There is absolutely nothing in this world like Facebook for connecting with all your old friends. The most successful people in real estate truly understand that networking is one of the real key’s to this industry and setting up a Facebook profile is drop dead easy thing to do to take advantage of it. Most of your old friends probably did not even know you were in real estate anyway. In sales the BIGGER YOUR SPHERE OF INFLUENCE THE BETTER.
Facebook and Twitter are truly opt-in marketing. There can be no chance that you can ever have provisions of the the privacy act thrown at you as they chose to follow you and they still WANT TO HEAR FROM YOU.
Testimonials are like gold for real estate agents and Linkedin allows you to write and receive business testimonials from other members. Testimonials that you approve become part of your profile for everyone to see. WHO DOES NOT WANT ANYMORE TESTIMONIALS?
Ensure your following the right people on Twitter as it is simply the best barometer on the real estate industry. Everyday you will get the latest training tips, strategies, news and commentary and all in just 140 characters each. On Twitter follow few and follow quality and YOU WILL BE REWARDED. Try to follow too many and it all just turns into noise.
Networking with others in and associated with our industry is just as important as networking with potential clients. When you are looking to contact someone you have never met Linkedin shows you who in your network already knows them and how. Linked in allows you to BUILD RELATIONSHIPS AND CONNECTIONS INSIDE THE INDUSTRY.
Twitter Search is a fantastic way to keep abreast of just what people are saying about your company, your brand or a recent advertising campaign. You get to see exactly what consumers are TELLING THEIR FRIENDS ABOUT YOU.
If they find it interesting or worth sharing, your friends and followers will spread your news for you when they retweet, comment or like something that you post. The power of social networking is INCREDIBLE WHEN IT GOES VIRAL.
Tweets are now integrated live into the Google Search Engine Results Pages. Facebook Fan Pages and Twitter Lists are now in the Google Index which makes setting up a Twitter Account and Facebook Profile the EASIEST SEO ON THE PLANET.
If you dont like someone or they are posting or tweeting rubbish… you can just DELETE THEM!
Twitter, Facebook and Linkedin are 100% FREE… at least for now.
I will not join your mafia, tend to your crops, find your lost puppy or swap aquariam fish with you. Can’t you get the hint…. Knock it OFF and LEAVE ME ALONE!!! Everyone must understand that all of these addictive little games they sign up for spam everyone on their contact lists.
Stop sending me requests to be a fan of your favourite causes, celebrities or your friends businesses.
If we have never met, never ever talked, in fact I dont even know you existed till now why would I be your Facebook Friend. Facebook is for personal contacts. I share my personal photos, thoughts and information to FRIENDS ONLY…. GET IT! Stuff I want to share with anybody who is interested is done through either a fan page, Twitter or a blog.
If you are an affiliate marketer just wanting to flog me stuff, a spammer of any kind, a pornographer trying to get me to watch your latest video……. I WILL DELETE YOU!!
There is no prize for collecting the most Facebook Friends or Twitter Followers. How can you follow 20,000 people on Twitter? Have you no life at all that you spend all your time reading other people’s tweets? I WILL DELETE YOU!!!!
Exactly like in real life I dont like being stalked on Twitter or Facebook …. If I delete you, say no to your request to be my friend and you keep coming back trying to be my friend and follow me I will block you and report you…. I PROMISE
Linkedin is a Business network of people you have done business with. You say that we worked together in your company but I would remember it if we worked together taking photos of properties in Perth I really would…. BUT I DON’T KNOW YOU!
You absolutley do not have to ReTweet everything. I checked out Twitters terms and conditions and nowhere does it say that you have to retweet everthing that someone sends you. How about being an individual and just SHUT UP IF YOU HAVE NOTHING TO SAY YOURSELF.
I know I have a profile on LinkedIn but that does not mean that I want you or your recruitment company to find me a new job. I dont want to meet with you, I dont want to send you my CV … JUST LEAVE ME ALONE!
