Ever since I had that “a-ha” moment with Twitter I’ve been hooked. Twitter makes that easy- you can check and post updates both on the web or on your phone. Tweetdeck makes it simple to work on other things and still follow conversations as they are happening – because that is one of the things about Twitter – you can respond to something any time really- but there is better interaction if you can catch the person in the moment.
After actively using Twitter for a couple of months, I noticed my profile was ranking high for my name in Google- since I don’t really care if people find me by my name and since I’m obsessed with SEO I decided to change the name on Twitter to a keyword – Davis CA Real Estate just to see if I could get this to rank. It’s taking a little while, but is slowly moving up in Google – I haven’t actively built any links to my profile.
Not exactly sure when I changed the name, but it was sometime in December. The graph shows that’s when my follower count started going up dramatically. I optimized the name for Google, but it ended up pushing my profile up when someone searches for people in twitter. If you search for the term real estate (on the twitter website itself) I have been on the first page of results.
I’ve said before that I am interested in using twitter to build connections and with 10+ people adding me every day I don’t feel like I even have time to check out the people who are following me let alone see if I want to add them to my feed. The number of people I’m following right now is manageable-if I’m following you – it’s likely I’m clicking on your links and following a good deal of what’s going on with your stream.
Maybe the mass number of new followers will slow a little – today I’m at the bottom of the first page – my follower count has stayed pretty steady today – I’m happy to let some other people get the throngs of new followers. I would rather search people out – one at a time-and add them because either really like what they have to say, or like what they link to – and build some sort of connection with them.
I will not be adding myself to the wefollow, Mr. Tweet, Twibes or any other directory where people can just go through a list and randomly add me to their collection of real estate people. I have friends who have a different viewpoint on this – I respect their opinion – but that is not how I want to use Twitter. I know one of the purposes of social media is to expose yourself to a wide audience – but really feel like most people who I have no connection with – aren’t really listening to me anyway. If you got to my site from Twitter and I’m not following you back – prove me wrong by leaving me a comment.
{ 11 comments… read them below or add one }
Just like everywhere else on the web it’s all about the Keyword Promotion.
I find it very hard to keep up with Twitter and I haven’t even reached triple digit followers. I couldn’t imagine having 1k+ followers. I never thought would get to know a person 140 characters at a time. I am still waiting for that “a-ha” moment with Twitter. Until then, I will continue to watch rmasse10′s quick vids and check out different pics posted
Mike – keyword promotion is good – people from Davis find me – I like that – maybe my problem is that I don’t want to talk a lot of real estate on twitter – I get tired of the just listed posts or even problems with clients and showings.
Shane-I should just ignore the fact there are a lot of people following me-still don’t think many of them are even paying attention. Twitter is just a starting point to get to know people though – you and I have emailed-chatted on REW-Twitter it’s the combination. I know at the end of the day if I really needed something from you, Mike or any of my “friends” I could count on you and the same holds true for me. Yeah, probably pretty hard to expect that with everyone I’m following – but still want there to be something of value. I’m not expecting Lance Armstrong to follow me back but I enjoy reading his updates. There is a huge volume of great info posted and also an amazing amount of good conversation that does take place in 140 characters or less.
One thing I learned at PubCon South is to be more open to followers. At the conference I observed more than one person with eight or more columns in TweetDeck. After following some of the presenters there and setting my name to Denver Real Estate it seems I pick up several followers a day. To improve my user experience I have setup some custom filters in TweetDeck for groups and custom searches but I find myself hitting the mute button much more often. =)
Hi Carolyn, I’ve been following your frustration on twitter. I have to say I’m with you on this…its very hard to keep up with everyone and not always a reason to do so. Your name/keyword study is very interesting.
Definitely have to have a “group” on tweetdeck to filter the noise and know what is going on. I think I have everyone here in the comments on my follow list. Apparently they are following Carolyn too. With the advent of the Social Networking thing, it becomes very difficult to be everywhere. I keep up with you guys via Twitter, but don’t participate as much because I simply have too much going on. However, I think that those that have nothing going on have nothing going on for a reason – they aren’t out there mixing it up on the socials!
Twitter and Social Media are great tools for creating brand awareness, if used intentionally. I agree with your perspective. It’s not necessarily about having a thousand hits on your website, but attracting your target market and attracting people that are truly interested in your business. I say focus on your niche and attract real business. That’s when businesses thrive.
I follow you on Twitter from a real estate/SEO interest. My real estate office in Costa Rica recently launched a new website in the obscure .cr domain. As part of our SEO efforts we decided to flex Twitter and Facebook, and even posted to Craigslist. We laugh out loud several times a day about the 15-foot waves of ‘social marketing’ we now surf each day. If we miss a day, what does that say about us, or rather, about our firm? We used to have to update the web page maybe monthly. Now we feel obligated to ‘chat’ online almost all day. Personally, I don’t care what a ‘pause in the conversation’ says about me. I live in Costa Rica, and I meet my customers on the beach. Why would I be online all day? Our office has discussed hiring someone living in a cold climate to manage our online presence including Facebooking-n-Twittering for us. Ironically, I had a friend block me on Twitter because she thought I was a spammer. On the bright side, I twittered about self-directed IRAs and got some good info from custodians surfing Twitter. For us, I think social networking is good for keeping existing customers in touch, and thus referrals flowing.
Sarah, I promise to look for you on twitter. I would love to meet my clients on the beach – I’m in California but an hour or so away from the ocean. I’m probably sounding really full of myself-on this – you aren’t following a lot of people yet-and really I don’t think there is just one way to use twitter – there are probably as many ways to use twitter as there are users-sometimes I feel like my account is just being added to someone’s (usually a spammer) collection. I had less than 200 people following me in January-there will be over 1,000 in a day or two.
Angel thanks for stopping by-we haven’t really connected yet, but I know you’re a friend of Knox so that automatically makes you follow worthy.
I just installed Tweetdeck to try to make sense of things. For a while I was following back everyone and now when I log in to the Twitter homepage, I have to scroll through pages and pages of things to feel like I’m keeping up, and I definitely lose track of people. Hopefully Tweetdeck will help
A major decision is whether to be completely inclusive and follow back everyone who follows you – which increases the noise and means you don’t get as much out of it – or just to follow people you’re interested in. The trend to “auto follow” certainly received a backlash when users started feeling like their followers weren’t actually listening, and it doesn’t fit with the original intent of Twitter. A company may feel like they’re being more inclusive when they follow back all their followers, but then it’s much more difficult to see important tweets. And if a company is trying to pare down the noise, do you decide to use an application like Tweetdeck, or to simply unfollow and deal with the consequences? It’s interesting ground to navigate.
I like your approach to it.
Hi Carolyn. On SEO-Forum in Sweden do we discuss Twitter also and it all about SEO likes the SERP, wordpress, blogs, Google Alerts, ect. ect. They say – You most do the seo correct. Title, keywords, tags, keyword density and keyword placement in the text. //Lenny