I have heard this over and over again, not just by real estate agents – but by many people who are trepidacious about getting involved in Twitter.

To many, Twitter has become more useful as a way to tap into what’s “going on today,“ than to broadcast their own messages. And once you get acclimated to Twitter, you might just find you have something to say after all.

Biz Stone, Twitter’s co-founder says,

“Naysayers should simply log onto their Twitter’s home page and search for a topic they are interested in, whether it’s their favorite sports team, the name of their company or a topic in the news.” Within a minute, they understand the appeal, he said.

Here are 3 ways to make Twitter work for you:

1. Create a custom feed. Find people to follow by searching Twitter directories. My two favorites are WeFollow or Just Tweet It. Remember, to get followers at first, you must follow others!

2. Create lists.

Lists are fantastic – and a GREAT way to organize people you follow. You could make lists for news sources, fellow Realtors, geographic areas, etc. This way you can click on that list to see what those specific people are talking about. I just created the Inman Team list – as a place for people to contact the right person at Inman News (i.e. editorial, marketing, advertising, etc.) If you don’t know who the best users are on a favorite topic, look for lists on sites like Listorious or by checking profiles.

3. Check out the most discussed topics in your area. We hear it over and over again, but real estate is truly a ‘local business.’ Find out who is around you locally and what they are chatting about. Some Twitter apps, like Tweetie and TwitterLocal, let you search posts near you. Check the Web site Happn.in to see the most discussed topics in your area.

BONUS: Don’t be afraid to ask questions. Once you’ve gotten your feet wet, use Twitter to ask questions such as the best place to grab a bite to eat in a new city, marketing tips, or anything else you need an answer to!

Some questions Realtors could start asking via Twitter are: “What’s the best marketing tool that is working for you?” or, “What is the most effective thing Realtors are doing to convert leads to sales?” These questions open the door to conversation and networking!

What are you doing to make Twitter work for you? Would love your feedback – please leave me a comment below!

Written by: Katie Lance, Marketing Manager, Inman News

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You can see a live demo here.

It’s a sharp looking design that really pushes Wordpress beyond its blogging basics. For just shy of a hundred bones (a pretty small investment really) you get a great looking web site with a lot of baked in functionality.

But more than just a good looking site — with a choice of four color schemes — you get the benefit of Wordpress’ fantastic SEO optimization, an integrated blog and all the great plugins and hacks available to Wordpress site owners.

I particularly liked the way Agentpress gives you customizable listing templates for individual properties which incorporate some nice design elements like the Lightbox-esque popups and embedded Google Maps. Plus, because each listing is stored as a separate post in the Wordpress database, Agentpress gives you a modest property search tool right off the home page to index your individual listings/posts.

Marry these property pages with a vanity URL and you’ve got yourself a pretty snazzy single-property website.

After a bit of a lull, there’s been a slew of real estate-related activity on Wordpress recently, starting with the Local Market Explorer plugin released by Zillow (see New Local Market Explorer plugin for Wordpress).

Now, with premium theme options like Agentpress (the iReal Estate Theme is another premium theme available for purchase) and an embeddable IDX solutions like that from Diverse Solutions, you’ve got the makings of pretty kick-ass website – right off the shelf.

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

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZrxAaMVWsEs[/youtube]

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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Things were simpler then, more familiar. You knew who to call, what to do and what to expect.

I’m talking about the good old days of real estate advertising.

Back then, you dealt with the sales rep for the local paper over a cup of coffee. Maybe you sponsored a little league team or bought a spot on the back of the church bulletin. And your audience? You could count on them to be in just a few places, at the same times, week in and week out.

Those days are long gone, a fact that has been amply documented. I won’t belabor that point.

The more important question is this: Now that the game has changed, how can we make it simpler for real estate advertisers?

Think about it: The average agent, broker or brokerage marketing director is faced with a panoply of media, formats and creative challenges these days.

