World of Mouth - Why Social Networking Works!
All of us who have been in the business a while remember when marketing was farming a neighborhood, putting ads in the local newspaper, adding sign riders to our signs, holding open houses - all what I call traditional marketing. And it worked - then.
Next we starting hearing about Realtor.com, so all our MLS boards starting feeding out our listings to this web site and that was pretty much the only web site that advertised homes. Buyers started using it and then talking to their agent about homes. Of course, they already had an established agent - why would anyone find their agent on the internet?
Next, we started hearing about Zillow, Oodle, Google, Trulia, and many, many more web sites and were told to start putting our listings there because now 80% of buyers were going to the internet first. Then came this thing called social networking which seemed to start with Facebook and My Space. So, we signed up for My Space and Facebook and that was about it. Playing games and sending drinks wasn't really our idea of practicing real estate. It seemed like a waste of time.
So, we did all this. Put our listings everywhere on the internet, signed up for Facebook, Twitter, My Space, Linked-In, etc. And, we starting blogging. Active Rain became the most popular real estate blog network around.
Low and behold, we got a buyer call - from someone who found us on the internet! They were relocating from Michigan to Ohio and liked our website. But, how did they find our website? So I started searching us and our information. They found us through our blogs, through Active Rain. It works! So we meet these buyers who were in their early 20's and we talk about homes. I suggest that I can e-mail them homes. They ask, "Can you put it on My Space so I can see it?" Buyers ARE using this stuff!
So we went back to our Facebook and we vamped it up. We added everyone we know and even some people we didn't know. We started Tweeting and blogging and blogging and blogging. We started doing videos of every home we listed and putting them on our web site. Next thing you know our website was #1 in our city and county. WOW - it works!
In the past 3 years, we have had numerous clients who have found us online, one way or another. We have been told, I found you online and started searching for homes on your web site. We liked your information, so we called you. They found us online! Social Netoworking works!
World of Mouth - Why Social Networking Works! According to the National Association of Realtors (NAR):*
- 87% of Buyers are going online first to find a home, even before they find a Realtor
- 78% of consumers trust peer recommendations
- only 14% trust advertisements
- 24 out of 25 of the leading newspapers are experiencing record declines in circulation
- Buyers are most likely to be 34 years of age or younger
- Gen-Y will soon outnumber baby boomers?
- 96% of Gen Y has joined a social network
- 1 out of 8 couples who married in the US met via social media
- Gen Y & Gen Z consider e-mail passe
- You Tube is the second largest search engine in the world
What does this mean? It means that buyers are going to be on Facebook and see that their friend has a friend who is a Realtor through their blog, their tweet, etc. So they start following this Realtor, their blog, their web site. Now they are ready to buy and who do they call? They call their friend's Realtor they found on Facebook!
So from experience we can tell you that social networking does work! It is the new World of Mouth!
World of Mouth - Why Social Networking Works!
*Statistics obtained from the National Association of Realtors (NAR).
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