Online Real Estate Technology

Tweetlister for real estate agents only

It seems that every time I post these days it’s about Twitter, and that is not deliberate, it’s just that there is a lot of information and applications being developed about and for Twitter. Although sometimes there’s a new application that is released that I can’t really see the value in, for instance, a new application for real estate agents has been released called Tweetlister . This is a free application that allows you to create, manage & schedule Twitter friendly property listings. The site allows you to track contacts as well as download them as an Excel report. 

As a part of your social media strategy, this could be a handy tool, however there is more to using and being succesful on Twitter and other sites than just promoting your product or listing. I can name a number of real estate groups that are just promoting listings and as a result have virtually no followers on the social sites. To make this work for you, you need to build a strategy around the engagement of the on line social media user, not just promote product. It’s about sharing information, about providing support and advice for people as they go on the journey of looking and searching for a home or investment.     

Yes, you read right, it is a journey for most people, as they research on line for  properties and agents to assist and help them, ask yourself the question, are you providing that information, are you there on the journey with them, or are you just out promoting a product. 

Use sites like Tweetlister  as part of your overall plan, but remember, the best way to  create a successful social strategy is engage & interact with your followers.

Anyway, you can already do what Tweetlister offers on other sites, so it’s really nothing new. That’s only my opinion of course and if you have a differing opinion, then I’d love to hear it.

FryPhone

Whilst doing a presentation this afternoon in Perth on social media, the subject of quantity vs quality came up, in relation to the number of followers I and other users of social sites have.  

It’s a really good question, and it got me thinking about this post, strange where ideas come from some times, so is it really about quantity or quality?

Some celebrities using Twitter and other social media have thousands of followers, Stephen Fry, the British comedian, for example, has over 290,000 followers on Twitter alone. Not long ago he caused a major stir in the UK when he wrote about his dislike for the Blackberry Storm mobile phone on Twitter, calling it “Shockingly bad. I mean embarrassingly awful. Such a disappointment. Rushed out unfinished. What a pity.”  After the review had circulated, the BBC accused him of having the “power to kill a gadget”, due to the effect that review had on sales.

Social networks bring like minded people together, and people looking for information will find you via blogs,social sites or even the search engines such as Google, and they will follow you if your information is relevant to them. But, if you set yourself as an expert and try and enter a social community, you had better know your stuff. These sites will sort you out fast if you are a fake, but if you have good quality information and you engage with your followers, they will respond to your posts and information and will follow where you lead them.

So, in my mind, I’d rather follow someone, that provides me with great content that I find useful and informative, than hear about what they had for dinner that night.

I compered myself to another Twitter user I know last night, and got a little disappointed that he had 10 times the followers that I did, but then when I looked at the bios of the followers on each of our sites, one thing really struck me, that was the difference in the quality of our followers. We both provide marketing and technology advice and talk about social media for the real estate industry, but the difference in quality of our followers was amazing. 

So it’s not always about the size of your following, it’s more about the quality of those followers. If you are just starting out using social sites or Twitter, then work on the quality of your information and engage your followers regularly, if you’re good at what you do, they will find you and they will follow you, and more importantly they will go where you lead them.

So, to answer my own question, I believe that size is not always better!

I’ve just got a colleague of mine to join Twitter and on checking out her Twitter page last night, I was surprised to find that she hadn’t used her own name. I mentioned this to her this morning on our way to the seminar at Fraser’s in Perth and Sarah replied that her name and variations of her name had already been taken. Now, if you are wanting to get into social media or even market on the web under your own brand, it is vitally important that you buy your domain name.

It is now just as important that you register your user name on social media sites as well, because if you don’t someone else will. Being able to use your name to build your profile or brand is vital to your success on the web and you need to ensure that you own it and register it. By having a consistent image across all social sites allows your followers or devotees to find you and follow you, plus it has the added benefit that you don’t have to remember hundreds of user names.

So create a user name, preferably one that identifies you instantly and register it across all social sites, you can use this great web site to check if your user name is available. Some sites will not allow your full name and limit the number of characters that you can have, so create a user name that is consistent and easy to remember.   

Register it on every site you can find, you’ll never use most of them, but at least you will own the user name and this will stop others from high-jacking your name or brand.

If you have popular web site or blog and have lots of followers, there are some users on the web who will try and grab your name and create their own logins, so now you have been warned.

Go forth and Grab it quick before it is gone, gone gone!!

