Through no obvious fault of his own, Kris Lindahl cuts a polarizing Twin Cities profile.
The mega-selling realtor carries himself with the effusive zeal of a mega-church pastor, evangelizing the merits of his trademark Guaranteed Offer home-buying program. (The scaled-up version proved disastrous for Zillow, the multinational property website that partnered locally with Lindahl.) His omnipresent billboard gaze and formidable wingspan suggest some degree of hucksterism, but there’s nothing tangibly shady about Lindahl. He’s simply a larger-than-life, tooth-grinning embodiment of success through relentless and shameless marketing.
Which makes one arm of Lindahl's marketing machine—his personal Twitter account—all the more curious. As pure spectator sport, it's must-follow stuff. Lindahl tweets out broad prompts, always punctuated by an emoji, with the ambient positivity of a life coach. The amount of engagement from his 5,607 followers can only be described almost non-existent, but he just keeps powering ahead; bursts of Vikings/Wild/Twins/Wolves/Gophs boosting provide rare deviations from the template.
Here's a mere sampling:
Many, like this one, request personal inventories that'd make strangers blush IRL.
See?
They're often accompanied by photos of Kris, frequently hard at work.
This one includes three emojis.
Sometimes we get screen-grabs of previous tweets.
I have exactly three co-workers, maybe they can describe me in the comment section.
Unclear if this is a question for followers or Kris just thinking out loud.
Sound off! (Nobody sounded off.)
This tweet is fully loaded with features: graphic design, a quote, and even the sneaky inclusion of a Lindahl billboard.
Not sure if that's a brick or a sponge.
Anyway!
It wasn't always this way. Based on my exhaustive journey backwards through Lindahl's timeline, I discovered that the machine-like production of prompts began sometime late last summer. Before that, he relied mostly on more personable methods of self-promotion, including a winking self-awareness around his massive billboard buys and attempted meme-dance.
What sort of newfound marketing sorcery could this real estate agent possibly be divining? I asked a friend who works in business consulting.
"Lindahl appears to have a pretty textbook social strategy for someone pivoting to a career of 'go get 'em tiger' thought leadership," he observes. "Can Lindahl sell your home and help you achieve all your wildest dreams? But his current social strategy wouldn't even have worked in 2012: Furnishing your feed with inspirational prompts barely even worked in the wild-west days of social media. And there is one very visible problem with his strategy: It's not working and he's not adjusting it."
Is there a lurking method to Lindahl's tweet madness? I asked the man himself, only to receive a fave instead of resolution. Hey, I'll take the engagement. (Update, March 11: He wants to get to know his community.)
