Online Real Estate Technology

Social Media and Your ROI

After facing my second redundancy in as many years, I had an interesting debate the other day with some business colleagues. The debate centred on how much information is shared via blogs like this one and other social media sites for free, and what my colleagues essentially were saying is “Why would anyone pay you, when you give all the information away for free” and in reflection, I’d have to say that a number of people who I dealt with in the past, who were regular callers, have certainly dropped off since I started on my own, thinking  I might start charging them for the information and assistance.

When I started this blog almost 12 months ago it was just a bit of fun and also a tool to build my profile , as well as provide the people in the industry that I was working in with a resource and information bank that they could use to improve their Internet marketing campaigns. Looking back over the past 12 months on this social media journey, I think I achieved quite a lot, I’ve got this blog operating, which as far as reader numbers would indicate, does very well every month, and I’ve had a lot of support and great feedback from you the readers over that 12 months. I’ve got my podcast series, which is very popular with listeners all over the world and my Twitter profile is building each day as more and more followers join me on the journey, so all in all, would I have achieved all of that without social media? the answer is no I would not have.

This debate I’m sure, is one that is going on every day in business all over the world, how much do we share and what’s our return on investment with social media. In fact, I’ve had this come up time and time again when I’ve been presenting social media strategies to companies and I beleive the main reason it comes up is because the sharing and giving of information or advice is coupled with companies charging for this expertise and the thought of suddenly providing this information for free is very challenging. This leads to another challenge for companies and one that really impacts the culture of the company, social media is all about sharing and if you have people in your organisation who don’t want to share, your social media strategy will not succeed, and that comes back to my opening statement, how much do you give away for free?

 I’ve always based the information provided on this blog on issues that affect small business,how to improve Internet marketing campaigns, giving new technology advice and looking at issues such as SEO and SEM, & how important it is for SME’s to be aware of why they need an active search engine strategy. If that information helps make you aware of what you need to do to improve your marketing efforts then I’ve achieved my goal, if you decide to use me to help you in that effort then that’s even better.  

With the real estate industry, the Internet has changed the way consumers get information, 10 years ago when I was a working real estate agent, my buyers and sellers would come off the cards in the office window, I would then get the chance to interact and engage my buyers face to face, well how many times today do you get the chance to influence these buyers at that first point of research? not very often I would think, research tells us that 9 out 10 buyers start the process on the net and they start looking for information and properties in the areas or suburbs they are interested in.

How then do you make sure you are the agent they want to deal with along this process?, you need to have as many communication channels available to you assisting you in delivering information to the property buyer or seller along the journey, and that is not just having a web site, but a multi media strategy running alongside your traditional marketing activities. 

The benefits of my social media efforts over the last 12 months have helped me move into new directions and opened up a lot of doors for me that were previously closed, it’s improved my knowledge of technology and marketing and I’ve become a syndicated author. In my experience, you’ll get out of a social strategy, what you put in.

Why would I not keep doing what I’ve been doing, and as long as you the readers of this blog find it helpful and of benefit to you & your business then in my mind, that’s my return on investment.