Our very own Steve Pacinelli sat down with Ernie Graham, the creator and CEO of Peep.ly, to review this exciting new tool.  What is Peep.ly you ask?

In a nutshell Peep.ly is a web service that discovers commonality between a prospect and a real estate agent. Commonality could be a friend in common, you both like yoga, or you both went to graduate school in Chicago.

Why should you care about something like this?

As Agents, we use discovered commonality every day with our potential new clients and existing ones. Why? Because this is how we’re wired as human beings. We like to do business with people that we have something in common with because personal capital creates quick trust and enduring loyalty.

Peep.ly just simplifies this process by digitally matching the profile of the client to agents to find this commonality fast. Think speed dating on steroids that creates high quality leads just for you.

Watch this video to find out how Peep.ly can work for you on an individual level or for an entire brokerage.  We go live into real examples for how the service can be used on a day to day basis.  Let’s face it, the “find an agent page” on a company’s site is almost useless.  This can replace that entirely with something that will help like minded people connect.  There is little or no “extra” work added to your daily schedule to use this product.  Put all that effort you put into social networking to use for you.  This is a system that will help you find that elusive ROI, if you haven’t been seeing it already.

The end of the video will contain information on how to sign up for the FREE BETA!  Yup, free.  It will also tell you when the beta starts (you heard it here first). Of course Ernie will be charging for this product eventually, but we want our fans to get the first crack at it to see if it’s going to be worth its weight.  If you want to try out a live version of this service after watching the video, go here and click the agent match button on the left.  Please leave your responses below and provide us and Ernie with your review about this new way to communicate with your clients.

Earlier this week we posted a question on our Facebook Fan Page asking if knowing how to tie all your social networking profiles together was a) important to you and b) if so, if you had it done. We got some agents saying that they had, noting what they had used to achieve this, and we got a lot of comments from agents stating that they really wanted to know how.

Posting the question on our Facebook Fan Page distributed the update to all our Fan’s personal walls – as of today that’s just over 7,000 Facebook profiles. That alone is a great start to the distribution of content and socialization with others. But let’s say that that update was actually a blog post automatically pulled from your real estate blog site and it wasn’t just posted within Facebook but it was also automatically posted on Twitter at the same time? And on top of that it was posted on your LinkedIN account profile… Now how many eyeballs have you got on your content? In my books, these four sites are the crux of Real Estate and where all your content MUST be distributed each time you update your blog or one of your social networking profiles/pages.

All this can be done automatically, within just a few minutes of your time, but saving you many more in the long run. Here’s a run down of how this can be achieved:

Blog Post to Facebook Fan Page

Here’s one of my favorite Facebook Applications in full effect!  NetworkedBlogs is a great application that can be easily added to your Blog site and tied to your Fan Page (it can also be tied to your Profile on Facebook, but DON’T!  Remember – Profile = Personal, Fan Page = Business).    Watch the following short video to see how this is done – step-by-step:

Facebook Fan Page to Twitter

This can be accomplished in many ways, but since we are already in Networkedblogs Application and it can be done directly in here, this is the way I would recommend:

Twitter to LinkedIN

Again, this can be accomplished in many ways, but for the sake of argument, here’s how I would recommend doing it:

[Special thanks to Audeliz for providing this in depth and right on post which originally appeared on her blog.  We are all about user generated content and helping tech agents connect their ideas at Tech Savvy Agent!

We posted a question on our Facebook page regarding whether or not you "like" Twitter or needed some extra guidance that got a huge response and Audeliz stepped up with some awesome tips!]

Audeliz Angie Perez is a Weichert Realtors Sales Associate.  You can follow her here: @NJRealtor1

By Audeliz Angie Perez of ForSalebyAngiePerez.com

In September of 2008, I got an email from a local marketing guru about Twitter and how the guru refused to use Twitter as a marketing tool. I had never heard of Twitter at that point. I was not even using social media or social networking sites to build up my Internet presence let alone my real estate credibility. I had a LinkedIn account and Facebook profile, but I was relatively a “no show” on the latter sites until that email.

From that unsuspecting email, I created my Twitter handle: NJrealtor1. I had absolutely no idea what would come from my use of Twitter, but I figured that one message with 140 characters, 3 times a day about things that I was doing in my business was an easy task to handle. Micro blogging seemed simple enough to do from the web or from my cell phone; it is not time consuming and it costs nothing except your desire to answer: What are you doing right now in 140 characters or less.

