There are already plenty of blog posts about the topic (including some excellent posts on Business2). And, there are already plenty of rhymes. But, until now, there has never been a rhyming social media blog post. (as far as I know)

It is, therefore, my distinct pleasure to introduce to you this world’s first–in its global premiere.

World’s First Rhyming Social Media Blog Post

“Social media, should I use you?”
That is my query.
Tumblr. Twitter. Facebook.
“YES!” is my theory. (1)

On this climb start many.
Many give up.
If I paid you a penny,
would you Tweet me to the top? (2)

They say to study others,
Learn from the barely surviving.
So your tail is well covered,
Put in toe before diving. (3)

You must talk, talk, talk, talk.
It’s 24/7.
Cluetrains don’t stop,
Even if a rest would be heaven. (4)

What’s cheap is expensive,
When you’re paying in blood.
Not to cause apprehension,
Customers can now make your name mud. (5)

Follow the lessons Gary has given.
Go online with compassion,
And up, up, up sales will be driven. (6)

This is really just for fun, and I’m no poet. It does, however, point to some truths. Below, I give a little more information about each verse.

Verse (1)
For 100 years or more, traditional media let businesses broadcast messages in one direction. Social media let us start two-way conversations.

Many people in real estate already understand how this will change their business. For example, I am doing some consulting work with LJ Hooker, and I have been impressed by the excellent social media training they offer their network. I’d be interested to hear what other agencies are doing, as well.

Verse (2)

Lots of people have tried social media marketing. A Burson-Marstellar study of 20 excellent corporate brands found this:

“A large number of companies have dipped a toe in the social media arena without following through. The study revealed a lot of inactive accounts, which could suggest ad-hoc efforts with no clear strategy for online stakeholder engagement.”

Many people who try and then give up blame the medium, and say social media is too immature to be useful. That’s like saying a trumpet is broken because the first 100 people who pick it up suck, as Gary Vaynerchuck wrote in The Thank You Economy.

Luckily for you, you have the world’s first ever rhyming social media blog post and Business2, the world’s best real estate blog, to help you figure it out. Nothing can stop you now!

Verse (3)

It pays to learn from the mistakes of those who have blown it. Take the same precaution with your social media strategy that you would before jumping into a swimming pool: dip your toe in first.

Start small, test the waters, and learn to swim. Then begin to take on bigger challenges.

Verse (4)
Social media look cheap, but they take their payment in blood.

Opening a Twitter account is as easy as checking your email. But, it’s a bit like hiding inside of a refrigerator. It’s easy to get in, but once the door closes, you can’t get back out.

To use social media productively takes a lot of time and dedication. It will probably also require some changes to your business that go beyond adding your Twitter account to your business card.

But, yes. It will be worth it.
Verses (5) and (6)
Word of mouth today has much more power than before social media. Tools like Facebook and Twitter give your customers the ability to say things about your brand persuasively and to a huge audience. Before, it was limited to the people they could conceivably talk to, email or call on the phone in a day.

Overwhelm them with kindness and excellent customer service, and they will become loyal fans and customers. Give them crap service, and they will make your name mud.

The Gary I mention in verse (6) is Gary Vaynerchuck, founder of tv.winelibrary.com and author of the The Thank You Economy. You could write a book about this topic, but he’s much smarter than I and has already done it. It’s the book about social media I have liked best.

For now, I hope you enjoyed this rhyming blog post as a bit of fun.

PS: Some real experts regularly read and contribute to this blog. If you have any social media questions, I’m sure they or I would be happy to respond below in the comments field.

1. 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.
2. 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.
3. 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?
4. 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.
5. 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.
6. 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.
7. 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.
8. 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.
9. If you dont like someone or they are posting or tweeting rubbish… you can just DELETE THEM!
10. Twitter, Facebook and Linkedin are 100% FREE…  at least for now.

By sending visitors across to the major portals, agents are diluting their marketing message & sending potential customers to a website full of their competitors.  At least if agents send them to their own website the customers can read more about the agent & the agency. Plus, the customers have the opportunity to opt-in to receive more information from the agent via newsletters, blog posts, etc.

