Metro Detroit Real Estate Homes For Sale

As I do almost daily, I watch the Twitter Stream and check in on a few of my favorites--and always adding to my list of all things Twitter.  And, as a good Tweeter should, I find many that I want to RT (retweet) to acknowledge the contribution that certain tweets have provided for me and the community of followers.

People are always asking me "what is Twitter" or the "how to" of it.  On this site, you will find under Help Resources Getting Started-- which includes:  Frequently Asked Questions, Posting a Twitter update, or "tweet" , and so much more.  There are "How To" information and "Troubleshooting".  You can also report SPAM and visit a few Twitter related Blogs.  I also found a few more people that I wanted to follow.  It was here that I found the Twestival.

I visited the Twitter Blog and the first post was "Tweet, Meet, Give".  I found the Twestival which will be held on February 12, 2009 in over 100 cities worldwide (and growing).  The Twestival is organized 100% by volunteers in cities around the world and 100% of the money raised from these events will go directly to support charity: water projects.  Scroll down and on the right bottom is a list of "Twestival North America" cities that are participating.  I was happy to find that Detoit is represented--Detroit @llaurentsmith.  What a great way to meet the faces behind the local Tweeters and for a very good cause.

Check out some of my other posts about Twitter:  On the fence about Twitter, Following the Elite, Twitter for Business & Using Twitter Alerts.  And don't forget to follow me on Twitter.

Metro Detroit Realtor selling Real Estate in Southeastern Michigan.  TishHouse sells Houses - selling Oakland County Real Estate with RE/MAX Showcase Homes in Birmingham, Michigan. Helping People in a challenging market by specializing in Short Sales. See what my clients have to say about my extraordinary customer service. 

I have been posting a lot about Twitter and why you should join and all the great applications I find as I explore the Twittersteam.  This evening, after shoveling snow, getting my showing appointments made and my listing presentation complete (Not much Twittering tomorrow), I indulged in an hour or so of Twitter.  I found a new application called re-Twit'd.  This application lets you see what's hot on Twitter based on how frequently something is retweeted.  You can find the most popular tweets by most retweeted in hours, day, week and fortnight.  When I checked it out, there was a retweet saying "OMG What an inspirational video You MUST watch this! I'm bawling!!!"  Well that was something I could not pass up!  Here is a link to the video she was referring to (retweeted 7 times).  It's called "Are You Going To Finish Strong".

http://www.maniacworld.com/are-you-going-to-finish-strong.html

One of the people I follow is Pete Cashmore @mashable.  He had tweeted about a Twitter section on his Mashable Blog--this is where I get a majority of my news on Twitter and other things relating to Social Media.  One of the stories was about introducing re-Twit'd.  If you love Twitter like I do, I suggest your check out this site and follow him - AFTER YOU WATCH THE VIDEO!

And, if you haven't checked out my most recent post about Twirl - Tweetdeck - Twitterific: Which is Best?  , I suggest you choose an application to manage your tweets - @mashable is in one of my groups called Twitter and SEO - this way I am fairly certain not to miss a lot of his great posts.  If you still aren't embracing Twitter then Twitter for Beginners - On the Fence - Read This.

Royal Oak Michigan Realtor selling Real Estate in Southeastern Michigan.  TishHouse sells Houses - selling Oakland County Real Estate with RE/MAX Showcase Homes in Birmingham, Michigan. Helping People in a challenging market by specializing in Short Sales. See what my clients have to say about my extraordinary customer service.  Follow me on Twitter.

I have been deeply immersed in Twitter since I joined over a month ago.  In my first post about Twitter for Beginners - On the Fence, I talked about how I avoided it for well over a year and am completely sold on how much value it provides.  Since then, I have been finding new applications, ways to find people to follow and so much more.

As of this post, I am following 506 people with 446 following me.  There are different goals and philosophies on how many to follow and why you choose to follow who you do.  Clearly with over 500 (and I follow people with over 10,000 followers) how do you keep up with them all--you don't!  But, there are ways to manage it and I want to introduce a few of the more popular downloads to interact to utilize with Twitter.  Whatever one you choose there are many.  If you haven't noticed, under each update in whatever program you are viewing them in, there is a source of where the tweet came from.  You will see "web" and this is from the Twitter home page - the basic entry point when you sign up.  You will see "twitterfeed", "twitterberry", the three I mentioned in the title and more.  I am going to talk a bit about Twirl, Tweetdeck & Twitterific which are some of the most popular.

The main thing that Twirl, Tweetdeck & Twitterific (and others) have over the "web" or home page of Twitter is that they have all the tools you need at your fingertips - mainly the "shorten url".  Twitterific is for iPhone or the Mac so I have not used this one.  With the iPhone (and Mac) so popular, this one, of course, is popular.  My nephew uses it and showed me the basics - a one column list of recent friend/follows as they post on Twitter.  It gives you the most recent tweets of those you follow and the ability to reply, direct message (DM) and update your status.  Twirl is pretty much the same only I have used Twirl and am a bit more familiar with it.  It is also one column which you can stretch longer than the initial download to include more posts.  You can customize it, shorten urls, comment, reply and direct message.  When it is running in the background, it gives you small alerts when there is a reply or DM.  I actually like the alerts on Twirl better as it gives you the actual message of the post.