So, here I am, almost 696 tweets later, I find myself with over 400 followers, which in the Twitterverse, is a relatively low number, yet find that I am absolutely satisfied with my tweet leads. Yes, I have leads from Twitter and that’s the beauty of Twitter. People who follow you are generally interested in what you do, what you tweet about and as you reply (@username) or Direct Message (DM) each other, you can start to build a relationship with your followers or even the people you choose to follow. (Yes, it is true that people who follow you may also want to sell you something and fortunately, you have the option to block people who are only interested in pitching you, but more about that later).

The following are my Top 10 Tips for Practical Uses of Twitter for Real Estate Agents. These Twitter Tips have earned me clients and I have had some success worth blogging about, but please note that what works for me, may not work for you. It works for me because I am committed to tweeting. I also like sharing.

Without further ado, here are your top ten Twitter tips.

1. Create an account with a Twitter username that has something to do with real estate. I created two Twitter accounts under different names: One was under my full name:  Angie_Perez and another NJrealtor1. I find that since I have the word realtor in my twitter name, I get more followers related to my industry based on my NJrealtor1name despite the fact that I tweet about real estate topics from both accounts. With a handle like NJrealtor1, you automatically know what to expect from my tweets without having to read my bio. I believe this is the reason people choose to follow me under this username more so than under my full name.
2. Once you have your Twitter account, set up favorable settings. From the web, click on settings in the upper right hand corner after you create your account.

• Add a Photo. Realtors like you and I are notorious for being a little vain in that we brand ourselves with our face, our name and our company logo. On Twitterverse, your photo or icon is important for quick recognition from your eventual followers. Keep your image consistent and do not change or update it.
• Notices. You have three options to choose from. Do you want to receive notifications from Twitter that you have a new follower, a new DM or an email newsletter that you receive with the inside scoop. I find that an email that I have a new follower can be an interruption to my day. I would rather know when someone sends me a direct message only.  (You can only receive DMs from people you follow back).  As a result, I have my settings to send DMs, in one email as I receive them.
• Set Your Location To Your Market Area. You have 30 characters for your location.
• Do not select protect my tweets. You want people to follow you and sometimes when your tweets are made public on the Twitter public timeline, you might pick up a new follower or two.
• Your Bio is 160 characters: I have “Saving the Economy One House Sale at a Time.” This is a good place to display your elevator pitch or to highlight your interests along with how you want people to relate to you.
• Add your homepage or blog url so that you can redirect people to your website.
• You can add a Twitter Widget to your blog or website for additional exposure.
• Find people in your sphere of influence that are tweeting. You can look for people on your AOL, Yahoo or Gmail network. Once you search for them, click on follow and as a courtesy, you can expect for them to follow you back.
• Background Use freetwitterdesigner.com to customize a background for easy recognition. If I were you, I would start tweeting first and when you are comfortable with Twitter, use freetwitterdesigner.com to differentiate yourself. Or try twitbacks.com, which will allow you to display links to your website and web addy to your other business networking or social networking profiles.

3. Start Tweeting About:

• Open house dates, times and location. Include Broker’s Open, then provide updates about what’s happening at the open house or Broker’s Open.
• Success stories of what is sold in your area by you, for how much and how long did it take.
• Provide market updates or news, including a link to where you found information that could be helpful to your followers.
• Add your blog titles and web address or urls for people to read and comment on.
• Ask questions and answer questions.
• Tell about your new listings or the type of house your new buyers are looking for.
• Tweet about the places you like in the neighborhood or upcoming events.People looking to move want to know what is there to do in town.
• Retweet content or other people’s useful information to show you are reading and truly following other people.
• Talk to your followers. Use @yourfriends name and DMs when appropriate. @yourfriendsname is visible to everyone, especially if your tweets are public. DMs are visible only to the person you are directing your message to.
• Share your experiences about your products or services that you have used or intend to you.
• Ask for and give referrals.

4.  Add yourself to Wefollow.com, which is the official twitter directory for people.

5. Bookmark the following site associated with Twitter:

• http://www.Bit.ly.com -If you are going to update your twitter page with multiple urls, you should use http://www.Bit.ly, which is a service that keeps track of how many people clicked on your URL. It’s free and easy to use.  This is an easy way for you to see who is interested in what you have to say, especially
• http://www.Twellow.com –allows you to search for people to follow based on keywords or location.
• http://search.twitter.com this is the best way to find what people are saying about a keyword or topic in real time. Popular keywords on twitter for real estate agents: Foreclosures, short sales, $8000 tax credit, New Listings, Just Sold, and Just Reduced.
• http://www.twitpic.com Allows you to upload photos from your cell phone, a twiiter app like tweetdeck or from the web. This is a good place to showcase your inventory.
• http://www.twitterforbusypeople.com If you follow multiple people, you can get on overview of all of the people you follow to see what was their latest tweet.
• http://www.dynamictweets.com Allows you to schedule tweets. It’s an easy way for you to set it and forget it. I use it to set tweet my open house tweets to post to my twitter page at 8:00 a.m. on the Sunday of the OH.
• Http://www.tweetlater.com more feature than dynamictweets and free, but could be overwhelming for a TNG (Twitter New Guy). Recommended for Tweeple who have been tweeting for 6 months or more.
• http://www.tweetlister.com This is the first twitter listing service for real estate agents and FSBOs. It combines the functions of bit.ly, tweetlater, lead capture, twitpic and an searchable listing service all in one. This is by far the best tool specific to our (remember I am a Realtor) industry. But tweetlister has some limitations and drawbacks. Read the full review on Tweetlister within the NJRETODAY blog for a complete list of pros and cons of using tweetlister.

