InfiNET Marketing

Basic Business Principles Remain in Effect with Niche Marketing & Social Media

People are always asking us – what generates sales and business? The answer to this is very simple – the same things that have always generated sales and business. Social media isn’t some magical medium that absolves us from practicing basic business, marketing and sales activities. Social media is a way to increase our reach, effectiveness and “hours of operation.”

Blogging allows us to speak directly to our clients/customers. This is powerful way to get our self/business in front of them. When we are writing a post for our blog, we imagine our perfect real estate client sitting directly across from us and we talk to them in a conversational manner. Always keeping the focus on helping them – answering a question, educating them about something or solving a problem they may have. In doing this, we naturally create the perfect content for the search engines for this type of client looking to buy or sell a home in Danville or San Ramon, CA. To increase the effectiveness of this content we marry it to our geographical location by mentioning our community, streets, shopping complexes, parks and other local landmarks.

The most powerful element in all of social media and the Internet is the search function. Search makes it possible for all of us to find exactly what we are looking for. Without search, all we would have is stored data. Search has brought more power and relevance to niche marketing than anything else in history.

The critical point for business people is – if you can’t be found, you don’t exist. This used to mean, if I can’t Google you from my computer – now it involves our mobile devices.

One of the big challenges with social media, the Internet and technology is trying to keep up with the pace of change. Our advice is to accept the fact that it is impossible to do so. We devote a certain amount of time and attention to a consistent effort to stay current with changes affecting the real estate industry and online marketing.

Following blogs like: My Tech Opinion, Duct Tape Marketing, Are We Connected, Alltop & Mashable.

A genuine interest in using social media and technology in business is very helpful. Likewise resistance or a begrudging attitude toward it is a one way ticket to frustration and a whole lot of grief. Hiring a consultant to come in for an hour or so every month to keep abreast of things is a good way to go. We do this and we have a full time tech guy. Make sure the “tech” guy can speak plain English and is not the type to get easily annoyed with non-tech people.

One of the great things about social media marketing is it makes it easy to target our niche by including the keyword phrases in our blog postings that clients would most likely be using in their searches.

The same is true for locating potential clients. Using the advance search feature found on most social media sites, we can find people and businesses in our geographic area that could represent future business.

Tools and applications exist to help us aggregate and automate some of the time demands associated with social media marketing. Seesmic or Tweetdeck (mentioned earlier) is one such tool. It allows us to follow our Facebook network and multiple Twitter accounts at the same time.

Other resources include:

• HootSuite
• Netvibes
• Ping.fm

How do people cope with thousands of followers? Coping with hundreds or thousands of followers is easy if we organize our efforts around 4 elements:

1. We can’t keep up with everyone
2. No one else can either
3. 80/20 – we invest our time, attention and energy where they produce the greatest returns
4. We define what our ROI should be for each particular venue

We concentrate our efforts, first and foremost, in the 4 major arenas of social media – blogging, Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn.

Next Post on Using Social Media to Dominate Your Real Estate Niche Market:

• Goal of Social Media Marketing

(Read the entire series on Niche Marketing in Real Estate)