Editor’s Note: This was originally published on RISMedia’s blog, Housecall. The real estate industry has been relatively slow to embrace technology, and a few years ago, agents could more easily get away without a strong social media presence. Social media is no longer optional for real estate professionals. Consumers expect any and all the businesses they work with to engage on social media. The Pew Research Center estimates 72 percent of all online U.S. Facebook at least once a month. Millennials, who are the most active Facebook users, also happen to be the largest group of homebuyers. The good news is that social media marketing isn’t rocket science. Here are five easy steps any professional, even those who don’t consider themselves tech-savvy, can take to ramp up their social media game. There are a lot of social media sites out there—Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Snapchat, Tumblr, Pinterest, and more. Simply having a page or account on each isn’t enough. Agents need to be active and consistent about posting.
Popular Social Networking Websites
The reality is that a Facebook page with three entries from 2015 could actually do more damage to your business than no page at all. It’s easy to get overwhelmed at first and lose momentum over time. Creating a plan helps you stay focused and organized about your social media marketing efforts so you don’t get sidetracked, give up or burn out. It holds you accountable and forces you to be thoughtful about your strategy, so when the time comes to post, you aren’t grasping at straws. To make the best use of your resources, you need to be selective about the social media channels you invest in. Every social media network reaches a distinct demographic and is suited to different types of content. What works on Facebook won’t necessarily work on Pinterest; if you are trying to reach older audience, Snapchat is probably not worth your time. It’s better to excel at marketing on the networks that align with your goals than to be mediocre at them all.
As part of your plan, identify the social media sites that fit your business objectives. Who is your target audience? Are you trying to expand the reach of your brand? Establish yourself as an expert on a certain topic? Cultivate relationships within a community? Be targeted about your campaigns. Each social media site has unique “cultural mores” that are important to keep in mind. You can’t share the same content in the same way across every network and be successful. For example, Twitter is a great resource for sharing articles and participating in topical conversations. Pinterest is where many people go for visual inspiration, so it’s an opportunity to share a broader range of content, like design ideas and home repair advice. When posting, follow the 80/20 rule, meaning that 80 percent of your posts should be on topics of interest and 20 percent should relate to your business and listings. People are not on social media to be sold to, and being overtly promotional can hurt your brand.
If you want people to engage with your content, you have to engage back.
Social media marketing is not the place to hit people over the head with advertising. In addition to sharing images and text-based content, like articles, embrace other forms of media, as well. For example, users love and respond to videos and animated graphics. Live-streaming is another opportunity. Multiple social media sites have live-streaming capabilities and there are apps that enable you to push a live-stream to social media platforms. Live-streaming can be a great way to, say, attract attention for an open house. Also remember that social media is a two-way street. If you want people to engage with your content, you have to engage back. Don’t be shy about liking, smiling and commenting. Responsiveness goes a long way. Posting consistently and strategically is key. Without careful management, social media could either take up way too much of your time or fall by the wayside. Marketing should always go hand-in-hand with measurement. Social media marketing is about long-term goals, so in the short term, identify metrics (such as number of likes or followers) that demonstrate progress until eventually those statistics turn into more leads and sales. Many of the social media management sites provide analytics to help track growth. Measuring will help keep your motivation up and give insight into what works and what doesn’t. Being active on social media is a powerful—and necessary—way to establish a strong online presence, position yourself as an expert, connect with your clients and prospects, and build relationships. It can also be fun. Most real estate agents get into the business because they are passionate about helping people find homes they can be happy in. Social media is an opportunity to share that passion, and boost your business along the way.
