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Self-assessment on today’s social media presentation

May 20, 2014 by Peter Fletcher

Today I presented a social media marketing course to around 120 members of the Peard Real Estate group. As a group they’re well disciplined and professional and come across as more serious and earnest than some of the other groups in the industry. This was my first social media marketing presentation in over 3 years. In that time I’ve been presenting courses on social media policy so this was a welcome return to where it all began.

Here’s my assessment of my performance.

Tell more stories

Whenever I tell stories I can feel the crowd leaning in. Some smile, others nod. The room is always quite. Sometimes there’s laughter, at other times gasps of fear. That’s when I know the message is getting through. But I don’t do enough of it. Every point I make should be accompanied by a story. My job is to find stories that make a point.

Change the way I explain the content quadrant

I created a quadrant that shows how content affects thought leadership. It’s a great model but it’s far too theoretical. Maybe I could turn it into four different stories that are much more visual. The stories I told to demonstrate the four quadrant positions worked quite well. With more thought that quadrant could make a deep impact.

Add more content

From the outset I was worried that I didn’t have enough content. In the first 1.5 hours I covered 41 of 98 slides. In the final 90 minutes I covered the remaining 57 slides. Toward the end I was pushing to get it all covered but I finished spot on time.

Include a section about Facebook advertising

I made the point that social media should be used to create advocates pretty well but this audience is real estate agents and they’re very pragmatic. It would’ve been helpful to include a section about Facebook ads to show agents how they can use Facebook to build their profile. I should also make the point that advocacy influences the advocate as well as much as those who they influence. Creating advocates has a useful byproduct of producing prospects from those advocates.

Drop the section on Twitter

I started the day with a session designed to get people on Twitter. It came across as disorganised and the fact that so many people tweeted that it was confusing showed that it was. I’ll drop this section for next time.

Be less idealistic

I could’ve shown people ways to make their social media maintenance more efficient by using software such as Hootsuite.

Tighten the group interactions, have less Q&A

Q&A is great in a small group but doesn’t work so well in a big group. I got away with it today but there were times that the room got a bit loose.

Overall I give myself a 6.7/10.

Who owns the client data in your business?

March 11, 2014 by Peter Fletcher

Agents who don’t take their data security seriously risk being left for dead. Image: Arcturus Aldebaran http://www.flickr.com/photos/42973403@N07/7293651626/

For too long now, too many real estate agents have avoided the question of who owns customer data.

It’s time for that to change.

It seems that agents have no problem protecting data that’s locked in their trust accounting software but everything outside that is left to chance.

If that sounds like you it’s time to answer the following questions.

Who owns the customer data collected in the sales admin process after a sales reps sells a house to a close friend or relative?
What about when they sell a house to a Facebook friend? Will you allow them to remain Facebook friends or LinkedIn connections after they leave?
Is every contact the sales rep enters into the company CRM now company property? If so, how will you account for the sales rep using their personal mobile phone, performing the action out of ‘normal’ working hours, and entering the data using their own computer and internet connection?
Do you have any claims of ownership over work-related data and communications performed during work hours, using work equipment via Facebook, LinkedIn or Twitter?
Who owns the sales reps Outlook contacts that are stored on your server?
Who owns the data that the sales rep brings to your agency on an Excel spreadsheet? Do you – or the rep for that matter – even have the right to use it under the Privacy Act?
What happens when a sales rep adds a client or prospect on Facebook or LinkedIn? Can they still communicate with that client after they leave?
Will you allow the sales rep to upload the Outlook contacts database to Facebook, LinkedIn or Twitter so they can add their contacts as social connections?

Regardless of your answers to these questions, it’s important – no, make that essential – that these issues are addressed and made clear in your employment contract.

And once you’ve done that, make it clear that you mean what you say through training and through your actions.

For example, if your policy is that all customer data collected by the sales rep in the course of their employment is company property, don’t then allow them to import into your CRM system customer data that they’ve brought from their previous agency.

That just makes you a hypocrite and makes a mockery of your data policy.

Have I got you thinking? If so, share this post with your agent friends and tart a conversation that will make a difference.

Gerry, it’s time to start listening

January 7, 2011 by Peter Fletcher

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.

Twitter backgrounds: A rough layout guide

December 20, 2010 by Peter Fletcher

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].

Could you become an Isaiah Mustafa?

July 16, 2010 by Peter Fletcher

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?

How real estate agents are using social media to achieve outstanding results

June 29, 2010 by Peter Fletcher

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?

Gerry, it’s time to start listening

Twitter backgrounds: A rough layout guide

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