An online survey, conducted by Postling, of more than 500 real estate professionals in the USA has found:[tweetmeme]

• 84% of real estate agents use social media.
• 79% use Facebook and 48% use Twitter.
• Most (55%) feel comfortable using social media, while 26% are only somewhat comfortable.
• Agents are missing opportunities by not using video for property marketing.
• 29% of internet searches result in a prospect contacting an agent.
• 45% of searches lead to a prospect walking through an open for inspection.
• Real estate agents are ahead of other industries in the use of Facebook but they’re behind in the use of Twitter and WordPress.

These stats demand agents rethink their web and video strategies.

I have no pity whatsoever for Gerry Harvey. In my view he’s arrogant and out of touch.

It’s a view I formed in about 2000. At the time I was studying an Internet unit at Curtin for my MBA. Our assessment was a presentation about Gerry Harvey’s stand on the Internet. We played a clip of him being interviewed on a current affairs TV shows. His attitude was that the net wasn’t going to amount to a hill of beans. No, I’m not going to rush out and build an online retailing presence, he said. In fact I’m going to leave that to one of our franchisees. Then he went on to say that he’d keep an eye on it but he didn’t expect that he’d need to do anything.

Gerry moved too late. Way too late.

But it seems that he still doesn’t get it. He told The Age that the abuse had been particularly nasty on social media sites and blogs.

You might have got a nasty phone call or a letter back in the old days but now anything slightly controversial, these people, whoever they might be, they go for you zealously and with hatred all over Twitter, he said.

If you are a CEO of a company and you speak out and then the board gets involved… it is suicidal. Because of my profile, I then get all these threats and people home in on me.”

What he appears not to realise is that “these people, whoever they might be” are Australians just like me. “They” include me. “They” are his country mates. “They” think, have opinions and know how to write.

Perhaps it’s time for Gerry to stop being so arrogant. Perhaps it’s time for him to listen to what people are saying. For “they” aren’t expressing hate but rather a frustration that big business simply isn’t listening.

The tables have turned Gerry.

[tweetmeme]

Here’s how I layout a Twitter background. It gives displays well on smaller screen sizes while the using Twitter’s background color to make the image look bigger on larger screens.

I should point out that the [background area] will be, in the main hidden behind the Twitter feed area so don’t put anything important in there. Keep the important stuff inside the [image area].

It’s been a big week in social media. And there was no bigger story than the launch of the new Old Spice ads. Of course it helped that the star of the show was by all accounts hot (is there a bit of man-crush at work here?) and the ads were witty and cleverly crafted. Jonathon Crossfield argues that ‘Are you influential‘ is the big question facing online marketers. The clear answer is Old Spice has influence in spades.

Of course it helps if the star of the show has the body of Adonis and…I digress.

What got the marketing world all aflutter was the way Old Spice tapped into social media. It must have been tempting for Old Spice to produce a couple of commercials, hit the airwaves and hope some kids sent it to YouTube.

They didn’t.

Old Spice jumped on the front foot. Through their @oldspice Twitter account, Facebook page and YouTube channel they invited the public to pose questions to Isaiah Mustafa. And that’s where the fun begins. The creative team then got busy creating 185 video responses, each cleverly written and completely personalised. They cranked out one every seven minutes.

And then just as fast as it started it ended. There final tweet said simply:

Well friends, like all great things this too must end.http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nFDqvKtPgZo

Women the world over wept. And not a few men.

So where does Old Spice take things from here? No, that’s the wrong question. The real question is where do marketers go from here. Old Spice have set the bar so high that marketers –well this one anyway–is struggling to draw breath. And no that’s not a man crush thing.

It’s as if Old Spice are playing in an entirely different league. To pinch an Aussie Rules phrase it’s like Old Spice have brought their own footy.

Admittedly this ad and the associated social media campaign isn’t cheap. But it’s the thinking behind the campaign that can be replicated by any marketer.