While it’s important to know how much people are talking about your brand online, it’s also important to know how people actually feel about your brand. Using social media for your business allows you to stay on top of sentiment analysis so you can protect your brand reputation. Bonus: Get the step-by-step social media strategy guide with pro tips on how to grow your social media presence. It’s also important to know what people are saying about your competitors. For example, tracking mentions of your competitors might reveal pain points with their products that you could reach out to address, winning new customers in the process. When Uber Canada launched a promotion to deliver free ice cream for a day in Vancouver, things went spectacularly wrong. People couldn’t get their free ice cream, and they were not happy about it. They took to social media to complain. The social team at Skip The Dishes saw an opportunity and reached out to people complaining about Uber with a free ice cream delivery of their own, in the form of a Skip The Dishes credit.
All those Uber haters quickly turned into Skip The Dishes fans, and new customers (since you had to create a Skip The Dishes Account to get your free ice cream). Thanks for delivering free ice cream to the office @SkipTheDishes. Monitoring the competition on social media also means you’ll be aware when you competitors launch new products, run promotions, and release new reports or data. In the online world, things move fast—and you can’t afford to be left behind. Keeping a virtual ear to the ground through social listening makes sure you’re always informed about upcoming changes to your industry that could affect the way you do business. Social ads are an inexpensive way to promote your business and distribute content. They also offer powerful targeting options so you can reach the right audience and make the most of your budget. Savvy marketers have embraced this key benefit of social media for business: They will spend twice as much on Facebook ads in 2018 as they will on newspaper advertising.
With ad targeting options including demographic information, geography, language, and even online behaviors, you can craft specific messages that best speak to different groups of potential customers, and only pay for the exact viewers you want to reach. Nearly 70 percent of online shopping carts are abandoned. People who have abandoned products in a shopping cart are prime potential customers. They have already found your website, browsed your products, and made a decision about what they might want. People abandon shopping carts for many reasons, but someone who has expressed this degree of interest in your company should not be ignored. Using tracking tools like the Facebook Pixel, you can show these potential customers social media ads for the exact products they have browsed on your website or placed in the shopping cart. For example, the craft site Craftsy used retargeting Facebook ads to promote products to people who had already interacted with a product page on the Craftsy site. The campaign saw a 4.3 times return on ad spend and 33 percent increase in Facebook-driven revenue. It is always a challenge for marketers to prove return on investment. But with social media tracking and analytics tools, you can see the full impact of your social media activities, from follows to engagements right through to purchases. Tools like Google Analytics and Hootsuite Impact track website traffic generated from social media, conversions, email sign-ups, and ROI for both organic and paid social media campaigns. UTM parameters are another great tracking tool that will help you see which social networks are providing the most benefits for your business. Use Hootsuite to easily manage all your social media channels from one dashboard. Grow your brand, engage customers, keep up with competitors, and measure results. Try it free today.
3: Don't use advertising links on social networks!
Too many companies and website are abusing the use of social marketing traffic gathering! In fact, there are so many companies misusing this type of marketing that more and more social media users are beginning to unsubscribe and ban all companies and organizations that they are following or are subscribed to on social networks. Therefore, it is vitally important that you avoid making the following social marketing traffic gathering mistakes found herein. If you even make one of these mistakes you could actually begin losing web-traffic! 1: Don't add people or send out unsolicited messages to people who are or are not on your friends list. The moment that you begin using social networks in this manner is the moment that people begin reporting you as spam! This is one of the main reasons that social media users despise this type of marketing. 1, don't overuse your ability to contact people on social networks. For example, if you use Twitter, limit the amount of Tweets that you send out. If you are Tweeting non-stop on a regular basis, you will lose followers. 3: Don't use advertising links on social networks! The moment you begin doing this your chances of being reported as spam increase 60% or more! Therefore, just tell your followers that you are running a special and place your link in your profile but not in your messages.
In a randomized controlled trial, the researchers created a website where 217 graduate students enrolled in free exercise classes at the University of Pennsylvania gym. Part of the group also received promotional messages from the University, including highly engaging motivational videos and infographics emphasizing fitness tips and the importance of exercise. Meanwhile, another part of the group saw no advertising messages. Instead, members of this group were placed into social networks with six of their peers. While these peer groups remained anonymous to one another, participants were regularly updated on each other's fitness achievements. They could monitor each other's progress on the website, and when one signed up for a weightlifting or yoga class, for example, the others were notified by email. As a control group for the two interventions, a final group of participants received no further follow-up through the study. By the end of the 13 week study, the findings were clear.
