Apr. 30, 2009 - Localism: a 'must read' for Realtors and Association Execs

"Researching homes and house-hunting is inherently a mobile experience," said Rich Barton, Zillow co-founder and CEO. "The GPS-enabled iPhone untethers our Zillow users from their computers and puts the power of our database of 88 million homes in their hands when they need it most - while they are looking at homes."

I posted that announcement to Twitter because I thought it was monumental: it basically said that anyone with the right phone could discover location-based real estate information when he or she was standing in front of a property. The consumer could find prices, neighborhood info, assessed values, and properties currently on the market. “Wow,” I thought. “That makes a lot of our MLS quarreling really insignificant.” Shall we put tax numbers on listings? Shall we post addresses? Who cares? Check out that consumer over there in front of that brick ranch house. He’s researching the information on his iPhone.

Now I know there are other considerations to this issue (I've heard those concerns for almost 30 years), and I know there are other real estate phone applications—my former employer developed one long ago, when even the cell phone salespeople had a hard time understanding that their customers could do an MLS search on their cell phones.

What was really significant to me about Zillow's product, though, was the fact that a major data aggregator has made access so easy, and information so complete and location-based.  “All those folks combing the countryside for a good deal on a foreclosed property are gonna love this,” I thought. This makes shopping for real estate location specific AND will produce immediate results.

Then another thing happened yesterday: The WAV Group, one of the really savvy real estate consulting companies, released its “Localism White Paper “. Subtitled “Geo-Domain Targeting trending to assist Real Estate Marketing”, this whitepaper is a MUST READ for Realtor associations, MLSs, and brokerages.

Usually, I’m not one for enthusiastic, unqualified endorsements—but this whitepaper makes a great case for an area which is mostly an unrecognized area of knowledge by real estate associations and their Realtor members: search engine placement (or SEO—Search Engine Optimization).

Why is SEO important? As the white paper points out, 76% of people using a search engine like Google or Yahoo visit the first search result that appears, and a majority of users never go beyond the first page of results. So, if you’ve got a web page, and you expect folks to visit it, you’d better concentrate on the placement of your site in the search engine results. 

Go now to your search engine and try it. How does your site rate? Local aggregators, such as MLS websites will likely rate pretty high, by the way—higher than many individual brokerages.

The Localism White Paper points out an even more basic fact: if you want results you have to think like a consumer. Will a consumer sit down at the computer and think, “Well, I am going to look for a new house. Guess I will go to Smith Realty and see what they have for sale”? Not likely, though most brokerages would like to believe that's what happens. 

Will the consumer type in the name of a national website, and then drill down to a location? Maybe. And a lot of national aggregators spend huge amounts of money trying to get consumers to do just that. 

But it is most likely that what most consumers do is sit down, open their favorite web browser and in the search field, type “real estate (location)”. As the Wav Group paper says, “Consumers understand that real estate is local, and believe information contained on local websites more than national websites.” 

Consumers will then examine the first several results the search engine provides.  And what most search engines do these days is use a search technology that puts the weight on location preferences and pushes other responses further down the page.

1.       1. Develop a website based on consumer search behavior. This is hard, by the way, because we are often still stuck on the notion that internet advertising is just an extension of print advertising. But that’s another topic.

2.      2.  Understand that real estate is local (where have we heard this before?)

3.       3. Know that Search Engine Optimization is a key strategy for successful internet marketing, and SEO is a sophisticated technical skill set that is fundamental to your website success. You probably aren’t going to be an SEO FSBO, either, so you will need to know enough to make appropriate demands on your website designer.

This white paper provides some specific directions: it tells you how to use indexing keywords, and how to set up a hub and spoke web presence. And it offers some answers to some organizational hot buttons: should an association or an MLS have a public-facing website? How can a website generate money for your association? What content do you include on your website in order to maximize your search engine positioning?

