I’m a fan of silly things – they usually make me smile , but sometimes I end up just scratching my head and wondering why people do silly things when they don’t intend to. And more and more frequently I see people doing sill things in social spaces.

Your community ( or audience, or market) needs to be the prime consideration when you write or say things, so I am stunned  by many real estate people who  think their audience needs to be interested in the things they want them to be interested in. I reserve  ReReflections for the comments on the real estate industry that are so peculiarly mine that I ‘m not sharing them over at AgentGenius. My social media thoughts are either published there or at www.smminstitute.com or www.buzzbuilderz.com. My blog posts that might be of interest to consumers find their way to either MovePhilly or C21AgVoices. Not because I want my writings to be hard to find, but because I want to be saying things that are relevant to specific readers.

It not a new phenomenon but before the advent of social media, we needed to be present to hear real estate agents say silly things. For example, an agent might tell a client whose listing was expiring “You can’t list your property with someone else – I’ve really spent a lot of time working on it”.  Why does the seller care? Their property isn’t sold and their needs are not being met. and they still needed to sell the property.  A more relevant tactic would have been to give them a reason to stay listed that made sense. Perhaps a discussion of their pricing and marketing position combined with a comparison of the marketing efforts  of the current and prospective real estate companies.  It might not have convinced the client to extend the listing, but at least the conversation would have been relevant instead of simply self-centered.

Today, poorly informed  agents who use social networks to broadcast commercial messages make their lack of thought a public spectacle. The “Facebook listing” is an iconic example of abuse.  With listings reiterated in thousands of places through IDX feeds and listing syndication, putting listing information or open house information in a social environment demonstrates not only a lack of concern for the other members of your community, but a lack of respect for your “friends”.

By demonstrating lack of relevance in your content, and a disregard for the social context, you demonstrate disrespect for your ‘friends’  that results in a dismissal of your message and a reduction in your online relevance .

Recently, I saw an interchange on Facebook that went like this:

When I read this he sounds like a multi-level-marketer talking about “income potential” . No one cares what you make (unless you’re paying their bills) – they care about things that impact them or your relationship with them. Not to mention the fact that the whole response might have been better placed as a message rather than a wall post.

And while we’re talking about advertising disguised as social interaction – how about this;

Where is the engagement in this blind solicitation? Who could be silly enough to think that this person cares about their career ? This could easily have been lifted from a bus bench billboard – is that what we perceive our social network values?

I think that talking about work in social settings can be appropriate , just as it would be in face to face settings. For example, you might say in a social setting that you had a tough time working with sellers to obtain a listing, but you probably wouldn’t whip out a flyer for the property and give it to the guests.  If we could just take a moment to think about whether we would do something in person that we’re about to do on-line, it might really improve the quality of our communications, and the bonds we have wth our communties,

I love the book “The 22 Immutable Laws of Marketing“.

I like it because it doesn’t try to be more than it is, it makes sense, its a quick read, and each time I read one of the 22 laws, I have a Duh moment.
One of the 22 laws is Marketing Rule # 3 The Law of the Mind which says;
“It’s better to be first in the mind than to be first in the marketplace”

The books uses examples like Dumont (first commercial television set) Duryea (first automobile) and Hurley (first washing machine) to indicate that being first to the marketplace with something is not as important as being the first association in the consumer’s mind.

To me real estate related examples come to mind like Red Carpet (first real estate franchise) who lost the battle to become first in the consumer’s mind to an upstart company named Century 21 that took the idea and became almost synonymous with real estate in the consumer’s mind.  Or another great real estate related example is Realty Executives, the first 100% concept franchise, which was quickly overshadowed by the second to the market first in the mind positioning of ReMax. Does that mean that the second company to seek a position has some advantage? I don;t think that’s the case. It merely seems that since marketing (IMHO) is basically about perception, the battle for the mind of the consumer will take precedence over the battle to be first in the marketplace.

Traditionally the battle for the consumers mind was fought with the ultimate business weapon – money. Cash spent to build resources to capture the attention, interest and desire of the intended market. Today, with the advent of Social Media, I think that this weapon might be challenged by content. Though content doesn’t come without cost (in time or some other resource) it can be much more affordable than ad campaigns or print marketing materials, allowing smaller brokerages ( a relative term – most brokerages are larger than some and smaller than others)  to compete with companies that are much larger and may have more resources. The size of the company behind the Blog or website is not immediately evident to the consumer, and clever positioning may prove more effective than a large budget. So go forth and lay your claim to the mind of your customer or client. Become their first choice  for relocation, or foreclosures, or short sales, or for a specific price range or age group or geography, because you provide the best source of trusted information to them in the manner they want to receive it, and reap the benefits of your victory for the battle of their mind.

A year ago I had a vague understanding that there was something out there called Blogging that was creating a stir in the real estate world.

I’m a pretty techie type of guy so I found Blogger and created a small Blog that I named MovePhilly, but frankly, after a couple of posts I felt like a guy in a room talking to himself and I stopped writing. I guess without positive feedback, and no road map to eventual success, I just wasn’t interested enough to support the time and effort it took to think of things to say in print on a regular basis.

At NAR’s Professional Standards Committee, we had been discussing the applications of the Code of Ethics to internet marketing, and Blogging kept being brought up. There was a substantial amount of writing going on out there , and it seemed that there was little understanding of what , if anything, we should do to keep the Code relevant to this new method of communication. At a meeting in Chicago earlier this year, the Interpretations and Procedures sub-committee of the group listened to a presentation by Liz Luby and Jim Duncan who made a presentation about the real estate blogging community. They showed us their sites, and national opinion sites like agentgenius and NarWisdom.