Whether it be on Facebook or Twitter, if you post 10 or 20 times per day you are ANNOYING THE HELL OUT OF ME and you should know by now what happens next..
One of the biggest real estate auction events in the Southern Hemisphere is about to happen on the Gold Coast.
Ray White Broadbeach – Mermaid Beach are holding ‘The Edge’ on Saturday 17th April 2010 at the Gold Coast Convention Centre.
Brett Clements from PropVid sent me the ‘Hot Off The Press’ promo video yesterday.
Now for such a big event I’m sure that there has already been a lot of promotion done by the Gold Coast Network in the lead up till now & it looks like there is going to be a whole lot more promotion done between now and ‘The Edge’.
But I thought I might throw my 2 cents worth in & share some ideas on how Ray White Broadbeach – Mermaid Beach could leverage Social Media & the web more effectively to help spread the word.
Here’s ‘The Edge’ video promo.
The video went live on the PlatinumHD.tv site a few days ago & was uploaded onto YouTube 3 days ago. Whilst I think the video is really powerful there are a couple of things that could be changed to improve its conversion.
Changes to the Video: Within the video I’d have the agents website address GoldCoastNetwork.com.au appearing underneath the Ray White Broadbeach, Ray White Commercial Broadbeach, Ray White Mermaid Beach slide (which appears at the 2 minute mark within the video).
Also, towards the end of the video a slide appears saying “Spaces Limited Book Now”
Whilst I think it’s great to include a call to action. It’s important to define what you want people to do. Are they wanting vendors to book their property in now for the auction? Or do they want buyers to book their seat now? Or both?
On the web there is no room for confusion. It’s important that people watching the video know how to Book Now.
Improve Online Conversion: One suggestion could be that if you include the agency website address within the video, then on the home page of the Ray White website they could embed ‘The Edge’ promo video into the top right hand corner (probably cutting out the end of the surf life saving flag or surfer image) and then have a button underneath to say Click Here to Book Now for ‘The Edge’.
I would then send them to a long copy sales page that features some of the benefits of why they should be involved in ‘The Edge’ and provide an opt-in section which identifies if they are a buyer or a seller.
This will allow Ray White Broadbeach – Mermaid Beach to leverage the traffic that they already get to their website from Google and their other marketing, plus improve conversion from the people who view their professionally produced ‘The Edge’ promo video.
Obviously, with only 6 weeks to go till ‘The Edge’, to allow for the 4 week cut-through marketing campaign that they mention in the video, all sellers would need to be contacted straight away to include their listing in ‘The Edge’ marketing campaign.
I can imagine that the agency will need to have all properties listed by 20th March, but due to the size of the promotion & the incredible exposure there’s a possibility that they could include a few extra listings within a few days after this cut-off date. But, that’s obviously up to them.
Here’s a few other suggestions…
YouTube: One of the first things I noticed is that the video could also be optimised a lot better on YouTube. The wording used in the description & tagging has no chance of being found on Google by someone searching for real estate on the Gold Coast & I’m not sure that having it uploaded under the Entertainment category is going to help either?
Blogging: They should integrate a WordPress blog within their company website. This will not only help to market ‘The Edge’ but it will help with their SEO.
They should write a daily blog post about some of the build up towards ‘The Edge’ and ask all the staff to tweet or share each article with their followers on Twitter & their friends on Facebook.
When sharing the articles on these sites they could also ask people to click the like button when uploading onto Facebook and ask the followers to ‘Please RT’ their tweets on Twitter.
When posting daily updates on the blog it’s important to leave the comments section open on the articles because this may get people asking questions about how to be involved & could provide an additional lead generation strategy.
This could also provide an opportunity to set a deadline for the last day before properties will be allowed to be submitted & could create an extra sense of urgency for potential sellers and/or could encourage friends to tell friends to contact the agency so they don’t miss out on ‘The Edge’.
To protect the integrity of the event, Ray White Broadbeach-Mermaid Beach are the administrators of the blog so they have control to monitor comments too.
