How can you keep track of the thousands of ‘Tweets’ sent out every second that might be about you, your company or topics of interest?

If you are LinkedIn, now you can get the ‘Company Buzz;. Company Buzz is an application you can install on your LinkedIn page that lets you tap into this river of infomation to find relevant trends and comments that are important to you.

Once you install the application, here’s some of what you can do:

• Customize: At first you are assigned search terms that are taken from your profile. Take a look and then change or add new topics you want to watch for on Twitter®
• Historical Data: See historical charts to track buzz over time
• Trends: This is a feature in Company Buzz that graphs the top words in Twitter comments associated with your topics. Just click on one of your topics to populate the Trends feature

If you’re not already on Twitter®, sign up and contribute.
You can Tweet with me at Twitter  

Of course, you have to be a member of Linkedin to take advantage of Company Buzz.

 Connect with me on LinkedIn   

With the current popularity of blogging and the promise of continued growth for blogs and other social media, Realtors® should consider this awesome tool for growing their business, with the caveat that they have a strategy and purpose for their blog. In my opinion, this should be the same as for their websites.

Here are the three things I suggest are essential components of your online presence.

1. Establish your expertise in your niche or community. You can’t be all things to all people, but you can be highly effective in winning over a particular target market in your area. Perhaps a certain city or neighborhood, or something like ‘great homes for golf lovers’. Remember that just because you choose a niche does not mean you are limited to only serve those types of clients.
2. Create a relationship with your audience. One of the biggest mistakes you can make is to notcollect the contact information from your target audience. If you don’t get at least their first name and email address the first time they visit your blog or website, you may never see them again. You can’t develop a relationship unless you can contact your visitors again and again. Offer something of value to them in exchange for their contact information, a free report on purchasing REO’s, best golf courses in Brentwood or free membership to your Client Gratitude Program. Alternately, provide an RSS feed to your website or blog.
3. Provide interesting and relevant content regularly. If you plan to make your blog an effective part of your marketing strategy, readers will need a good reason to come back often. Plan to post a least weekly. Tuesday is the best day to post if you can only muster once a week. Also, keep in mind that your prospects and clients are busy too, so give them what they want.

The best way to proceed in starting your blog is to just start. Don’t worry about having everything perfect or spending a ton of money having your blog specially designed and hosted. Sign up for a free account at WordPress or Blogger and start writing. Ask your audience what they want and then provide it. It takes time to build a following, so you can continue to educate yourself on Web 2.0 techniques and strategies as you go. Check back here at RealTechy for information and insight, and share what you know with others.

As the saying goes, “You don’t have to be great to start, but you have to start to be great”.