Thank you to all the agents who came out to our Intermediate Twitter event. Outlined below are the notes from the session:
Sharing Photos
- If you want to share photos on Twitter and have the little ‘Photo’ button show up under your Tweet, the best tool to use is www.photobucket.com
- To set up your account, go to http://www.photobucket.com/twitter and click on ‘Set Up An Account’
- Link your Twitter account to your Photobucket account when prompted
- Word of warning: don’t select ‘Automatically Upload’ your photos to Twitter. If you do select ‘Automatically Upload’ then all photos will get uploaded and the tweet will just be a link to the photo. You don’t have the chance to add a message to the tweet before it is sent out
- To send out a pic on Twitter you need to upload the photo to Photobucket, then go into your Photobucket ‘Album’, hover over the photo you want to Tweet out, click on ‘Share’ and then select ‘Twitter’, add your message where prompted, and click ‘Share Now!’
- This allows people to also view the picture while still in Twitter. They no longer have to click on a link and be taken outside of Twitter to a third-party site to view the photo.
Hashtags
- A hashtag is the number sign (#) that you see used in front of a keyword phrase in Twitter – i.e. #TOrealestate
- Hashtags are used as a tool to organize content in Twitter. You will often find the hashtag used at events and conferences to help attendees organize themselves and make it easy to search for content that others are tweeting about the event.
- The hashtag is usually placed at the beginning or end of the tweet.
- To find all the tweets related to a specific hashtag, just use the Search bar at the top of the Twitter interface and type #<searchterm>
- This will pull up all of the tweets that were sent out using that hashtag and display them in reverse chronological order – i.e. newest tweets at the top
- There are a couple of websites that have attempted to be the go-to resource for defining hashtags. If you are trying to find out what a specific hashtag means, then you can try looking them up here:
- http://twubs.com/
- http://www.tagal.us/
Engagement
- Twitter is not just a content distribution channel. It is a very effective conversation medium.
- In order to get maximum value out of Twitter, you need to be actively engaging with other Twitter users. It is through this engagement that you develop and deepen relationships
- I highly encourage that you be the one to reach out first instead of just distributing content and hoping others will make the first move
- Outlined below are some good ways to make that first move:
Retweeting
- When you see an interesting tweet that you think your followers would find of interest, you should retweet it. There are two ways to do this:
- Type ‘RT @<username>: <copy and paste their tweet>’
- Hover over the tweet in your stream and some options will appear in the top right corner. Click on ‘Retweet’
- This is a good way to not only get interesting content to your followers that you don’t have to write, but it is also a good way to be top of mind and get some brownie points with the person you are retweeting. Retweeting is a very big compliment in the Twitter world and when someone is retweeted they receive a notification that it has been done
Replies
- Replying to a tweet is another great way to engage because you are proactively reaching out to the person who sent the tweet which you are replying to
- Think of this as the same as hitting reply on an email, but be aware that in this case, it’s public
- There are a couple of different ways to reply to someone:
- Hover over the tweet in your stream and some options will appear in the top right corner. Click on ‘Reply’
- Or type @username + message: This directs a tweet at another person, and causes your tweet to be saved under that user’s “@Mentions” tab. It will look like this: @bsage I love that module on Twitter. Thank you for being so awesome.
Direct Messages
- Twitter has a private messaging function that allows you to communicate privately with other Twitter users. This is like sending an email in that only the recipient will see it.
- To access your direct messages, click on the person icon in the top right corner. A drop-down menu should appear. Select ‘Direct Messages’. Here you will see the direct messages that have been sent to you, and you have the ability to send direct messages to others.
Search Function
- Twitter has incorporated into its main interface a very powerful search functionality that allows you to not only search for individuals on Twitter but also search for content.
- The content side of the search provides a great opportunity for Toronto real estate agents to use it as a prospecting tool
- By using quotations you can search Twitter for tweets that include specific phrases such as “moving to Toronto”
- By using strategic terms you can identify prospects based on their tweets
- Once you have identified a potential lead, you can then click on their profile and review their other tweets to see if it might be a decent lead. Then engage with them by replying to one of their tweets. Be sure to be very soft in your approach as you don’t want to scare them off.
Customizing your backdrop
- It is possible to create and upload a custom backdrop for your Twitter profile
- This is a great idea as it allows you to add your personal branding to your Twitter profile and add additional information
- Because of the character limits in your Twitter bio, I recommend that you create a custom backdrop that includes the URLs to all of your other digital properties
- To upload the backdrop, you first need to have one created. Because of the dimension restrictions imposed by the Twitter elements it is highly recommended that you work with a graphic designer who is familiar with creating these sorts of things. If you are more of a do it yourselfer, then the following blog post outlines all of the dimensions quite well:
- http://mashable.com/2010/10/06/new-twitter-background-customize/
- Once you have the backdrop created, you then want to click on the person icon in the top right bar and select settings from the drop down. Then in the left hand column select ‘Design’. Now click on ‘Browse’ to upload the file
Automatically post your tweets on your Facebook wall
- There is a feature in Twitter that will allow you to automatically post your tweets onto your Facebook wall.
- Depending on your social media strategy, this can be either a good thing to do, or not.
- To enable this feature, click on the person icon in the top right bar and select settings from the drop down. Then in the left hand column select ‘Profile’. Now scroll down and click on ‘Post your tweets to Facebook’. Then click ‘Save changes’
Email notifications
- Users can manage the notifications that get sent through to their email
- I would recommend that you make sure to set things up so that anytime someone sends you a direct message, a reply or @ mentioned or retweets you. You receive an email letting you know.
- Each of those actions or specific interactions with you and worthy of a response
- To manage your notifications click on the person icon in the top right bar and select settings from the drop down. Then in the left hand column click on ‘Notifications’. Now you can manage your email notifications
Upload email database to Twitter
- It is possible to link your email account to your Twitter account so you can see who from your contact database is on Twitter and then choose to follow them or not.
- This is a great thing to do when you are first getting into Twitter because it will give you an instant sense of how many people from you database are using Twitter.
- The only downside is you can’t just upload a .xls or .csv; you have to be using one of the four email clients that Twitter is set up with
- To do this you need to click on ‘Discover’ in the top bar. Then select ‘Who to follow’ from the left drop down. Then find the email client that you are using and click ‘Search Contacts’
- If you do not use one of these email clients you can still use this feature by setting up an account with gmail and then uploading your contact database into gmail and then linking it to Twitter. It is a bit of a process but will save you time in the long run.