I started using Twitter again recently because of some blog posts that I read by some pretty influential people.

What is twitter? Twitter is a very easy to use, real time messaging system for groups and friends. Another way to think of it would be text messaging (or instant messaging) from one person to many people at the same time. The length of each message is about 1 sentence (140 characters).

Twitter is free and easy to use. When I got started with Twitter in June of 2007, it was a relatively new thing. The company launched in March of 2006. My first reaction was "interesting waste of time."

Now Twitter has grown up, but is still in the early adopter phase, and can still be a waste of time. Those using it "bend" toward technology professionals, and it is popular among real estate bloggers.

Today, I see the following uses which can make twitter valuable for real estate professionals

For real estate technology companies

Twitter allows you to tune into activities among your peers, competitors, and industry thought leaders. It is good to stay tuned to what they are doing, and share what you are doing to this group of highly influential personalities. And, it can be very entertaining.

For real estate brokers

Twitter is a method that allows you to communicate en masse to all of your agents about business information in real time. Announce important reminders, price changes, rate changes, new listings, sold listings, trainings, meetings, events, etc to all of your agents with one message. It can, in effect, act like a company "Intranet" that delivers messages to each of your agent's phones in real time using text messaging. It is a very engaging system that can be used but hopefully not abused. 2 or 3 messages at most a day would be tolerable (my guess).

For real estate teams

Twitter is a way to connect the daily activities and movements of team members. Twitter showings for the day, price changes, team meetings, task accomplishments, etc. Teams can currently communicate through transaction management systems and other platforms, but they usually require each team member to have a smartphone. Twitter works on any phone with text messaging capabilities.

If you think this might be of value to you, sign up and try it.

Here is how you get started.

1. Go to twitter.com and sign up
2. Input all of your contact information. Remember that your user name will be shared with everyone so be sure it is something that you would like to share
3. Hook up your mobile phone( and/or optionally Instant Messaging account) - follow the instructions provided - they are easy - essentially you send a text message to 40404 with the letters on the screen to program your phone for twitter.
4. Search for Twitters that you know by using the Find & Follow Feature.

Twitter Language

1. Follow - means you want to get twitter messages from people
2. Followers - people who get your twitter messages
3. Tweets - twitter messages

Twitter Tips and Tricks

1. Prepare your contacts so you can find your friends
a. Before you get started, set up an e-mail account at gmail (my preference) or Yahoo!. That is free
b. Export your contacts from outlook and import them into gmail
c. Select the Find & Follow link in twitter and login using your gmail username and password - twitter does the rest! They will cross reference your contact e-mail addresses with their data base and give you a list of friends who have registered to twitter. You can browse their profile and decide if you want to follow them or not. Here is an important note: When you type in your e-mail address, type in the entire address like me@gmail.com then select gmail, then type in your password or it will not work.
2. Reply to one person: To Reply directly to a twitter message from your cell phone type d username message that you want to sent. That is "d" space "twitterusername" space "type your message"
3. Reply to everyone: When replying to a twitter message so everyone will see your reply, you have 2 choices.
a. Start with the @username term: @username thanks for sharing , The @username followed by the message will put the reply in the replies folder
b. Put the @username in the middle of a message: that is really cool @username thanks for sharing, by putting the @username in the middle of the sentence, your reply will be shared with all of your followers.

First thing to know if you decide that you like twitter.

1. Get Twhirl - this is a program that allows you to twitter on your desktop computer.

To use Twhirl, you will first need to download Adobe Air. The link to download it is on the twhirl home page at http://twhirl.com. After installing Adobe Air, download the twhirl application.

2. Get familiar with tinyurl.com. Will let you take a link like

http://www.mapquest.com/maps/291+Falcon+Crest+Dr+Arroyo+Grande+CA+93420-5330/

?#a/maps/l::291+Falcon+Crest+Dr:Arroyo+Grande:CA:93420-5330:US:35.10692:-120.

566066:address:San+Luis+Obispo+County/m:hyb:12:35.10692:-120.566066:0::/

io:0:::::f:EN:M:/e

into http://tinyurl.com/yu57jp

Which is very important if you only have 140 letters and you want to twitter message about.

Have fun, social networks will not harm you.

Other Articles on Twitter for Real Estate

http://waves.wavgroup.com/tweetopics-twitter-for-real-estate-twitterstate-continued

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