I’ve been “social” for a while. I first joined my first facebook in 2003 (not to be confused "the Facebook" we know today), tweeted for the first time in 2008, and watched in 2009 as many professionals, real estate agents, and marketers who were early adopters started to dub themselves “gurus” and the like.
What I’ve learned over the years is that there’s no blanket plan for how to “do social media the right way.” You should “do” what works for your audience to help drive business.
On the other side of the fence, there are a few sure-fire “don’ts” you can avoid to keep from ruining your reputation and preventing your efforts to share, blog, and tweet from turning into real business.
Call this Jovan’s “Manifesto of Social Media Don’ts: the Real Estate Edition.”
1. Don’t Keep Your Contact Info Out of Date/View
Call me crazy, but I‘m under the impression that most businesses and professionals who have a business or professional social presence want to, well, do business.
Why could you call me crazy? Too often I see profiles, business pages, and websites where the contact information is buried in some spot only a technical expert can find.
Placing your contact information front and center isn’t a new strategy for generating business, but here are a few all too common places I see this missed socially:
- Twitter bio - They even give you extra characters so you can fit it in
- Your Website’s Homepage - If someone lands on your homepage, (hopefully) they’ll want to contact you. Don’t hide the goods
- Facebook’s “About Me” Page - There are spots here for multiple names, numbers, and websites
2. Don’t Mistake Social for Search
At a conference I ventured to this week, national real estate Tech Trainer Kim Wood shared this social epiphany, “People don’t come to Facebook to search for a home.” I would add that most people don’t come to Facebook searching for anything.
Now with the caveat that this could all change with Facebook slowly releasing it’s social graph, for the time being and foreseeable future Facebook is a place where people join and interact with conversations.
Posting on Facebook is not enough. If you aren’t creating a conversation, you need to rethink your strategy.
Does that mean you should avoid sharing listings? Definitely not.
It does mean you should listings as a part of a conversation. A few ways to do this are
- Sharing your listings with a question in the caption
- Start a debate and let your followers pick the best listing photos
- When you see one of your followers or friends is house hunting, comment with a link to a listing that meets their needs
- Including historic or other interesting info about your listing’s story or neighborhood before you post
The best way to be ignored on social media is to oversell. Engage your followers and friends in interesting conversation and they’ll love you for it. Don’t, and they’ll hit “hide” and tune you out.
3. Don’t Become a Victim of Outlet Overload
There are billion people on Facebook, more than 300 million on Twitter, and tons of people signed up for hundreds of mediums they won’t use. Why? We are all humans and that means there’s limited attention to go around.
As an agent, one of the most important decisions you can make is the decision to only be where your clients and prospects are paying attention.
Here are a few signs you’re suffering from Outlet Overload
- You get monthly alerts from sites you don’t remember joining
- You can’t remember which password goes to which profile
- You try to join a new site and it tells you you’re already there
If you’re a victim of the overload, there’s an easy solution.
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Discover the remaining six social media mistakes most agents make by clicking on the below image!
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