InfiNET Marketing

The SOCIAL MEDIA Phenomena

• YouTube has over 100 million videos
• If Facebook were a country, it would the world’s 4^th most populated country
• 45 million updates are posted on Facebook daily
• Approximately 25 million Tweets are posted every day
• 80% of corporations use LinkedIn to fill job openings
• Word of Mouth Marketing is the most effective advertising channel
• 78% of consumers trust peer recommendations
• Today’s college students consider email passe’
• Social media is a fundamental shift in the way we communicate

The danger of doing social media the wrong way is not that it will waste your time and energy or even cost you ROI in dollar terms. In the world of social media the real danger is the loss of your reputation – what gets posted to Facebook, MySpace and the like – lives for a very long time.

If our social media strategy is to add to the pollution – inane, meaningless content – we will have to live with the effect of it on our business and reputation for a very long time. Not understanding social media, the social etiquette that goes with it, how it is being integrated into business practices and especially how social media content is being used to form or discard relationships – leaves us in a very vulnerable position in today’s business environment.

This is taking on even more significance as we write as Yahoo, Bing and Google have signed agreements with Twitter and Facebook to index their content. This means that all those tweets and all that wall content will be available to search queries.

In real estate, the more things change, the more they stay the same. When it comes to property values – Location, Location, Location – is still number one. In building and growing a real estate business – the sphere of influence is still number one – Relationship, Relationship, Relationship. Social media can help you extend your sphere of influence and nurture it in ways that save you time, money and energy. Online technology has much to offer.

Example: SendOutCards is an online resource for sending greeting cards one at a time or 10,000 one-at-a-time. You can upload your handwriting and your signatures to make them even more personal. You can include gift cards and even brownies, cookies, books and more with them.

The real beauty of the system though is the campaign feature combined with custom card feature. You can create unique cards for your various business needs and create targeted drip campaigns that will mail a series of cards to clients or potential clients.

Social media, the Internet & online technology can be used to create and nurture relationships or they can be a total waste of time. The determining factors are: knowledge, action and an effective, targeted strategy.

Many REALTORS are in and out of business 6 or more times a year. When they have a listing or an active buyer, they are in business – the business of servicing one client. Taking care of the client and the real estate transaction process is a demanding and time consuming process. Consequently, many real estate agents stop working their lead generation business because they are too busy with other details – they are, in fact, out of business until escrow is closed and they once again have the time and attention to work the business again.

Structuring social media and other Internet based technologies to run 24/7 as lead generators and relationship builders is a great business investment.

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

• Power of Blogging for REALTORS

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