Last week I spent time in Adelaide South Australia and presented to a number of real estate groups, and it was for me an interesting exercise. Social media is not going to be for every agent or business owner, of that there is no doubt, because each person within the office needs to commit to the discipline of social networking.

It is vitally important that social networking is seen as a long term strategy and not a short term fix. It takes time and commitment to really work social media, to create the handshake and work the room. Traditional real estate marketing models are quickly becoming obsolete as the internet takes over so real estate businesses need to start to think more long term and think about marketing to the customer of tomorrow not just today.

This is the word of mouth brand building of 2020, so when deciding that a social strategy is part of your marketing plan, make sure that all staff are committed to its success. Social media very quickly sorts out the committed members in your office.

So where to start: First of all make sure you put a realistic time line in place,when integrating social strategies into your office, plan to have it integrated over the next 2 years. This allows you sufficient time to get it in place and build on the network.

Decide on who will be your target market - Because this is, in reality, what social media is, a corporate communication strategy for your business, and you need to plan what information will be shared by you and your company/staff.  This is really about people!!

Decide on the objective, what do you want to achieve and more importantly what do you want out of it as a business or sales person. Is it instant leads or sales or is it a long term plan to provide good quality content to your prospective clients, so that when they decide the time is right to buy or sell, you are the business they choose.

Plan your strategy, will it be combinations of social networks or just one, how often will you post to your blog, what type of information will be included and what is your ultimate plan?

Finally, decide on the technology you will use. Facebook, Bebo, Twitter, blogs etc or do you intend to use them all. If so, then make sure you have a plan and strategy in place for each one.

Once you have all of that laid out as part of a corporate communication strategy, then and only then, is the time right to start to implement your plan.

As always, if you would like my help on getting your strategy started, all you have to do is ask or send me an email via this blog.

Great story today out of the UK, with an academic claiming that social networking sites such as Facebook, Bebo and Twitter shorten the attention span, encourage instant gratification and make young people more self centred.

The comments come from Baroness Susan Greenfield an Oxford University based neuro-scientist. She said the sites as well as fast paced computer games and TV shows can effectively “rewire” the brain. She states that these technologies are infantilising the brain into the state of  small children who are attracted by buzzing noises and bright lights and who have a small attention span.

More than 150 million people worldwide use Facebook, and Twitter now has over 6 million users. In a report to Britain’s highest court, she indicated that a teacher of over 30 years experience had noticed a sharp decline in the ability of her students to understand others. It seems that real converstation may eventually give way to sanitised and on line dialogues.    

I  notice she hasn’t mentioned us baby boomers out there that use social networking sites, but then again this is something that I’ve known for a long time, I have a short attention span and I’m attracted to buzzing noises and bright lights. So now I know who to blame for this.

Facebook, Twitter, Bebo, you have a lot to answer for!!!

I’ve spoken a lot over the past 7 months this blog has been running about social media and why you should start to integrate it into your business plan for the future. Well a recent survey by Deloitte US has predicted that 2009 will be a breakout year for social media networks. Globally, social network sites have experienced a 25% growth in unique visitors in the last 12 months and research is indicating that around 40% of the users of these sites are over the age of 35.

Social networks, according to Deloitte, are a powerful tool for any organisation, and a way of tapping into the wisdom of crowds.

The graphic below shows the multi faceted nature of Enterprise social networking (ESN):

ESN Networking Graphic

I know that I’ve spoken a lot about the integration of social media into your real estate business and without the assistance of someone monitoring and assisting you to do it, it’s not unusual to get lost. I’ve recently seen some of the franchise groups try to get into the world of social media and to be honest, their efforts are a total waste of time.

There is one group, trying to use Twitter as a means of promoting it’s listings, and it’s got 171 updates and 4 followers, totally a waste of time and a totally wrong strategy attached to their attempts.

So where do you start?

There are a lot of social networks popping up at the moment, some offer similar features and some have very unique features, taking advantage of all of these requires different strategies but fundamentally, the approach you take to all of these networks should be the same.

Understanding each network and how to communicate with it will help you assimilate yourself into the group, remember my post on Social Media, Working The Room and Creating the Handshake!  , but do this carefully. Jumping right in and interacting with those who helped build the group or network can leave you not performing to the users expectations. Over time community members build a standard on how they feel each member should act, if you don’t spend time getting to know the expectation of the community, your information can be buried or your questions unanswered, so spend time evaluating the conversation or information and understand what the community wants from its members. From this take the knowledge learned and then join the conversation. This is what the group I mentioned before has not done, they have not read the community that is Twitter and therefore they are doomed to fail.

