Over the past year or so we have seen the rise of Real Estate Agents using Facebook to promote their business or personal profile. The best of you continually add informative and fun content to your page and have seen a steady rise in fans. But there is a disturbing trend to this and this shows complete mis-understanding of how to market yourself online.

If you are a real estate agent who has a page on Facebook and you are reading this, I am going to give you some advice, and some of this will hurt a little, but here goes.

Preaching to the converted

Let us say you have a fan page on Facebook and you update this page daily, you deserve a pat on the back and get one social strategy point, however if you have a website and do not do the same, you lose that point, why? Because you are preaching to the converted on Facebook, they are already a fan. Your first strategy should always be on your own website, this is where the whole world is waiting to connect with you and my guess is that your advice is not the most amazing real estate advice on the planet, where all of your fans spread your word and get other people to join (this is the holy grail of social marketing). The only true way to build your Facebook page is through your own business or personal websites blog and then to select appropriate articles to post onto your Facebook page.

Rachelle Hirt Real Estate Agent Miami Beach Florida

We recently built a site for a local agent in Miami, Florida. Her name is Rachelle Hirt and she wanted a site to market celebrity style homes in and around the Miami area. She has only just started, but she has the right strategy and will learn quickly from any mistakes she makes, but off the bat, she has the right strategy.

Her Facebook Page is here (you must be logged into Facebook) and I advise to follow her, just to see what she does and the content she publishes on both her website and Facebook Page.

Her site is fun and bright and she posts regularly and doesn’t push everything to her Facebook page, she selectively chooses what to post and push.

Note: The website cost just over $1,500 including theme, setup and design elements. Talk to your web developer about doing the same.

Different strokes for different sites

Another thing you must understand is content, if the only thing you post are ‘amazing new homes’, ‘get in quick’ and feel good market news, then you lose another point. The one true reason people will choose you to sell their home, is that they see you understand the local market, you understand technology, they trust you and most of all they like you.

Understanding the local market
Post local sales information and try to break it down as best as possible by property type, bedrooms etc. The more it relates to people the more they will trust that you understand the local market, Talk about property types that are selling well and ones that are not, give people advice on how to get their homes ready for a sale, smart renovation techniques that buyers are looking for. You understanding the local market gets your foot in the door.

One thing to avoid is ideology posts or comments, unless your market is mainly conservative or progressive, do not risk it. Stay away from horoscopes, and religion too. In most cases these only impress the minority, and just alienate the rest.

Understanding Technology
If you think it is cute to tell your potential vendors that you are a technophobe, then get with the program, you are and will be left behind. You dont need to know quantum physics to understand how a browsers works or how to resize an image, there is a world of information online that can help you to better understand the business you are in and the technology that you use. Spend some time online learning how to get the most out of your web browser, mobile phone, tablet device and computer. Understanding and possibly helping vendors out will impress them in more ways than you think. This is your business now, get it!

Trusting you
Start being honest on your website and Facebook page, display content that helps and hinders you, good or bad, thin or flush, this content makes a trust difference between you and your competitors.

You as a consumer would know that good advice is brutally honest advice. If you believe it when the salesperson tells you every dress you try on you look fabulous in or that Donald Duck tie you wear to work makes you look windswept and interesting then you are naive and in the case of the donald duck tie – an idiot

But tell me, how many vendors are easy these days? Very few! In most cases vendors are well armed with a good dose of information and an equal distribution of mis-information. You need to be honest and tell them what will work for them and what will not. You need to also post information on your website and Facebook profile that works against you selling more homes and always make a corresponding comment with bad news.

This comment should not be that you always disagree and why (you must always give a valid reason to disagree), but should be informative and sometimes brutally bad for your own motives.

Liking you
You are awesome right? You mum and dad thinks the world of you, you can do no wrong, in fact you dream of receiving the greatest person of the year award each year. Here is one lesson you must learn when publishing to any website or social media platform. People love self deprecating humor, it gives you a human side to your electronic life. For me, luckily it comes naturally. There are two types of self deprecating humor, the first is first person and this is where you let people know your stuff ups and remind them of this on occasions in the future.

