Today’s announcement by the Center for Marketing Research that over 91% of all Fortune 500 companies are already using social media should not be a surprise. Most successful real estate agents and brokers in today’s market have learned that if you are not tweeting, you are missing the boat. In the connected economy anyway, you are essentially a nobody without a Facebook or LinkedIn page. Without a blog you are overlooking the opportunity to inform potential colleagues and clients. Not posting on YouTube means you are ignoring the marketing possibilities of the second largest search engine on the internet. The reality is if you are not utilizing social media marketing then you are losing immeasurable business opportunities. Because these new exploding resources cost little, and in many cases are entirely cost- free to use, you risk very little jumping on board.
Here are the 5 basic Social Media Tools that research shows captures the most attention today. I’ll show an example of each, and give you the link to each site to enroll and get started:
Twitter
With Twitter you can reach millions of people instantaneously with one post, or tweet. The idea behind Twitter is to keep a constant stream of short and sweet tweets going out to your followers. Followers are the people that will receive your messages so the most labor intensive part of using Twitter will be building up the number of people that will follow you.
Keeping your messages short and to the point is a crucial part of using Twitter effectively. Tweets only allow a maximum of 140 characters and spaces each, but you have plenty of space to add a link to a website. Twitter uses URL shortening codes to keep the number of characters in a web address limited so you have more space for the message to entice your followers to click through to your website.
You can see an example of my Twitter page, and follow me on Twitter here: HermanoGeoff
Facebook
A Facebook wall allows you to highlight everything possible about your services in real estate and the properties in your inventory. There is no limit to what you
can showcase. You can include links to websites and videos, as well as creating photo albums to feature properties. Facebook has friends and fans instead of followers. You can create or join groups of people that compliment your real estate focus and generate more friends and fans as these groups expose you to more and more people.
You can even link your Twitter account and your Facebook page. Every tweet that you send out will automatically post on your Facebook wall for all of your friends and fans to see.
This is a Facebook Fanpage for ColibriRealEstate.com
LinkedIn
A LinkedIn page works in the same way that the Facebook wall works. You can create links to websites and blogs that are meant to promote your real estate business. These social media pages should be geared toward building traffic on your website as well as generating phone business as more and more people are exposed to your page. And as of late November, LinkedIn now integrates with other platforms like TweetDeck, giving you even more exposure. And of course, everything is going towards delivery on smartphones, so your bio will be available to everyone on the go as well. You may also want to check out LinkedIn’s competition: Google Profiles.
Here’s my Linkedin page Here’s an example of my Google Profile.
Blogging
WordPress is the king of free blogging. Creating a real estate blog is an excellent way to get a lot of information to your clients. In a blog you can post articles pertaining to your business or real estate in general. People can read the information which can contain hyperlinks to other websites or blogs. The trick to a blog is to keep the content high quality and fresh so that you get inquiries that will generate real business. In addition to Facebook and LinkedIn providing links to blogs, you can tweet blog posts as well. Even better, today you can automatically have your blog fed right into your Facebook page.
We use WordPress for our “Good News in Real Estate Blog” which allows us to make our blog appear on our website automatically.
YouTube
YouTube is the best way to use streaming video to market yourself and your properties. Whether it is a short video post of you promoting your business or video tours of featured properties on your inventory list, you will want to harness the strength of the second most used search engine on the internet.
Here’s an example of a short video we posted on YouTube that tens of thousands of people have watched, and which drove hundreds to our website.
Just using one social media tool will increase your potential business, but using them in conjunction with each other can be a force of marketing power to be reckoned with. You don’t have to do all five of these at once. Why not start with Twitter this week, and work your way down the list? In a month you’ll be a socially connected expert!
Want to find out if you have what it takes to be a Real Estate Agent or Broker?
About The Author: Geoffrey Thompson is an owner and founding partner of Colibri Real Estate, LLC. Since 1996 the companies under this banner have offered online real estate licensing and insurance licensing courses as well as online real estate exam prep and insurance exam prep.
