Creating a Social Media Strategy and Managing Social Media Activity
Social Media is taking up more consumer and business owners time these days, yet there’s a lot of complaints about how time consuming it is. Business owners can’t get their head wrapped around the complexity of social media and how to tame it. I was just listening to a radio show today about social media usage and the time issue is really big. Content creation is another big task too, yet after you’ve been doing social media posts and responses for a while, you become a little more proficient at creating content and more enthusiastic about doing so.
Yes, social media infrastructure might just be as unstable as the stock markets today. Every day some new social media service comes into play and of course everyone has to test it out. Some will fade while others will likely grow, especially niche social media sites which will provide more significant value for users. While social media can’t produce leads like Google search and SEO can, it is very difficult for you to ignore social media. You need to begin to plan a social media strategy and identify the roles each will play in building awareness.
The first task in strategy development is defining the purpose. The purpose is increased engagement with you. The goal is to increase page views and online interaction leading to personal contact. The medium is social media sites such as your blog, Facebook page, Youtube Channel, Twitter page, Myspace page, Google +, Linkedin page, or friendster page among others. The message is that using a real estate professional is wise and that you have all the right stuff to be their real estate sales rep.
Establishing a profile or persona is important. This is the image you want to project on your social media accounts. Rather than pictures or superficial image elements, your persona is your content. A nice picture of yourself is great but “you” are your content. What they read tells them who you are. Each social media site will link to each other for sure, but you’ll want to vary your content and topics to build a richer presentation of yourself. So your Facebook content should be different than your Linkedin content. If you’re athletic or community involved, you’ll want to look for social media sites where you can establish specific athletic, charty, political or niche topics. Link all of them to your Facebook page and Blog.
This is your social media mini-network.
The key is to find the sites that your prospects are using and then get involved in them. Involvement means offering value by informing and discussing services, opportunities, resources, and people just as you’re discovering on this blog. Social media can be a chore unless you delve into a conversation with visitors. They don’t want to be sold. They want an experience where they learn and build enthusiasm about a topic – such as where is the right home for them and how do they go about acquiring their dream home. Integrating your mls idx feed into your wordpress blog won’t cut it by itself. You have to get involved in discussing properties, buying issues, how to avoid problems, and strategies for selling as an example.
On your blog, Facebook, Youtube, and Twitter pages discuss these topics below. These topics are what your prospects are interested in.
> Create and feature property or community videos (use someone else’s youtube videos)
> Discuss specific properties in your market area
> Discuss your city’s economic future if it’s improving
> Discuss strategies to find and buy a dream home
> Find the best mortgage or refinancing
> Best places to live in your city
> How to increase the value of your property
> Timing the sale of your home
> How to avoid foreclosure
> Discuss your local pro sports teams – contest for free game tickets.
The point of your social media strategy is to build a conversation which leads to a boost in awareness of you (your brand image) and a desire to return to your social media sites and participate in the conversation. Each visitor will decide on their own, for their own unique reasons whether they want to work with you. And if you’ve got lots of traffic to your site already with no leads, then you know that these “overmarketed to” consumers won’t be affected by listings. Your social media strategy might just be the differentiating factor that inspires them to work with you.
Then you need a way to organize all your social media activity and get stats on how people are interacting with your social pages.
If you’ve got numerous social media pages including Twitter, WordPress, Facebook, Google+, Zynga, Myspace, Youtube, Linkedin, Orkut, Meetup, Beebo and son on, then wouldn’t one single service to control them all be great! Well, there are a few that exist.
One to take a good look at is Sprout Social. For one low monthly payment, you can manage a few of the more popular social media accounts in one place.
Sprout Social for Realtors
Perhaps one of the biggest benefits besides time efficiency is that helps you focus your social media efforts so they are effective. It’s one thing to be social, but you need to use it effectively.
If you manage a team of agents, they can all log in and you can keep your collective efforts visible and measurable. The stats function can help you understand what impact if any your posts or videos had on visitors. You can monitor followers conversations to see what they’re saying about you or your company. And let’s face it, when people are talking about you, you’re making an impact – and isn’t that what real estate marketing is all about?
Check them out at www.sproutsocial.com
Homebuyers, discover more about the MLS, Realtor.com, Realtor.ca and changes in real estate associations today. The Internet has changed the way people buy homes and condos. Realtors check out why you should be using WordPress IDX solutions as part of your real estate marketing mix.
