The ARE-TEC Blog: All Things IDX, Website, and Techno-geek

Do you auto-tweet your posts from here on ActiveRain?

Can I ask you why?

Did you know you can do that in a vastly better way that will
 - brand yourself
 - give you an idea of the power of your Twitter network
 - not waste 20% of your tweet!

As a Twitter old-timer, here's why I don't think you should auto-tweet from ActiveRain:

1. You waste 20% of the available text by saying "Just posted on ActiveRain: ".  That's 27 characters that you could be using to entice people to actually read the post, instead of letting them know they're about to be auto-spammed.  27 characters is a lot when you only get 140!

2. You can't track your traffic.  How do you know if your Twitter network is working or not?  You can't track clicks from those auto-tweets to your post. 

3. It doesn't brand yourself.  First words of those auto-tweets brand ActiveRain.  Which is all well and good - but I'd rather brand myself, thankyouverrrymuch. 

4. If you've got an outside blog, the auto-tweets don't link to it.  The point of the outside blogs is to have your own domain and a prettier blog, right?  But those auto-tweets send people to the "inside" version of your blog.  Think about that.  Your outside blog has how many links across the top that can take people away from your site?  Mine has none.  The AR inside blog has 9.  9 links *away from me* up at the header - in the exact place most people look for navigation and global links.  Why pay for an ouside blog if I'm not sending all my traffic there?

5. And finally, auto-tweeting doesn't really engage anyone.  Jeff Turner wrote an awesome post today about engaging others on Twitter - why follower counts don't matter if you're really successful at engaging the ones you have.  Twitter is about interaction.  Auto-posting doesn't interact.

So how do you do it better?

First - turn off that auto-tweeting.  It's in your "Settings" link in your Home. 

Second - go to BudURL and sign up for an account.  BudURLs let you track click traffic, and you can make custom URLs. 

Third - use the link from the post on your Outside blog, if you've got one, and make a BudURL.  Plus, I hear Google Analytics works now on the outside blogs, so you've got two methods to help you figure out if your post tweets are getting you any clicks or not. 

Fourth - tweet your new BudURL with an interesting headline, something that will be intriguing to your Twitter audience and compel them to click on the link.

Fifth - don't tweet every post you write, unless you think that post will honestly be interesting to your Twitter network.  Think about who you're trying to engage there.  Is it other agents or non-agents in your area?

And Finally - go back to BudURL and see how many people actually clicked on your link in your tweet.  This is a sign of both the power of your Twitter network, and the interesting-ness of the headline you used.  By looking at those numbers, you can start to create more compelling tweets - a successful headline will get a lot more clicks than a boring one.

Yeah, you'll have to remember to do it.  And it's an extra step you'll have to take, another 2 minutes you'll need to spend every time you post.  But the reward is worth it.  You'll be more engaging, attract more followers, and generally have better interactions both here and on Twitter. 

If you want to see how I do it, you can check my account - I'm @housechick.

I work hard on my little local blog and website. I'm the local expert, with fabulous information that I'm trying to get out there - and it's frustrating being the little guy with limited resources when the big national players can walk all over me in the search engines.

But I fixed that - or I'm in process anyway. It's building momentum.

You have any idea how many people search for an MLS number? A property address that they drove by and are now typing into Google? A subdivision name? LOTS. And that's where players like Trulia tend to win in Google - for individual property addresses, subdivisions, that sort of thing.

So working with ARE-TEC, I got around that. And I'm starting to beat Trulia at their own game.

And in all fairness, I now work with ARE-TEC - it's my hubby's company. Which means I got to help develop this stuff to really meet my needs as an agent. I get to make sure all this new stuff really works before we make it available to everyone else.

So here's what we did.

See, most IDX companies, when you put their MLS search on your site, it is all framed within a tiny piece of code, and all the data - all that lovely, keyword rich, search engine delicious information - isn't found by the search engines on your site. The ARE-TEC search cube? It embeds so simply into any blog - including ActiveRain and Wordpress - but it doesn't let Google look at all of those listings.

But ARE-TEC fixed that, several months ago, quietly tweaking and finding the best way to fix the problem.

It looks like this:

Looks pretty unassuming, doesn't it? But it packs a punch with search engines.

Every tiny little bit of information in the MLS - is now nicely tagged and indexed in the search engines - on MY site. All those keyword rich descriptions and subdivision names and street names - Google finds them on MY site, and relates them to ME. So when people type addresses into Google, my site comes up. When people Google subdivision names, MY site comes up.

How frikking cool is that? Soon, every address in the MLS, every home for sale - if someone types it into Google, my site will appear. Just stop and imagine that for a second.

And once it was installed, it takes no effort or maintenance on my part. Nada.

Which means my little local blog site is starting to win. Not every time, just yet. But we're getting there...

Now, there is an exclusivity element to this. If every agent in my area had it, it'd lose power. So I have an exlusive deal in my city. In fact, ARE-TEC won't sell it to every agent in a city anyway, so availability is on a first-come-first-served basis.

So sweet. I love being the little guy with an edge.

Spring has hit my city!  The palo verde are in bloom, the weather is warm - which all means it's time for a thorough house cleaning to clear out the winter dust and clutter.

It also reminds me to do the same with my blog.

I've been working on some course materials for a new social media designation, a group I'm honored to be part of.  It's all based around the concept of leveraging these tools to engage with real people.  So every once in a while, I like to go back to my site and my blog and make sure that's what I'm doing.

I was peeking around AR today as well - I went to eleven of the top ranked agent blogs for eleven random states here at AR to check out their blogs.  And would you believe, out of those 11 blogs, only one had any kind of call to action, any kind of offer in their sidebar that might entice a client to explore further, to stay and click around in some information that pertains to that site visitor, or to go look at homes?

Oh there were plenty of "come see me over here" type links - which sort of scream "hey you - come learn about me!"  But is that really engaging others?  I don't think so.

So if we're trying to attract clients to our blog given the various content that we write, what kind of calls to action, what kind of offers should we be making in our sidebars?

People generally want two things: information and listings.  And yet not one blog I went to today here on AR had a prominent link to their listings search anywhere where I didn't have to scroll to see it, or where I didn't have to look through a huge list of text links down near the bottom.

If we know people want information and listings, why not give them huge, obvious opportunity to look at those things?  Why not make a nice button and put it in your sidebar up at the top, something a user can click to look at homes.  Or another button that links to all of your buyer or seller or city articles by using your tag links?

Make it easy for people to get to the information they want - engage them by offering them what they want, not by blasting them with more information about yourself.  Give them what they want on their terms - take care of them, and they'll take care of you.  So what can you add or rearrange in your sidebar that would better address a visitor's potential needs?  What offer can you make that would be helpful, what information do you have that you can group together for them?