Real Estate Agents do more than enough advertising for the major portals via posters in their windows, talking about the major portals at listing presentations, etc.

If agents are going to post a link for one of their listings into either a blog post or onto Social Media sites like Twitter, Facebook, etc then they should make sure that they direct the traffic back to the listing appearing on their company website.

I can understand why there would be  some agents unintentionally sending visitors across to the major portals from Twitter, mainly because posting listings onto Twitter is still a relatively new concept for a lot of agents & many agents aren’t aware that they can use a URL shortening service, but when sharing listings on Facebook there’s really no excuse for it.

“URL shortening is a technique on the World Wide Web where a provider makes a web page available under a very short URL in addition to the original address. For example, the page http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=TinyURL&diff=283621022&oldid=283308287 can be shortened to http://tinyurl.com/mmw6lb .” Source: Wikipedia

The URL shortening services are free & most have stats so you can use the shortened URL to measure the response from your Social Media marketing campaigns at the same time.

There are over 100 or more sites to choose from. Here’s just a few of the URL shortening services that make it really simple to link across to a web page on your company website.

tr.im
bit.ly
ow.ly
budurl.com
tinyurl.com
su.pr

Twitter is taking the Australian real estate industry by storm at the moment and I have to apologise about another post on the topic in such short time, but I think this is very important. Whilst its potential to do good is huge like most powerful web applications it has a dark side just waiting to come out and bite you for the wrong reasons. Social networking and the internet in general has allowed a voice for everyone including your biggest critics.

I searched all major real estate groups on twitter to see what they are doing on Twitter and two things really stood out.

LJ Hooker is getting really hammered on twitter right now. As at 8:48pm tonight , the 27th of May, searching “LJ Hooker” on Twitter (http://search.twitter.com) provides a total of 16 results. One of these had no relationship with LJ Hooker Real Estate and four where by LJ Hooker offices themselves. That leaves 11 posts by third parties nad 6 of those were negative damning comments. That’s more than 50%.. hell that’s still nearly 40% of all posts returned being negative. That’s got to ring alarm bells for somebody at LJ Hooker HQ. It may turn out to be an anomaly but they need to monitor it to find out.

Just in case anybody questions the results here are the screenshots.

Click to view the full size screenshot

Another thing that stood out was a campaign being run by a solicitor in Frankston under the twitter name of @frankstonowners (soon to be renamed @baysideowners apparently) who is a “Bayside Homeowners Group.Exposing Bad Practices in the local real estate communities of Frankston (E,N,S), Seaford, Mt Eliza, Patterson Lakes,Carrum & Chelsea”

Click to view the full size

What’s particularly interesting here is that this last post clearly infers that they had to censor their own posts and that those posts might not have been polite or HONEST. That’s a little dangerous and irresponsible don’t you think? I wonder just what the deleted posts contained. Anybody who has used Twitter for 5 min or longer knows that a Tweet’s lifespan is counted in minutes so the damage to somebodies reputation was done well before it was deleted.

The thing that confuses me with this is that Grade 10 maths will teach you that for every property sold OVER the median there will be one sold UNDER the median. Its just impossible to sell every property over the median unless its over last months or last quarters median price and prices are on the rise.

I don’t think any agent in Australia would try to convince you that that the whole industry is a totally full to the brim with saints, but neither do I think every agent in the district of Frankston are shonky. If you give everyone a voice something like this bound to happen.

The best way to monitor your profile, and that of your real estate group is to use a service like Twilert. Watch what people say about you and protect your reputation…. and don’t forget to thank the people that praise you on Twitter as well.

However, ingenious people are finding a mass of different uses for Twitter. We are even building this into our new property platform Zoo Property, so that agents can automatically notify followers of new listings, price changes etc.

I am sure other platforms will do similar things and that’s the beauty of technology, there are a million uses for even what at first seems like a pointless tool and sometimes the company that makes these tools, do not even know what they will be uses for.

Even Google Maps did not even think about what people may do with mashing up the data and now there are millions of websites using mapping in so many unique ways.

Here is an other excellent Ted Talk from Evan Williams