The WAV group white paper is free,  it’s written in English-for-nonTechs, and it contains a ton of good information. You might even come up with some great ideas for your association education programs. But in any case, read the “Localism White Paper”

Apr. 26, 2009 - The Internal Blog: A Management Tool

The use of blogs for promotion of the association to the public is a generally accepted tool. In our organization newsletters these blogs were often called “A Word from the President”, or perhaps “From the AE's Desk” (the subtle distinction here being that the President got to talk about the 'big stuff' (state of the economy or association legislative initiatives) and the AE got to talk about more clerical matters like dues deadlines and general membership meeting registrations. Of course, back then nobody talked about interaction to these messages: most newsletters didn't even have a Letters to the Editor section, and anyway, who wanted to wait a week or a month before seeing some response from a reader?

Enter the age of social communication. If your online association newsletter doesn't have a 'click here to post a response' to almost every article, you are still in the dark ages. Even large real world newspapers and magazines don't let their articles stand alone without reader response. For an association which has as its main reason for being the building of community, there's no room for the old “we've told 'em, so they'd better listen up” mode of behavior. Technology has made communication a two-way street in real time.

Blogs, then are now the preferred way to speak to your public and to the members of your organization. They are more timely and informal, and they allow for direct reader involvement. Savvy organizations are also finding blogs a management tool for building staff cooperation and teamwork.

“Well,” you say, I don't need a tool like that. I only have a staff of two. I can just talk about what I'm thinking by shouting across the room.”

As a manager of a small staff, I had the same conundrm. When was 'small' too small to hold a staff meeting? And when I was at the meeting or seminar, how was I going to share what I learned, or what inspired me, with my staff? Or how was I going to share things with key elected leaders, keeping them in the mainstream in a timely and efficient fashion?

More than that, the internal blog can be free of the constraints of more traditional communications, such as corporate memos or whitepapers: blogs can explore more original issues and encourage examination of ideas among a staff audience which otherwise might tune out more formal messages.

Developing an internal blog is a way of keeping your voice in the staff conversation, no matter where you are or what you are doing.

Here's how you do it. Go to any one of a number of free blogging sites. I use www.wordpress.com for one of my blogs and Internet Crusade, and I like them both very much. But whatever your decision, select a blog vendor which will let you limit your internal blog to those you name: your staff, or your advisory team (could include your executive committee, for instance). That way, only invitees can read and post to your blog, keeping it secure from the public at large. You may also set up an edit function for reviewing all posts before they are seen by others, but in a private blog, that may be just a tad over-controlling. Encourage interactions from those you've invited—that's the point!

Internal blogs are in many cases good alternatives to meetings. You may not have frequent meetings, even on many important matters, for several reasons:

*you feel your staff is too small to have many meetings

*you just don't have time to interrupt the work day with a meeting

*some staff is part time, or subcontracted special labor and not on premises for meetings

*you're on the road, at state conventions, seminars, NAR meetings, or visiting member offices

However the way all staff members communicate and share information in a blog environment creates practically any number of small or large virtual meetings in which they can participate at any time of the day (or night), and you can share ideas and information with them while it is fresh in your mind.

You will find that the old 'you never told me' or 'I was on vacation for that meeting' excuse disappears. Also, fewer people will feel that they excluded from the decision making process. Since every post is open to the designated community, anyone can take part in the decision making process, simply by adding comments. For instance, you post: “I think the office needs a policy on using computers for personal communication. Please feel free to contribute suggestions about what it should contain,” or “I am sitting in a social networking seminar. Do you think we could use Twitter in our association? How?” A talking community creates the healthiest environment in the decision making process with its collective intelligence—that that statement is indeed the theme of social networking.

“Well, sure,” you say. “But why create a blog for this stuff? I just send emails!”

Here's the rub. I get over 300 emails a day. Sometimes I just archive them until I can get back to them...which could be never. And sometimes I respond to the emails, but I don't create an archive: later I simply can't find them. People will say “I told you” and I either don't remember or can't find the exact wording (which I may have skimmed over in the first place). But blogs don't go away. They are archived and searchable. Comments are not lost, but stay with the subject in a handy filing system, too!

Blogs are easy to find and follow. Following blogs is painless: Most blog providers have RSS technology (Real Simple Syndication). The person reading the blog sets up a feed from that blog to his/her browser (and all the new browsers support RSS technology). Using RSS, readers can then be informed if there are new posts or not, and click on a link to visit the blog. They don't have to visit the site every day to see if there's anything new posted there.

