There’s been a lot of talk lately about Twitter.  What is it?  How should you use it?  Is it a waste of time?  These are good questions that I want to address.  I’ve been a part of the Twitter community for a few weeks now learning as much as I can about the audience, reach (current and potential) and usefulness of this network as it relates to personal branding and real estate lead generation.

For those who don’t know, Twitter is one of several emerging micro blogging platforms that lets users interact with other members of the network.  Twitter’s power grows as the network grows and last month (Dec. 2008) the company saw 27% growth and logged 4.5 million unique visitors to it’s website.  Those are big numbers and it’s my bet that the tipping point has been reached as we are entering into 2009 and what will be the complete adoption of a very interactive and social web… the masses are coming.

So, how to use Twitter for real estate lead generation.

Most notably, Twitter has eliminated agent-to-buyer and buyer-to-buyer separation.  Because Twitter is a place where people post about the things going on in their life someone who has purchased a product or used a service can share that experience with their Twitter following.  Think word of mouth marketing on steroids.  The clients of yours using Twitter will naturally post about the ups and downs of their transaction.  Their Tweets (Individual Twitter posts) become living and breathing testimonials for your service to anyone in their social sphere.   The potential arises in the ability to leverage the social sphere of happy clients during this social feedback cycle.

“It (The social feedback cycle) is the post-purchase conversation – built up and validated through the collective wisdom of the crowd – that ultimately drives word-of-mouth-based evangelism”  - Dave Evans, Social Media Marketing 

3 steps to leveraging your clients Twitter social sphere.

1. Join Twitter if you haven't already and familiarize yourself with the community.  Take note of the kind of conversations happening on Twitter.
2. Find past and current clients that are using Twitter.  I also recommend installing a service like Tweetdeck to organize the people you are following into groups.  A group of “Past/Current Clients” makes sense.
3. When it is relevant, and especially when there is good news, communicate with your clients through Twitter.  When your happy clients respond back to you then their following (Friends, family, co-workers) will be able read about the favorable experience they are having with you as their agent.  Even better their following may even join in on the conversation.  The fact is that a lot of people will be reading a positive testimonial about your quality service from someone in their social circle.

Twitter is just another piece to your online toolbox as a tech savvy agent.  As these types of micro blogging platforms become the norm, stay ahead of the curve and ahead of the competition.  I already see agents using Twitter successfully and am interested in some more success stories as we move forward!

Additional resources:

Twitter.com – Getting Started

10 Twitter Etiquette Rules

Video: Gary Vaynerchuk – Building Personal Brand within the Social Media Landscape