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

15 Ways To Spot A Social Media Fake

Credit for this one goes to Anna O'Brien with Random Act of Data. 

Anna OBrien- How to Spot a Social Media Fake

View more presentations from Anna OBrien.

Less Broadcasting Please

I don't like to tell people "you're doing it wrong" because you know what, we all do it our own way. And that's ok. But there is one thing that has to be said because I see people new to social media do it all the time!

STOP BROADCASTING!

Blatant self-promotion and the hard sell really doesn't work around here. Do you know why? It's because people really only care about two things: 

1. Finding a solution to their problem(s).
2. Being entertained.

If you're not offering one or the other, you're not providing much value. Period.

Deliver Edutainment:

A friend of mine used to always say that you have to strive to deliver "Edutainment" (the art of educating and entertaining). Here's a few things to keep in mind:

• Give away your Top Shelf content for free (through your blog, ebook or newsletter)! If you're selling a coaching (knowledge-based) product then it's ok to hold back a little but still, deliver the goods through your blog for free.

• Have fun with it (it's ok to have a sense of humor). You're not writing a college paper or essay. It's ok to get casual and conversational in your writing. And if you through up a "Just for Fun Friday" post that makes me laugh, heck, that's ok too.

• Remember, relationship before the sale. You know the old mantra: People do business with people they like. Well it's true! You have to hang out where your customers are hanging out on-line (on social networks, blogs, forums, etc.) and engage with them first. Friend them on Facebook or follow them on Twitter and start a dialogue that allows you to get to know one another. Then and only then, are they happy to promote your product on your behalf for free (and often times without you even asking them.

What do you think? Do you think people broadcast a little too much online? How do you find a good balance between engaging for fun, and broadcasting to make a sale?

Social Media: the best way to learn is to just do...

Yesterday I gave a presentation to the Arcadia Association of REALTORS® Young Professionals Network (it was a great group). As in most presentations that I give, there's always someone in the group that I bump into with some resistance. Here's the thing, in real estate, there's no one "right" way to do things. You do what works for you. For some, that involves social media. For others it doesn't. 

How Do You Know If It's Right For You? 

The best way to learn is to just do. It's like riding a bike for the first time. You might not get it right away. You might mess up and fall. But after a ride or two, you slowly start to get it. 

• Join Facebook (it's easy). You sign up for an account like you do anywhere else. Don't know if your clients are "social media savvy"? Here's a neat trick, Facebook allows you to import your email database. Do it. You'd be amazed at how many people in your database area already on Facebook. 

• Get on Twitter and tweet. Here's a short list of people to follow who I think are doing it right: @EvangelistaLA, @ChrisBrogan, @Startabuzz,@FunomenalRltr, and @unmarketing. Give them a follow, say hello and start tweeting. 

Then, the brilliant folks over at MyTechOpinion wrote an excellent resource titled: 

Twitter for Real Estate Twits

• Start a blog and just write. You can do this for free at wordpress.com. My friend Laurie March did this and now her site is hopping with readers and comments. 

• Subscribe and start reading other blogs both inside and outside of your niche. I use Google Reader for this (the folks over at Common Craft have anexcellent video tutorial for you). Here are some blogs to read and subscribe to: Problogger.net, Copyblogger.com, ChrisBrogan.com, AgentGenius.com and Ribeezie.com (heh, that's me).

Remember, you wont' always get it right straight from the beginning. That's ok. The trick is to pick yourself up and start riding again. And if you have any questions, well, that's what the comment box is for...ask away!

Listen. Learn. Provide Value. Engage.

I just got back from REBlogworld and Blogworld & New Media Expo 2009 (two events that I'm definitely very passionate about). And I think Amanda Coolong (Chief Correspondent at Techzulu) said it well: 

 "1 word to sum up @Blogworld: EPIC. Major kudos to Rick & co. Amazing speakers, well attended, niche experts. Great @techzulu coverage #bwe09" - via @acoolong

300+ speakers, thousands of attendees (estimated 2,200), lots of learning & collaboration! There's nothing more inspiring than learning direct from the experts and then taking the time to mingle with them face to face. As Darren Rowse said: "Face to face meetings count for a lot!" I agree...

