Social Media Networks Part 2: Twitter
What’s new today? A question asked just as often as it is answered. However as Bob Dylan once famously wrote, “For the times they, they are a-changin’.” Well in today’s technology-driven age, sharing what is new has gone from the plain-old word-of-mouth to sharing your thoughts and activities on the World Wide Web – and what better place to start than Twitter!
With Twitter, you have a free resource to advertise – property information, valuable quick-tips such insights on any market changes, home staging dos and don’ts, or even friendly reminders on upcoming local community events – and that’s just on the business side of things. Twitter is also an excellent personal communication tool, allowing you to connect and share thoughts with friends and family from around the world.
What else can you do with Twitter? Well not only can you send out Tweets (lingo for the messages you send), but you can also follow other users and gain access to their Tweets, which in turn can trickle down to your followers. A good tip is to follow active real estate-related resource providers, such as your brokerage and board, and even certain media outlets are useful. Find an intriguing Tweet from another user? Share it! Retweeting is a superb feature that allows you to share another’s tweet with your followers. A perfect example of a Retweet is - Retweet: @realwebtweets “Are Craigslist and Kijiji really worth my time?” http://ow.ly/1qhkI – Great Tips
Already have an account? Great! If not – click here to register! For new and even existing users - don’t forget to create a detailed and engaging profile. Include your picture, information about yourself, focus areas, work experience and even a company logo to help with branding. Got a website and/or blog? Linking to them is essential. Tweeting about your latest blog entry is an excellent way to cross-communicate between your preferred social media outlets. This can help pull in extra traffic to your blog, and vice versa, you can attract followers to your Twitter feed through the useful content provided in your blogs.
Twitter Self-Disclosed Age Demographics
“The Facts: Based on a sample set of users who disclosed their age, 65% of Twitter users are under the age of 25
Note: Only 0.7% of users disclosed their age, with younger users showing a higher probability of doing so. Still, the statistics suggest Twitter is growing in popularity among younger people (Sysomos, 2009).”
The Other Facts: That leaves more than 21% of Twitter’s population that is of the home-buying age range of 30 and older. Quite a large part of the market that can be easily accessed by your Tweets, the potential for clients and leads is there… wouldn’t you agree?
How else can you tap in those target demographics?
Join and/or start Twitter Groups focused on real estate-related topics in your area. Use services like twitter4groups.com, twitterGroups.com and tweetworks.com to find local groups to join and follow, or even to create and promote one of your own. Other useful free services such as Filttr and twitTangle can also be used to maximize your day-to-day Twitter experience. Don’t just join business groups – consider also joining community and activity groups – the more you network with people, the greater the chance someone will come to you with their real estate questions and needs.
Fastest Growing Cities
“The Facts: The cities with the biggest Twitter populations are New York, Los Angeles, Toronto, San Francisco and Boston. Los Angeles is the fastest growing city in the list (Sysomos, 2009).”
What a useful fact. Toronto is the third largest, and also the third fastest growing Twitter hotbed. With that many Torontonians’ subscribing to Twitter, the question you should be asking is… how can I get more of them to follow my Tweets?
One way is through the use of #hashtags. What’s a hashtag? Well it is a (‘#’) inserted before the topic, such as #homebuyer. This allows you to connect with a broad group of Twitters following the same topic. Tweeting via hashtag topics allows your messages to reach potentially tens of thousands of people. You can search for popular hashtags at websites such as, http://hashtags.org
You can also use Twitter’s Advanced Search options to refine your searches to include specific people, topics or even a location. Want to find out who is tweeting about real estate within 100 kilometres of Toronto? Try this for a search: near:Toronto within:100km real estate
Twitter Activity by Day of Week
“The Facts: Based on a sample of 20 million Tweets, Tuesday is the most popular day for Twitter activity, accounting for 15.7% of total activity; followed by Wednesday (15.6%) and Friday (14.5%) (Sysomos, 2009).”
Use this to your advantage, plan your Tweets for less popular Tweeting-days, which are Monday, Thursday, Saturday and Sunday. You can receive a lot of Tweets depending on the number of people you follow, and at times they meld together if too many of them are received over a short period of time. Don’t be a victim of this! Although you cannot foresee how many Tweets any one person will receive over time, you can plan it so that your Tweets arrive during off-peak days, increasing the likeliness that they are read.
Another simple tip is to avoid tweeting at the same time every day. Tweeting is like the spices you put on your food at dinner, a bit of variety goes a long way in keeping things fresh and interesting to your followers.
Authored By: Bryan Coughlin, Client Relations
Cheng, Alex, and Mark Evans. "Sysomos | In-Depth Look Inside the Twitter World."Sysomos | Business Intelligence for Social Media, Monitoring and Analytics. N.p., n.d. Web. 16 Apr. 2010. <http://sysomos.com/insidetwitter/>