On the table are:

• SEM/pay-per-click
• Brand display ads
• Direct response display ads
• Syndication
• Video
• Mobile
• Print

And this, mind you, is a growing list. Video wasn’t there three years ago; mobile wasn’t there just one year ago. Next year you may need to consider your strategy for Tweet ads, or feel pressure to get into the “augmented reality” game.

I know, it’s a little scary. And most brokers, and darn near all agents, don’t have the in-house talent to master all these platforms. Nor do they have the budget needed to hire a digital agency that does.

What to do?

Here are a few recommendations, from both the advertiser and publisher side of the business.

For advertisers (brokers and agents)

When Google launched Adwords back in 2002, thousands of brokers and agents jumped on the opportunity. After all, who wouldn’t explore performance-based advertising?

The problem was few practitioners had the time or skill necessary to optimize an SEM campaign. Results for many were disappointing.

My point: Pick media you are confident you can execute well in. If your marketing department has a good designer, you may want to focus on display ads. If you have a great headline/call to action writer on your team, SEM may be a good choice. If you or your broker performs well in front of the camera, start syndicating video.

Stick to that which you are capable executing well.

Secondly, for digital media, make sure you think beyond the click. By this I mean where the user is taken when they click on your ad. Whether this is a property detail page or a more conventional landing page, you have to make certain you present the user with something that is clear, consistent in message and look with the ad that got them to click, and loaded with a strong call to action.

If you can’t execute beyond the click, don’t bother.

For publishers

We as publishers – those site owners or media channels that sell advertising to brokers and agents – can also do our share to simplify the advertising ecosystem.

For one, we can offer cross-platform buys. At HomeFinder, we offer national exposure through HomeFinder.com combined with local placement on individual newspaper sites. Brokers and agents like this because it allows them to kill two birds with one stone.

Adwords now has a mobile offering. Several companies are marrying listings syndication with distribution to YouTube.

We are getting there. But we need to move more quickly to offer integrated packages that streamline the process for our advertisers.

Second, publishers should do more to share best practices with their advertisers. Many sales people take a consultative approach with broker and agent clients as far as structuring an ad buy, but I’m talking about something more.

For example, a strong case can be made that any large publisher would do well to hire an in-house marketing specialist available to help clients evaluate creative, craft messaging and optimize landing pages. If that sounds over the top, consider that newspapers sometimes create ads for smaller clients.

Moving forward

We will never again see a world where advertising is straightforward and audiences are concentrated. Our time is one of multiple, often blended, media channels and atomized audiences.

Our aim should be to make that reality more manageable.

If you’d like to have your writing featured on FOREM blog, please email us at futureofrealestate@gmail.com

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It allows you to instantly add rich, dimensional media to your blog or website by integrating text, images, video, maps, music and much more from over 50 sources; including Wikipedia, Flickr, NY Times, YouTube, Twitter and many others.

In the data rich environment of the Web that we now all live in, for many of us the big challenge is finding a way to present all the great new content we have at our fingertips on a web site.

So as a web site owner or blogger, Apture allows you to begin to curate that content and begin to provide the proper context for your visitors.

Take, for example, this widget (click image to activate) I created for the neighborhood in which I live; containing a map, photos, video driving directions, historical background and a great article from the NY Times on Portland’s restaurants.

You can also create a link that has the same functionality built in.

Using a third party source like Outside.in for content is certainly a sensible and easy way to add some depth to your web site (see Looking for Hyperlocal Content?) but using a plugin like Apture, you can really add the right personal flourish (like linking your Twitter profile) and, more importantly, begin to apply the proper editorial oversight to really present your city, town or neighborhood in the right context.

Read More: Sellsius’ Joseph Ferrara writing on Inman News also profiled Apture.

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Boxee.

