Yesterday I was pleasantly surprised to find an email newsletter from – TWITTER! I guess it shouldn’t surprise me – but at first I was a bit surprised that the company that made “140 characters” a household name, decided to get a message out to their members via email.

Good reminder to all of us that email is still a great way to get a message out – especially to your loyal fans (or followers!)

Here is the body of the email in it’s original form – lots of great new things coming down the pipeline from Twitter!

Hi there,

In the early days of Twitter, I used to send out short updates just to keep everyone in the loop since so much was happening. It’s been a while, but you signed up for short, monthly updates from Twitter so we thought it was time to start sharing more information. We’ve had quite a year. If you haven’t visited in a while, we’d like to invite you to come have a look at http://twitter.com — we’ve been busy!

Growing Up
In the course of a year, registered Twitter accounts have grown more than 1,500% and our team has grown 500%. Recently, we hired our 140th employee! His name is Aaron and he’s an engineer focused on building internal tools to help promote productivity, communication, and support within our company. We celebrated with a little dance party.

Features of Note
Some features of note that we released over the course of a year include the ability to create lists, quickly spread information with a retweet button, and an easier way to activate your mobile phone to work with Twitter over SMS. We also built a new mobile web site that looks and works much better on smart phones.

Feeling Inspired
By working together during critical times when others needed help, sharing important information that otherwise might not make the news, and inventing new and interesting ways to use Twitter, you’ve shown us that Twitter is more than a triumph of technology — it is a triumph of humanity. Projects like Fledgling and Hope140 were inspired by you.

Chirp!
While there may only be 140 full-time employees working at the Twitter offices, there are thousands of dedicated platform developers who have now created more than 70,000 registered Twitter applications creating variety and utility for all of us. We’ll be gathering this spring at Chirp, our first ever official Twitter developer conference.

Thanks,
Biz Stone, Co-founder (@Biz)
Twitter, Inc.

Would love your thoughts on email newsletters. I am a big believer in them myself – especially to drive traffic to your web site or blog. I also think they are a fantastic way to keep your ‘raving fans’ updated on the latest and greatest that you are promoting.Leave me a comment below!

Written by: Katie Lance, Marketing Manager, Inman News

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I kept thinking, “If I was a Realtor, what would be my big take-away from Connect?”

At opening session, Brad Inman talked about 2 things that caught my attention:
1.    The world is changing – real time search, location, news, comments, reviews, auctions and collaboration, and of course real estate.
2.    In this age of “digital addiction” take time to “look up” and connect with people face to face.

So taking those two things into consideration, if I was a Realtor – here would be the 2 big things I would implement ASAP into my business:

1.    Mobile technology. If I was a Realtor I would make sure that I had a mobile strategy in place. In his opening message, Brad Inman, Publisher, Inman News said, “One of the biggest shifts we are seeing is the increase in real time data.” Tools like mobile applications, Twitter and Facebook, are impacting how quickly information is distributed. Inman predicts that one of the big trends in 2010 will be mobile apps that are able to filter and organize this data. Real time search, real time location, real time agent feedback, and real time real estate listing information will be major trends we will see in 2010. “Those agents that adopt technology will close more transactions because they will be more efficient,” say Inman.

If I were a Realtor I would make sure I looked at things like:

• Does my brokerage have a mobile app? What about my MLS?
• Is it worth me investing in my own mobile app?  iSites, a new service launching today, allows you to take your website’s RSS feed and data and quickly transform it into a full-fledged iPhone app. It was created by Genwi, a service that combines aspects of RSS reader, social network and news filter. For just $25, iSites will create a customized iPhone and Android app for you.
• What type of local data can I have right at my fingertips on my mobile phone? Yelp is a great place to start. Foursquare is another great local app that is getting a ton of attention, especially after Dennis Crowley spoke at Connect – and we all had an “a-ha” moment!

Mike Mangino, Owner & President, Elevated Rails talked about some of the key apps to have on your mobile phone to help you do your business better:

• Navigation tool
• Access to your CRM tool
• A simple mortgage calculator app you can use with clients
• Social Media apps: TweetDeck, Tweetie 2 or Hootsuite, Facebook and Linked-In apps
• I’m adding to this list – Wordpress app – a must if your blog is hosted on WP.

2.    Connect with people face to face. One of the biggest challenges Realtors face is meeting new potential clients face-to-face. Now is the time to ‘look up!’

Scott Heiferman, co-founder and CEO of meetup.com was one of the final keynote speakers at Connect and talked about the power of connecting with people live and face to face. People are creating their own self organized groups.

There are 5.7 million Meetup.com members in nearly 59,000 local groups in more than 11,000 cities, according to the company’s site.

Agents can not only join a meetup for local real estate professionals, but they can connect with local real estate buyers groups and sponsor non-real-estate-related groups.

I love this concept – especially for an agent trying to break into a new market niche or community, or just for an agent trying to expand their sphere of influence, this is the perfect opportunity for them.

