” tagline. It’s one of the things I think helps make people not understand its potential or use. When it started it was okay to tell everyone you were “about to read a book, brush my teeth, then go to bed.” While you still see that and do it, it is not the core of what Twitter has become (in my opinion). Perhaps this would help people get a strategy together instead of thinking “why does anyone care about the fact that I had spaghetti for dinner.”
In reference to your comment to Matthew, I wonder what your opinions are on what makes a good reminder to other that we are open for business. When Matthew said:
I immediately thought of my Flickr experience (getting dumped for commercial use). We are all selling something. Not just real estate agents. Everyone. We may just be selling ourselves, we may be selling a product or service, we may be selling our connections and friendship. We are all after something. How we do the selling varies greatly, but I do believe every step in life is some sort of transaction – some with short term payment, some looking towards the long term. We give, we get…it’s one giant transaction.
Benn Rosales
October 3, 2009 at 11:47 am
@rerockstar Glad you asked, and it’s all about just answering the question on what you’re doing-
for example, tweeting a time daily that you block for walk-ins at your local starbucks and tweeting it and supporting it on your website
If your plan is to work in a builder model over the weekend, mention it throughout the week, and support it with your blog where you provide pictures and things
If you have an open house, do the same
Mention often where you are showing for the day if you’re specific to a neighborhood
Mention that you are on your way to listing appointments
Mention that you just met with a buyer and are stopping at X location to hang out for a while
There are many ways to use the ‘what are you doing’ tagline for your business, and why I hope they keep it. It gives you a very human and natural way of displaying that you are in fact in business today.
Last but not least, if someone mentions to you they’re going to buy in 6 months, set an appointment now and make sure they don’t mean ‘in 6 months or when someone finally tells me it’s a good idea to do it today’
Tweetdeck offers ways of pooling buyers and sellers into one category, anyone that even mentions buying or selling, make sure you group them and then follow up through conversation letting them know you’re available to answer questions.
I’m only spelling these out for folks that need real concrete ideas, I’m sure you do most of this already.
Matt Stigliano
October 3, 2009 at 1:06 pm
@BennRosales – Excellent food for thought there. I do employ some of those, but in thinking about, perhaps not on a consistent enough basis. Now that I see how you view “what are you doing” I may have to retract my earlier statement. My focus on the tagline is more about why people don’t “get” Twitter. I think I may rethink some of my strategy and perhaps use some of these a little more often than I do.
As always, thanks for the ideas – if there’s one thing I would say is best about AgentGenius it is just that – the solid information that gets shared here is invaluable to any agent – new or not.