Some of Arizona’s most Successful Agents call John Hall & Associates home.
Tag Archive: twitter
Real Estate Technology Training: Twitter and Hootsuite
This Friday we’re continuing our real estate technology training with a lunch and learn about Twitter and Hootsuite. You’ve probably heard of twitter, but you may not know about tools available that make it easier to stay up to date with your social networking sphere. Cue the class on hootsuite.
Twitter basics:
- Vocabulary
- Completing your twitter profile
- Finding folks to follow
Hootsuite basics:
- Creating Tabs and Streams
- What the heck is geolocation searching?
- How the Hootlet helps
- Shrinking and Scheduling
Our techno lunch and learns are hands-on so bring your laptop, iPad, iPhone, or Android smart phone. If you don’t have an iPad yet, don’t forget to enter our contest to Win an iPad – entries must be submitted by this Sunday!
You are invited to join us
If you’d like to attend, please RSVP to psexton@johnhall.com. We’ve only got room for 20, so if you’re interested, speak up. There is no cost for our lunch and learns, and they are open to all REALTORS® – not just John Hall agents.
This is a hands-on session at our Phoenix Real Estate Office. Class is from 11am – 1pm and lunch will be provided thanks to the generosity of Bryan Jones from Clear Title and Stacey Gross from Old Republic Home Protection.
Twitter: Sending DM’s to New Followers
The John Hall & Associates twitter account recently followed about 80 people. From those 80 follows, I received a handful of direct messages (DM’s).
(If survey does not show, you can find it here.)
Why am I asking? I think we can learn from others. I plan on posting my favorite (and why) in a future post.
Just in case you’re not already subscribed to our articles, you can do so here.
A Week in Review
Friday morning I come into the office and get going with my routine. Check email, run disk clean-up, check twitter via twhirl, fill up the water bottle, and the coffee cup. Friday usually means a gathering of punk, hip-hop and classic rock (courtesy of Pandora) whispers from my speakers just loud enough so I can hear. As I open the web to upload Jim’s September Phoenix Market Review I notice it’s been a week since we’ve posted an article here on our blog! Man, so much has happened this week, I can’t believe it slipped by without any updates. 5 topics have stacked up. For some reason my thought process decides it’s better to include all 5 topics in a “week in review” type post, rather than 5 individual articles. (Let me know if you make all the way to the bottom
Winners!
Thank you to the 750 members of the Phoenix Association of REALTORS® who voted in this years’ election. Marge and Jim have been elected to the Board of Directors for the Arizona Association of REALTORS®! They won the election by a landslide! (<– I made that up.) Congratulations to all the winners and thanks to all who could vote!
ARMLS
It must have been an exciting week to be an ARMLS employee – two news worthy stories. Clareity Security and WAVE were both introduced this week, but only one made it to Friday. Based on the wait time for their help desk, it seems like Tuesday’s security update wasn’t as smooth as everyone had hoped (myself included). I’d like to address the question about the security update I’ve been hearing the most and then we’ll talk WAVE.
Clareity Security is an mls security company (Scottsdale, Arizona roots) whose purpose is to help keep sensitive data secure. On Tuesday ARMLS rolled out a new login page for flexmls – provided by Clareity Security. According to a Clareity Security employee on twitter, the new page had issues with the web browser Internet Explorer 8 (IE8). As of yesterday (followed by the official announcement today), ARMLS returned the login page to the familiar flexmls one. If you were having login problems Tuesday or Wednesday, it should now be fixed. However, I wouldn’t be surprised to see the Clareity login resurface once they get the bugs worked out.
Based on the email from ARMLS leading up to the change, it was clear this new system wasn’t going to allow users to store passwords in their browser. And based on the questions I’ve been getting, many ARMLS subscribers think this was the only reason for this update. Not true. Clareity Security is much more powerful than just preventing you from storing a password. Check out this paragraph from their website:
“The foundation of the product is an identity profiling engine for aggregating user access data, creating statistical profiles, and detecting anomalies. … The product is unique in its ability to accurately and transparently identify users. Keystroke dynamics makes it possible for the Server to detect account sharing, account takeover, and differences between individual users.”
“Keystoke dynamics makes it possible for the Server to detect account sharing.” Wow. Inman News mentions Clareity as they describe the fact everyone’s typing rhythm creates somewhat of a digital fingerprint. So ARMLS’ new security tool can detect if it’s your rhythm accessing your account or someone else’s. That’s impressive. No seriously – impressive. Impressive like bad to the bone. Impressive like being able to find fingerprints on fingers I didn’t know I had. Bottom line, abide by the rules – don’t share your password.