Follow my thinking here.

Real estate agents meet dozens of people every week. Many ask questions others also want the answer to. Why not answer them? Directly. In a personalised way. In front of a video camera. In a way that’s light and easy and maybe even entertaining. And then put them on YouTube and Facebook and Twitter and let your customers and friends become part  of your success.

Now there’s an idea.

Could you become the next Isaiah Mustafa?

According to a recent article on Mashable Real estate professionals are using social media to achieve real results. How are those results being achieved?

Matthew Shadbolt, Director of Internet Marketing at the Corcoran Group says that it’s all about developing relationships. His company’s goal? To “foster a kind of openness and a dialogue where people can feel they can talk to us about the things they are worried about.” It’s a long, long way from Tom Hopkins style trial closes!

On Corcoran’s YouTube channel CEO Pam Liebman answers questions posed to her via Twitter. When asked about her feelings between Facebook and Google her response was: “People find us on Google and we talk to people on Facebook…it’s a real deep way of getting to know our clients and interacting with them.” For Liebman the two platforms are complimentary. Google is where the relationship begins and it’s extended on Facebook.

But Corcoran’s efforts don’t finish with Facebook. Shadbolt proactively leaves local neighbourhood tips on Foursquare and Gowalla for users to find and maintains a highly conversational presence on Twitter.

He avoids pimping company listings though.

While an occasional listing may be appreciated by your social media community, many experts advocate engaging your audience with industry knowledge and an expert perspective, rather than alienating users with useless information. Because there are so many factors that must align to make a listing pertinent to a single customer, such as pricing, location and size, there is a high probability that most listings do not pertain to most people in a given social media audience.

That’s a sentiment shared by James Kimmons who believes that promoting listings on social media is old-thinking:

Just like that would be a stupid thing to do, it’s also not smart to take a budding new marketing medium and permanently damage its ability to promote your business because you keep placing your listings there. Visitors to your Twitter page, Facebook and LinkedIn accounts really don’t want to see every new listing you take…really. Continuing to push them there will only alienate visitors, causing them to leave at some point.

Promote you, your business, and your expertise in your local area real estate market. Do it with market commentary, education and statistics…The “old ways” are causing destructive marketing by real estate professionals in the new Internet world.

The place to promote listings according to Kimmons is on aggregation sites. Here in Australia that includes all the major portals. But equally it means promoting them on the agency web site.

But that’s not all an agency website should do. The Corcoran site includes a variety of Neighborhood Guides that help people new to an area pick where they’d prefer to live. Much of the content comes from external sites.

So how are you building your brand with social media? Do you have a strategy?

How good is the new Hootsuite?!

Since their last upgrade they’ve added:

• A personalised dashboard thanks to their selection of unique themes. Options include the familiar green and blue ‘Classic’, sleek ‘Blue Steel’ – feels a bit like Facebook, or a dark ‘Magnum’ theme (my favourite).
• Hootsuite have Google Analytics “baked in”. I can now overlay tweets with web traffic. That gives me a sense of how my Twitter activity is translating to site visits. I like.
• Geo-location searches. Want to know what people are saying about a subject in your area. Just pop the term in the search box and hit the icon that looks like a cross-hair. Works a treat.
• Drag and drop image uploading. Just drag the image into the message box and it automatically loads with a shortened link.
• Share more on Facebook by including photo thumbnails plus titles, descriptions in wall posts, and view pictures and videos from friends in-stream. Prior to this improvement links sent to Facebook via Hootsuite displayed just the link. No photo, no customisation. Now you get to choose the thumbnail and description before hitting the publish button. Honest to god, it’s gold!
• Share Twitter messages with your network using Twitter’s Retweet tool. This one I don’t like so much as I prefer to add a comments in a retweet. It’s a small price to pay and I understand why they’ve done it. They do allow adding of streams to display retweets to you, by you, and by your followers.
• Display your social streams even faster — using HTML5, HootSuite caches content for immediate recall and less waiting for updates. That just means it’s fast. Time’s money. Money’s time.