Some of the readers may remember when I got ‘done’ big time years ago by a member on this site on April Fools Day. My default position was to try to repair the embarrassment, but I learned a long time ago (2001 to be precise) – this only makes things worse, so I embraced the fact that I got caught out and just went with it. The lesson from this is always to distrust your own motives and just let the world know that sometimes you stuff up.

The second variety of self deprecating humor and a great example of this type of person is Sam Newman. Yes, there are people that dislike him (most of whom rarely watch or engage with him), but overwhelmingly he is liked.

Sam Newman says some of the most ridiculous offensive things and should be “banged to right” on occasions, but one thing he does magnificently, is when someone makes fun of him and his positions, he laughs, he doesn’t fight back, he doesn’t get angry or show negative emotions, he laughs at himself!

So when people make a comment on your website or social profile (that is not overly abusive) display it publicly, laugh it off, or at least explain why you do not agree. If you are one of these people that blocks or deletes negative comments then you are already a failure and need to get over yourself or your business.

Finally, enjoy your social profile, don’t treat it too seriously, make sure you mix the informative with the fun.

Different Content – Different mediums

Your final strategy should be to not always post information to both mediums (blog and social) keep the mix a little different, otherwise why would they follow you on both your website and social platform? Keep the social posts a little more fun with articles from across the spectrum, if you do post funny stuff, make sure it will appeal and not offend (you can save the offensive for direct messages on Twitter – Anthony Wiener tells me it is very hard to get caught out with this strategy).

So post regularly and make 100% sure your website blog is the king when it comes to your marketing strategy! Make sure your title of your post is informative and describes exactly what the article is about, this is important for subscribers as they scan for articles that interest them.

Titles are everything

Given that we use technology differently today than we did even a year ago, speaks volumes in how we must communicate effectively. Today we are overloaded with so much information, that we care more about the time it takes to scan and read, be it your Facebook News Feed or your blog Feed, titles are everything and if you use Facebook, you should already know this. I cannot emphasize how important titles are. Here is good and poor example.

Poor: Property prices continue to rise. Comment:For who, for what? This is not personal or direct at all.
Good: Mosman, Neutral Bay Sydney see steady rise in apartment sales. Comment:This is going to appeal to homeowners or potential buyers in this area. It mentions location and property type.

How to get the ideas and motivation for writing articles

I use Google Reader (help here) to subscribe to hundreds of different websites. I create folders for these subscriptions. Here are some examples of these folders. Apps, Client, Company, Design, Style, Real Estate News, Technology, WordPress, Social, Travel.

Everyday hundreds of new articles from all of the sites I subscribe to come into my reader. I do not need to waste time jumping to each article. I scan them for ones that interest me and this is usually in the title. Sometimes I write an article about this news, sometimes it inspires me to write something else. The great thing about Google Reader is that it saves me so much time and if you organise it well, it can also save you money (daily deals etc).

If you havent got Google Reader (or similar) then you are missing out on a great little program.

Footnote: One thing that always amuses me is friends on Facebook who ‘accidentally’ click on what is obviously adult spam on Facebook. These are little posts on your news feed with images that have titles that are of the erotic nature, that one of your friends ‘accidentally’ clicked on.

What is more amazing, is that they do not know how to delete this immediately and leave it for me to ponder why this married man (or woman) of three is doing looking at this stuff anyway. Human nature is a wonderful thing isn’t it

Facebook currently has over 500,000,000 users, yes that’s 500 million! An almost unbelievable statistic, coupled with the fact that most users are active it is an Internet behemoth and will almost certainly be a very profitable machine.

Twitter has fewer active users but their figures are also very impressive with a user base of around 200 million.

Both of these platforms outshine even online newspapers for breaking news and events to family and friends, so much so that online newspapers are actually becoming slightly less relevant than they were just a few years ago. You only have to take the recent Osama Bin Laden death to know that most of us get a lot of our news directly from our online networks on both of these platforms.

Creativity Vacuum

Where I think Twitter and Facebook fail is in their business models. The current thinking (or lack thereof) is that build up users and then start displaying advertising from 3rd parties amongst the content on various pages.

Google was the first large Internet player to do this successfully and have reaped billions and billions of dollars in advertising revenue on this model and will continue to do so. Why this is successful is very simple, users search for information and Google displays as close to relevant information back to the user as their algorithms allow.