We left the meeting and I began to read some of the blogs. Soon I was commenting on what I considered inaccuracies on some statements. Soon I was involved in a lengthy argument with another commentator, and the next thin I knew I was writing. Through this journey I was being exposed to a whole new world of interactive websites populated by large numbers of real estate professionals and consumers who didn’t move in the larger physical circles of meetings and association groups that I had become accustomed to over the years.

As I traveled back and forth to visit with my son and daughter-in-law in California over the next few months, I began to evangelize about this new marketing medium and its immense impact on my business. After 37 years in the business I had less then 500 mentions of my name on Google. After less then six months, I had over 15,000 mentions of my name on Google. In addition, I had been hired for several consulting opportunities (that came directly from social media marketing), had re-connected with a friend from 35 years ago, had consumers contact me to list and buy property,  and had been interviewed by local and national media about real estate and social media.  In addition, I had the oportunity to participate in several potential business arrangements. This was an astounding amount of results for a very short period of time.

I had found a new type of world wide web – the web effect created by linking interactive sites where an online presence could be built quickly and  inexpensively. The world of WEB 2.0 (or in our industry the RE.NET).  This was a place where every professional needed to be in some manner.

So why weren’t there more people in this arena?  The effort to do the  research on where you wanted to be, how you wanted to be presented to the public, and how you wanted your online presences to interact and support each other was immensely time consuming.People just didn;t know how to bridge the gap between Web 1.0 and Web 2.0, or what to do when they go there.  The time to find all the sites, let alone register on all of them can be immense. Busy agents have the time to teach themselves even if they had the inclination.

It was when my son Hal broached the idea of creating a free lance marketing company to serve the real estate community that BuzzBuilderz was born. We created a short cut to insert agents and companies directly into Web 2.0? We designed an interlacing relationship of Web 2.0 sites to give a turn key solution to the agent?  BuzzBuilderz was a simple concept. For a nominal flat fee for we provide an agent with a ready to utilize Web 2.0 platform. An easy to drive marketing program that they could operate at whatever speed they desired. I knew it worked from my own experience.And I knew that it didn’t take much time. All I needed to do was to learn some simple short cuts that had huge impact – things anyone could do while they searched the MLS, or read their daily industry news.

Instead of spending lots of time and money on the same marketing that real estate people had been doing for the last century, I now had a free marketing machine that created signs pointing at my business, that never go away. every time I did something, I wasn’t sending out something that was being used once by one customer, I was creating a perpetual marketing machine that kep tgetting larger and larger and larger.

Not only had I received referrals, earned, consulting fees, connected with old friends ,clients, and consumers in only 6 months,  I was enjoying myself meeting new people and learning about new applications of technology! And I had access to all of this for little or no cost.The experience was terrific -

So now we’re prepared to share that experience. Please visit us at BuzzBuilderz as we try to mesh the world of real estate I grew up in with the newer technology being adopted by agents and brokers all over the country. Maybe we can enhance your online presence a little.

]]> http://rereflections.com/2008/09/17/making-the-most-of-your-marketing/feed/ 234 http://rereflections.com/2008/09/11/building-your-buzz/ http://rereflections.com/2008/09/11/building-your-buzz/#comments Thu, 11 Sep 2008 14:57:34 +0000 Bill http://rereflections.com/?p=38  

Social Media is not organized. Its organic and exciting, and confusing to most new participants. Real Estate agents and companies know that they should be Blogging, just like they knew they needed a database in the 19990s and their own web site at the start of this century. And like the databases and the web sites, they go  out to get them without a clear idea of what they’re supposed to do with them once they’ve set them up.

Even if they start to read blogs, and get an idea of what they might choose to write about there is still the issue of choosing a platform to start writing. Do they go to ActiveRain or Blogger or WordPress? Do they take the simplest platform or the one that is most flexible? Do they buy an area through a vendor seeling local or city blogsites or do they strike off on their own and take the time to build their brand?  The very variety of choices create additional confusion in the minds of the neophyte, and even the pros like PoppyD  of Agent Genius make mistakes in their strategies (as evidenced in this post on AgentGenius).

Additionally daunting are the issues of analyzing the Blog traffic, understanding the interconnection of various media sharing sites, Social networks, Social Bookmarks, and feed aggregators. And finally, there is the considerable amount of time it takes to create and then upload  consistent profiles , photos, logins and passwords on all of these sites.

So a busy agent do who doesn’t have the time to invest in the set up of the basic social media package seems to be at a substantial disadvantage – at least they are if they haven’t found the services available at BuzzBuilderz , a new company set up by my son Hal and myself.

My son Hal is an actor and  copywriter in Los Angeles who has written a wide variety of web based copy as well as shows and scripts for the entertainment industry, including treatments for Lou Gosset Jr.  A Cum Laude Graduate of Syracuse University, Hal has the insights of youth and the formal training to assist any professional in their entry to the world of Social Media.  Using my experience in social Media, and capitalizing on the mistakes I made and the lessons I learned in moving from Web 1.0 into the world of Web 2.0, we have designed a low cost, high impact method for agents to make ther own transition.

One flat fee entitles a BuzzBuilderz client to a marketing interview which is then used to create appropriate profiles for different sites like LinkedIn and Facebook, along with the shorter profiles needed for other social media sites. The BuzzBuilderz team then registers the client on 40 different interrelated social media sites, posting their photo or avatar, completing their profiles, linking their websites or blog, and setting up the analytics for the client to use.  If the client provides their email list, BuzzBuilderz will also create the core of their Social network on each of these sites.

A quick start manual with ideas on how to maximize the exposure provided by these sites with a minimum of effort, including isdeas on various blog topics completes the program, and the Web 1.0 agent is now the proud owner of a complete Web 2.0 platform, all ready to take out for ride in the new world of social media.