1. Twitter helps you improve communication

If you want to get good at something, you have to practice. And writing updates to Twitter is one way to practice all aspects of your writing. It will make you more aware of your grammar, punctuation, and choice of words. Even the 140 character limit is effective because it forces you to be succinct and direct.

2. Twitter makes you a better listener

Communication isn’t a one way street, and you are likely to find yourself reading a wide array of updates posted by other locals. By immersing yourself in your local Twitter community, you will naturally have a broader and deeper understanding of the people in your market and what is driving them.

3. Twitter helps you establish a real connection with clients

This point may be the most important because it involves moving past your use of Twitter as “just another marketing tool”. Twitter helps you establish relationships with people before, during, and after they are actively involved in the real estate market. Twitter helps you go beyond a list of contacts and helps you build lasting, trust-based connections.

You’re the key character in your story, but there are undoubtedly others too — the people in your contact network, your colleagues and clients, mentors, family and friends, idols and heroes.

Characterization involves using the information you have about yourself to best effect in giving others a clear picture of you.

Blogging is the first thing that comes to mind as a great way to tell your story in a daily/weekly narrative form, but it can also be done using tools like Twitter and Facebook through frequent updates and information fed from other sites (FourSquare, LiveStrong, etc.).

This is good news for out and about real estate professionals! It’s about to get even easier for you to let your clients and potential clients know that you are out and moving in your market on a daily basis!

And check out FourWhere, which mashes up FourSquare information with Google Maps. Now you have yet another opportunity to be influential in your local market simply by making notes and suggestions with your FourSquare account!

That’s great for blogs on WordPress.com, but what about those of us who are running WordPress software on our own servers? Luckily, there’s the new PuSHPress plugin to help us out! And this one is a great one for folks who aren’t especially comfortable with installing plugins to their sites, because there’s nothing to configure.

Give it a shot, and watch how fast your next post shows up in your feed reader!

Basically, ManageTwitter takes a look at the people you are following on Twitter and classifies them in a few different ways, giving you the option to choose to un-follow if you’d like. You can see which of the accounts you follow don’t follow you back, which are inactive, talkative, and quiet.

A quick note–it automatically selects every account in each category and gives you the option to un-follow all of them. I’d like to see that feature work the other way around, forcing you to choose which accounts you’d like to un-follow. Just a word of warning–be careful not to accidentally choose to un-follow people you want to continue following.

It’s also worth noting that people are going to be increasingly looking for ways to manage their accounts, so it’s in your best interest to keep your Twitter account active and continue to engage!

Leslie’s doing a couple of things here that are very impressive. First of all, she’s produced a short video to augment the information she’s providing about the Poplar Street neighborhood. It gives readers unfamiliar with the area several visuals in a small space that really drive home the “Main Street U.S.A.” feel of the neighborhood she describes in her post.

If you click around, you’ll notice that Leslie has also done something else that fits in perfectly with her market, which is a small town. She provides her readers with information about not only local real estate, but also about other civic happenings around town. It’s a great service to provide for the community in and of itself, and probably not a bad way to get some extra attention from local business and residents that she wouldn’t normally get.

This is a great example of understanding your market and its wants and needs, then catering to them!

In the middle of last year, Twitter’s growth slowed from 7.8 million new users a month to 6.2 million, according to a recent study from RJ Metrics. That report also found that only 17 percent of Twitter users updated their accounts in December — an all-time low. An earlier study by the Nielsen Co. revealed 60 percent of Twitter users do not return from one month to the next. Taking that into account, it’s tempting to conclude that Twitter is following in the footsteps of another social-media ghost town, Second Life.

This is a great time to reiterate that those people leaving Twitter are the same ones who were abusing it.  Lots of real estate agents got swept up in the hype, created a quick account on Twitter and started posting listing after listing, then wondering why their followers were bailing like sailors on a sinking vessel.

Twitter’s value hasn’t changed. The Twitter users still around are the ones who grasp the value and THEY could be your next client. TechShorties is still teaching best practices for leveraging Twitter to grow your real estate business.  You can learn more  in our ILE.

Yes, you should be monetizing your real estate blog.

Now, hopefully, you aren’t filling your real estate blog with Google AdSense, Amazon affiliate links, or other traditional monetization techniques. These traditional methods of monetizing a blog involve sending your readers away from your site, and they usually involve relatively small amounts of money. The goal of most bloggers is to create these small transactions many times over.

Not so with the blog of a real estate professional. Your goal should be to keep them there as long as possible, giving you the opportunity to convince them of your expertise and knowledge in the market. In fact, “monetization” of a real estate blog is probably happening on only one page…

The “Contact Me” page.

Establishing a strong readership by sharing your expertise in your market is your best bet. Unique and relevant content that provides information about your market people can’t get anywhere else is the best way to give your readers a reason to keep coming back. Remember, there are many people who are interested in what’s going on in the local real estate market, even if they won’t be buying or selling in the short term. These are the people with whom you want to establish a rapport.

One day, they’ll be entering the market, and if you’ve established yourself as their go-to person for information, their natural inclination will be to go to your site and click “Contact Me.”

What does that mean for real estate pros’ online efforts? First of all, using social media alone isn’t going to guarantee you the top spot in every Google search for real estate in your area, but it sure isn’t going to hurt to be active. Secondly, if your blog or website is (ahem) “vintage”, it would behoove you to get in the habit of adding fresh and valuable content. The new indexer will favor information and social media for generic search terms, “real estate” for example.

Not that either of these were bad ideas before. Google has long rewarded sites with frequent updates by returning to crawl and index them often. And the use of social media is a great way to expand your sphere of influence even if search engines were completely ignoring it.

Now the stakes are being raised. Are you in or out?

Think about your marketplace. Why not be the first to review a new book on Amazon? If you’re a real estate agent and you write a thoughtful review on a new book about real estate investing, it may be seen by tens of thousands of people.

Don’t forget that the author and members of the media will likely see your review too. People who then visit your Amazon profile learn about you and your business and some may contact you. Maybe someone looking to buy a home will see your location and contact you. That’s what social networking is all about, right?

Read the full post at David’s site…