Newspapers do the same thing, they attract visitors to their websites and then display advertising amongst and over (annoying their users) content and generate most of their online revenue from doing so.

This model is a problem for Twitter and Facebook and Online Newspapers because users do not use or behave the same way on these sites as they do on Google and other search and retrieve related entities. We use Twitter and Facebook to inform others on what we are thinking, what we are doing and where we are going, we gather news from Online Newspapers to share ones that interest us to our networks or to keep ourselves up to date. In short we generally have conversations on Facebook and Twitter and we use newspapers to gather information on the days events.

What is needed from these entities is a creativity revolution, one that value adds the offerings to those of us that want to become power users.

Online Newspapers

I am going to use the Sydney Morning Herald and The Age Newspapers as these are clearly the best newspapers in Australia. Each day I visit both of these websites to read up on news and events and each day I try to avoid any annoying ads across these sites.

What if I became a member of either of these websites? I really get nothing in return, making the added value proposition worthless. However what if the hierarchy thought a little differently about their business model.

What if for say $100 per annum, I could get an enhanced mobile version for both my smartphone and my Android or iPad tablet? What if my membership included the ability to sell my unwanted sofa quickly and easily? What if I could sell my car, engage a real estate agent, advertise open positions at my company? What if all of this was included in one simple interface and for one simple price? I don’t know about you, but I would pay this money without a second thought. Why? Because I trust the company, I know they have the biggest user base and I know I have one place to go to do all of these if and when I choose!

Facebook

If you read the above with interest, could you imagine if Facebook did the same? This would send shivers up the spine of any newspaper across the globe, simply because newspapers have lost control of their users and have been slow to innovate. Facebook could very easily do the same thing and to be honest, I think they would win this battle. Facebook currently has the dumbest advertising platform of all of these entities combined.

As an example if you ever had the miserable pleasure of adding some of your favourite movies, books or music to your profile you will immediately notice your Facebook wall being filled up with junk advertising from related advertisers. They must have been up all night thinking about that one – pathetic!

Facebook is so bad with their business model that it only serves to annoy their base and this is a true crime in the online world and may someday open themselves up to competitors. It also will cost them billions in the long term as users will simply change their behavior.

Facebook should also offer an enhanced version one with stronger privacy cooler profiles and a tranche of new offerings including the above, classifieds, cars, jobs and houses. I should also want to store with the options to share HD Videos, HD Photography and enhanced mobile versions all for a simple annual fee.

Twitter

Twitter worries me, it is no longer a must-be destination for the average Joe consumer or small business. It is slowing down dramatically and may only useful in the future for disseminating news and events. Sure it is still relevant but it maybe just a niche player in a few years.

For the power user it still offers some great insights and I do get great information, but more so from a select group of people I follow.

Summary

In summary I think the advertising model is flawed across Online Newspapers, Facebook and Twitter and needs some real creativity. I am convinced the model of the future for sites that have massive user bases is enhanced offerings all paid for with one simple annual fee.

Twitter
Twitter is a little on the nose to me and I am going to predict a sharp decline in 2011. Sure, Twitter will exist in some form or another well into the future but to me it is finished as a mass marketing tool and will eventually be relegated to some important niche communications. Twitter’s revenue making announcement early last year completely lacked any corporate imagination and signalled to me to be the beginning of the end for the company (and a multi billion dollar entity) and unless they innovate well I cannot see the service lasting in its current format for too many years. It is great for cross communication and breaking news alerts and it should play on those strengths.

Google
Google has made a great move in move with Eric Schmidt stepping down at Google and being replaced with Larry Page. Schmidt has made just about every web developer nervous (including me) as some of his comments were against every moral grain the company had built over the years and some of his recent comments were just idiocy! Hopefully Larry Page can get the company back on track, his communication is poor, but hopefully he has worked on this over the years.

Eric Schmidt did an amazing job in his initial years of organizing the company and building revenues and profitability, but he has shown he struggles with communication and needed to be replaced.

Facebook
Facebook goes from strength to strength and has now reached a valuation of around 50 billion. It does however make you wonder how they are going to satisfy the demand from all investors for revenues, especially in the light of them recently raising another billion of dollars. This places pressure on the company to massively increase revenues when they already should be very profitable.