Now all I want is a Hoostuite iPad app.

Our home of a decade and a half is soon to go on the market. It’s a stressful time. Choosing agents, sprucing up the gardens, patching, painting and packing. All make for challenging times.

Here in Perth, Western Australia it’s officially the start of autumn. It seems no one has told the weather though. A long, stifling heatwave would have any outsider feeling like it’s the middle of summer.

It’s not.

Soon leaves will start falling out of trees tired from a long summer of growth. The rake and leaf blower will come out of hiding to keep the yard pristine for a merry band of buyers and a host of nosy neighbours.

As much as falling leaves and leaf blowers are synonymous with autumn so is the never-ending chore of keeping friends and follower lists tidy on social networking sites. Neither job is glamorous.

Without regular maintenance gardens become messy and out of control. So do Facebook and Twitter streams.

On Twitter I regularly turn the leaf blower on spammers and folk who are only interested in pimping their eBook or affiliate programme. I clean out the gutters of my Twitter stream by unfollowing inactive accounts. With just a few minutes a day my Twitter garden is clean and tidy.

I keep my Facebook backyard in similar shape. New friends are added to lists – I have about thirty – that allow me to communicate with friends about stuff they’re interested in.

Almost all applications are blocked so my newsfeed only contains updates and news items. I don’t want leaves blowing across my front lawn and I certainly don’t want to see who’s had a psychic reading from Tara the Clairvoyant.

Occasionally I ‘hide’ a friend, a bit like I keep an old saw tucked in the back corner of my garden shed. I recently removed someone from my friends list altogether. They left a pile of spam leaves on my wall. And I take pride in keeping my wall neat and tidy.

Just like my front yard.

Best I stop writing now. I have a hedge to trim.

I recently linked my Facebook fan Page to my Twitter account. The thinking behind the move was simple. First the audiences for both my Page and Twitter accounts are similar making the content of the Page post and tweet relevant in both cases. Second, when I update my Page Facebook creates a tweet giving me one less thing to do. Sounds simple enough, but it’s not.

I imagined that any link contained within the Page post would be sent (probably in shortened form) in the tweet.  Instead Facebook send Twitter a link to the post on the Facebook Page (here’s an example), and not the link posted to the Page.

What this means is that users are taken to a page on Facebook  that contains the original post. From there they must then click through to the article. It’s a long way around.

Facebook may be trying to help Page owners by driving traffic back to the Page post and therefore the Page. I’d like to think that’s the case. A more cynical view is that Facebook is attempting to grab a few extra ad-carrying page impressions. Maybe that’s going too far.  Whatever their reasons it’s a clumsy arrangement that doesn’t work well for the end user.

As of yesterday I’ve unlinked my Facebook Page and Twitter account until they get it sorted out.

Photo credit:

There are no right or wrong answers when it comes to social media marketing. There are plenty of ways to get it right; and wrong. Treat these 10 mistakes as ways to think through your social media tactics. They may even serve as useful guides for your marketing more generally.

Mistake 1 – Don’t listen

Listening is social media skill number one. If you’re not listening to the  community chatter about your company, products or industry your making a big mistake. That mistake will lead to a two-fold risk. First, you risk ignoring legitimate complaints about your service and that can really piss people off. Second, there’s the real risk of missing opportunities to create connections that could generate more business opportunities.

Mistake 2 – Don’t respond

Your Google alert has identified a blog post that’s a scathing attack about the quality of your service. Do nothing and you’ll appear ignorant at best or arrogant at worst. A better course of action is to leave a comment on the post. Optus does that regularly.

Mistake 3 – Be overly sensitive

There are other times when it’s best to let sleeping dogs lie. If you see a tweet and it gets your blood boiling don’t respond. Take a day or two. And a chill pill. If you’re thinking of suing someone about a single tweet think again. Just ask Horizon Realty how their “sue first ask questions later” strategy turned out. When it comes to PR on the Internet suing is rarely a wise strategy.

