I don't claim to be a "guru" or Twitter "expert." I do have my own ideas about what I believe will ultimately bring me business from Twitter or other social networking. But, like many, I'm still waiting to see actual proof of significant lead or business generation from Tweeting. I am making one comparison, and I think it is already telling me something.
I'm in a small vacation home real estate market, and only one other Realtor here is really into Twitter enough for me to keep up with what they're doing. This person has been using Twitter longer than I have, and has about 6 times as many followers. She also Tweets a lot more than I do. She also does a lot more social tweeting, and a lot more re-tweeting than I.
I bring this up, as it's important to my comparisons using multiple sites that "rank" or "score" your influence on Twitter. With that many more followers, and a great many more tweets and re-tweets, it was clear to me that I would not fare well in comparison on these ranking sites. And I was right, as she killed my scores on all of them I checked.
Then I went to our MLS and checked transactions for this year, a year in which both of us are using Twitter (not a good year for our market, though). What I found was almost identical track records, same number of transactions closed. I don't yet know what this means down the road, nor do I want to make any predictions. But, I'm going to watch, and report here in the future.
Who might realize more, if any, business from Twitter? Will it be the more social account with many more followers, or the more real estate specific, with fewer? What does our similar transaction record tell us, if anything? Or, maybe I'm just wasting my time doing the analysis, even using Twitter.
Please comment here on your thoughts, and especially if you know of actual business that originated with Twitter or other social networking.
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