When you have understood how the community works and what is expected from each member, begin to build the relationship. There is no need to try and connect with every member on the community, on my Twitter account you’ll notice I don’t follow everyone that follows me, I’ve spent time learning and reading the profiles of the people who follow me and I will only follow those that have good content and information that I find useful. Approach those that share a common interest with you and these followers will be more beneficial to you when it comes time to virally market your services or products.

With all of the information you have learned about each network and the way its members interact, you are ready to take advantage of the unique features offered by each of these networks. Understanding the network and building relationships is an ongoing process,so don’t be afraid to set new standards and contribute to the group on a regular basis. However, if your strategy includes techniques that are not accepted in your network, it will damage your campaign and you will not fully realise the power of social networking. 

As always, let me know if you need help with your social media marketing.

This week I’ve spent a lot of time talking to, and presenting seminars, to real estate agents in North Qld, and I thank all of the attendees at the Bundaberg breakfast session on Wednesday as well as the team at Elders Mackay and Northern Beaches for their time, input and feedback into my sessions.

During the presentations, which were all about the power of blogs and social media, I thought I would write a post on the potential uses of these tools in your office. Social networking has changed the way people connect with and communicate with other internet users. I remember, on my recent holiday to the US, watching a CEO of a large US company being interviewed on TV, telling us how she now uses Facebook to invite and notify her friends of social events and dinner parties, she no longer gets on the phone and calls them.

So lets see how you can use these tools in your marketing and strategy for your office.   

Internet Exposure:By using social networks and tools you increase your presence on the net, Facebook allows you to invite groups into your office and blogs are your personal communication to consumers. By using these tools, you open doors to other networks and users. 

Building Rapport with Your Clients: Use the social aspect of these platforms to find out what interests and hobbies your clients share.  More importantly, you can share yours with your clients as well as your experience, it might just generate a lead or repeat business.

Keep Clients and Prospects Informed:  You can communicate with users on market updates, provide them useful tools and information and do this instantly via RSS feeds and “The Wall” in Facebook. You can also set up discussion groups and provide your input and knowledge which can improve your value as a market expert.

Word of Mouth Brand Building: Using social network platforms and blogs to help build your brand or business or profile helps you take advantage of the impact the web is having on brand and consumer awareness. See my post on this earlier this month. The Impact of Social Media on Word Of Mouth Brand Building

Targeted Prospecting:  By using these tools to search the profiles of other members of social networks you can improve the effectiveness of your prospecting. Using Facebook as an example allows you to search for engaged, newly married or divorced consumers and you can then tailor your message to have the right impact. You can also search for employer groups or people who are interested in real estate. You can also create groups and share information with them.

Blogs and Podcasts: These allow you to constantly update information or communicate with your readers. If you are reading this then you’ll know what I mean. Blogs can drastically increase your profile in your market and the search engines, because they are frequently updated and the search engines such as Google and Yahoo like good quality frequently updated information and will help syndicate your blog, plus this will help your profile on the search engines. Search Mike Andrew Real Estate on Google and you’ll see what I mean.

Your Podcast allows you to deliver this message in a downloadable format which consumers can subscribe to, This month my podcasts have been downloaded over 260 times. Great for profile building and using in your listing presentations and as a listing tool.

Directing Traffic: By using blogs, podcasts and social networking sites you start to effectively drive awareness of you, your service and experience to internet users. This also helps your web site traffic.

One word of advice! Use these tools and distribution methods, because that’s what they are, the same way you would act face to face. Be respectful and provide relevant and valuable information that your consumers will appreciate and respect. Use these sites and users with respect, don’t send them unsolicited commercial adds or Spam. You’ll acheive your goal if you use the sites wisely.

The most successful on-line networking efforts will be the ones that you integrate with using face-to-face techniques.  Invite people and clients you know to join the networks you are on, and invite people you “meet” on-line to meet with you in person, when appropriate.

I’ll look at bookmarking and the impact it has on your web site and blog in the next few posts, because these tools will have impact of generating traffic for your sites.

This post now available as a podcast, please click here to listen or download:Mike Andrew’s Real Estate Tips & Technology Podcasts