Social media and social networking are not just short term fads, but rather strategies and tactics that offer lucrative marketing channels for your real estate practice.   If you’ve not jumped onto the social media bandwagon, its not too late to do so.  However, a word of caution and advice for those contemplating embarking into this marketing media.   The word is: Strategy! 

Just as there are agents and companies who gain business in spite of themselves, there will also be agents and companies that enjoy sporadic success by spontaneously and half-heartily jumping into the social media mix.   If for no other reason, they’ll experience an increase in business because they are touching, engaging and communicating with their sphere of influence within social networks such as Facebook.   It is no secret that, in general, the real estate community does a poor job of staying in front of their past clients and customers.   Add a little Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter into their marketing mix and voila — a transaction or two!

The antithesis of this approach is having a system and process that can consistently render desired results.   The social media process is  a simple five step process that will deliver upon the expectation of  more leads, more clients, and more raving fans.  The process isn’t easy, and it certainly isn’t a magic formula or a silver bullet.  It requires thought, dedication, energy and time.

Here are the five steps of the social media process:

1.  Develop Content

2.  Drive Traffic

3.  Engage Consumers

4.  Create Clients

5.  Cultivate Raving Fans

Each of these five steps contain several sub-steps of social media activities.  For instance, for the purposes of this article, let’s take step number one:  develop content.   In order to develop content you first need to create a central destination for all the content — a container for your words of wisdom, customer advice, REALTOR insights and special reports.   There is no better content management system than Wordpress. 

A Wordpress blog will become the center of your social media universe.  All your actions, feeds, posts, tweets, white papers, articles, etc., will orbit and gravitate to and from your Wordpress blog.   However good content will be required to engage consumers.   You don’t want to market  and drive traffic to a destination that has no value or content.  

Consider all the great advice, knowledge, expertise, and  insider secrets that reside between your two ears.  You probably have years of information that needs to come out in the form of 200 to 300 word articles, how-to’s, advices, etc.   You might even have some nightmare transactional experiences that could serve as great “case-studies” to educate potential clients on what not to do.  Likewise, there’s no doubt that you’ve also solved problems, navigated the deal-killing antics of others, and negotiated brilliantly.  All these can serve to communicate your value and worth as a great agent or company.

Grab a notepad and pen.  Spend a good forty minutes to an hour thinking through Buyer, Seller and Transactional problems.  Write down topics, titles and or bullet points that solve those problems.  Each of these can provide the foundation for a great resource.   To make it easier, why not segment the audience a little further:  investor, first time home-buyer, vacation home buyer, For Sale By Owner, urban, high-rise, high-end, etc.   Each of these segments have their own challenges.  Cover these in your list. 

Once you’re done with your list, begin outlining three to five points for each topic.  Before long you’ll have an exhaustive list of content.   Schedule writing and development time into your time-blocked schedule, or hire the help of a freelance writer or virtual assistant, if needed to bring your resources to life.  The completed articles can then be cut and pasted into your Wordpress article platform.

I recently had the pleasure of speaking on the social media process to a wonderful company in Upstate New York, RealtyUSA.   Merle Whitehead, along with Mark Re, Al Picchi and others from the RealtyUSA leadership team are making sure that their organization is on the leading edge of social media by providing the tools, education and resources necessary to equip their associates to serve the needs of their clients and customers.   The slides from the presentation are below. 

Feel free to provide feedback, and/or your experiences and challenges with the exciting marketing opportunity called social media.

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