Finding past subject matter is equally simple: Blogs make use of tag words. The person writing the blog assigns tag words to the article, like 'social media policy' or 'customer service'. The reader may then search tag words to find the archived material. This makes finding the needed information much quicker than searching through the tree of directories that most email programs use. (“Let's see...I remember that email from Albert the AE. Do I search under the date? Emails from Albert? The topic? How the heck would I have filed it anyway? Or did I send his stuff to the trash bin?”) Key word searches blog site are much quicker and more convenient!

Again, think of using the internal blog as a management tool. It will improve teamwork and collaboration with your staff, and is a good source for team learning. It promotes dialogue, and allows you to have conversations where there is a shared vision. For instance, your blog group may be all staff and the vision you share is one of better member service. The internal blog can reinforce this vision, no matter what your specific topic.

Internal blogs also allow you as manager to solicit differing points of view in an environment which is much 'safer' for many participants. Staff members who are unwilling to speak up in a face to face meeting may feel much more comfortable in making contributions to a blog. The conversation can also be more timely (how can we deal with this immediate issue?) and translate words more quickly into action. No waiting until a week from Monday to bring it up at the staff meeting and asking everybody to think on demand, because it's 9 AM and we're on schedule.

And finally, the internal blog management tool becomes the written memory of your staff organization.That, in turn, promotes consistent institutional development based on written word (usually more stable than the ephemeral bright idea or heated arguments found in a face-to-face meeting). That written word becomes a part of the group history.

Apr. 22, 2009 - The New Association

A major change in the Obama administration has been the appointment of two positions to his leadership team: the Chief Technology Officer, and the Chief Information Officer. These positions have been closely watched in Washington, although with our national fixation on the economy, little recognition seems to have been made in the remainder of the nation.

But here's the thing. Both offices recognize the impact of technology on the way we do things, and in this case, the specific emphasis is on the new buzzword, “transparency” in government.

Managing transparency in a democracy isn't easy. This morning I read a highly critical reporter who said that the plan to bail the housing industry out of crisis wasn't going to work because there are just too many people involved for action to occur rapidly enough to do much good. I had to laugh: seems to me that's been a constant refrain in my history of managing associations. How does leadership make decisions in a timely fashion and still involve the stakeholders (members)? It's especially true when we're dealing with technology-related decisions: by the time we get around to making the decision, the technology we were considering is outdated. Are we still taking three years to make a choice on who our MLS vendor will be?

So, transparency combined with democracy. How will that work?

Today the Huffington Post writer Don Tapscott had some instructions for the new US Chief Technology Officer, ideas that I thought might be worth thinking about in our roles as association managers. Here are some specific adaptations of Tapscott's ideas:

1. Ensure access. Tapscott is calling for a national broadband infrastructure which will reach the most isolated areas of the country. But I was thinking about how this mandate might apply to real estate associations, because it's really quite revolutionary. How do we ensure access for our members? That's not just 'providing access', as in “We're having an education session. You all drive on over.” “Ensure access” might mean, how do we arrange it so that every member has access to this information? How can we deliver our services in such a way that everyone who wants the knowledge is included? Also, how do we ensure that every member of our business community who needs the information can get it? That is to say, are we withholding information from some through exclusionary membership structures?

2. Creating Conditions for a Vibrant Technology Industry. Tapscott refers to nationwide stimulus of new technologies, and an atmosphere of embracing new ideas which, he says, encourage even the smallest business provide levels of customer service never before possible. I thought of associations still bogged down in the question of 'who is our customer?' I think we need to go one step further and recognize that for our members, the consumer is king—and any way we can assist our members in providing better consumer services has got to be a priority with us as professional associations. The world today is consumer driven, more than ever before. Real estate associations must play a part in satisfying consumer needs, I think: transaction management, comprehensive public-facing websites, better property information for our members, affiliate businesses, and the public. And let's face it: the consumer doesn't care about our association governance infrastructure. The consumer doesn't want to hear someone say, “I can't tell you about that property because it's not in our MLS”, or “I can't show you this house because I don't have the right lockbox.” The question then is, how can associations dispense with what are essentially political boundaries, and enhance and implement technology solutions that will help members serve customers?