Amidst the logging in hoopla, ARMLS announced the winner of their “Name our Ezine Contest” appropriately in the first issue of the online magazine – WAVE. Congratulations to Tony Pomykala FTW (for the win). WAVE is ARMLS’ latest attempt at getting good, trustworthy, relevant information to their subscriber base. I’m a fan. I hope to … ride the WAVE to more understanding of what’s available at ARMLS. I hope not to … WAVE goodbye to the magazine anytime soon. It’s going to be hugely valuable as we continue on this … technology WAVE that will take into the future. Okay that’s all I got…
I’ve set a new avatar over at the John Hall & Associates twitter handle. If you use twitter, you know how impersonal it is when a company has a logo as their avatar. Even though I was aware of this, I didn’t really want my picture to be the @johnhallassoc avatar. Well, I got over it. And I’m glad I did. I feel liberated that my tweets now appear to come from a human rather than a John Hall & Associates open house sign.
John Hall & Associates’ Intranet
I got a phone call late last week from WebEx, the company behind our intranet – since the year 2000. They were happy to let us know that they appreciate our business and that they were going to more than triple our monthly bill. When I asked about the new features we would receive based on the 333% cost increase… nothing is changing but the cost. So what does that mean to you?
Assuming you are one of the successful agents that works with John Hall & Associates, that means you will be seeing a brand-new intranet towards the end of October. Bill and I have spent all week evaluating possible solutions (hence the lack of blog updates). We are confident we’ve found one that will work just fine. More news on this as we get closer to rolling it out.
Blog Improvements
Blogs are dynamic. If you have a blog, you know how it goes. If you don’t then you might not know that both the articles and the sidebar(s) are dynamic. It’s mainly because of the simplicity of bringing new ideas to life. Case in point, the two new additions to our sidebar.
As you are scrolling down from the top of our blog, the first addition you’ll come across is the button that links you to the download page of our toolbar. We’ve been getting questions from our agents on how to get the Phoenix Real Estate Toolbar that is installed on our office machines. My answer before this button was to google it. That changed this week!
The second addition is to highlight our commenters, you know, the folks who leave comments on these articles. The 5 most recent commenters will be displayed with their photo (courtesy of gravatar), a link to their website, and a link to the article they commented on. The goal is to give a little more thanks to those who participate and hopefully attract some new ones!
There you have it, our week in review.
Have a good weekend,
Phil
Real Estate Agents: Do you know what the web says about you?
I really enjoyed reading the cover story from the March 2009 REALTOR® Magazine, Ratings Matter – Managing Your Reputation in the Age of Social Media. The part that I found especially useful was the sidebar (Your Reputation, Your Responsibility) with helpful hints to manage what’s being said online about you. It talks about several places to search for yourself, an extremely helpful tool called Google Alerts, and a few words of wisdom when it comes to responding to critics.
This article is focused on you as an individual. However, all of these online reputation management tools can also help you find information about your company, your city, your subdivision, etc. Also, don’t forget people often spell words wrong. Include searches for the misspells.
Twitter, Tweet-up, Tweeting – WTH?
Maybe you’ve heard some of these terms and have wondered what the heck? You may think they sound more ridiculous than the first time you heard the word google. But don’t let the funny names fool you, the website Twitter is HUGE and is getting HUGE-R. Barack Obama uses twitter to communicate with 165,000 people instantly. The Scottsdale Police Department uses twitter to broadcast road closings and other public notices. All of Arizona’s news stations share links to stories and monitor twitter to find late breaking news, pictures and eyewitnesses. The focus of this post is to help the beginners understand what twitter is, why it’s growing and the best ways to participate – according to the experts.
Social Media in Plain English by CommonCraft
“What is Social Media?” Once again, CommonCraft has put a new concept into plain English.
Other related posts:
Why should I care about social media?
Trying to get to my first Inman Connect conference in San Francisco was just a bit challenging. Cancelled flight. Couldn’t get to Oakland, so ended up getting shipped to San Jose.
Sitting on the runway, hoping the plane would actually take off. Time for one last text message.
Bus. Train. Taxi. Eleven hours in transit, and finally I made it to the hotel for an event that I’d wanted to attend for a good number of years. And it turned out to be well worth the effort.