Boxee is a revolutionary application that lets you pull together all your media together in a single browser that you can access from the comfort of your couch. I truly believe that Boxee – when combined with a device like my AppleTV – is the future of television. It lets me consume all the media I’ve gathered on my local network as well as hook in to all kinds of web-based streaming content; including breaking news, music and, of course, video.

Recently, the company launched a contest for developers to get companies to write applications (“plugins”) that can be added to a Boxee installation.

The folks at WellcomeMat obliged and built a wicked cool app that let’s you browse and search for local videos on your TV. Check it out.

They’re asking for your help too – vote for them and help them win the developer challenge. Today’s the last chance to cast your ballot.

So why is this all important? As we move into this brave new world of web marketing where everyone becomes a content producer, it’s important to consider where the new distribution channels may lie. Whether it’s new devices like the Kindle (see FOREM now on Kindle) or new platforms like Boxee – figuring out your syndication strategy is going to become as important — if not more so — than creating the words, or video, in the first place.

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Amazon kicked open the door this afternoon to bloggers of all stripes to get their work on the book seller’s breakout e-reader device; the Kindle.

Previously you could subscribe to a handful of pre-selected blogs on the Kindle, but Amazon now lets all publishers submit their feed for sale in the Kindle marketplace. Prices range from $0.99 – $1.99 a month for a subscription; and Amazon shares this revenue with you, the blog owner.

Creating an account and submitting your blog is pretty straight-forward. I had this blog up and running in a couple of minutes (though it takes Amazon 24-48 hours to review and accept your blog).

Right now there’s a mad land rush to corner the blossoming market for e-readers (witness the Kindle DX’s launch only 3 months after the Kindle 2). New devices from makers like Plastic Logic and a long-rumored Apple tablet stand only to accelerate the changes in the way we consume the written word in the coming months.

This move towards digital ink has a fundamental impact on the way organizations, brands and professionals (Realtors indeed) will communicate with customers. Case in point, delivered electronically to a Kindle, your local newspaper comes stripped of advertising, thus eliminating one traditional touch point for marketers.

But imagine instead a monthly real estate market report delivered wirelessly to a widely distributed network of opt-in (paying, even!) wired consumers via Whispernet. Much more valuable than any ad could ever be.

I truly believe these devices are game changing and will be speaking on the subject at this summer’s Real Estate Connect conference in a panel titled “How the Amazon Kindle Will Change Your Business” (natch). Make sure you register and snag a pass quickly!

In the meantime, if you have already Kindle, head out and subscribe and read FOREM on the go. Let me know what you think.

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Jeff Turner and Bill Lublin have announced the creation of the new Social Media Marketing Institute (SMMI) and now offer a new designation to Realtors; Certified Social Media Marketer (CSM). The course is designed “to educate business professionals in the effective and responsible use of Social Media to generate business through permission-based marketing.”

Both instructors certainly have the chops to pull this off; Jeff is better known as the founder and president of the virtual tour company Real Estate Shows. He is a deep thinker and true pioneer in the social media space – you can follow him on Twitter (@respres) and on his blog Turner’s Perspective.

Bill is the CEO of a Century 21 affiliate in Phildelphia; you can read him on MOVEPHILLY blog, on Twitter (@billlublin) and is an active contributor to AgentGenius.

For more on the SMMI, read today’s Inman News article.

Other social media/online marketing resources:

• 1000Watt Consulting
• Reachd
• 4Realz
• New Media Labs
• Domus Consulting

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And while this may have been forgivable during the height of the bubble; now, when the market is at it’s most vulnerable, and folks crying out for some guidance and clarity, we’re really seeing some doozies. 

Like this ad from national homebuilder DR Horton. (h/t Hot Property)

Or this gem from RE/Max (I’m not picking on them I swear…)

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aSTdelX3_gU[/youtube]

Problem is, it’s not a funny time. 

These ads are pandering and an insult to our intelligence. It’s about dumbing it down to the lowest common denominator. It’s advertising 1.0 thinking… that we’re more clever than you are, so listen to what we’re trying to sell you.