There are many opportunities for Facebook and it will be interesting to see if they show a little more imagination than the Twitter crowd. I think adding personal related services that are paid for makes just as much sense as the boring old advertising model favored by investors.

I prefer to use Facebook for just family and friends, however I now see some really good opportunities there for our business and Facebook give developers the tools to build out some pretty cool applications. Here are some of our recent Agent additions from my company. You should talk to your developers to get them to build out some apps for you just to test the water. All you need is your own page (not your personal account)

RWM Mosman Facebook Page
Raine and Horne Facebook Page
Ristic Real Estate Facebook Page
Graham Lynham Facebook Page

Will Facebook continue it’s amazing growth? Maybe, however, I see a more local version of my personal life, something that is open source and that I have 100% control over who has access to what. I havent seen it yet, and really do not know what it is – but it definitely is not one company controlling my whole digital personal life.

Groupon
How many companies are offered a buyout of billions of dollars only to reject it and see their valuation plummet in the ensuing years?  Yes, many we have already forgotten about. Groupon rejected Google’s billions and now have to compete with that very same company as Google has just announced they will be launching a competing service. There is a moral to this story – sell your bloody company when you get a decent offer. There are many businesses/ideas you can build with a few million/billion dollars.

Linkedin
I will stay on this site as long as it is free, but to me it is just a chest thumping load of junk. Currently it ranks below my own company site as far as referring traffic (all of the articles on this site are linked to my linkedin.com profile) and from what I can tell this is useless fro business to consumer. For business to business we might see something, but not for the real estate industry.

MySpace
Rupert got his money back on this investment early. But in the ensuing years MySpace has cost him big big money and he can kiss it goodbye as it is currently burning through 100′s of millions of dollars a year. It was a lame duck from the beginning (disorganized, spam) and is a perfect example of why you sell early! Listening to Rupert speak about technology is excruciating. He simply doesn’t have a clue, quotes like Facebook being a fad, Google struggling once it matures and then his continual assault on free news (BBC< AC etc) is childish and gets him nowhere.

Your own blog
If you have a real estate website and you are not blogging about local market, local news, local events then you are missing out the the biggest opportunities for personal and business growth. If you want to start on the ground floor, get a FREE WordPress.com blog and start playing. If you want a professional blog under your own domain name speak to your developer.

Wikileaks
Isn’t it wonderful that we have one news organization in the world that actually operates like all major news organizations once did? I hope there are many more years to come of people leaking information we should already know to organizations such as Wikileaks. Stand up for these freedoms we enjoy at all times and never be a hostage to your own motives!

ANZ Bank has fired back with their own Real Estate iPhone Application,, the ANZ Property Tracker – and it is proving to be quite popular. It looks very pretty – which you would expect from a bank with a little spare change and it plays quite nice. You can view it here and download it immediately from your ITunes Application of iPhone.

Just by following us here at Business2.com.au you will have noticed that all the major banks are getting in on the iPhone Real Estate App Marketplace and for good reason, research indicates that this is where young people get their information – although most young people do not have the money to buy a house, they can now have an app to find that house they can’t afford!

Some nifty little features of the ANZ Property Tracker are:

• Get the last sales price of properties for free (not sure for how long), but this is a pretty good reason in itself.
• It allows users to share properties of interest with family and friends via Twitter or Facebook
• There is also a diary function for organising open for inspections, auction dates – times, and providing reminder alerts.

Would be great to have a schedule for those days of house hunting that allowed a user to plan their day on a Google Map, possibly by integrating with a calendar.

All in all a solid start from ANZ bank

If you have not seen the previous top 10 lists you can checkout them out here: Q1 and Q2.

@RealEstateAU

@apimagazine

@peter_ricci

@ozspecialagent

@TatianaMijalica

@auction_action

@PriceFinder

@homehound

@remarketingtips

@PortalWatch

If anybody has any suggestions for the next Top 10 list send me a direct message or mention @glenn_batten

(edit: duplicate homehound entry removed and remarketingtips added)

During the recent UK general election (American friends of mine were amazed at how quickly it was over, English friends bemoaned how it dragged on for weeks), I read a Guardian blog post which berated parties of all hues (“tribes”). The writer loathed one tribe, but was saddened how his own tribe had left him, and he wasn’t really interested in the third one either. Hence the inconclusive result I suppose.