3. Fostering Collaboration. The whole basis of social media is not learning about what your buddy ate for breakfast, but it is about collaboration. It is about the wisdom of the group being greater than the specialized knowledge of one person. Social media is not just a buzzword or a fad, it's a technology structure that's filling a very real need. In a sense, associations themselves are a form of social media—technology is just giving us a way to do our job better. How many of us have MLS programs that allow shared thoughts on listings? Do we have blogs, both professional and public? Do we Twitter? Have discussion forums? Group think tanks on real estate issues? Websites that allow consumers to evaluate Realtor service levels?

   4. Web-enabled Transformation of Government and Democracy. This is what it's all about: a TRANSFORMATION of governance and democracy, in association terms. We as leaders of our associations have a responsibility to engage in a transformation, a re-invention. Let's face it, our members are doing this in their brokerages and in their role as sales persons (of services, not properties). How can real organizations use technology to modernize association governance and bring it into the digital era? Don Tapscott says, “The goal is to identify breakthrough strategies that rethink the core value of key government (read 'association') services, dramatically improve service delivery, reduce costs, and renew administrative processes. Another is to change the role of the citizen as a shareholder in government.”

   The digital age has created a new level of membership participation in a more global, networked environment. It has removed the necessity for some of our most treasured association imperatives such as geographic boundaries, exclusionary membership, and the body-in-seat measure of member involvement. And it has produced the additional responsibility of not only 'encouraging' member access and participation , but also of ensuring it.

Apr. 15, 2009 - A 98 Pound AE Weakling? A five month program to association strength through social networking

I have a couple of presentations coming up for state association AE seminars, and the topic is “Doing More with Less”, or how to manage an association during an ‘economic challenge’. (Did I say that right? Do I sound like an economist?) 

One of the major points of my discussion will be using social media as a way of building your association community. In a previous post, I discussed how an AE can use Twitter as a part of the association manager’s toolbox, and hopefully you found that helpful. But I had an AE friend who wrote, “All well and good, Lindenau, but I have two questions: where to I find the freaking time to do this, and how do I get started?”

Well, actually, the two questions amount to the same answer. In getting started with adding a social networking dimension to your skill set, I have one major caution: don’t, don’t, DON’T jump in without a plan. If you do, one of two things will happen: (a) you’ll lose perspective and burn out fast, or (b) you’ll make yourself look foolish in the eyes of your members and your publics.

Develop, instead, a clear business plan for your association social networking program. Write it down. Establish a goal and some measurable benchmarks, and an overall approach to what you want to accomplish. In other words, get a program. Then, stick to it.

I am going to suggest a plan of action for you to consider. I’m assuming you are the AE of a mid-sized or smaller association (you big guys with Realtor Association Kingdoms can hire management consultants to help you…like me, maybe). But for those of you with limited resource associations, declining memberships, and not enough bake sales to fund outside help, here’s what a social networking plan for your association might look like.

Weeks 1-3. Do some homework. Set aside a couple of weeks in your personal growth plan to learn about social media. One AEI seminar does not make an expert, as I’m sure you’ve figured out, once you got home. So, for your two weeks of personal growth, do the research. First, read blogs like this one. Try Cindy Butts’ wonderful blog “On the Verge” on Blogspot. And for the real estate industry, select a couple of blogs from “A Directory of Real Estate Blogs” or the blog section at Internet Crusade , or the Real Estate Today blog. And most importantly, check and see who’s blogging in your association, and follow that blog. Remember, though, you are only listening and researching: don’t spend too much time at this—maybe 20 minutes a day for a couple of weeks. What you are doing is putting your ear to the door, and listening to the conversation.

            The second part of doing your homework is going to Twitter.com and signing up for an account. Then, search. Type in key words like ‘real estate’ or ‘real estate(location)’. Poke around and follow some of the results. Social networking is about listening as much as it is about talking to people. And think about this: when I ask people why Realtor associations have so many committees, they often answer, “So we can be in touch with our members and know what they are thinking.” Listening on Twitter accomplishes the same thing—and without the meeting!

