The 'Twittersphere' on Realtors

Once the playground of uber-geeks and the most technologically connected, Twitter has now gone mainstream. It seems like you can't go a day without hearing a celebrity or news organization or regular person reference their Twitter name. That wasn't the case just a few short years ago.

As the popularity of Twitter has increased, so has the conversation around just about any topic you can possibly imagine -- everything from politics to sports; from the weather to what my cat ate; anything and everything -- including Realtors. Below is a search of Twitter posts, or "tweets," for the term "Realtor" (using the Twitter desktop application Tweetie for Mac). For those of you who think that Twitter is solely populated by ego-centric, attention-deprived quips about mundane details from pedestrian lives, you may want to check this out:

Nine of the 10 tweets pictured that reference the word "Realtor" are NOT from Realtors, but from the general public. Of those nine, two of them are from real estate investors seeking to work with a Realtor. Six of them are from people who are either recommending a Realtor to someone else or describing their experience with a Realtor. The other one is someone asking for opinions about Realtors.

For the three Realtors mentioned by their Twitter name (@CarinMorris, @WhitneyPannell, @REESOURCE) and the one mentioned by name (Fiona Walls), they each received a very personal, and very public, word-of-mouth recommendation. The last time I checked, that was one of the best kinds of recommendations out there.

The interesting thing about Twitter is that while the individual real estate professional might choose not to participate, he or she can't prevent customers and clients from participating. The potential for conversation among those clients and customers is always there, and one thing has become very clear over the last few years: The conversations aren't going away. They are, in fact, growing.

This small snapshot of the global conversation about Realtors gives us just a small glimpse into how Realtors are affecting the conversation, and the way that the conversation might potentially affect Realtors.

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