And so it got me pondering the state of how we get our information these days, and how quickly media has changed. The blog itself is something I would never had read without the advent of the internet (itself only a 20 year old invention). By the time I read it, it had already attracted 50 comments.

On election night (morning in Australia), I found myself searching #ukelection and #ge2010 twitter themes to read what people were saying as the results came pouring in. Most of them were watching the same telecast I was half a world away (I found the BBC player online somewhere which had been blocked on the official BBC web site). They were reacting to the same commentators and politicians pontificating in front of us, which we were all viewing in real time. Yet, it was these live twitter comments and reactions which drew me in. They had far more validity and were much more entertaining and “real” somehow. They were from people who I did not know and would never meet, but whose opinion had more power and meaning than the pollie spruikers set up in adversarial mode by an aggressive media front man bating them into actually saying something.

Opinions poured forth over the twittersphere – every minute I could refresh the screen to read dozens more updated “tweets” (those 140 character short messages served up by twitter users).

I turned to an ex school friend of mine (a passionate Liberal Democrat and someone I’d not physically met in 30 years and only recently got back in touch with thanks to Facebook) and discussed the outcome with him and his ‘friends’ (we have only one in common, another ex school friend I’ve not seen in 3 decades).

As we collate information (on anything) directly from the sources of individuals whose opinions are as good as anyone else’s ‘in the media’, so we are simply returning to our tribal roots. It’s where we all came from (and still are really) – learning, teaching and sharing.

Of course, this is devastating news for traditional media who have much invested in their print presses, TV and radio stations. Over the past 100 years (a miniscule time frame in the grand scheme of things) they have informed us on what they believe we want to hear, read and view, and when we can get that information too. Our grand children (and maybe our children) will think it quite twee that we all once sat down together with our families at the predetermined time to watch TV programmes (I remember what an ‘event’ the 6pm nightly news was every night in our household in the 1970s). Those days are over.

If someone wants real information on property, who better to tell you than your knowledgeable local ‘tribe’ member? The person selling real estate who lives around the corner from you, the property manager who’s seen everything a thousand times and in a patient manner organizes the leaky gutters to be fixed for the hundredth time. They are the experts, and they ‘know local’ like no one else. 20% of those looking for rental properties in Australia search rentals on twitter. Of the 7 million Australians on Facebook, half tune in every day, and more are aged over 40 than under 20.

If you’re not there, you cannot be noticed or listened to. In this way, twitter, facebook, blogs and the like are merely tools of communication. No silver bullets. No one can give you the scripts and dialogues, but if you view this all in the right manner, you’ll know what to say when the time comes. You’ll make mistakes. You’ll learn it by doing (and listening). Join the conversation. We like to pass on interesting snippets, we like to help, we are good people. It’s tribal, it’s in our nature, it’s who we are.

Photo Credit: Maasai Tribal Dance

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.

1. @aussiehome
2. @apmasphere
3. @TRETCOMAU
4. @smartcompany
5. @peterfletcher
6. @mashable
7. @Larascott
8. @GregVincent
9. @Apimagazine
10. @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

I discussed the ugly side of Twitter about a year ago and in that article I said “Social networking and the internet in general has allowed a voice for everyone including your biggest critics”. Realestate.com.au found that out better than anybody as the new site went live.

Now this article is about that handled their complaints but to be fair there was a lot of praise amongst the twitter stream and facebook  as well.  But like always its the mud that sticks the longest and what people remember the most so its important that any company handles its complaints well even when they are the size of REA and there were a ton of complaints. The really impressive part was that it appears they were prepared for it and had an action plan in place that was executed brilliantly and agents should take notice. .

Someone was actively searching Twitter for any references to the relaunch and responding directly to the tweets concerned. They did not just respond to tweets directed at there twitter account of @realestate_au but they were actively seeking out anybody tweeting to their followers about the site, good and bad.

