Why is CRE Gravitating to Twitter?

I was still in the process of drafting this blog post about the commercial real estate community’s affinity for Twitter when I came across this post from B2B marketing strategist Chris Koch titled: Is Twitter Social?

I should point out that I follow Chris on Twitter and have for some time but that is not where I discovered his post. I subscribe to his blog as well and after scanning through my Google reader, the title caught my eye. Once, I read Chris’s thoughts on Twitter it struck a chord with me because they supported some of my opinions of why I thought Twitter has become popular with CRE professionals.

I have always believed that when most CRE professionals decide to dabble with social media for first time that LinkedIn is typically the first choice. I liken it to wading into the kiddie’s pool, as it is the safe-choice. After all it is the business professional’s “social network” and certainly nobody is going to snicker at them for opening a Linkedin account.

Once they have that LinkedIn profile up for a few months and they haven’t been bombarded with meeting requests from all their “connections-connections” just invites from the guy down the hall and brokers they compete with in their own market they get discouraged, but they keep hearing about this Twitter thing.

Really Twitter?

If you are like me you might think upon first look that Twitter is perhaps the stupidest thing on earth. I have had a Twitter account for almost 3 years but didn’t use it for the first 6 months. However, that was 2009 and this is 2011. Since it is safe to say I was an early adopter and while I have no formal data, I can confidently say I have watched the number of CRE professionals with twitter accounts grow exponentially particularly over the last year. So why has it become so popular with CRE?

Well this is where Chris thoughts aligned with mine as he summarizes in his post:

• Twitter isn’t really a social platform it’s a broadcast medium.
• Twitter isn’t for conversation, it’s for learning

After you figure out that you can’t really tweet your listings or that you just closed a big deal because nobody cares, you begin to get a feel for Twitter and you quickly learn that it is a fantastic “real-time” news source. I always get a chuckle when someone shares a news item within the office via e-mail and I read it on Twitter 3 days prior.

Second you realize that Twitter is a great learning tool as there are thousands and thousands of business people just like you sharing great and interesting content. You jump in and tweet something interesting and then you get the re-tweet. Wow, people are occasionally paying attention, this never happened on LinkedIn.

Why and How I use Twitter

I use Twitter as a personal branding tool to create visibility and credibility with people within my industry as well as individuals who might consider doing business with me. The premise is to share information that is interesting and provide some value, a learning tool. Twitter is also key tool for driving traffic to my blog where I create and curate content designed to provide value to my target niche customer and existing clients. I can tell you that after 20,000 plus tweets there are hundreds, maybe even thousands of people on Twitter that two years ago had no idea who I was and now know exactly what I do, not that I am just a CRE broker, but an experienced tenant representative in Houston with Colliers International. Some have even read my content and bothered to send some business my way. Remember when I said that I didn’t come across Chris’s blog post on Twitter but that I subscribe to his blog. Well I subscribe to Chris’s blog because I discovered him on Twitter sharing great information.

Twitter isn’t about what you had for breakfast. CRE is filled with some very bright people and many are discovering the value of Twitter. Why do you like it?

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