Facebook: I also noticed that Ray White Broadbeach-Mermaid Beach have a personal profile on Facebook. Whilst they currently have 67 friends, they should really have this as a Fan Page, because Facebook has a limit and once you get to 5,000 friends you have to change to a Fan Page.
Any company thinking about creating a presence on Facebook should start off with a Fan Page. They are better for business.
Celebrities, etc should also create a Fan Page. eg. One of my friends on facebook, Jack Canfield sent me an email the other day to ask me to join him at his fan page because he had reached his limit of friends.
Jack now has the task of getting all 5,000 of his friends that he has built up on his personal Facebook profile to go over & connect with him on his new Facebook Fan Page.
( Update: I found their company Facebook Fan Page – See Update at bottom of this article )
Twitter: With regards to Twitter I can’t seem to locate a company profile for them. At this point there appears to be no Twitter account linked to their site & no blog within their site.
Whilst ‘The Edge’ is an amazing concept, there are so many different things that Ray White Broadbeach – Mermaid Beach could do to make this the most incredible real estate event ever through Social Media.
(Update: I found their company Twitter account as well see Update at bottom of this article. I searched both facebook and Twitter for Ray White Broadbeach and Ray White Mermaid Beach. I finally found them under the Gold Coast Network.)
Print Media: Having seen the magnitude of the print media campaign from last years event, Ray White Broadbeach-Mermaid Beach should be advertising something like,
“For the daily inside scoop on ‘The Edge’ become a Fan on Facebook and/or follow us on Twitter” within their campaign.
This could help them to build a huge network of people connected to their company who live within their service.
It’s never too late: Even though ‘The Edge’ is only 6 weeks away, when you think about the real-time nature of Web 2.0, there is still a lot of time available for Ray White Broadbeach – Mermaid Beach to leverage the power of the internet & use this impressive Video Production from PropVid to generate the most amazing impression within their marketplace.
2 last things: A geo-targeted Pay Per Click campaign on Google could help overcome some SEO issues, plus a targeted Facebook Ads Campaign would help drive targeted traffic to their video campaign and/or their Facebook Fan Page.
The amount of ‘Free’ online PR that could be generated around ‘The Edge’ could be massive.
If Ray White Broadbeach – Mermaid Beach get this right, ‘The Edge’ could become so much bigger than they could have ever imagined.
And, if you tallied up every strategy that I’ve mentioned, they could make a huge difference to their whole campaign for around $500 – $1,000 plus time spent writing a daily update on their blog about ‘The Edge’.
PS: There’s a few more ideas I have about what they could do on realestate.com.au and other strategies, but at this point I just wanted to paint the picture of what is really possible, if a real estate agency embraces Social Media and uses the power of the internet the right way.
Please feel welcome to share your thoughts & ideas.
UPDATE: After writing this article I noticed that Ray White Broadbeach – Mermaid Beach do in fact have a Facebook Fan Page under ‘Gold Coast Network‘ and a Twitter account at Twitter.com/raywhitebroad with their username as ‘Gold Coast Network’. It’s great to see that they have established a fan page and a Twitter account.
At the time of posting this update, they have 97 fans on Facebook and 23 followers on Twitter, but unfortunately all the company seem to be posting is there sold listings & providing a link to the Open Homes that they have on each weekend.
Their Gold Coast Network Fan Page could become so much more engaging and simply because of its name, Gold Coast Network, it has the potential to become one of the biggest real estate fan pages on Facebook if they shared some other information about what’s happening on the Gold Coast as well.
Let me say in this my first post for Business2 (thanks for having me) I have no shares in Facebook (more’s the pity) and no real axe to grind either way in this tale. I just thought this might be of interest to anyone looking to brand and differentiate themselves effectively, potentially save some advertising dollars (who doesn’t want to do that?) try something new and maybe make themselves look pretty tech savvy in the process.
Facebook Ads.
OK, I was the same too – deeply skeptical as I was of all Web 2.0, self-indulgent bloggers, twits and lamebookers. I’d heard all about alleged ‘click frauds’ last year (search ‘Facebook click fraud’ and you get 18 million results).
