Well, no, of course not! But the way you’re using Twitter might not be compliant with the new law!
Some significant changes to the Illinois Real Estate License Act were enacted on Jan 1, 2010. The most talked about is the transition from licensed Salesperson to Broker, but for Realtors that are active in social media and online marketing, special attention needs to be paid to the regulations on advertising.
The rules around advertising have stayed pretty much the same, but are now applied to advertising of any form, including online. Section 10-30 states:
(b) No blind advertisements may be used by any licensee, in any media
(e) No licensee shall list his or her name under the heading or title “Real Estate” in the telephone directory or otherwise advertise in his or her own name to the general public through any medium of advertising as being in the real estate business without listing his or her sponsoring broker’s business name.
(f) The sponsoring broker’s business name and the name of the licensee must appear in all advertisements, including business cards.
When you tweet about a listing you probably aren’t including any info about your sponsoring broker. The 140 character limitation on tweets don’t allow much room for your broker’s info. An argument could be made that posting a link to a website that has the info is OK, but it’s better to err on the side of caution.
Luckily, there’s an easy way to address this! Twitter allows you to use a customized background image. You can create a background that has not only your broker info, but also your personal contact details, your picture, a short blurb about your business, or whatever you feel appropriate to add to it. Now when you tweet about a new listing or your services you have included the broker info required by the law.
If you’re confident in your image editing skills you can create one on your own. There’s some things you need to remember about sizing and layout. The following links are great resources for you do-it-yourselfers!
http://designreviver.com/tutorials/13-tutorials-resources-for-a-perfect-twitter-background/
If you don’t have the time or inclination to try this yourself, there are some freely available tools to create a background image for you. I recommend:
This brings up the tricky question of when a user is viewing your tweets from an app that doesn’t display your custom background. Should you include the broker info on every tweet just to be safe?
I don’t know the answer to that, and it’s probably something we’ll see clarified in the near future. By using a custom background though, you are at least following the spirit of the law, if not the letter of the law.
Make sure you follow your broker’s social media policy if they have one, or any other rules they’ve set out for online advertising. Nothing in this post should be considered legal advice.