Actually Tweetdeck does most of the same like shorten url, replies, direct messages, alerts and the ability to search (Twirl does too).  Tweetdeck is my favorite because you have the ability to create Groups.  This is important to me as I follow most of the people who follow me.  However, I search for some of the best on Twitter and want to particularly keep up with them.  With over 500 and growing, this is impossible unless I separate them somehow.  So, I have created about 5 groups:  Local, ActiveRain, Elite, Twitter & Social Media(it seems you can have as many as you want but have to slide screen over to view them).  You can have a column/Group of Replies and one of Direct Messages as well.  These you can close when not using them and open again with an icon at the top.  If you close the other groups, you lose them permanently.  I have done this a couple of times accidentally and the newest download now warns you that your group will be lost.  It warns you about DM & replies but I find that you can open them back up later.  You also have gone Group/column of Friends which is the whole tweetsteam of who you follow.

Other features include a column that opens up when you see someone referred to in another post and want to check out their profile.  You just click on their name (like @tishhouse) in the post and it opens with their profile, stats and recent posts with the ability to click "follow" at the bottom of the column.  The last feature I like is the ability to open Twitscoop from an icon at the top and another column opens and you can check out the top conversations/words that are being twitted right now.  You do have the option to view Tweetdeck in a one column format as well--which is all "friends" like Twirl.   Lastly, if you don't like the black color (I didn't), you can click settings and change it.

More of my posts about Twitter:

How To Follow the Elite on Twitter & Are you One?

Twitter for Business & Using Twitter Alerts

Shorty Awards - Find & Follow Best Producers of Short Content on Twitter

Royal Oak Michigan Realtor selling Real Estate in Southeastern Michigan.  TishHouse sells Houses - selling Oakland County Real Estate with RE/MAX Showcase Homes in Birmingham, Michigan. Helping People in a challenging market by specializing in Short Sales. See what my clients have to say about my extraordinary customer service.  Follow me on Twitter.

For those of you still on the fence about Twitter, you really are missing the opportunity to immediately access and follow some of the top voices in the field of technology, social media and really any field you have an interest in.  The true value I find on Twitter is to follow those who are influencing the fields I am interested in.  That is the beauty of Twitter - a conversation NOW in Real time - where we get to listen and interact with the creative process of people.

I posted about following the Elite through Twitter Grader but the Shorty Awards are an even better way to find the top microbloggers in 26 main categories from advertising, social media, SEO to videogames, humor and nonprofits.  There are many other categories as well.  The nominations are now closed but there were more than 32,000 nominations, for 6760 Twitterers in 1599 categories.  I have been following @shortyawards and found the top nominees in social media and started following them.  The top overall nominee is @marismith in social media followed by a list of top bloggers in a variety of fields.  You can click on the different categories and follow individuals in your field of interest.  I started following  @Breakingnews and  @guykawasaki and was already following several.

The thing that makes this different from the elite on @grader is that they are nominated by followers who find great value from their posts.  There will be final voting and an awards ceremony in February and you can follow @shortynews.  You can also check out my post about twittering for business and twitter alerts.

Don't forget to follow me on Twitter.

Royal Oak Realtor selling Real Estate in Southeastern Michigan.  TishHouse sells Houses - selling Oakland County Real Estate with RE/MAX Showcase Homes in Birmingham, Michigan. Helping People in a challenging market by specializing in Short Sales. See what my clients have to say about my extraordinary customer service.

We have all heard about keeping track of what is being said about us on the web by utilizing Google Alerts.  Well, you can do the same with Tweetbeep.  You can keep track of conversations that mention you, your local community (which is what I do with Google) and a keyword on any topic that you want to hear about that is being twittered.  It also says you can even keep track of who's tweeting your website or blog, even if they use a shortened URL (like tinyurl.com).  I haven't tried the latter but have set alerts up about the communities where I sell Real Estate and have found local twitters to follow.

Speaking of local people to follow.  On my last post on How to Follow the Elite, there was a comment "haven't done anything with it yet.  I still don't see how it can help me increase my income".  I find/follow a lot of local people to network in my community.  While most of the comments are not about Real Estate, local twitterers can view my profile to see who I am and what I am up to.  Of course, you would have to be engaging and contribute to their conversation for them to be interested enough to check you our and, hopefully, to follow back.  I post a lot about local businesses and events and broadcast these to Twitter from ActiveRain.  Followers can get interesting and quality information and, at the bottom, there is always a link to my website etc.  You can link to Twitter from your "settings" and Facebook accepts twitter posts when you sign up for that application.  So Twitter alerts increases the usefulness of why you want to Twitter and what to Twitter about.  I find much more up-to-date information and ideas for posts.  If you are still "on the fence about joining" read Twitter for Beginners.

We know that the majority of people utilize the internet for buying/selling homes.  Who wouldn't want an agent who is up to date on the latest technology.  While my "twittering" may be 25% real estate and marketing, I do broadcast new listings, price changes and market reports etc.  Who do I want to know these things but people in the local areas where these apply.

Graphic used was Posted on Twitter free graphics.  It is in a zipped file but some follow graphics to use.  A great site to follow is @twittes where I find a lot of interesting stuff.  Don't forget to click on the graphic and follow me on Twitter.

Royal Oak Realtor selling Real Estate in Southeastern Michigan.  TishHouse sells Houses - selling Oakland County Real Estate with RE/MAX Showcase Homes in Birmingham, Michigan. Helping People in a challenging market by specializing in Short Sales. See what my clients have to say about my extraordinary customer service.