Mistake 4 – Ignore people who help you

Social media thrives on reciprocity. When someone tweets your blog post or shares your content on Facebook say thanks. Or return the favour. It takes no time at all and builds a bank of goodwill. But if you want to annoy the good folk who are trying to help just ignore them. Pretty soon they’ll go away so you can play in the social media sand pit all on your own.

Mistake 5 – Be unclear about with your intentions

Facebook and Twitter are THE places to waste lots of time. And that’s what will happen if you’re not clear about what you want to achieve. To avoid this mistake connect your social media efforts directly with your business goals. Being clear about your intentions will help you avoid wasting time on networks that don’t add value to your business.

Mistake 6 – Be a fake

If you’re faking it you’re going to be found out so don’t try to be something you’re not. Some of the biggest companies in the world have found this out the hard way. Sooner or later your fake “I became a millionaire in 15 minutes a day” blog is going to be exposed as a sham. The ferocity of the community backlash will be in direct proportion to the degree people felt let down.

Mistake 7 – Don’t put social sharing buttons on your site

If you don’t want your blog posts or articles shared or bookmarked don’t put social sharing buttons on your web pages. If you do want people to share your content – and let’s face it, that’s probably the case – then get them on their pronto. And a Twiiter and Facebook logo on your home page isn’t what I’m talking about. Share buttons. Every page, Now.

Mistake 8 – Use social media as a broadcast medium

Ever walked into a party and used a megaphone to introduce  yourself? Probably not, so why do it on Facebook or Twitter? Let’s face it, advertising is an important part of any marketing budget but please, mix advertising and social media sparingly. If you want to advertise use Google Adwords or Facebook’s advertising platform. Social media works best as a conversation, not a broadcast platform.

Mistake 9 – Focus on the numbers

Anyone can have lots of Facebook friends or Twitter followers. Getting big numbers is easy. Just keep clicking the Add of Follow buttons and soon you’ll have big numbers. But so what? if people aren’t listening. What really counts in social media is relationships. If your message is concealed behind the Hide button or tucked away in a Tweetdeck group what’s the point? Relationships thrive on conversation and deep relationships make good business sense.

Mistake 10 – Be a Lurker

Lurking in social media is like people watching at a party. Sure it may be fun for a while but you’ll be going home alone. That’s no fun. It’s much better fun get known, so get out and start connecting. Say “hi” through a blog comment, the Like button, an @ reply or an email. Whatever you do, don’t lurk.

Mistake 11 – Abandon your Twitter account (or blog or Facebook Page)

Want to look super uncool? Start tweeting, tweet like there’s no tomorrow, then stop. For 6 months. It’s the fastest way to show the world your management team has the attention span of a gnat or they you’re adept at backing the wrong horse. Either way, not a good move.

There they are, the top 10 mistakes to not make in social media marketing. I’ve made several. Be ye not so foolish.

11 Social Media Mistakes That Will Turn Your Brand Into a Train Wreck was originally posted on The Real Estate Marketing Maven

It seems that the growth in visitors to Twitter has stopped in its tracks. At least for the moment. According to Mashable, Twitter’s growth flatlined in May with only a 1.47% increase.

What does this mean?

For a start the decline could be an anomaly. For example, the number of Twitter accounts using desktop clients might be reducing visitor numbers but not interest in the service. If it turns out that way then great. But if it’s not than here’s the risk. According to TechCrunch “80 percent of Twitter accounts have fewer than 10 followers…[and] 30 percent have zero followers”. Put simply there’s between little and nothing keeping the majority of Twitter accounts engaged and active.  And tweeting to followers who are there in name only achieves nothing.

The takeaway?

Sure, use Twitter as a marketing tool, but remember it’s just that, a tool. And it’s one that might need replacing sooner rather than later.