About a year ago I attended a small business seminar where the concept of advertising on Facebook came up, and a quick demo was run on how easy it was to setup and how quickly results were viewed. I had try it for myself. I put up an ad (it was easy to do), aimed it towards 35-55 year olds who live in Perth (I hail from there) and sat back and watched the results.
Now 11 months have ticked over (long enough time to measure results I feel sure), the ad has been served up almost 22 million times (22 million!) to my target audience and it has cost me a tad over $3500 (or $300/month for 2mn views/month on average). I humbly show you the stats (screen shot of my Facebook Advertising account below) and invite you to pore over the numbers. [Note: $ values are US dollars]
Being a small business owner with a limited marketing budget, I have experimented with many things over the years (local papers, radio, billboards, cinema ads, car ads…) but the results of my Facebook advertising have blown me away. I don’t know anywhere you can get potentially millions of directed ads ‘served up’ into your local market for this cost. It equates to an average CPM (cost per thousand views) of 16 cents.
CPM for my various Google ads run at over 10 times that, and I can’t (as easily) send my ads to people on Google as determined by their age nor where they live. Moreover, all Facebook ads include a thumbnail image of my choosing. Google ads are mainly text based.
If you compare Facebook advertising to more traditional advertising (local papers, cineads, billboards and the rest) the latter tend to follow the old media rules of a ‘shotgun blast at a target’ approach, which is (literally) ‘hit or miss’ at best and (to stretch a tired metaphor still further) provides less ‘bang for the buck’, Charlie Gunningham
As audiences reach for their own divergent media, an advertiser can get lost in the choice, or use that choice to target people directly. I know of an experiment done by fellow Business2 contributor Peter Fletcher who targeted a Facebook ad to be viewed by ONE specific person. As Peter knew their profile settings, he could send up an ad on to their pages when that person next logged on to Facebook. The ad garnered 7 views and was clicked on once – by that person. You can’t get any more targeted than that! I’ve seen shorter Ad campaigns targeted at filling a seminar room and this has been their only marketing spend (about $50) to fill a room of 100 paying $200 a ticket. (That’s a pretty good ROI). No need for brochures, mail outs, email campaigns. Grab people where they are, and who you want to grab.
Moreover, you can run as many ads as you like, set a daily budget (you never go above it), determine your cost per click, pause and delete the ads whenever you want. You can send ads onto Facebook pages of people living in different cities and countries in different age ranges. Enter your credit card details and it gets billed automatically, with notifications of amount spent. You are in total control, can view the results and adjust your ads and settings whenever you like.
Over 6.6 million Australians are on Facebook. 300 million globally (75 million in the States). 1.6mn over the age of 18 are on Facebook in Sydney, 1.4mn Melbourne, 885,000 in Brisbane, 562,000 in Perth… (To check these stats yourself and research further, go to ‘Advertising’ in the footer on Facebook and click ‘Create an Ad’ – under ‘Targeting’ you can play with the variables).
What surprised me at first is that more people over age 40 are on Facebook than under age 20. It’s a myth that this thing is for kids. And 90% of Facebook users are active (login more than once a week) and 50% login daily. Often 2 or 3 times a day. Do you think these people are interested in real estate?
A few caveats at this stage. You’ll notice that my ad had 22 million views and ‘only’ 6000 or so clicks. A pretty poor ‘click thru rate’ (CTR) you might say (a miserable 0.029%). However, that was deliberate. Being a penny pinching sort of guy I adjusted the settings to maximise possible views (which are free). I was doing it as a branding, differentiation and “getting your name out there” exercise. (You can also set them up to get traffic to your properties, profiles, home page and pay per views if you wish.)