The hardest thing to do after getting back from a conference is gathering your thoughts into one coherent stream and plan of action. So, with this post, I thought I'd offer you my thoughts based on the sessions I attended and the overarching theme of things learned at #REBW09 and #BWE09. 

Listen: 

In just about every session at Blogworld, "Listening" was a big part of implementing social media successfully. Personally, I agree! You can't begin to provide value to an audience if you don't listen for the problems/questions you audience members are having. 

Here, go read Chris Brogan's post on the subject: Grow Bigger Ears in 10 Minutes

Learn:

There's not one "right" way to use social media. We all have different objectives. Different ways of doing things and communicating. Learn what others are doing in their space. And then just do and adjust accordingly. 

Again, read Chris Brogan's post: You're Doing It Wrong

Provide Value:

Again, you can't offer value without listening first to your audience. So listen. Then, offer value by sharing things via your social media that educates and entertains (my buddy @TPEntrepreneur calls it: Edutainment). 

The only challenging thing about social media and tools like Twitter is that it gives people unprecedented access to you which implies certain time constraints. You need to work on managing expectations with folks and customer service needs to be a top priority. If @Zappos did it, you can to (and they sold for close to a billion). 

Lastly, realize that face-to-face (as Darren said), truly accounts for a lot! It truly does. So as much as you engage with people online, do the best that you can to take some of those connections offline. I'm thinking meetups, tweetups, Facebook events and more! 

Engage:

Social media isn't a place for robot behavior. (Disclaimer: I on occasion am guilty of scheduling tweets. You click on the links and read 'em and you even retweet them. So I continue to share them. And yes, I do respond to @ replies). If you're thinking you can get away with using social media to "push-market" your service/product, you have another thing coming. Chris Brogan has a great analogy about that too.

So instead of focusing on the "hard sell" first, focus instead on engagement: meeting new people, responding to emails, tweets, Facebook status updates, sharing photos and more... Engagement is the key to it all!

So there you have it, a simple but effective strategy to leading a successful social media campaign: Listen > Learn > Provide Value > Engage.

===============

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

Seth Godin on Social Networking

Seth Godin's blog is one of the few blogs that I subscribe to via email and that I read just about every day. This video below is an interview clip from AMEX's OPEN Forum wherein Seth Godin talks about Social Networking for Business. A gentleman in the audience asks a question that I'm asked daily by REALTORS® and Brokers: 

"My question is on social networking for business. Is it valuable for business? Yes or no? And if yes, for what types of businesses?"

Seth Godin on Social Networking: 

My favorite line from Seth is this one: 

"Networking is always important when it's real and it's always a useless distraction when it's fake. What the internet has allowed is an enormous amount of fake networking to take place." 

There's A LOT of truth in this statement (in my opinion). I think that the biggest mistake that people make when they jump into social media is they engage in blatant self-promotion and focus less on building relationships. They use their blogs, their twitter streams and Facebook updates as press stations to talk about themselves and they do it in such a way that screams desperation and that is just simply unattractive (there's not quicker way to lose a sale than by spamming me with your promo's). 

Those that are doing it right, are the individuals who are out there building relationships and growing their network one true fan at a time. See, if you believe that business is built on building relationships, then you need to make building relationships your business. This means responding to every comment, answering every email (and phone call), responding to your status updates (Facebook reference) and your @ replies (Twitter reference). To reference Chris Brogan, "make the relationship before the sale." At the end of the day, it really isn't all that difficult... 

What say you? Am I off base here? 

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? 

===============

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? 

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? 

[Video] Social Media Revolution

In August of 2009, LinkedIn celebrated it’s 45 millionth user sign up! To date, LinkedIn is regarded as one of the world’s top professional social networks (it just happens to be one of my favorite networks).