The study utilized a model developed through Centola's previous research on online group dynamics.
Promotional messages caused an initial bump in class attendance, but the motivational effects quickly wore off. The promotional messages had almost no long term effect on class participation. Program-assigned "buddies," on the other hand, were much more effective at motivating people to exercise. As the weeks went by, the motivating effects increased, producing a substantial growth in enrollment levels among people in peer networks. The study utilized a model developed through Centola's previous research on online group dynamics. Jingwen Zhang, an author on the study. Scientists and entrepreneurs alike have long understood the power of social influence, both positive and negative, in real-world situations. For example, negative behavior signals like watching a peer smoke or drink, increase the likelihood that observers will follow suit. Or if a high schooler's peers talk about how hard they studied for a test - a positive signal - he is more likely to hit the books too. What this new study reveals is that these same positive behavior signals are also powerful in our online networks, and can be harnessed for the social good. This approach could be applied not only to encourage exercise, but also to promote vaccinations, medication compliance, and preventative care. The participants, in fact, knew remarkably little about one another, yet the results indicate that even minimal exposure to social cues can have strong effects. Simply knowing that your peers are going to yoga class is effective motivation to get you into your workout clothes—and the technology required to share that information is incredibly cost-effective. New experiments building on these findings are currently underway to explore why social networks are so effective for increasing participation. Centola and his team are testing whether people are better motivated by competition or by friendly social support. The answer has implications for the entire field of organizations using social tools to help people lose weight, stop smoking, and live healthier lives.
Social networking is absolutely everywhere. You can tweet a large corporation, visit the Facebook page for your local dentist, and even instant message an old friend at the same time. If you find yourself checking your social media accounts often, consider adding a page for your business. This article will demonstrate how you can enjoy greater exposure through social media marketing. If you are using social media marketing, make sure you inform all of your current customers. If they join your page, most social media sites inform all of their connections that they are following your page. This is essentially free advertising and should not be underestimated. It also has more value than regular advertising because it is essentially a referral. You should be flexible about how often you update your page. If you are launching a big campaign for a new product, people will expect frequent updates from you. On the other hand, if you struggle to find content to post, perhaps you should think about updating your status less often. Link your social media blog to email. In some circles, this may be considered old hat, but there is still plenty of market to be tapped via email.
You can simply add a 'subscribe via email' link to your page that will allow fans to get on your mailing list. Run fun and interesting polls on your Facebook page. This is a great way to engage your audience and involve potential consumers. Facebook has an easy to use feature that can help you with creating polls, so take advantage of it. Polls don't have to be about information directly related to your business. They can be fun, interesting, and involve current events. The point of the poll is to keep consumers interested. To successfully market your business on social media, opening a twitter account can help attract new customers. Word on twitter travels fast, and many successful businesses have used twitter to spread the word on discounts or special events occurring at their businesses. You can gain followers by doing this, and news about your business will also be spread by word of mouth. If you are going into the social media marketing, you have to be able to deal with the negativity that can be associated with it.
Using Facebook can be a great way to promote your business.
It is great when your followers love your products and company, but you have to deal with the negative side also. Do not turn your back on it but face it head on and help those customers who are unhappy. Using Facebook can be a great way to promote your business. Facebook allows you to connect with your target audience. If you use Facebook correctly, you can interact with your audience in a friendly manner without pressuring them to purchase anything. If people connect to you on a personal level, they're more likely to be interested in your business. Do not expect immediate results. Develop a good social media strategy requires a lot of time. You will need to keep working on getting more people to add you on Facebook or follow you on Twitter before you can think about launching any serious social media campaigns. Make sure you mention your social media presence in your other marketing campaigns. If you are using WordPress for your site, be sure to put a Retweet button that is at the top of your posts for your readers to use.