The message is: be the catalyst for community in your business – online and offline in 2010.

Stay tuned for more about Connect. Inman News will be publishing a comprehensive report next week. Also check out inman.com this week – videos are available for Inman Premium Members. Not a member? Sign up by this Friday, January 22nd and get a special rate of only $99 (reg. price $149)

Written by: Katie Lance, Marketing Manager, Inman News

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I am fired up about the results we have had by simply ‘turning up the dials.’ So how can YOU grow your Twitter traffic?

Here are my top 4 tips plus a cool update from Twitter’s blog:

1. Work smart. Have a plan. Don’t get distracted.

I could just end my blog right now because that’s really the core of what I’m doing to grow our follower list at Inman. I have a simple plan that I follow every day. Where do you want to drive traffic to? What message do you want to convey? One of my favorite Twitter products is HootSuite.com which allows you to plan your tweets – much like drip marketing. Spend 1 hour a day on Twitter and plan out 95% of your tweets.  Also, Hootsuite just launched their iPhone app this week. This is quickly becoming my favorite Twitter app.

2. Don’t be passive. Twitter moves fast – you better keep up.

Twitter is not Facebook. Twitter is not email. Don’t make the mistake of thinking you can just tweet once or twice a day and that’s going to cut it. Log onto Twitter and look at your Twitter stream. Scroll to the bottom of the page – when’s the last tweet? An hour ago? Half an hour? For me it’s 2 minutes ago.  If you aren’t on your follower’s radar– they will NEVER see your tweets – so be aggressive. Word of caution: don’t just tweet to tweet. Put out good content and good links.

3.    To be followed you must be a follower.

Twitter is not a “wait and see” marketing tool.  You can’t expect for people to just find you and follow you. One of the fastest ways to generate new followers is to follow like-minded people. Use the search function and search for people who are your target audience. In TweetDeck you can save searches so if you plug in a specific search like “Manhattan Real Estate,” anytime someone tweets about that subject, you will be notified

4.    Recognize and connect.

Aren’t you surprised at the number of people who just spew information out there and never interact!? Don’t be one of those! Your daily plan has to include checking to see who mentioned you, retweeting others, and responding to DM’s. This may be the last point to this blog but this is SO important. A great video for breaking this all down in 10 minutes a day is a fantastic video by Laura Roeder.

One last thing – breaking news from Twitter on their blog yesterday.
Twitter is beta testing a new function for companies called “Contributors” – it enables users to engage in more authentic conversations with businesses by allowing those organizations to manage multiple contributors to their account. This could be huge for brokerages – you could have the CEO, Broker/Owner and Marketing Director tweet on the same handle – but you would know who “the voice” would be.

These Twitter tips are so easy to do – but they are also so easy NOT to do. For every 5 real estate agents and brokerages on Twitter, there are 25 that are not. The odds are your favor – take advantage of it! And if you’re not yet following me on Twitter yet, click here or here!

posted by: Katie Lance, Marketing Manager, Inman News

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Significantly, the company found that the use of video is up 95% in the first half of 2009 versus the first half of 2008.

Breakouts like Realtor Ian Watt (see Video Isn’t Just About Your Listings) set the bar for the creative use of video and also seemed to have kick-started a whole generation of car-mounted video blog posts.

But it’s not only the little guys getting in on the fun; big brands like Corcoran Group are embracing video too.

Click here to view the embedded video.

What I found particularly interesting in the report however, was the breakdown of the how real estate professionals are using video. Marketing listings comes in at the top of the list 30 per cent; showcasing local areas and professional introductions round out the top three but oddly, demonstrating market knowledge comes in dead last.

Seems to me, if done properly, market intelligence is the biggest opportunity to push video in a new interesting direction. Imagine an animated Common Craft style monthly video market report, for example…

Here’s a few more slides from the full report.

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I first met Gary at his keynote at Real Estate Connect in New York where I had the opportunity to corner him for an video interview (see Leverage the power of social media).

Gary’s book Crush It has been tearing up the best-seller lists and I’m stoked to announce that as of today, Crush it is available as a vook.

I could write a lengthy blog post about the app – but Gary sums it best…

Click here to view the embedded video.

The Crush It vook app contains 18 never-before-seen videos and the full content of the book. It is available for immediate purchase on iTunes (App store download) and on the Web.

[Full disclosure: I've been working on this app for the last couple of months. Vook was founded by Inman News publisher Brad Inman.]

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Her answer was posted on YouTube. I’ve posted the video below.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Thanks Pam!

I’d also like to throw this question out to the rest of the real estate industry – send me your video response via YouTube and I’ll post them all here on this blog.

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Want to learn how to Crush It?

Web 2.0 guru and now best-selling author Gary Vaynerchuk will be holding court at the Bell House in Brooklyn on October 27th, starting at 9pm, for an exclusive FREE event.

RSVP on the Eventbrite page – and make sure you get their early to secure your spot! The place is filling up quickly.

