Ribeezie: Social Media Business Strategy for Real Estate & Small Business

Don't Be That Guy!

I've been attending a lot of events lately. I get telemarketing calls almost daily (not to mention those bad spam email pitches). You get those too don't you? 

Well, today I just wanted to drop by and say just one thing: 

Don't be that guy!

A point Chris Brogan puts so well in this video...

LinkedIn Networking Tip: Personalized Invitations

LinkedIn happens to be one of my favorite social networks. You wouldn't have thunk it would ya? 

Well, it is. 

Like most people, I utilize it as a virtual resume (who I am, what I do and what I've done) but I also use it as a growing database. Many of the people I'm connected to, I've actually met in real life. I make use of the status updates to ping my network and let people know what I'm working on and I check in with at least 5-10 new people in my database each week (I ping my network to see what people are doing and how I may be helpful). 

In today's post I want to point something out: I do screen invitations to a certain extent.

Why? Because I value the quality of the relationship(s) that I'm trying to establish with people within my network. Some people might disagree with me here, I encourage you to express your opinion in the comments (after all, I may be wrong). 

The Benefit of Personalized Invitations:

As I said, I screen invitations to a certain extent. This means that if you send me a static invitation, I'm very likely to ignore your invitation. It's nothing personal. It's just that if we haven't met in person, I'd at least like some form of an introduction. Don't ya think? 

Here's how I send my invitations: 

In the end, a personal touch goes a long way!

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How Many People Do You Connect with Daily?

If you believe that your business is built on building relationships, then you need to make building relationships your business. Don't you think? 

With that said, I thought I'd throw out a little survey today to see how many people you're personally connecting with on a daily basis (both on-line and off-line). 

• How are you connecting with them? Do you follow up with an email, phone call or personal note card?   

• How do you manage your database? Do you even have one? (If you don't, it's time to get on it. Just sayin'...).    

• What counts as a "New Contact" to you? Somebody you've merely spoken to? Or do they count as a contact if they've subscribed to your newsletter or something to that effect?   

• How often do you follow up? Is this a weekly, monthly or quarterly process for you? 

Cast your vote in the poll below and then drop a comment. Share your process! What works, what doesn't? How do you do it? 

A Few Reasons to Like Posterous

It all started with a couple of tweets about Posterous. Jim Marks said: 

To which I retweeted and responded: 

And Loren Nason responded with: 

You following along so far? Good! Basically, Loren Nason was asking what's so great about posterous? So I thought I'd put together a short screencast and then invite your opinion below... 

I like posterous because it makes it ridiculously easy to create and share multi-media content! It's a one stop syndication source in that you create content, email it to posterous, and it then cross-posts that content to multiple sources if you're so inclined to do so. Now you don't have to cross-post it, you can send it to single sources as well (it's all up to you). 

I like it because you never know what's going to serve as a conversation starter within the members of your social media network. So I use posterous to create and share multi-media content with network. Often times, as in the example above, that creates a discussion. And in the end, isn't that what social media is all about? Creating discussion amongst members of a group... 

What Do You Think? 

How or why do you like Posterous? How are you using it to create and share new content? 

Drop a link to your posterous account in the comments below so that we can connect with you and tell us how you're using posterous to share content with your audience. 

Mine is: http://www.ribeezie.posterous.com

I'm using it to ask questions about how you're using social media in your daily business and I'm using it to share moments and thoughts in my life as I travel to and from conferences. 

Social Media Addiction Rap + 6 Social Media Productivity Tips

 

Social Media is great for many reasons (I think that you'll agree). No? But heck, we're all addicted to some extent. Sometimes to the point that it becomes a productivity killer and keeps us away from the day-to-day work that we have to do. With that said, here are...

6 Social Media Productivity Tips: 

(Some of these tip have worked for me. Hopefully, they'll work for you too.)

• Write More Than You Publish. Get in the habit of writing daily (whether you're scheduling 15 min., 30 min., or an hour of your day). If you write more than you publish, that's ok; that's the point.   

• Only Check Email Once. I don't mean like once per day. See, when we check our email(s), we have a tendency to scan back through emails more than once. Get in the habit of checking emails only once. When you open that email, either: 1.) respond, 2.) delegate, or 3.) delete it. I use tags to filter my messages. I also use AwayFind to manage my time spent answering emails (it's a GREAT service!).   

• Perform Social Media Triage. We've talked about this before. This is the process of prioritizing and identifying what tools are going to be most beneficial/resourceful to you. For me it's the blog and Twitter. For you it might be Facebook and your email newsletter.   

• Learn To Scan. I'm subscribed to well over 400 blogs. There isn't nearly enough time in the day to read every single  blog post out there, every article posted on the web, every email and piece of correspondence that comes in the mail. So, learn to scan/skim and look for important bits of information. Categorize your content (I use Google Reader and have folders for different types of blogs) and give yourself a process. For example, I skim through my "Social Media" and "Technology" blogs every morning for 30 minutes searching for new golden bits of information.    