The real estate advertising applications are obvious
real estate reps can put a photo of themselves, a brief heading and 135 characters of text, and link the ad to their own profile page
individual properties can be put up (as a normal part of every marketing campaign) linking to their individual pages on the agency’s own sites
Auction campaigns with standalone web sites or individual pages within sites
Simple branding ads sending users to your home page, or better yet, some specific landing page (competition, offer, new blog post…)
Ads linking to your Facebook page to drum up ‘fans’
Use these ads for recruitment of staff (e.g. you’re looking for a property manager and can using age, interests and possibly gender targeting)
Setting up these ads as a normal way of doing things could make you look extremely tech savvy with your vendors and other clients
It would seem something to (at least) consider; but if all the above is true (and I have probably missed most of the advantages others can see straight away) is this the future of targeted advertising – if not on Facebook, but on social networking sites in general? What does this mean for traditional media who rely on local advertising?
Facebook.com is already breaking even on this advertising stream. I believe they are going to earn a mint from this, in the same way Google did from Adwords. I have reduced my Adwords spend and moved the money to Facebook. If more and more do the same, what will this mean for Google?
In the past I’ve overheard real estate agents talking on the phone, directing clients onto the major portals like realestate.com.au & domain.com.au to help a client find out more information about a property. I could never understand why the agent wouldn’t want to send the customers to the listing appearing on their own company website??? Read the rest of this article »
Before Web 2.0, if you provided good service it was widely regarded that people would tell a handful of their friends about their great experience. But, if your service was poor or you did something wrong then they would tell 20 people.
Well, what used to be Word of Mouth, has now become World of Mouth, simply because it is now very easy for people to share their customer experiences with their friends over the web. Read the rest of this article »
Whilst I still believe that real estate agents should be using Facebook for marketing themselves & their real estate business, after reading this article about Facebook Click Fraud it may be better for agents to proceed with caution if they intend to use the Pay Per Click advertising section.
Many companies use Facebook’s Pay Per Click Advertising platform because the demographic information collected about Facebook users enables companies to target their marketing campaigns within the social media environment.
Some companies also prefer using Facebook’s Advertising rather than waiting for the SEO on their site to kick in and/or they feel that it’s better value than having to compete for expensive keywords within SEM campaigns on the search engines like Google, Yahoo & Bing.
Facebook advertising generated $280 million in revenue in 2008 & they are expecting $550 million this year. But with the grey cloud of Click Fraud hanging overhead, Facebook will be keen to rectify these issues very quickly.
For the moment, agents may be best to limit their Facebook marketing to the 3 Free strategies.
1. Building your personal Facebook profile
2. Creating a Facebook Fan Page for your company
3. Creating a Facebook Group
I was looking in the window of a real estate agency the other day & noticed that they had no listings available to sell. This got me thinking about ways that a real estate agent could market themselves & build their profile without even having any properties to market.
These online marketing foundations could be adopted as a good start up strategy for any new agent or simply a way that agents can build their profile & generate more business. Either way, to begin building your online profile these first 4 steps are probably the best place for an agent to start.
1. Personal Domain Name
Secure your personal domain name. eg.YourName.com or .net.
To order your domain name, there are lots of domain name providers to choose from & the cost for domain names seem to be getting cheaper all the time. There are sites like GoDaddy.com, PlanetDomain.com, Intaserve.com & CrazyDomains.com just to name a few.
If your domain name has already been taken you can try putting a hyphen into the domain name. eg. Your-Name.com. There are lots of hyphenated domain names that are still available.
At present, there doesn’t appear to be any real benefit in securing the .com.au or .net.au unless you really want to. Your TLD, (Top Level Domain) YourName.com is better to secure if it’s still available.
Simply register the domain name & don’t sign up for the hosting packages because in a future post, I’ll show you ways that you can get your hosting for FREE.
2. Twitter
Secure your personal name on Twitter.
Once a Twitter username is registered then no one else in the world can create the same username. That’s why, even if you don’t want to use your Twitter account for a while, it’s still better to secure your username.
If Twitter.com/YourName isn’t available then you can use ‘underscore’ to create Twitter.com/Your_Name or you can even have the underscore at the beginning or the end of the username, like _YourName or _Your_Name.
