He may have over 14,000 Twitter followers, but Jessi Johnson of Verico mortgagebrokerteam.ca has scaled back on his Twitter activity – now convinced it's a lackluster business development tool.
He may have over 14,000 Twitter followers, but Jessi Johnson of Verico mortgagebrokerteam.ca has scaled back on his Twitter activity – now convinced it's a lackluster business development tool.
“To be honest, I have Twitter and I have a fair amount of followers but it has not been a focus of mine for the past few months,” Johnson told MortgageBrokerNews.ca. “I’ve been focusing on my clientele and shying away from Twitter because I don’t think it drives much business; it has a very low return when it comes to your bottom line.”
It's an opinion that a growing number of brokers may take issue with as they look to the social media phenom to grow leads and cement relationships. Scott Dawson of Verico Paragon Pacific Mortgages is one of them, and, with over 4,000 Twitter followers of his own, is no social media slouch.
“I love it. It’s quality over quantity; the number of followers doesn’t matter,” Dawson told MortgageBrokerNews.ca. “Myself, I’m strategic about who I try to follow and I try to attract local and relevant followers; I reach out to people in the industry – Realtors, brokers or people I’ve met in real life.”
For Dawson, Twitter provides ample opportunity to get his message out in a strategic and effective manner.
“I treat it as a way to network with the industry and I don’t really blast a message -- it’s more of a conversation rather than one-way dialogue,” Dawson said. “And I’m not just talking about work: I have some great connections with people talking about things that aren’t mortgage related such as golf and wine.”
Connections forged through shared interests can provide ample business opportunites, according to Dawson.
“I was introduced to a guy on Twitter and he organized the golf game,” Dawson said. “I met him and I just got him a mortgage renewal.”
Still, success doesn’t happen overnight in the online sphere.
“It takes time: mortgages are a long sales cycle,” he said. “If you make the effort to take online offline, it pays.”