So when tweets like these started to show up

NathanKrisanski: New realestate.com.au website live today. what do you think? seems a little busy to me, but it is quicker & easier to use. DM me ur thoughts

alcro: Hey Realestate.com.au, your new site doesn’t work #REAfail

glenn_batten: @realestate_au Technical issue with your new site which may be causing more than a few people problems. http://bit.ly/bzaHuC Please fix

Brett_Hales: What is up with #realestate.com.au – if I search for a property everything is left justified. Looks ugly, check it out http://bit.ly/3wqDg

AnnalisaW @realestate_au can’t get it to load properly. Cumbersome. Most of content blocked by office filter.

portek I think the realestate.com.au suburb select for rentals is broken. Airport west is NOT North MElbourne.

they responded quickly to each person with:

realestate_au: @NathanKrisanski thx for your Tweet earlier today. If you have suggestions on making it less busy wld luv to hear them http://bit.ly/98znQe

realestate_au: @alcro Sorry to hear you are having issues with search – let us know the issue here and we will look into it – http://bit.ly/98znQe

realestate_au: @glenn_batten Thanks Glenn – already looking into it. Will keep you updated.

realestate_au: @Brett_Hales Glad you have been trying the new site – if you have suggestions for the search results share here – http://bit.ly/csJ79a

realestate_au @AnnalisaW sorry to hear you’re having issues – if you can, try another browser. if still having problems, let us know.

realestate_au @portek ok, might be best if you drop us a line at enquiries(at)realestate.com.au – we can direct your issue to the tech boffins there. thx

Their facebook page had similar sort of comments the only difference was that because it was on their wall they did not respond to every single comment as that would have seemed a touch too contrite.

The fact that they took the time to respond to so many consumers and agents was really fantastic and I was not the only one who thought so either:

charispalmer Impressive: @realestate_au getting back to everyone that has commented on the new site on Twitter

Rolling out a site the size and traffic load of Realestate.com.au would be a huge challenge and predictably there were problems that cropped so they didn’t just listen to the complaints on the social media  but the technical team also used to identify real issues in a live environment. They were cross referencing live tweets with server logs to fix problems very quickly even before users filled out feedback forms..

I was a victim of one of the more obscure ones where an incompatibility between our isp’s proxy server and the realestate.com.au servers caused a certain css file to be delivered blank. This meant any search result pages had no styling applied at all and was just an ugly bunch of left justified text and photos.

Now I noticed the problem during the beta testing but since I never received an invitation I had to piggy back on a somebody else’s access I never reported it through the official beta feedback. But once the site went live I and others brought it to their attention of the technical team pretty quickly. Because I had some fantastic help from Nick here on this blog they they tracked down the cause very quickly and even went so far as to ring and work with individual isp’s to track down the problem.

There are certainly still problems outstanding that team are still working on including some fairly major suburb related issues. One of these causes absolutely no properties show for major suburbs but for the most part the site is running extremely well now.

So whether you like the new style or not you have to admire how realestate.com.au handled the complaints.  Up till recently large corporations would normally respond to each call or email with the obligatory “you are the only person to be experiencing that issue” stock standard reply. But social media like Facebook and Twitter means you cant do this anymore. Everyone is far more educated and word spreads like wildfire.

Real estate groups and individual agents alike can learn a few lessons from how Realestate.com.au handled the recent release:

1. No matter how good a job you do you are never going to please everyone and there are going to be days where no matter how hard you try you just make some mistakes.
2. Be prepared and regularly monitor Twitter for tweets good and bad about your agency and your brand. Realestate.com.au probably dedicated a staff member to this job over the launch but agents thats not viable. Twilert was really good for this but it closed down because it could not handle the sheer success of Twitter but it has recently relaunched again and is a fantastic way to monitor your brand on Twitter.
3. Similarly Monitor your facebook fan page for feedback from your fans. This is certainly easier because Facebook can email you with every comment as it has been added to your wall.
4. Respond quickly, professionally and most importantly listen and be respectful.
5. Ideally offer a different more private forum to receive further information on the problem and to discuss the issue.

Of course not everything went to plan and the funny thing is that if you are looking to handle complaints about the performance of your new website, directing them back to that problematic website was probably not the best idea in hindsight. Of course there is a lesson in there as well:

jasb @realestate_au i just submitted your feedback form and got could not be found! Check ur search results layout in chrome, its screwed!

