Landlord Products / Services
Oh GREAT, I’m about to eat my own dick here.
To cut a long and shameless story short, I’m just going to say it…”I’ve started to get Twitter.”
A few months ago I mentioned how I thought Twitter was a pile of donkey shit, and how Most Of The Estate Agents On Twitter Are Idiots. While I still maintain the latter to be true, the former “donkey shit” claim can be retracted.
I don’t know whether I’ve seen the light, or merely adapted to a bad situation. Either way, somewhere along the line I’ve managed to utilise Twitter and extract some usefulness from it, which means there’s a chance it might just be useful to others, including landlords…
Drilling down to a good list of Tweeters
The unsurprising feature about Twitter is that it’s plagued with parasites: spammers, trolls, and those that are purely trying to generate business for themselves (and nothing else). Those accounts are essentially cancerous to the Twitter ecosystem. Consequently, it can take time, patience and good judgement to block out the noise, to the point that Twitter becomes useful to a Landlord (or anyone else, for that matter).
It’s taken me approximately 3 months to actually build a community that’s proved to be useful (i.e. I now have a live feed that helps me keep on top the latest industry news). The key to Twitter really is about following the right people, and getting the right people to follow back!
Each Tweeter you follow should be a sharp tool
I don’t follow many Twitter profiles, but those I do follow are generally of some quality. Twitter is definitely about quality and not quantity.
By that, I mean, If I follow 50 new property related accounts on Twitter, I’ll be lucky if 70% of them aren’t absolute garbage. So I use my best to carefully curate who I follow to limit the God awful noise.
How Twitter has helped me as a Landlord
Believe it or not, I don’t know everything about being a Landlord. In fact, I’m still learning every day. So if ever I need advice/help, I just fire off a Tweet, and sure enough, someone usually comes good with a response, whether it be from a letting agent, a fellow landlord, or some other industry professional. It’s great!
A few days ago I wanted to see different examples of Guarantor forms that other landlords/agents are using, so I could see how they compare to the one I use. So I threw this Tweet out there:
Anyone got a good Guarantor Form that's legal? Would be much appreciated! :)
— Landlord (@The_Landlord) July 31, 2009
Before I knew it, I had 3 letting agents emailing me examples of their Guarantor forms.
Now that’s the real power of Twitter when you do it right.
Seriously, once you build the right network and get the key users following, Twitter is a GREAT resource.
How do Landlords build a good Twitter following?
Well, this is how I did it:
- 1) Have a property related description in your bio. I have this:
I’m a Landlord that likes to bitch about being a Landlord while loving the job.
If you have keywords like “landlord” in your bio, property related tweeters can easily identify your interest, and start following you.
- 2) Find a few big names on Twitter like, Rightmove, Zoopla and the alike. Go through their followers and add as many property related Tweeters as you can.
- 3) Monitor the quality of tweets you get hauled with, and unfollow those that produce worthless junk. Look out for Tweeters that actually engage in conversation, they’re the keepers.
- 4) Routine Tweet landlord/property related stuff, and throw in keywords like “tenant”, “landlord” and “tenancy”, and property related folks will naturally start following you.
- 5) Twitter has attracted all kinds of professionals from even the smallest of industry niches. Try to find Tweeters that specialise in areas of interest. For example, if you require more information on Gas Safety, you can follow the Gas Safe Register Twitter account.
You can all follow me, The Landlord on Twitter
Disclaimer: I'm just a landlord blogger; I'm 100% not qualified to give legal or financial advice. I'm a doofus. Any information I share is my unqualified opinion, and should never be construed as professional legal or financial advice. You should definitely get advice from a qualified professional for any legal or financial matters. For more information, please read my full disclaimer.
Wow - I get a mention! *blush*
As well as being a landlord, I'm also a computer geek (I work in IT), and I find Twitter incredibly useful for keeping up to date with the tech world, and I definitely agree with your advice on how to use Twitter. I'm going to follow some of the Twitterers you mention, as I'm not following too many property-related ones at the mo.
I agree, Twitter is really useful - as long as you prune your Following list from time-to-time. Someone that posts too often (usually with banal crap) usually gets dumped from me as well!