Gary will be joined by a guest that night for a very special announcement, and the evening will feature an exclusive montage of never-before-seen, behind-the-scenes video footage. An after party with Clabo, who brought you the Crush it! music video, will top off the evening.

It should be quite the night…

UPDATE: Want to hang out and drink champagne with Gary V. backstage before his presentation at the Bell House on October 27th? Just reserve a spot on the Eventbrite page and then get two of your friends to reserve tickets as well. Send all three of your confirmation codes to garyvbellhouse@gmail.com and they’ll draw one email as the winner. The winner and his or her two friends will then get to go backstage before the show and spend time CRUSHING IT! one on one with Gary V!

Photo by affiliatesummit

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Ork Posters prints beautiful neighborhood maps for cities across the US; including Seattle, Boston, NYC, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Chicago,DC and Philly, among others. The maps are designed by Jenny Beorkrem from trimtabdesign.com.

For the true font-o-phile, these works are wonderful typographic inspiration. But regardless, they would look great hanging in your office or conference room and make for a great conversation piece. Also would be a fantastic thank you gift; especially for any relocation clients moving in to a new city.

Posters are printed with soy-based ink on 100% recycled paper. Various color styles are available for each city and they run between $22 and $27 a pop.

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The evening unfolded something like this.

Allegedly, Chappelle, while wandering around Portland yesterday, told a handful of people he would be doing a free set at 1am on the steps of the downtown gathering spot.

Word began to spread through social networks, via Twitter and Facebook status updates. Anticipation began to build. (As did some healthy skepticism that it was all a hoax).

Chappelle expected a couple hundred people to show up and instead, this is what happened.

An utter mob scene – but in typical Portland fashion, totally chill.

I think this is a wonderful illustration of two driving concepts in today’s web economy; the power of giving something away for for free and the power of social networks to distribute that message for you.

Let’s tackle the first concept – as Chris Anderson explains in his book Free, “free” is a incredibly powerful motivator and can instantly build brand loyalty. How many Chappelle fans, spurred on by the thrill of him just showing up, raced home and purchased his CDs or DVDs off Amazon? How many will be in line to buy tickets the next time he swings through Portland? By deciding to perform for free on a whim, he instantly connected with a legion of local fans and gave them a unique night to remember.

So what are you giving away for free? A market report, your home search tool (i.e. no registration). There’s lots of things you can be doing for free.

Secondly, the excitement around the mere thought of a Chappelle appearance in Portland was amplified exponentially by online social networks, as friends told friends, and the word of mouth buzz spread. And, either online or offline, this buzz (and good will) will likely continue for weeks as the story is retold over and over.

Granted most of us aren’t stars the magnitude of Dave Chappelle, but each of us, in our own way, can use this understanding that by doing something remarkable, and better yet, by giving it away for free, you can create instantly communicate, invigorate and even resuscitate your brand to your fans.

We can all learn something here. Even from a funny man like Dave Chappelle.

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Gahlord Dewald writes today over on Inman.com about Tweetlister – a new service that helps you market your listings on Twitter.

The main advantage? Tweetlister takes all the listing details you input in to the site and automatically creates a 140 character “tweet” for you and gives you a landing page for the property.

Dewald writes…

With all of the variables and attributes in a real estate property listing, trying to get it shortened to the 140-character limit of a Twitter post can be a challenge. One thing which TweetLister does well is shorten the listing information for you.

You enter the broad-stroke information via pull-down menus and a few text boxes. You can also select a repeating schedule with start and end dates. TweetLister shortens it all into a classified-ad-style Twitter post. Nothing fancy, no snappy copywriting or anything. Just short and simple.

I’m a big fan of any service that makes life easier – but like Nik Nik at MyTechOpinion I had a hard time wrapping my head around Tweetlister initially.  Certainly, using Twitter to promote a property can be an effective way to launch a listing into the conversation — as long as it’s not the only thing you’re tweeting! — but as NikNik said, much of this could easily be accomplished with a URL shortener and link tracking service like Bit.ly.

Also  I think I was reacting to the idea that I’d be using my network to drive traffic to a third party destination. Personally, I’d want to send any visitors to my own website. I suppose if I were a Realtor that didn’t have a personal website that showed off my listings or already own a single-property website for the home, Tweetlister might make an quick and dirty alternative. But I’m betting most readers of this blog are doing at least one of the former however.

That said, combine Tweetlister with service like vFlyer that already does some of the heavy lifting of syndicating listings to multiple destinations online (including social networks like Twitter) and you’ve got a really interesting product. Especially if you roll in all the back end analytics functions that something like vFlyer offers.

As traffic to social networks continue to soar, they do become viable syndication destinations in addition to the real estate portals – but as Gahlord also writes in his piece, “don’t confuse automating your listing promotion via TweetLister with being an engaged social-media-expert real estate professional”. Engaging on Twitter or Facebook or any other social network is a big responsibility – and there are no short cuts there.

For more on how to use Twitter in real estate, check out the Tomato’s post, Twitter Explained for the Real Estate Blogger.

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