One of the best sessions at Real Estate Connect was one that featured Jeff Jarvis. Jeff is the author of the book, "What Would Google Do?" In it, he asks how Google would go about changing the real estate industry.
While Google has no plans to take over the industry, Jarvis had several great suggestions on how you can use social media platforms to make more money in your real estate business. Here are the key suggestions that Jarvis made during his talk.
1. The Social Media Sites All Rely on Sharing
The key commonality among all social media sites is that they exist to share information. The key point to note here is that the old broadcast approaches of the past fail miserably when you use them on the social media. This is one of the reasons it's not smart to post your listings on your Facebook personal profile or on your Twitter Feed. Instead, engage people in conversations and build a relationship over time. Earn the right to do business with them. As Jarvis describes it, "Sharing yields trust."
In fact, the process is to share first. This "disarms the stigma of being a stranger." In other words, people can engage with you online and feel they have gotten to know you. This in turn leads to trust, which ultimately canlead for business.
2. The Cabernet Law
Never post anything when you have had one too many glasses of Cabernet. The real point here is to never flame another person. The good-old-fashioned Golden Rule has it right--if you can't say something nice, don't say anything.
3. The social media enables collaboration.
One of the major trends that will reshape our future is collaborative design. Right now groups of people are designing cars collaboratively--not the engineers at the car companies, but the consumers.
4. Have a conversation, don't broadcast.
One of the biggest mistakes most people make on the social media is to broadcast their messages using the old 20th Century advertising model. Jarvis, like many other speakers at the conference, argues that your message must be focused on what the consumers want and need as well. It must also be highly focused on hyperlocalism--the things that matter to consumers about the specific area where they live.
The key is to leverage your hyperlocal posts into hyperlocal relationships that will generate business. As Jarvis says, "Content is a tool that lets us hyperlocalize online relationships."
5. Add value
This is the notion of "give to get marketing." In other words, give of yourself, share links, videos, whatever matters to your audience. When you give to others, others will give to you.
Posted by Bernice Ross. Join us this week on RealEstateCoachRadio.com and hear top technology speaker Amy Chorew on "iPad Apps for Buyers' Agents." Here's what Amy wll be covering on this week's shows: Monday: Working in the Cloud; Tuesday: Buyer Counseling Apps; Wednesday: Digital Signature Software; Thursday: How to Use an iPad on Showings; Friday: Third Party Apps
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