Weeks 4-10. Ok, here’s the next step: establish your voice. You’ve listened. You know what members and other industry and association professionals are talking about. Now, set up a blog. Yes, YOU set up a blog. Don’t hide behind the association president—you are the association manager and you have some answers to questions that members want to know. So set up a blog from the AE. You can do it on your association’s Members Only page or, if you don’t have one, use the Internet Crusade’s free blog (that’s what I use), or one of the blogging sites like WordPress or BlogSpot. They’re free too, and if you worry about being too public (for instance, you’re going to blog about the new dues increase or the RPAC Kiss a Pig fundraiser), there are ways to limit your blog to registered users.

            The important thing to remember in blogging is to keep it interesting. What you are doing now is communicating with members—perhaps by posting some interesting photos of the pig-kissing and some entertaining comments. You don’t have to be profound, but you to have to be informative and helpful. Again, you are building community. You can leave the profundities to your president in her blog.

             The next step of your speaking-out program is to establish your social networking accounts. You’ve already established a Twitter account, but you need two others: Facebook and LinkedIn. Visit each of the sites to get a feel for what they are: they are both social networking sites, both have followers, and each will bring you different results. LinkedIn is more business-oriented, perhaps, but in neither application will you want to appear frivolous. Your goal in establishing a personal account is to put a face and a dimension to you, the AE of the real estate association—so tell people that you like sports and Portuguese Water Dogs and have seventeen grandchildren. And don’t use the Realtor “R” as your photo, use your own picture!

            I’ll have more ideas for setting up an Association blog in another post, but now’s the time to get started. Then begin to use your Twitter account as the more personal ‘face’ to your association. You can build awareness for yourself, your employer, and your association causes and programs in 140-letter micro-blogs.

      Weeks 11-16. Now you begin to develop your audience. As an association AE, you will find you have several audiences—your members, your peers in association management, and the industry-specific public (newspapers, consumers, and government officials, to name a few). In the beginning, it’s best to concentrate on just one area—probably your members is the best place to start. As you gain confidence, you may want to develop strategies to reach other segments of the industry, but your immediate members and affiliates is a good place to begin.

            The best advice I can give you is to write helpful material. Social media is really based on a principle of giving: people won’t ‘follow’ me unless I have something to offer them. Always ask yourself, “Why would someone want to know this?” Or, as someone else has observed, don’t answer the question “What’s on your mind?” (which Facebook asks), but think of what you’d like to be on the minds of your readers. That you are having mustard on your hotdog is not so important as wondering aloud how the housing recovery process is faring in your community. And let your networking tools interact: post to Facebook and Twitter the link to your latest blog entry, or send out a link to your education class flyer. And make sure that you publicize your addresses and contact information—again, check out my blog information on using Twitter for some insight here.

Weeks 17-20. Finally, stand back and assess your results. Is your social networking program working? Do you see some interest being created in your association and its programs? Are members beginning to feel more informed about the association? Are you forming bonds with members in new ways? Is the ‘them’ vs. ‘us’ demarcation between members and staff going away? And most of all, is there a return on your investment if time and skill in pursuing this marketing program?

            If, after you’ve tried it, it’s not working you have a couple of options. The first is to experiment with some new tactics. Those might include some courses on social networking and marketing for your members: after all, they have to use these tools for you’re your efforts to bear fruit. You might form an informal advisory group of those who do follow your efforts—ask them for a critique of what you’re doing, or how you might be providing more compelling information.

            The other option is, of course, to spend your resources elsewhere. Social networking isn’t for everyone. But as an AE, you owe it to yourself and your members to try. I personally think abandoning your social networking efforts would be a mistake, because I think in one form or another social networking is here to stay: it’s impacting too much of our lives to ever go away or be dismissed as a fad. It’s changing how we get news, build brand, sell product, encourage openness and transparency among our members. 