The reason why it’s important to have your name within the username is that it forms part of the URL and this can help somebody find you easier on Google, Bing & other search engines if they type in your name.
3. Google Profile
Register your Profile on Google.
Having a Google profile enables you to provide a biography/profile of yourself on Google’s site. You can also include links back to your company website & links to any of your other profiles/websites.
The same applies with Google Profiles, once the username is gone it’s gone, so it’s worthwhile going & securing your Google profile before someone else in the world with your name does.
4. Facebook
Register your profile on Facebook
Facebook has recently announced that as of this Saturday, June 13th at 12.01am New York time (2.01pm Sydney time) Facebook users will be be able to choose a username URL for their Facebook account.
It’s designed to make it easier to direct friends, family, and coworkers to a Facebook user’s profile.
This move by Facebook will also mean that people’s Facebook profiles will start to appear a lot more on personal name searches within the search engines.
For example, the new Facebook URL will become Facebook.com/YourName which can make it a lot easier for people to connect with you on Facebook.
Usernames will be issued on a first-come, first-serve basis for your profile and any other Facebook Pages that you administer by visiting http://www.facebook.com/username/.
Facebook Pages are designed for your business. There appears to be are a lot of agents & businesses that have started registering Facebook fan pages for their businesses & it may be a good idea to secure the Facebook username for your business at the same time. Eg. Facebook.com/YourBusinessName
Whilst there are lots of others sites like YouTube, LinkedIn, etc that you may want to register with, these are the Top 4 things you should do first.
Armed with the Twitter for Real Estate Twits ebook from the last article I posted I decided to jump into Twitter and give it a whirl. Take it for a testdrive so to speak.
The first 24 hours has been very enlightening and one thing has become crystal clear. Twitter is fantastic! It is such a simple concept that when done right is so powerful and for our industry it can work amazingly. After the testdrive I decided to take one two home :) Read the rest of this article »
Throughout capital cities in Australia carparks are limited and often can demand excessive rents for hourly, daily, weekly, monthly and even yearly periods. For car park owners and landlords, the issue has always been how to monetise this as there is no formal mechanism to recognise and rent these car parks. This has all now changed due to a new online venture Rentmy Carpark allowing property owners, landlords and property managers to rent out carparks. Their concept is simple…..if you can park a car on it then it is a carpark. Only rent the carpark out when it is convenient to do so. From their website:
The idea for our site was conceived several years ago when one of us walked past an empty driveway in the city and thought “hmmm……if only I could park there!”. Needless to say two years later we had launched our first website.
Our goal is a simple one – To provide you with a fun, quick and easy way to advertise and rent out your carspace, driveway or storage space.
Rentmy Carpark is a very clean website which utilizes map search for carparks across Australia. Carpark seekers are able to submit an enquiry for carparks they are interested in or save them to their favourites list. The website also users social networking through a blog for the website & individual blogs for each car park, along with publishing an advertiser’s ad to their Facebook profile.
The only shortcoming I see with this website, is that it offers no facility for owners to offer their carpark for sale. Perhaps this will come in the form of another website further down the track.
As a property manager or agent, you can now offer an alternative service to your vendors. If they have a car park available where they live or in an investment property where the tenants do not have a car, then here is an opportunity for you to generate additional income for them. Also, Rentmy Carpark has an entire section dedicated to Parking Stations which provides Commercial Property Manager’s with a great resource to help them manage/lease commercial carparks.
Disclaimer: Rentmy Carpark was designed and developed by Agentpoint Pty Ltd which is owned and operated by Peter Ricci.
Peter Ricci is the Director of Agentpoint.com.au, Business2.com.au, Ginga.com.au and ZooProperty.com and has been involved in designing and developing real estate systems and websites since 1997. In July 2001 Peter founded Business2.com.au to help real estate agents better understand the power of the Internet and the real estate landscape in Australia and New Zealand. Since then he has penned over 300 articles on a variety of subjects in the real estate technology industry. Business2.com.au is now the leading real estate technology site in Australasia.
Blogging: They should integrate a 
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