Use social media to sell your home

For several months, Betsy Talbot didn't put her Seattle home on the market. Instead, she and her husband Warren promoted it through social media. "We've basically been living our lives online for the last couple of years as we document the preparations for our upcoming travels around the world, so it made sense to do the same to sell the house," she says.

Here's what they did:

• Launched a website.
• Produced home-tour videos, which they've uploaded to their site and YouTube.
• Added a "Help Us Sell Our House" link to their blog.
• Updated their Facebook pages to let friends know their house was for sale.

Betsy also kept track when someone typed in "move to Seattle" on Twitter, and then got in touch. Recently, a woman tweeted that before moving to Seattle, she planned to revisit her favorite restaurants in her current city. Betsy tweeted her back with a link to her website. "I tweeted back to recommend that she follow a great local food writer," she says.

Betsy had shown the house several times, but then finally put it on the market. The house sold within three weeks.