6. Be Personalable. Even though your Twitter account is business oriented, remember that people buy people before they buy products and services. You are human and you should share your success as much as your mishaps i.e. mix and match your tweets with things that you are doing with business updates.

7. It is ok to use shorthand. Twitter is about being short and sweet. Full sentences are not necessary and if needs B, Try 2 shorten ur tweets w/symbols & #s when U can. Click here for a list of common short hand or shortcuts on Twitter.

8. Ask for other contact information when you cannot communicate in 140 characters.When someone wants to know about a rental or what he or she should do to prepare oneself before they buy, ask for their email address so that you can respond or follow-up periodically.

9. If you are blogging and sharing specific, value added information, redirect people to a landing page that will collect contact information before you provide the information. We have all been on the receiving end of landing pages where you have to give your email and sometimes your phone number before you get access to information, but if you are going to share a foreclosure list and you paid for it, I would advise people that you ask for contact information at least so that you can follow-up with inquires. Click here for a video explaination of landing pages.

10. Tweet 3-5 times a day and don’t spam. Unsolicited messages are frowned upon and you could get blocked from users who see you as a spammer. Your goal is to get direct messages from people who are interested in your inventory or services. It’s up to you to follow-up after contact has been made.  Remember, be genuine and share.

[If you would like to write a post for our site email me directly, Chris (at) TechSavvyAgent.com, and I will get in touch!]

Tweetlister – Great Real Estate Tech Tool

The following post is about a tech savvy new tool called Tweetlister and seems to be pretty handy for automating real estate listing syndication via Twitter.  It was originally written by one of our Facebook Fans, Sheri Moritz with Real Living Realty Experts in North Carolina. She is our first official guest blogger and we are looking for more of you to contribute!  Why?  Let’s keep it simple.  We can get way more traffic than most of you can without help, so by us featuring what you have already written for your own blog on our site and then syndicating it to our Fans and Followers(over 4,400), it will grow your reach tremendously(and give us a day off!).  Even better, we are linking back to both the original post and to your website which is great for SEO and will send you traffic regularly.  Please leave a comment below this post if you feel like you have a topic regarding technology, social media and real estate that you would like us to use.  We will then send you the details of getting it to us via private email.  Learn.Grow.Engage.Progress Tech Savvy Agent

Tuesday is for Twitter Tips, Toast and Treats

“My 2 year old loves Tuesdays. It is amazing that at such a young age we can get used to routine and expect the same things to occur at the same time. Every morning when we drive to daycare she tells me what they are going to have for morning snack. She asks what day is it and I tell her Tuesday. She says “Yah!” and claps her hands. The rest of the way to daycare she is is saying “toast” which means she wants french toast. Apparently they have french toast on Tuesdays as I found out by asking the teacher. All the kids were sitting perfectly still waiting for the treat.

So. I thought I would make Twitter Tuesday  filled with Real Estate Toast and offer yet another treat for Twitter users or those looking for a reason to spend time there.

This week’s Treat is Tweetlister.

With Tweetlister you can:
Post and re-use as many listings as you want for residential, commercial, vacation and any other type of property. Schedule each listing to post as often as you’d like for a set period of time – until it sells, rents or leases! Build enhanced listing detail pages. Create broker/owner profiles. Post to multiple Twitter accounts.

And best of all – it’s FREE

Because I mainly train and manage real estate agents I don’t often list homes. However, I have an investor that I work with that was ready to list her flip home. I don’t personally care for the auto-tweeting programs because one of the things I like best is being involved in the conversations. I don’t really like to just blurt stuff out there without being by the computer to answer questions about what I tweeted should someone have one, especially if it is piece of real estate I am hoping to sell in the near future! But I figured I would give Tweetlister a shot and I have really liked it. I set it up to auto tweet each day in the middle of the day when most people are sitting at their desks. I actually sent the first Tweet and forgot about it until the next day when all of a sudden 3 local people retweeted it! I thought it was odd that they were all a day behind in their tweets until I went into my account to be reminded that I had set it up to tweet daily. I didn’t have to go in physically and set up a Tweet each day in Hootsuite or manually do it on Twitter or Tweetdeck. It sends it out automatically for FREE. Not to mention the retweet that got it out to a few thousand more.

