As always, thanks for the ideas – if there’s one thing I would say is best about AgentGenius it is just that – the solid information that gets shared here is invaluable to any agent – new or not.

for example, tweeting a time daily that you block for walk-ins at your local starbucks and tweeting it and supporting it on your website

If your plan is to work in a builder model over the weekend, mention it throughout the week, and support it with your blog where you provide pictures and things

If you have an open house, do the same

Mention often where you are showing for the day if you’re specific to a neighborhood

Mention that you are on your way to listing appointments

Mention that you just met with a buyer and are stopping at X location to hang out for a while

There are many ways to use the ‘what are you doing’ tagline for your business, and why I hope they keep it. It gives you a very human and natural way of displaying that you are in fact in business today.

Last but not least, if someone mentions to you they’re going to buy in 6 months, set an appointment now and make sure they don’t mean ‘in 6 months or when someone finally tells me it’s a good idea to do it today’

Tweetdeck offers ways of pooling buyers and sellers into one category, anyone that even mentions buying or selling, make sure you group them and then follow up through conversation letting them know you’re available to answer questions.

I’m only spelling these out for folks that need real concrete ideas, I’m sure you do most of this already.

One of the things I think Twitter (specifically) could benefit from is getting rid of the “What are you doing?” tagline. It’s one of the things I think helps make people not understand its potential or use. When it started it was okay to tell everyone you were “about to read a book, brush my teeth, then go to bed.” While you still see that and do it, it is not the core of what Twitter has become (in my opinion). Perhaps this would help people get a strategy together instead of thinking “why does anyone care about the fact that I had spaghetti for dinner.”

In reference to your comment to Matthew, I wonder what your opinions are on what makes a good reminder to other that we are open for business. When Matthew said:

Since SM began, I’ve been saying that many proponents, while bashing the very concept of selling, are in fact, doing exactly the same thing by other means.

I immediately thought of my Flickr experience (getting dumped for commercial use). We are all selling something. Not just real estate agents. Everyone. We may just be selling ourselves, we may be selling a product or service, we may be selling our connections and friendship. We are all after something. How we do the selling varies greatly, but I do believe every step in life is some sort of transaction – some with short term payment, some looking towards the long term. We give, we get…it’s one giant transaction.

We’ve bashed overtly selling anything and still remain firm on that point. To log on and say buy my product is just a commercial ad, but to simply remain present and add value within the community gives your brand staying power and appreciation from the community. Over time I have a feeling that this approach will be overrun with businesses that simply don’t understand that it’s not what you said, it’s how you delivered it that gets you hung up on. Even I have given into a telemarketer with the right approach, just like agents still enjoy success from calling expireds.

We find the biggest failure in sm right now are folks that do not remind others that they are in fact open for business. Even consumers do not want to bother business people that appear to busy with their business- it’s just human nature. Subtle reminders from agents to followers that they do in fact practice and are interested in helping is a good thing, but again, it’s a nuance, not a written script nor a new semantic the same way it happens offline.

Looking forward to your case study!

My Winning Strategy
Do A 10 times a week
Do B three times a week
Do C once a week, but twice when B provides results
Do D as often as possible, but never on weekends
(…and so on…)

What we often miss is that B may have become the “uncool” thing to do, so now B is actually working against you. Because C relies on B, now we have two items that may not be providing results. Instead of dropping B in favor of doubling our efforts on E (which is what is working best right now), we stick with our strategy.

When it fails, we don’t question the strategy, we question the product/effort we built our strategy on. When we allow for fluidity in our strategies, we create what sometimes may not look like a strategy, but there is calculated thought and effort behind it – a strategy. A strategy is only as good as the outcome it produces. If your strategy sucks, so will your outcome. If your strategy needs a shift in order to produce the outcome you’d like, then you need to take that shift rather than saying “I have a strategy and will continue to work it until it produces the outcome I planned for it.”

I’m actually dreaming up a post that will apply to this in some sense revolving around my recent “Get Me To REBlogWorld” efforts. Not only was it a contest that I wanted to win, but I also saw an opportunity for a small experiment.