What is twitter generated traffic really worth?
I recently twittered via @anreps about a new property for sale on ANREPS real estate website. The house had only been on their website for half an hour and had only had one page view when I sent a link to it via twitter. After two minutes I refreshed the page and there had been 22 visitors to that property page. I refreshed again a minute later and it had 37 visitors.
Now I realise these aren’t huge numbers, but it did seem quite impressive within the space of just a few minutes. I have read about twitter posts crashing servers because they can’t cope with the traffic, but that wasn’t going to be a problem here.
I was quite pleased that my experiment worked. But this was short lived as I thought about where the traffic had come from. And I was right. When I checked the traffic using bit.ly the majority from the US, with two from the UK and one from Israel.
So where is the real value? Don’t I want Australians to click on the link? Doesn’t it come down to wanting a potential client or buyer to view the website? Or is it positive just to have an increase in traffic to the site?
lisacsmith perth wa 
Hi Lisa,
Twitter is free & measurable. Whilst it may not be as targeted to your audience as you would like at the moment. As you start to build a more local following it should begin to have a better impact for you.
For years agents have wasted a lot of money on print media campaigns & leaflet drops with no real way of measuring response rates. One of the best things about the internet is finally an agents marketing efforts can be tracked.
From your bit.ly stats, my interpretation is that you want to build a more local audience. To do this you will need to be more geo-targeted in your approach toward building your Twitter followers & be a bit more localised with your use of some keywords that you can use within your tweets.
PS. You said ‘Don’t I want Australians to click on the link?’. There are lots of expats who buy property online without physically inspecting the homes.
Be careful about discounting the power & leverage of Twitter for real estate.
When you look at the results another way Lisa, you’ve actually shared the details of an owner’s property out to a segment of the international online audience that you would never have connected with otherwise.
I hope this helps. Cheers Greg 🙂
Greg Vincent
09/06/2009
Hi Greg, thank you for your comments, it’s great to get an industry view on this. I didn’t mean to sound like I was discounting twitter, I think it’s fantastic and have encouraged my workplace to take it on wholeheartedly.
It is a wonderful tool for engaging in conversation with people you otherwise probably wouldn’t (overseas or in your own backyard), and I am really enjoying being able to establish relationships with other real estate agents; it certainly feels like a community.
We are getting traffic to our website and we are also raising the profile of our business, not just using Twitter but Facebook as well, together with other social networking media.
Thanks again for checking out my blog. I’ll see you in twitterverse, cheers, Lisa
lisacsmith
11/06/2009