Gahlord Dewald writes today over on Inman.com about Tweetlister – a new service that helps you market your listings on Twitter.
The main advantage? Tweetlister takes all the listing details you input in to the site and automatically creates a 140 character “tweet” for you and gives you a landing page for the property.
Dewald writes…
With all of the variables and attributes in a real estate property listing, trying to get it shortened to the 140-character limit of a Twitter post can be a challenge. One thing which TweetLister does well is shorten the listing information for you.
You enter the broad-stroke information via pull-down menus and a few text boxes. You can also select a repeating schedule with start and end dates. TweetLister shortens it all into a classified-ad-style Twitter post. Nothing fancy, no snappy copywriting or anything. Just short and simple.
I’m a big fan of any service that makes life easier – but like Nik Nik at MyTechOpinion I had a hard time wrapping my head around Tweetlister initially. Certainly, using Twitter to promote a property can be an effective way to launch a listing into the conversation — as long as it’s not the only thing you’re tweeting! — but as NikNik said, much of this could easily be accomplished with a URL shortener and link tracking service like Bit.ly.
Also I think I was reacting to the idea that I’d be using my network to drive traffic to a third party destination. Personally, I’d want to send any visitors to my own website. I suppose if I were a Realtor that didn’t have a personal website that showed off my listings or already own a single-property website for the home, Tweetlister might make an quick and dirty alternative. But I’m betting most readers of this blog are doing at least one of the former however.
That said, combine Tweetlister with service like vFlyer that already does some of the heavy lifting of syndicating listings to multiple destinations online (including social networks like Twitter) and you’ve got a really interesting product. Especially if you roll in all the back end analytics functions that something like vFlyer offers.
As traffic to social networks continue to soar, they do become viable syndication destinations in addition to the real estate portals – but as Gahlord also writes in his piece, “don’t confuse automating your listing promotion via TweetLister with being an engaged social-media-expert real estate professional”. Engaging on Twitter or Facebook or any other social network is a big responsibility – and there are no short cuts there.
For more on how to use Twitter in real estate, check out the Tomato’s post, Twitter Explained for the Real Estate Blogger.