- Day 1: RE Barcamp - This unconference was one of the most unusual and best events I’ve attended. The following Facebook video shares the Barcamp experience and does a great job of putting it all together.
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- Day 2: Blogger Connect was a pre-conference and chock full of great information. The Agent Genius blog ended up winning Most Innovative Blog award and this post will show you why!
- Days 2-4: The main conference was video taped and is posted on-line at Inman Videos. I highly recommend the Inbox Zero presentation, and really enjoyed Craig Markam’s humor as he spoke of his customer service job at craigslist.org.
While there, I texted, and twittered, and photographed, and learned blogging tips from some of the best real estate bloggers from around the country. I learned about how other Realtors are connecting with their clients with Twitter, and FriendFeed, and Flickr.
The experience is one that is even more amazing in that we used social media to share, so that people who did not attend the conference got some of the benefits, and are able to forge new relationships and continue the discussion. They will have the choice of connecting to new people and expanding their circle, much like Phil did when he wrote about the impact that Dustin Luther’s Linkation, Linkation, Linkation presentation made on him when he first started blogging.
I know first hand that I am connecting to people that are finding me through my social networks, when I hear “I found you on some social network, I can’t remember which one, I’m ready to buy a house can you help me?“
Or, like today when an email starts out with “I found your profile (and blog, very nice) through the Realtor Website and would be interested in talking with you. I’ve finally decided I’m ready to take the plunge and am looking for the right priced home in south Scottsdale.“
So, in a nutshell, this is why I care about social media. I get to connect with people I wouldn’t have gotten to know any other way, and when they contact me, they already have a pretty good idea of who I am, what I know about real estate, and even a bit of how I run my business. It’s a great way to start a business relationship!
Insights on Social Media
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pkitano @drubloomfield @irenehammond Hi! I’ll be in PHX Camelback Rd all Thursday afternoon, would love to meet up w/ you (thx to @phoenixreguy) |
Earlier this week, I had the good fortune to receive an invitation (above) to attend a seminar by Pat Kitano on Social Media, how it’s changing the business of real estate, and why it’s important to participate. One of the major points Pat made during his presentation was that a person’s online presence, in services like Twitter and FriendFeed, is the new resume.
Phil Sexton and I have both posted here on Twitter before, but FriendFeed may be new to you. FriendFeed allows you to merge feeds from your blog, Twitter, StumbleUpon, and the many other social media sources into one area. Some of the benefits of FriendFeed include:
- You can follow a conversation, even over a span of time, because comments can be grouped.
- Blog feeds and other network sites can be set up to feed into FriendFeed automatically.
- The room concept creates a room (either public or private) to gather a group of friends to discuss topics has a lot of potential.
Pat has posted the two following slide shows on Social Media, and why it’s important to utilize. Both are highly recommended!
Getting Started with Twitter
If you’ve discovered Twitter and would like to get started, there’s a bit of protocol and a couple commands that you may find very helpful.
To post (or tweet), just start typing in the “What are you doing now?” box on the main Twitter screen. Twitter will keep track of how many of the 140 character maximum that you have left.
So your post could be something like this:
drubloomfield Just got back from Scottsdale MLS committee meeting — we are so ready for FlexMLS!
-or-
SethGodin Alphabetical order is obsolete: I love the alphabet and the fact that it has an order. There’s no reaso.. http://tinyurl.com/262vrj
If you want to follow someone, you can subscribe to their Twitter posts, if you know their Twitter name. Here’s a couple for you to start with:
Michael Wurzer- FlexMLS and FBS Blog
If you are responding to a “tweet” that someone directed to you and you want the world to see it, you can preface your comment with @username. So, if you wanted to send a message to Phil Sexton that all your followers can see, it would look like:
@psexton – Great background on your twitter page!
Now, if I want to send Phil a private message (i.e. a direct message), I would type:
d psexton – Who’s Michael?
Here are a couple user guides that are very helpful in understanding what twitter is and how you can use it to build your network, and your business.
And here’s a great little Twitter tweet sheet you can print out.
If you have any questions, just make a comment here, or stop by and see me on Twitter!
Do You Know How to Twitter?
Have you heard any of the buzz about Twitter? I’ve had friends talk about it, and I finally jumped in. It’s just one more aspect of Web 2.0 that becoming part of our everyday world.
This video explains what Twitter is, simply.
Designated Broker Office
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