Bart Wilson

In this Twitter tip #7, I will show you how to SEARCH Twitter and find some respectable, high profile movers and shakers in the Real Estate sector.

Step 1. Log into your Twitter Account.

Step 2. Go to the top right menu navigation and click the Find People.

Step 3 (below) enter in the phrase: real estate and click search.

Step 4. Pick the people you WANT to FOLLOW by clicking on the Follow button. See below, I am following Denise McNerney from Australia. She seems intersting, and has a good bio and I like her posts.

Notice she is not like iJustine who posts that she is going to breakfast. These kind of LOSERS are not the ones you need not bother to follow.

Step 5. Click on the Settings navigation and ADD their Chirp broadcasts to your Cell Phone if you want. Notice that I have mine set for DO NOT DISTURB from 9pm to 6am. This means you can still GO to Twitter and see the chirps they tweeted, but your phone will not disturb you if this needs to be your quiet time.

Step 6 is easy. Wait + Learn. The folks you are following will probably thank you for following them (which is always a nice gesture) and as you watch WHAT they Tweet and Chirp on Twitter, simply watch, read and learn.

Then, as you feel confident about your new found Twitter skills... go out and try your own thing. Tweet to Inspire. Chirp with passion and with a purpose. Just don't waste people's time like iJustine does by Tweeting everybody she's going out to breakfast. This is how you LOSE followers on Twitter.

Nuff said and here endeth the lesson.

If you'd like to learn more about Chipring on Twitter, email me at voyager360@mac.com or call me at (505) 466-2483

- Bart Wilson

Not that I want anybody's attention, but for me it's kind of a cheap thrill, really.

I'm going to break 30,000 points now on ActiveRain. I feel like Homer Simpson now. Wooo-hooo!

Milestones or self-imposed goals are good to have. How many of you set goals every month, then take specific approaches to HIT your goal?

REALTORS are sales people. We need to stretch our brains a bit, and work them like any other muscle in our body. I'm a big soggy around the mid section because I have not been exercising my stomach very much. And at age 40-something... it shows.

I'd love to have the six pack abs, but it's nothing something I'm really focused on, so it follows if you're not focusing on achieving your goal, it's not a stretch of the imagination to see why you're not going to get it.

The age of information is here. We make money by out thinking many of our competitors. Do you need to be college educated to make craploads of money? Nope. Bill Gates dropped out of College and so did I. I find myself making good money and I rather like the company I'm in if I'm compared to other college drop outs like Bill Gates of Microsoft.

Making money, being successful simply boils down to two things:

1.) Brain Exercises. Doing daily brain crunching.

2.) Learn what works. Find a REALTOR making $100,000 - $250,000 a year and buy them lunch. Bring a note pad and start Working the muscle between your ears. Ask the successful REALTOR how they did it. What do they do every day, how do they think, how do they look at customers.

Because at the end of the day, the REALTOR in Hollywood that closes on one home, pockets $92,000 in sales commissions. You on the other hand, work in Ohio and your last sales commission was more like $4,200 after your REALTOR took out the desk fees and your last commission advance.

Let's take a look at this year for your goals. Where are you at right now?

Did you set the goal for hitting a six digit income this year from your sales commissions? Those of you in the back, who got a commission advance. Sorry. Put your hands down. I'm talking to the REALTORs who letting six months of the year slip through their fingers like sand through an hourglass.

Did you hit your mid year target on June 30th? Okay, if not, why? Did you get 50% of your target sales commissions? Or was it more like 25%?

You have six more months in the year hear. Be happy and try some different tactics to achieve a really good end of year sales commission target. July just started but now it's July 2th and August will be here next week. Next thing you know will be taking time to carve the Jack O Lantern, taking your kids around the block to trick or treat. Then it's Thanksgiving followed by Christmas.

You wake up and it's 2010, January 1st and another New Year. This year you promise to set better goals, and this year you promised your spouse the trip to Europe or Cabo. But unless you really set some goals and take specific actions to achieve them... it will be another disappointing year for many of you.

Here's the secret that will make you rich: Rome wasn't built in a day. But you must focus on building it -- and understand that you will never stop building your business. Every day, you will build more onto your business. Once you understand this simple rule, once you put yourself on the road of being a life time student of business and understanding that people don't buy a house... they buy into a lifestyle. The day you understand these things is the day you are on the raod to making a lot of money.

I've made just over $2 million dollars over the past five years. Getting there took me six years. The day I landed page one #1 on Google was the day my earnings increased substantially. The day your website naturally ranks on Google on page one is the day your cash cows start to come home, too.

STOP wishing for the old ways and old days to come back. They're gone.