            I think, too, the popularity of social networking has some real messages for us as association executives: it says

a.       Our members want personal interaction. They want to know about US as people, not just as go-fers for the Board of Directors. They want to trust the association management, and they want to know the manager personally. All those bureaucratic layers (not to mention the ‘invisible hand that steers the ship’)  are going away in our modern world.

b.      Members expect interaction. It’s no longer acceptable to say, “if you don’t like it, vote in the next election” or “write a letter to the committee chairman.” Almost every site they visit on the internet has feedback and opinion built in: associations should have those capabilities as well.

c.       It’s no longer enough to just convey the party line, or the association marketing message. Members are finding out that social networking participants are turned off by empty bragging and heavy-handed and self-serving observations. Your networking followers want value in return for listening to you. Social networking is the wisdom of the whole, not the preaching of a few.

So there you have it. It’s not rocket science, as they say. Just follow the steps: 1. Spend a couple of weeks listening for 20 minutes a day; 2. Start a blog and keep it going for a month or so. Then, take a couple of weeks to establish your association’s personal presence (you) in Twitter, LinkedIn, and Facebook. You’re now going into the third month of this process, but again, you aren’t working on this more than a half  hour a day, if that. 3. Build your following. You’ll need friends and fans on Facebook, and followers on Twitter, and contacts on LinkedIn. Make sure your members know about your contact points, and regularly ask members to give you theirs. 4. Then, assess and tweak! Make adjustments to your program to make it more effective, and perhaps expand it to include staff. Think about other applications for your skills (a Directors’ Blog? A wiki about topics of specific interest to members?). In five months of careful and well planned activity, you’ll have the confidence and personal skills to utilize social networking to build a strong association and, at the same time, solidify your important place in your management of your organization.

Apr. 13, 2009 - How to Use Twitter: A Guide for AEs

Recently I’ve been working on some social media/marketing presentations for Realtors, and I’ve gotten involved in the whole online networking scene. I reviewed the proposed new Social Marketing course from Internet Crusade, as well—it’s going to be very helpful to our members, I think (should be released soon!).

There’s a ton of information out and about on the topics—the real problem is finding the time to sort out what will work for you and your situation and what won’t. I know how much time I’ve spent researching and experimenting-- time I couldn’t have found when I was a full-time association manager.

So I feel your pain. And yet I am convinced that the social networking tools are the greatest community builders we’ve seen in our field of building and maintaining associations—and they’re tools that everyone needs to know about and make use of. The best part: many of the popular tools are free and readily available for associations to use.

One of the most popular these days is Twitter. Twitter has been called a micro-blog—you only have 140 characters in every broadcast. However, it’s easy to broadcast links to documents, photos, and websites in general and again—these tools cost your organization nothing. But the hard part is that for such a simple concept, there are thousands of applications which have been developed for Twitter users to help them receive and send messages from cell phones, develop their Twitter account page, and sort out the ‘tweets’ (messages) that they want to receive from those they don’t.

Twitter is being used by many of your members—you should know that. Particularly your younger members—those, say, under 40 years old. They’re using it to keep track of important people in their lives, learn more about things they want to know, and to develop and maintain a professional client base. And I think Twitter  won’t go away: applications are being developed by third party providers that relate specifically to marketing listings, mapping, posting pictures, and connecting to the MLS. Twitter is being used on desktop computers, laptops, Blackberry and iPod phones, and wireless devices of every kind.

It stands to reason that once the application is there, is being used by members, and the price is right, you as an AE will want to see how far you can go in using it to build community in your own organization. Here are seven start-up tips especially for Realtor AEs.

1.      Go to Twitter.com and set up a main account for your organization. Let’s say you are the Bittersweet Association of Realtors. You might set up an umbrella account called @BARtweets. You will want people to find you easily.   Then, set up your main Twitter page for your organization. You’ll want to link your Twitter page to your organization’s website, and I would recommend setting up a ‘landing page’ on your organization’s website for people who come from your Twitter link. Your landing page might say something like “Welcome to the Twitter site for the Bittersweet Association of Realtors. We’re glad you are here. We’re here to service our Realtor members and the real estate consumer. Our staff will help you too. Here are our team members—feel free to follow them as well. Then list your staff members and their Twitter addresses.