It isn't the best phase to test out new theories or gamble with a big risk.
This will make it easy for them to pass on your information to others. WordPress has plugins for this, so it will be simple for you to do with huge benefits in the long run. The holidays may be a big time of the year, but don't use the opportunity in the wrong way. It isn't the best phase to test out new theories or gamble with a big risk. Stick to your proven guns and utilize them in a more customer-friendly manner. You will have all year to plan out a strategy for the next holiday season. As you can see, it is extraordinarily easy to start your social media marketing efforts. By modernizing your advertising and keeping ahead of current trends, you, too, can enjoy renewed success from your marketing efforts. By reading this article, you are one step closer to planning innovative and effective marketing for your business. Author's Bio: My name is Debby Makarius, online marketing consultant. Please Register or Login to post new comment. How to Build Your Social Media Marketing Strategy?
Names Of Social Media Sites
In the world of social media, changes can and do happen at a blistering pace. Unless your full-time job is to track social media news trends and updates, trying to keep up with all of the latest happenings in the social media arena can prove to be quite difficult, if not impossible. For this reason, it’s much better to have a stable of online resources to refer to in order to keep yourself in the know. Much of the corporate activity of these companies is covered on Social Times, including major events such as mergers, acquisitions and IPOs. 2. Mashable - Although Mashable is a huge site encompassing several major channels including business, technology and entertainment, they have devoted a sizable segment of their online real estate to the world of social media. Mashable specializes featuring breaking social media news, as well as various oddities and humorous happenings in the world of social networking.
3. Digital Trends - Digital Trends is another megasite that offers news and tech product reviews, but they have a specific social media portal within their site that includes trending news for all kinds of social media events and happenings. 4. Social Media Today - Social Media Today is an online community that specializes in featuring social media news for marketing, advertising and PR professionals across many disciplines. Their emphasis is on highlighting the latest platforms, applications, tools, companies and personalities that drive the social media space. They also offer important social media statistics for various popular marketing verticals including health, beauty, automotive and fashion. 6. Social Media Examiner - Social Media Examiner holds the title of the world’s largest social media magazine, boasting an email distribution list of more than 225,000 subscribers. Social Media Examiner also hosts a popular podcast known as the Social Media Marketing Podcast, which ranks on the top 10 list of iTunes podcasts in the Marketing category.
7. AllFacebook - As you can probably guess by its name, AllFacebook concentrates primarily on news and events happening within the world of Facebook. AllFacebook has termed itself the “Unofficial Facebook Blog,” providing a plethora of insights, trends and updates regarding the world’s largest social network. 8. AllTwitter - Similar to AllFacebook above (and owned by the same company, MediaBistro), AllTwitter refers to itself as the “Unofficial Twitter Resource,” keeping track of all of the latest events and updates regarding everyone’s favorite microblogging site. 9. Social Media on Forbes - Although Forbes is primarily known for being a business and investing portal, they have an entire section of their website devoted to the latest social media happenings. Most of the social media news and articles published on Forbes focus on the corporate side of the world’s largest social networking sites (i.e., earnings, share performance, mergers and acquisitions, etc.). 10. Social Media on Bloomberg - Bloomberg is a huge site covering all aspects of the economic spectrum, and as such, it has reserved a section of its vast digital domain for news and updates regarding social media. Bloomberg primarily focuses on how business and market forces intersect with the social media landscape. When it comes to social media research, there’s no need to reinvent the wheel. Having the above sites bookmarked in your browser will keep the latest news and trends regarding social media right at your fingertips.
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Topic title: 5 Tips For Real Estate Agents To Succeed At Social Media In 2019 |
Topic covered: benefits of social networking, short article on social media, social news, social sites, top social media in the world