Brett_Hales @realestate_au Thanks for the opportunity to provide some feedback – didn’t go too well upon submit http://twitpic.com/1fjap1

]]> http://www.business2.com.au/2010/04/realestate-com-au-show-real-estate-agents-how-to-handle-twitter-and-facebook-complaints/feed/ 16 http://www.business2.com.au/2010/04/top-10-people-to-follow-on-twitter-for-australian-real-estate-agents-2010-q1/ http://www.business2.com.au/2010/04/top-10-people-to-follow-on-twitter-for-australian-real-estate-agents-2010-q1/#comments Thu, 08 Apr 2010 14:14:37 +0000 Glenn Batten http://www.business2.com.au/?p=2898 There are quite a few lists out there of people you must follow on twitter if you are a real estate agents but they are all skewed to a US audience. So I decided to create  a top 10 list for Australian Real Estate Agents to follow. I quickly found it pretty difficult to limit this to just 10 people to follow.  So what I decided to do is a quarterly top 10 list.

With the first quarter of 2010 just screaming past us already this initial list will be slightly retrospective but the next list will be better timed.

So here in no particular order is the first Top 10 People to Follow on Twitter for Australian Real Estate Agents:

1. @RPDATA
2. @realestate_au
3. @RealEstateUncut
4. @Domaincomau
5. @nik_nik
6. @BusinessTwo
7. @inmannews
8. @retomato
9. @RealEstateSoft
10. @jburslem

If you think you should have been on the list or know somebody that should have been dont despair. They will probably show up in the next list or the one after but just to make sure suggest them to me @glenn_batten

Edit:  All the top 10 from this list, and future lists can be found in my Twitter Listhttp://twitter.com/glenn_batten/top-10-for-aussie-agents/members

Disclosure: I created and maintain the Australian Real Estate Software website which is a directory of Real Estate Software and Internet Solutions for Australian Real Estate Agents. The twitter account listed as number 9 @RealEstateSoft broadcasts new additions to the directory.

1. There is absolutely nothing in this world like Facebook for connecting with all your old friends. The most successful people in real estate truly understand that networking is one of the real key’s to this industry and setting up a Facebook profile is drop dead easy thing to do to take advantage of it. Most of your old friends probably did not even know you were in real estate anyway. In sales the BIGGER YOUR SPHERE OF INFLUENCE THE BETTER.
2. Facebook and Twitter are truly opt-in marketing. There can be no chance that you can ever have provisions of the the privacy act thrown at you as they chose to follow you and they still WANT TO HEAR FROM YOU.
3. Testimonials are like gold for real estate agents and Linkedin allows you to write and receive business testimonials from other members. Testimonials that you approve become part of your profile for everyone to see. WHO DOES NOT WANT ANYMORE TESTIMONIALS?
4. Ensure your following the right people on Twitter as it is simply the best barometer on the real estate industry. Everyday you will get the latest training tips, strategies, news and commentary and all in just 140 characters each. On Twitter follow few and follow quality and YOU WILL BE REWARDED. Try to follow too many and it all just turns into noise.
5. Networking with others in and associated with our industry is just as important as networking with potential clients. When you are looking to contact someone you have never met Linkedin shows you who in your network already knows them and how. Linked in allows you to BUILD RELATIONSHIPS AND CONNECTIONS INSIDE THE INDUSTRY.
6. Twitter Search is a fantastic way to keep abreast of just what people are saying about your company, your brand or a recent advertising campaign. You get to see exactly what consumers are TELLING THEIR FRIENDS ABOUT YOU.
7. If they find it interesting or worth sharing,  your friends and followers will spread your news for you when they retweet, comment or like something that you post. The power of social networking is INCREDIBLE WHEN IT GOES VIRAL.
8. Tweets are now integrated live into the Google Search Engine Results Pages. Facebook Fan Pages and Twitter Lists are now in the Google Index which makes setting up a Twitter Account and Facebook Profile the EASIEST SEO ON THE PLANET.
9. If you dont like someone or they are posting or tweeting rubbish… you can just DELETE THEM!
10. Twitter, Facebook and Linkedin are 100% FREE…  at least for now.