life, tech, web 2.0, social network, real estate, small biz, twittering and shameless rantings

Photo by Peter KaminskiI had a great time speaking on panel yesterday to kick off my local association SAMCAR’s (San Mateo County of Association of Realtors) Social Media Summer Camp. It was also interesting to see what type of questions people ask and what they are concerned with.

In general, everyone has heard of social media, but most people do not how to incorporate them with their businesses, especially in real estate. There are also new “social media experts” popping left and right with promise of this program will get you tons of leads and open up your sales funnel, yada yada yada. (Sound familiar?) The truth is there is no magical trick nor the one specific way will work, because internet, like all technology, changes constantly. MySpace was hot yesterday, today Facebook reigns the kingdom. Tomorrow? Well, I don’t know.

BUT. There are things you can do as real estate professionals to develop relationships and grow that sales funnel. Note: Strategies are required.

Photo by Nemo’s great uncleSelling real estate is tough to market in the sense that you don’t know where your next lead will come from, which means you have to cast out a wider net and narrow your choices down from there. It also makes it tougher to know where your target market is. You can only guess it by targeting geographical areas. So the key is the BAIT you put out to get in touch with your potential leads. In old school real estate marketing, agents do that through farming by sending postcards every month to a targeted niche area, run expensive print ads in real estate magazines and newspapers, cold call everyone in the neighborhood, or literally walk the neighborhood and knock on doors.

While those strategies are fine and dandy, they require significant of mind, effort and can be very frustrating and discouraging, not to mention it’s often endearing to knock on a stranger’s door or cold call someone you don’t know. This is where social networks can come in and create that non-invasive touch. But know this, just because you got a Twitter handle or Facebook profile, doesn’t mean your potential leads will flock to your profile and calling you up to sell a house immediately.

Photo by Stabilo BossThere are a few ways to approach this. Essentially people are on social networks for 2 things: socializing with others and get useful information. So for you to be effective on the social networks you need to do both of those things. You need to engage your readers/audience/followers by interacting with them, having conversations with them like a real human being, not as a real estate salesman/saleswoman. Today’s buyers are finicky and very sensitive, they can smell a selling scheme from a mile away and people are extremely turned off by sales tactics. Hard selling no longer works.

Not only you should engage, you should provide useful contents. You have to think like your potential clients. If you are a buyer’s agent, what would buyers want to know? School information perhaps? So should you list out the entire school district’s rankings? Maybe. But wouldn’t it be much better if you write a blog post as a parent at one of those schools telling your potential buyers how you feel about the particular school? Or interviewing other parents at the school what they like or don’t like about the school?

So, theory is nice. Next, how do we apply it?

Photo by Annette SchwindtFor Facebook: The great thing about Facebook in terms of business applications are the Group and Fan Page options to choose. To have a fan page about yourself as a realtor or your company, you can walk the dangerous line of creating a shrine about yourself. It is different for a club, restaurant or a product, because they have a larger base of fans that can interact not only with each other as fans, but also with the business through promotions like free appetizers, $2 drinks or 10% off on blah product today. The business not only can create great word of mouth, and also get more fans and reach more people.

If you have established a fan page for your business, you can add different tabs on your page to feature different things that you do. You can add “Events” to feature any buyers’ or sellers’ seminars you are holding and having people RSVP on Facebook to the event. And remember, because Facebook is a social network, anytime someone does something, it gets broadcasted out to his/hers network immediately and his/hers friends can see them. So the virality of your message is already built in. You can also add tabs like “RSS” to stream your blog post, “Reviews” or “Testimonials” to feature your clients’ reviews about you. You can also provide useful contents like your video casts, podcasts, etc. to feature them on your wall. These are all great ways to grow fans and to engage your audience.

Photo by johnpiercyFor people who have service-based business, groups are a great way to appeal to your targeted niches and their interests while incorporating yours. I am sure you know these, realtors are everywhere and your competition is pretty fierce. So it is important to differentiate yourself from other s and stand out. What better ways to do it while pursuing something that you love? Say you work in South San Francisco, and you love to try restaurants. You can form a group for that specific purposes and start reviewing restaurants and getting dinners together for people who have similar interests. In these type of relax settings, it is much easier to get to know people personally and develop that relationships you want to turn people into your champions. You can also set up groups that talks specifics of your niche, like common issues first time home buyers can face, etc. The possibilities are endless!

These suggestions may seem like major time suckers, but remember this, think about how you can use one piece of information and repurpose them for multiple purposes. We all are busy people, but there are definitely ways for your to splice your information up for different purposes, as well as leveraging people like assistants to help you get things done. Moreover, you need to find the best style that suits you and pick just one or two mediums to focus your efforts on.