4 Twitter Tools Your Competition Doesn’t Want You Using

On March 21st, Twitter celebrated its 5th birthday. As part of the festivities, the company shared the following fascinating statistics in their blog: Twitter users now send more than 140 million Tweets a day (which adds up to a billion Tweets every 8 days)—by comparison, it took 3 years, 2 months, and 1 day to reach the first billion Tweets. While it took about 18 months to sign up the first 500,000 accounts, the site now sees close to 500,000 accounts created every day.

There were also some great statistics in their March 12, 2011 blog post. For instance, there were 572,000 accounts created on that single day. In the month prior to their blog post, an average of 460,000 accounts were created per day. And, in line with a trend we're seeing everywhere, the number of mobile users skyrocketed (a 182% increase over the past year).

What does this mean for REALTORS®? It's worth your while to begin to master the art and the science of effective Twitter use. You can safely assume that your competitors already have or soon will use Twitter for their business. Thankfully, there are a variety of tools that can help you develop and refine your professional Twitter campaign. In addition to these tools, Twitter has an excellent guide for businesses that may help you get started.

Twellow

Although social media does seem to make the world smaller by allowing communication between people on distant continents, it’s important to find a way to make it local. That’s where Twellow comes in. This free tool is known as the “yellow pages” of Twitter. You can type in the name of a street, the name of a city, or zip code, and get a list of every Twitter user in that area. The results can be organized so that the user with the most followers or Tweets is at the top and the least active user is at the bottom of the list.

Real estate is local. Twellow helps REALTORS® use Twitter as a tool to form connections with people in their own community. By viewing the list of the most active Twitter accounts in your area, you can choose to follow these thought leaders. They, in turn, may follow you. The result could be a growing web of valuable connections and relationships. As your name gets "out there" with important people in your community, the number of people seeking your professional services will grow.

For example, our CEO Victor Lund is the 11th most popular Twitter account in San Luis Obispo, California, over California Polytechnic State University. Just goes to show that an individual can dominate local business communication via social networks.

Twitgoo

Plain text is boring. To catch the eye and the attention of readers, images and color have a big impact. Twitgoo allows users to embed a thumbnail image with their Tweets. By adding an image, REALTORS® will see more people clicking on their Tweets, improving recognition and increasing traffic for their account.

Twitter Grader

Using an advanced 5-piece algorithm, Twitter Grader will assign a grade (from 1 to 100) to any Twitter account you search. This can be your own Twitter account or anyone else's. No password is required, so you can grade your competitors and accounts that you are following. When you understand which accounts are rated highly, and which are weak, you can reassess which users you follow and keep tabs on your own grade.

Tweetcloud

Some of the most important decisions you'll make about your Twitter account are about who you follow. How do you choose? One of the most essential considerations is the content of their Tweets. What are they talking about? If you're not connecting with what they have to say, then your followers might not either. And believe me, your followers are expecting you to provide valuable content.

Tweetcloud is a free service that gives you a visual representation (a "cloud") of a person's Tweets. You'll get a valuable big-picture look at their content. You can assess this cloud to see if it's right for you and your followers. As a REALTOR®, you'll probably be most interested in clouds that are relevant to real estate and/or your community.

See what Twitter products are available.

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