The abacus was replaced a long time ago with your HP Financial Calculator.

The Real Estate BOOK was replaced by a computer.

Email has replaced your fax machine.

Your Sony digital camera was replaced by a 360 virtual tour system.

Next time home buyers in the 20-30 something range don't read your drip emails and now hang out at Facebook, Twitter and YouTube.

Does anyone think that REALTORS tomorrow will be replaced by a Robot? Robo-REALTOR? Yuk. I can't think of that ever happening.

Why is it that some REALTORS never hit their sales targets?

It's not because you're stupid. It's not because some of you are lazy. I've heard hundreds of lame excuses like "I'm no good with computers," or that you can't figure out how to Chirp on Twitter or how to create a corporate presence on Facebook or LinkedIn.

There are lots and lots of books on Amazon that will show you how to get good at Internet marketing, better at understanding how next time home buyers find homes today, and how you can kick Broker Bob's ass and out sell, out negotiate and make your business stand out from the pack.

There's just one thing countless REALTORS need to know before you ever start walking down the road of success. EDUCATION. And lots of it.

I'm a big fan of self help books and in my last post, I gave you some good books to get from Amazon. But those of you like me, who don't have very much time to read, how about listening?

Amazon bought into a firm not too many years ago called Audible.com.

Audible.com is a place where you can spend 19.95 a month, and you'll get access to thousands of business books on audio. MP3 to be exact. So for $19.95 a month, you get two (2) legacy credits and any book you want to download is just (1) credit.

More good stuff later. I promised the family some relax time, so I am quitting for the weekend and I am going to spark up the BBQ for some my famous Texas BBQ Beer Brisket with an Ancho Chile Glazed Shiner Bock glaze.

-- bartman

Blogging with nothing to say.

Reposting the same stuff but word smithed.

For some reason, too many people out there are perfectly content posting blogs that remain truly uninspiring and 99% unremarkable.

These are the characteristics and flaws of REALTORS who blog, but has nothing much to say. I refer to them as, "Clueless."

"Clueless" seems reasonably intelligent, college educated and has been a REALTOR for quote some time. Clueless emails are bright and witty, but when it comes to blogging, Clueless seems to struggle to find the right words to say.

Clueless posts boring content on line and for some reason, feels there's some deep seeded need to run a race with other agents, Blogging for Points.

It's sad, but at the end of the day... there it is.

I think Cluless needs a helpful Intervention. "Clueless" last handful of posts show that 3, 1 or 0 people made comments to them.

Surely, this kind of preaching to an empty audience, and hearing crickets instead of the returns of laughter or thunderous applause would make "Clueless" rethink their online blogging strategy. I've watched America's Got Talent, and I've seen folks boo'd off stage dozens of times. Blogging with 0 comments is akin to getting boo'd off stage.

Below are several books on Smart Marketing and Blogging that should be on every REALTORs bookshelf.

The Wisdom of Crowds

The book explores the facts that large groups of people can't all be wrong. It looks at "collective intelligence," being a new trend in helping ordinary people recognize trends that thousands of other people are buying, using or servicing. Smart People tend to herd up in packs as do morons and stupid people. If people or crowds don't always recognize or have all the facts... they can sometimes act irrationally. The book explores and shows how diversity, crowd or herd mentality is affecting the way people shop, think and react to new products and services today.

Groundswell

This provocative book asks the fundamental questions like, "How can Facebook help my REAL Estate Business?" Social networking is not a fad, nor is it going away anytime soon. The landscape of marketing has changed. If you're wondering why nobody is picking up your Drip marketing emails from Top Producer, it's no surprise. Nobody is bothering to read your weekly or monthly emails. Your first time home buyers are hanging out on Twitter. Facebook. Myspace, Youtube, Joost, Yeoh and Hulu. If you're not advertising there, it's soon going be time to pack your bags and move. Because your real estate business won't survive to see the world come to an end when 21 December 2012 arrives.

That's the date the Aztec long count calendar ends. The Azted calendar was far more accurate than our Roman calendar is today. The Aztecs nailed every celestial event for the past few thousand centuries. Unlike our Roman calendar which is so inaccurate, we have to have a LEAP year day once every few years (feb 29th) to have our chronology catch up.

On December 21st, 2012 -- our planet will be in a straight line with every planet in our solar system. This is going to create some unknown effects and scientists don't really have any solid answers. What do know is the last time this event happened, was 26,000 years ago and that was the last ice age. So at the risk of ruining your day here -- it's probably going to be time to kiss your ass and your business good bye on 21 December, 2012. Until then, learn how to take advantage of social media, make a crap load of cash because it's not going to be of much use to you on 22 December, 2012 when the earth's mantle shifts and the north pole is now where Florida is today.