Facebook currently has over 250 million users. 120 million users log onto Facebook at least once each day.30 million users currently access Facebook through their mobile devices. In fact, people that use Facebook via their mobile devices are almost 50% more active on the social network than non-mobile users. 

45 – 54 year olds are the top demographic on Twitter (according to the April 2009 comScore). 25 – 34 year olds follow closely behind at second. The microblogging tools that asks: “What are you doing now?” has the potential to be nothing more than a giant time-suck. However, if leveraged correctly, it’s a powerful application that can drive enormous amounts of traffic to your blog(s). 

There are over 200,000,000 blogs. 54% of bloggers post new content or tweet daily.

The following video is a close look at how social media is impacting our daily lives… Enjoy!

 

So, what do you think...fad? Or revolution? Will it change the way you do business? Has it changed the way you do business? 

Drop a comment and let me know...

[Poll] How Do You Feel About Scheduled Tweets?

So here's the deal, I know how you feel about Auto-DM's... Frankly, I feel the same. I think they're a very poor attempt at trying to be personal and personable. You ever meet someone that strikes you as being a complete "fake"? That's kinda how an auto-DM feels to me. In fact, the only auto-DM that I ever really liked was Nik-Nik's. I don't know how she did it, but she managed to rock it! 

Anyway, today's question...today's poll is not about auto-DM's. It's about scheduled tweets. Yup I said it: Scheduling Your Tweets! I've done it. And I know quite a few other people in the RE.net space who do it too. We do it because tweeting "5 Steps to A Fantastic LinkedIn Profile" just isn't as sexy at 2:00am. We do it because it's resourceful to schedule a tweet to go out at 10:00am whilst we're working on other things. 

It's not that we don't care to engage with you. It's quite the contrary. We do it because we care that much that we wanna make sure we're sharing good stuff while still working on things that bring in the paychecks. Make sense? 

5 Tools to Schedule Tweets: 

• TwitterFeed: actually, I don't know that twitterfeed counts here as a "tweet scheduler." What twitterfeed does is it feeds your blog to twitter. Once you set up your account, the next time you publish a blog post, twitterfeed will announce it and post a tweet about it. You can add any prefix to your tweet (twitterfeed will shorten the url and give you stats on the click-thru rate for that tweet). I use it. Ines uses it and so do several other folks.   

• FutureTweets: this is one that I use fairly often. I consume content between the hours of 8:00 - 10:00pm, 12:00 - 1:00am and 7:00 - 8:00am. It's a funky schedule I know but it's when I settle down and consume content either in books or from my feedreader. Rather than tweet this stuff at those times I use FutureTweets to schedule content to go out during "normal hourse"; you know, that time of day when you're grabbing your coffee and booting up the computer. Usually, I'm hosting webinars for the Real Estate Tomato at those hours so it works for me to schedule these tweets.   

• TweetLater: this one is similar to FutureTweets. However, I've had an issue or two with it so I just stuck with futuretweets. In my personal opinion, I just didn't like the user-experience here.   

• Twuffer: this one is awesome because it gives you all of the functionality of FutureTweets and well, it has a very clean interface! You can schedule your tweets as far out in advance as you'd like (however I don't really recommend doing that).   

• Su.pr: now here's my favorite of all of these. First you'll need an account at Stumbleupon (this is your passport). Once you get an account there, you'll be granted an account at su.pr. Log-in, click and drag the bookmarklet into your toolbar and presto!, you're ready to go. The next time you come across an article whilst skimming the web that you think is tweetworthy, click on the su.pr bookmarklet and you'll be able to tweet straight from there. Su.pr even gives you the ability to schedule tweets straight from that pop-up.

Poll Time: 

With all of that said, I wanna know... 

But don't stop there, tell me what you REALLY think! Drop a comment below and kick of this conversation... 

===============

[Photo Credit: FutureTweets]