• Read Fewer Blogs/Feeds. I'm not saying that you should go an unsubscribe from a ton of blogs (you could miss out on good information that way). Instead, as noted above, I'm suggesting you learn to skim but also that you spend more time creating your own content (point number one) and less time reading other people's content. 

• Let It Go To Voicemail. This almost seems counterproductive. I've written about this before in a post titled: Answer the Phone! I hate it when people screen their calls and let them go to voicemail. But you know what, it's ok to let it go to voicemail so long as you respond within a reasonable amount of time. What's more, services like Google Voice offer voicemail transcripts (a major productivity win if you ask me). 

It's easy to let social media become nothing more than a time-suck that keeps us away from work and family obligations. My recommendation is to find the tools that make it easier for you to do things, time-block and set boundaries.

REALTORS® often ask me: "How much time should I spend on this social media stuff?" 

My recommendation is 1 - 1.5 hours per day (if that). If you're spending more time than that, you're either doing something wrong or you could be doing something better (in my humble opinion). 

What do you think? 

Any Other Suggestions:

Any other ideas you'd like to add that I might have missed? How are you managing your social media usage? What works for you? 

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Follow me on twitter for more cool tech & social media tips and connect with me on Facebook. 

What the F**k Is Social Media?

This is probably (nay, it is) one of my favorite slide-decks ever. It's the follow up to the original posted two years ago from the same individual; Marta Kagan.  

What the F**K is Social Media: One Year Later

View more documents from Marta Kagan.

Watcha think? What does social media mean to you? 

Bobby Mcferrin Show Us How To Engage With An Audience

I've seen some of Bobby's music (his performances). In short, I think he's awesome. I came across this piece earlier today via Seth Simonds blog and I think it's simply brilliant! 

World Science Festival 2009: Bobby McFerrin Demonstrates the Power of the Pentatonic Scale from World Science Festival on Vimeo.

How's that for connecting with an audience? 

Link Your Facebook Page to Twitter: the twitter exporter tool

This evening Facebook launched a pretty unique feature for Facebook Page owners. It's called: The Twitter Exporter Tool. 

The idea is pretty simple. As you post updates to your Facebook Page, the tool allows you to then syndicate that content to Twitter without ever leaving Facebook. 

What's the Point? 

I like the idea for it's simplicity. I like tools that make it easier to do things. But, from a content-sharing perspective, I've always used different platforms to communicate differently (does that makes sense?). 

I'll give the app a test-drive and see what I think. If anything, it might be a great way to drive traffic back to you Facebook Page which seems to me has always been a challenge for most people. 

What do you think? 

Animoto Property Slideshows

Mike Long is a client here at the Real Estate Tomato; he authors MikeLongRealty.com. Anyway, during our training session today we were talking about property slideshows. Animoto came into the conversation and BAM! Look what Mike put together...

Matt Dollinger at TheYouFactor.com put these together:

Whadya think?

At the Inman Real Estate Connect Conference in San Francisco, somebody made the comment that Animoto doesn't do a very good job of putting together clean, easy to watch property slideshows. 

I disagree. 

I happen to be of the opinion that this property slideshow is pretty awesome (of course this was just a test-run) and just think of the "Wow Factor" when prospective clients see this as part of your marketing strategy. The thing to remember is that the slideshow plays with the tempo of the music so a lighter tune will definitely render the photos much better at final cut. 

But anyway, what do you think? How does this slideshow look? 

Be Interesting: don't just talk about yourself...

I've talked about Social Currency before. In short, it's the idea that you have to invest part of yourself into a community before asking for anything in return. You know, the whole "give to get" idea. 

And yet people pop into different social networks all the time touting their greatness asking you to sign up for this and buy that. They move right past the meet-and-greet, or what I call the courting period, and jump straight into the sale. Or to quote Chris Brogan: "In relationship terms, I'm reaching out to shake your hand and you're trying to put your tongue in my mouth." 

To all the marketers, self-proclaimed gurus & experts, I almost always want to response like this. (Pretty appropriate in many cases if you think about it). 

With that said, here's what doesn't work in social media: 

• Blatant Self-Promotion: 

I don't care that you keep telling me how good you are at what you do. I don't believe you. If on the other hand you were referred by your network on LinkedIn, well that says a whole lot more. 

• Inattentiveness  or Unresponsiveness:   

If you have a blog that talks about your product/service and I leave a comment, it'd be great to get a response from you. If I send you an email via your contact form on a customer service issue, it'd be nice to get a response within the next 1-2 business days not 1 month later. 

• Don't Bash the Competition (or speak negatively):

Simply put it's unattractive. It speaks of desperation and well, like I said, that's just not attractive. 

Anything you'd care to add to the list?