2.      Next, set up staff accounts for those staff members you are enabling to communicate on behalf of the organization. Give them individual accounts, such as @BARtweet_Bob. This is important because your group’s followers will have different personalities they will enjoy following. For instance, your MLS manager will have a specialized view of what’s going on in the organization, and many members will only want to here from that department. The same is true with the political affairs, ethics, or education staff. As an association manager using social networking tools you may have a bit of a challenge giving your staff responsibility for their on content and developing their own following—but that’s the way the new management paradigm works!

            3. You will want to monitor multiple accounts. Perhaps you will have your own personal account as well as your organization account. Your staff will probably have the same             issue. There are software installations which allow you to do that: one I recommend is       “SplitTweet”. Another is “CoTweet”. Why do this?  Because it’s much easier than  signing in and out of different accounts all day.

            4. Ask each staff member to follow people who tweet regularly about your industry or      cause, as well as actively Tweeting members, affiliates, legislators, or other stakeholders.     You can find other interested Twitterers (Tweeps) to follow by using the search function        on your Twitter page. Enter keywords such as ‘NAR’, or ‘Realtor’. You can follow                  your own zip code, too. And you can import your association email list into Twitter and     find out who else in your association may have Twitter accounts. Your criteria for            following people might be to find people who are active—they have lots of friends and         followers, and a number of updates.

            5. Learn to use hashtags. Let’s say you are having a big educational event   Hashtags will             help you develop a         following. Here’s how you do it: (A) You create a hashtag by          using the hash symbol followed by a word: #BARclass, for instance. (B) Then go      http://twitter.com/hashtag and follow @hashtag. The program will follow your          hashtag back and ‘register’ it. Your  topic can then be searched and followed by others    (C) Then begin to use your special hashtag #BARclass in all your Tweets about your    education program. In essence what    you will be doing is building interest among those    reading your messages: “#BARclass early bird registration discount ends”, “Amazing           speaker will help your income! #BARclass” and so on. (A word of caution: uses    hashtags sparingly! One or two in a message is all you should use.) Publicize the    hashtag you are using on your other materials, too: that way, the word will get around.

            A good example of how hashtags work is a personal one: because I am no longer an AE,  I wasn’t really in a position to attend the Institute in Colorado Springs. I was missing everything! Except I followed the #AEI hash, and “listened” to a lot of you comment on     speakers, party, food, and the facility. It was a second-hand experience, but still fun!

            6. Learn to use ‘ReTweet’. Let’s say that one of your staff members sends an interesting tweet on an MLS issue. That tweet will only go to those following that staff member, but     you may feel it’s of interest to everyone in the association. ‘ReTweet’ it! It will draw           more people into the conversation and support your staff team as well

            7. Remember that successful use of Twitter is all about sharing content. People will not    become followers unless you offer them some enrichment. They aren’t there just to hear        your advertising content (I emphasize this in my presentations to Realtors…). Nor do  they follow you to find out what you ate for dinner or when you are getting a hair cut.       Twitter is a way of building community through sharing, and the sharing that the  community does is through content and information. Discuss this with your staff         Twitterers. If there’s an interesting blog they’ve found on the web, or if there’s a real             estate article in the online Wall Street Journal or the local newspaper, ask them to send a           message to their followers. Or if there’s a member who is getting married or has just had     a baby, or perhaps opened a new office or had community recognition, use that occasion  to build the social fabric of the  association.  

            Encourage each staff member to take responsibility for sharing links with interesting and  useful information relevant to their specific areas of expertise.  Encourage them to engage       in conversation with their Twitter networks, respond to things other people are tweeting          about, ReTweet links and information from people outside your organization as well as  your own; suggest they converse on topics of interest!

As association managers, we’ve talked for a long time about the difficulty of getting people to come to meetings and to participate in our association in the traditional ways. We’ve discussed, too, the need for finding new tools to build our communities and keep in touch with our members and their business environment.

Twitter is one of those tools. As an AE you can probably set up an effective association Twitter program in just a few hours. Then in just a few moments a day you can keep your finger on the pulse of what’s happening among your members, the Realtor association, and the real estate business as a whole. Give it a try. And add @JWLConsulting to the list of organizations you follow!