Don't make me think.

Crappy websites are not the problem. It's the stinking user interface. It's the most over looked part of any website design. And it the single largest problem for the millions and billions of me-too agent websites out there. DId you sign up as a Kellwer Williams brokerage? Gary Keller thinks their stock (canned) broker and agent website is so cool, but it looks like it was copied from a $64 dollar template from MonsterTemplate.com. Steve Krug's Don't Make Me think book will force you to rethink and retool the most important part of your website. The User Interface. Steve includes a valuable set of Usability tests that will help you and your web designer come up with a website design that will turn your site into human flypaper, and make your cash register go Ka-ching.

Your marketing sucks.

REALTORS, let alone most companies have no friggin' clue what good marketing is. Most REALTORS good idea of good marketing is the cheap or free website you get from Point2Agent. Your Marketing Sucks, sets apart the cheap skates from those who know how to dollarize and explores proven, business savvy ideas that actually WORK to get you a lot more marketing bang with a carefully measured ad spend. Free is out and doesn't work. Spending money is what you have to learn to do and your marketing budget for any business needs to be at least 15% of what you make annually. Your competition is going to drown you in a sea of billboard, radio, print and internet marketing. So to compete, you have to pony up the same marketing dollar spend that your competitors are spending. If you don't buy into this, it's not a problem. You'll be flipping burgers and your competitors will be enjoying the business left in the wake of your leaving the market, Rule of thumb: There's no such thing as FREE marketing or advertising. If you think blogging is free? It's not. Your time is money. If you're foolish enough not to value your time, then you're foolish enough to fall for any FREE advertising scheme that appears in your mailbox and you deserve whatever you get. Those who learn this rule early, will be the survivors tomorrow as you watch your competitors pack up and move.

- bart

I'm getting a lot of emails and a lot of calls over this, so I'll keep posting valuable, step by step How To Tips for those of you Active Rainers not too sure what to do on Twitter.

Here is Twitter Tip #6. How to follow people you want, and get short Chirps to your cell phone.

As you click people you want to follow, click the link on your home page (Following 86 people) for example. Scroll down and see the image above? There is a GRAY phone icon. Click that and it goes GREEN and it shows you are going to get Updates from That person to your Cell Phone. I clicked the link and wanted to get updates from President Obama.

Before you do step one above, you need to make sure you go to your Profile -- > Settings and click the options below. You need to first SET up your cell phone for receiving alerts from Twitter. You do that in two steps.

Step 1: Set up your cell phone.

Step 2. You get a short burst message to your cell phone and when you reply, it is verified as your cell and you are now able to go to any of the folks you are following, and click the Gray Cell phone icon -- it then goes GREEN and confirms you are now getting Alerts from those folks to your cell.

It's not very hard to do, but there is a small learning curve to getting this set up. Once it's set up, it's super easy to pick and choose folks you want to follow.

If anyone needs help on this, email me at voyager360@mac.com.

I am selling Voyager360.com and my time will soon free up to do lots more consulting before I take off to Europe for a year for some badly needed time off.

- bart

This is my Twitter Tip #5. Double check your FOLLOWERS at least once a month.

Because on closer inspection of my FOLLOWERS on Twitter, I had to delete some more people.

Ethelynty wasn't one I spotted the last time I was cleaning out the back seat of my Twitter account. In some ways, it's like you're driving down the Twitter.com road and you seem to pick up leaches and scum you don't want, and like a hitch hiker they somehow end up in your back seat.

I turn around and I find a few sexual predators riding along with me. So stop the car. Kick them the hell out by BLOCKING them. Then you report them to Twitter and hopefully, they get banned.

I have kids over here using our computers, and now they of the age when they start to poke on Uncle Bart's icons I have on my desktop. So the last thing I need here is how to explain the facts of life to my 8 year old niece.

Ehelynty is just another moron. Literally. Just look at how she spelled NUDE photos. She spelled it: NUDOE. I certainly hope her English teacher is proud.

Horny Sophie. Cute photo, but I'm happily married with a wonderful sex life and I have no interest in clicking on your link, honey.

Sorry, Buh Bye. I press the BLOCKED button and Bzzzzt. Ta-daa. You're history.

........

If anyone is chirping on Twitter, the occasional clean up of who's sitting behind you is mandatory you look at the back seat and see if you want them riding with you or not. You don't have to accept any follower here.

So once a month, log into your Twitter account home page, see who's there and delete the morons, JABHOTs and the sexual phreaks and tell them to get the hell out.

- bartman