Not only does it send a Tweet it makes a flyer and a link to that flyer is in the Tweet. The flyer has all your agent information and a link back to your website, a virtual tour and additional pictures.

Check out their enhanced listings features that are currently FREE

I hope you enjoy this tid bit of Twitter “Toast” and bookmark this blog so that you don’t miss out on future Twitter Tuesday Treats.”

Follow me on Twitter @RealLifeSheri or twitter.com/Tweal_Estate

So we aren’t as popular as Stefan Swanepoel and his Trends Report, which we love by the way, but we figured we would still give you our 10 predictions for where Social Media is headed in regards to the Real Estate Industry for the year 2010.

In no particular order here they are…

1. Realtors will figure out that NO ONE except other Realtors and MAYBE past clients will really want to be a “Fan” of theirs on Facebook. Friends maybe, but not a Fan. In fact 77% of all Fan pages have less than 1,000 Fans and those that do are typically an established large company or a celebrity. Fan pages that are information focused, think “Local Market Real Estate Trends”, and aren’t attached to the name of a salesperson(were talking about you BTW) will be the ones that will grow, bear the best ROI and thus will be worth your valuable time maintaining.

2. Realtors who are looking to “figure out” Twitter will learn that tweeting “we service the blah blah blah area, call us today if you are looking to buy or sell” will lead to exactly ZERO paychecks in 2010 and beyond. Even if you did it all day everyday, it isn’t going to work with today’s Tech Savvy consumers.  In our experience most Twitter users are above the curve on tech savviness and will not respond to these pleas for business.

3.  Twitter will begin to transform into a way to aggregate information quickly and learn from others using clients like TweetDeck.  Lists, columns and trends will continue to grow in popularity as tools that help to facilitate and organize the massive stream of information available.  Realtors will “Tweet” less and learn more by doing so.

4. LinkedIn will become more popular with agents as their format is looking more like Facebook everyday. Trouble is, most Realtors will sign up, log in once, fill out their profile and then wonder a few months later why they “didn’t get anything out of it”.  Great tool for generating business from the millions of Doctor’s, Lawyers and fellow business owners on the site,  but not if you aren’t engaging regularly, self promoting when you do and never offering anything of value.  Anyone have a Doctor or Dentist friend whose status updates include the root canal or surgery they just performed?  Probably not(thanks Nathan Bangs)!

5.  Direct mail and offline marketing such as business cards will start to mention that there is a page for their community on Facebook.  This approach will actually work compared to the God awful typical response agents get through the mail.  You are not asking them to become a Fan of yours, just a Fan of their community or neighborhood.  You know they are on Facebook, so create a Fan page for your farming areas and link up with them that way!

6.  MySpace will go bankrupt and Facebook will be flooded with teenagers and musicians all looking to be famous and none of whom are looking for a Realtor.  If we see customizable skins and mp3’s that play while you look at someones profile we know that the end is near!

7.  Share buttons and sharing content via Facebook, Twitter, etc will continue to grow in popularity. It will be the main resource for getting news headlines, local stories, referral business, movie reviews, etc…by the majority of consumers.  It will also be a way for agents to gain more business and keep their name top of mind, as long as they aren’t just sharing Real Estate related content(be a real person once in a while).  By our estimate only about 50% of Realtors are currently comfortable/know how to share content and the training wheels will come off in 2010!

8.  More Realtors than ever will learn the value of back linking their blog posts through sites like Digg, StumbleUpon, Reddit, etc…Syndication of content, inbound as well as outbound links and search engine optimization will be better understood by an industry that is typically a bit behind the curve when it comes to tech(just being honest).

9.  Every agent will finally have a blog and Wordpress will overtake ActiveRain as the platform of choice! Problem is, less than 10% of Realtors will use it properly, tie it together with their social networking sites using badges or ever generate a single lead from it.  Those who run the blogosphere will generate all of the buyer and seller leads from the web and will push out the non tech savvy agents who are already wondering if they should have renewed their license this year.

10.  YouTubeand HD multimedia will be the primary focus for Tech Savvy Agents who figured out the previous 9 in 2009(congrats all 3-5% of you)!  The majority of blog entries, status updates and agent websites will involve video and YouTube will be the em bedder of choice.

So there’s our list and we would love to know what your thoughts are.  Did we miss anything?  Please feel free to comment below and here’s to a great and productive year!