“The team at Scribe Communications was kind enough to share with us their Twitter guide for those in the real estate industry. Since most of you reading this blog are in real estate you should follow all of these industry professionals!”
Getting on Twitter:
A. Potential followers/followees:
1. Builders – Pardee, SheaHomesSD, WilliamLyonHome, 4SRanch
2. PR/Industry people – MariaSwanson, ScribePR, CaronDG, JonJonBailey, NewHomesSection, etc.
3. News
a. This may include the publication itself
b. Industry reporters
c. Trade publications
4. Organizations affiliated with the market – BIASanDiego
5. Real Estate Professors
B. Twitter can be used in 2 ways:
1. As a Listener
Look for tweets about the housing industry/market, trends in real estate, good business, changes, expansion, community events surrounding your projects, etc. Use Search.Twitter.com to search for trending topics. You can type in any keywords here to see what people are saying.
2. As a Listener and Contributor (what you want to be doing!)
As a contributor, you should Tweet about opportunities and news. You should also re-tweet (RT) positive news from your competitors. Your followers, and if you’re re-tweeted, additional followers, will see your name/thoughts/news in their Twitter feed.
Convinced?
Here’s how to use Twitter:
1. Sign-up at www.Twitter.com
2. Create a user-name, etc. Your user-name is also your Twitter name, so select this name carefully.
3. Tweet from your Home page in the “What’s happening” section. The tweets of those you follow also appear here.
4. To view your tweets only, visit your Profile page.
5. To write to someone, about someone, or to reply to someone, use “@”. For example, if you want to say something to user SDUT, type @SDUT in your “What’s happening” field, and proceed with your message.
6. To re-tweet what someone has said because you want to share it with your followers, type RT @SDUT [copy and paste their tweet here] OR, you can just click on the little re-tweet symbol in the lower-right corner of a tweet you like.
7. To re-tweet what someone has said and comment on it, type your comment, RT @SDUT [copy and paste their tweet here].
8. You can send and receive direct messages (DM). Visit your Home page, and view DM’s in the right hand column.
9. You can change your page settings (colors, design, etc.) by visiting settings (upper-right hand corner).
10. You can also decide to protect your tweets or leave them unprotected. Most people do not protect their tweets because twitter is really just a stream of status updates (as you would see on Facebook). Picture sharing is available, but profiles have not been as fully developed as they are on Facebook. Its up to you…
How to track tweets:
1. Go to bit.ly and register for an account. You can Tweet straight from this site, use the URL shortener, or both. Because you are limited to 140 characters, it is wise to shorten all URL’s you are linking to.
You can return to bit.ly to see how many RT’s and clicks your post received.
2. Use Search.Twitter.com and plug in keywords to see where you have been mentioned. This only stores tweets from the last 8 days.
10 Etiquette Tips:
1. Post useful, relevant information.
2. Do not use this tool as a “bull-horn”/for blatant advertising.
3. You don’t have to follow all of your followers. Follow those who interest you.
4. Remember that Twitter is a PUBLIC forum.
5. Keep personal conversations private. Utilize DM (direct message) tool.
6. Spread the good news of others, including competitors.
7. Don’t post multiple tweets in a row. They clog up Twitter feeds.
8. Make sure to post a photo and bio on your profile page.
9. @replies should have a lot of detail. For example, @SDUT Yes! would be better as @SDUT Yes! The housing market is picking up. This will clue your other followers in.
10. Don’t send a generic, mass-produced message to new followers. Rather, personally thank them for following you, and show interest.
Recommended people/organizations to follow:
New Home Builders
@PardeeHomes | @SheaHomesSD | @LGIHomes | @4SRanch | @Lennar
PR/Industry people
@MariaSwanson | @Carondg | @jonjonbailey | @ScribePR | @NewHomesSection
@RealEstate_SD | @Vanessa_Linn | @Jwalcher | @Peter_Dennehy | @PRProSanDiego
News/Industry News
@EmmetPierce | @richtoscano | @kellyrbennett | @KPBSnews | @SDNewsNetwork | @PCBC_TheShow | @Inmannews
Organizations affiliated with the market:
@BIASanDiego
Jan Percival, 
Very useful information. Using twitter to gain insights into your business is one of the best and greatest uses of this social media platform. Thanks for the info.
Thank you, Silveria Team. Glad you found it useful.
Interesting way of using twitter personally we have twitter but we tend to use twitter for tweeing to our blog posts or something else we want to promote.
Thank you sharing this information with us, at this time we haven’t started to use Twitter but after reading this and seeing the step by step tutorial I think it’s something to seriously consider implementing.
As Twitter continues to grow, it is more important than ever to hop on board. There is such potential for connections and opportunities, it is just a matter of keeping up to date with your account. There are some great starting tips here.
Twitter is an integral part of our SEO and is linked to from our websites and all our blogs as is our facebook page.
This may be one of the best articles I have read on using twitter. I’m not an avid user of twitter, but with this I can use it a bit better.
There was a very interesting interview with Biz Stone co founder of Twitter on Bloomberg TV where he set out his plans so Twitter could start to make money and pointing out unlike facebook they have no privacy issues because it is a public forum, I am sure they will repeat it well worth a look.