I don’t know, is it just me? Am I the only one who would like to see advertisers promote an honest discussion about where we are in the market and why there’s some hope of a rebound building out there (that the first time buyers credit seems to be stimulating some activity in certain areas). Folks I talk to want to hear about this, but nobody’s out there telling them.

Instead we get stupid gimmicks like this. Seems like a wasted opportunity to me.

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A guest perspective from Ashfaq Munshi, co-founder and CEO of Terabitz.

In an earlier incarnation, soon after I graduated, I was a young and eager executive at Oracle viewing life through a much different lens than I do now. While I did not know it at the time, that lens was cloudy, fogged up by youthful exuberance born out of pure textbook education and the rush of applying it inside fast lane of corporate America.

As far as rat races go, Silicon Valley is the Indy 500. And there I was, one was of many, trying to lead the pack inside a huge company where every other over achieving, drafting, Ivy League hot shot could, at any given moment, swing out from behind and out do me. All they had to do was work one hour longer, take one less break, and devote one more weekend to a project.

I didn’t think about it then, but few of those folks would ever really make it to the end of the race a winner.  The reason, as I would soon come to learn, is that most never really had the proper set of directions. Or discipline. They had an idea where they wanted to end up – rich and famous for some technological innovation – but few every really understood how to navigate the inside course to reach it.

I might not have either had the man I reported didn’t pass on a few words of wisdom that I remember to this day. In short, he suggested that if I truly wanted to define my life and achieve everything I was capable of, I needed to answer one simple question: What do I stand for. Once I determined that, he said, all I needed was to make sure everything that followed paid homage to it.

Right now this might be a great time for anyone reading this to ask that same question of themselves and their business.  

The essence of a brand

You do not have to be a dog lover to appreciate Cesar Milan or the success he has created for himself and others around him. What is important to understand however, is how he was able come to this country minus most of the tools we are lucky to inherit as citizens and within ten years achieve the very things most of my colleagues at Oracle spent a lifetime aspiring towards but never reaching.

Cesar stood for something. That something guided each and every decision he made. From who he married, to where he lived and to whom he allowed into his life.

The world is filled with examples of people who find within them a core belief that define their being. Some of them go on to build businesses that evoke and stir that same emotion within their clientele.

Madison Avenue distills that core essence down to one word – principles. It is from those core principles that brands are born, live and thrive.

I went back to my office after speaking with my boss and thought about what I stand for. I came up with two simple tenets that have defined my life. One was personal and one was career oriented. Personally, I stood for family first. And I meant it. I never waivered.  Career wise, I stood for creating solutions that better organized and simplified the life and business of my clients. I meant that too. And never waivered.

As a result of my dedication to these principles, the people I served achieved the goals they stood for as well.

The essence of real estate

Deep down, stripped away from all the goop that is our business, the commissions, the leads, the politics of search, and housed under the mire of fierce competition and the down market, are solid gold entities – brokerages and agencies that face far less adversity than any immigrant from south of the border who if pressed, probably couldn’t read a yard sign back then to save his life. Or for that matter the son of an Indian immigrant, fresh out of Stanford, trying to find his way in life.

Every broker I know stands for something. But until you compose it on paper, flush it out and fully examine if what you’ve built is aligned with your principles, then your brand will never shine bright. It will spin inside a centrifuge, caught in the rat race that is real estate and pit you against every other high achiever. On any given day, any broker can work a little harder, recruit the other brokers agents or throw a few more dollars at their marketing and out do the other.

But that’s not going to build a brand.

Align yourself and your company with your principles – the very core of what you stand for – remain steadfast and the essence of your brands will begin to glow. And you could become untouchable.

I’ve been fortunate to watch this happen in other industries. I know it can happen here.

Interested in contributing a perspective to FOREM? Please send your submissions to futureofrealestate [at] gmail.com.

photo by Stuck in Customs

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