Social Media, Blogs & Twitter: Oh My!

19 Reasons You Should Blog And Not Just Tweet

Great post on why you should not simply focus on one network in your SocNet strategy at the detriment of other networks.

Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn…they all have good aspects in trying to connect and re-connect with friends, family, past clients and soon-to-be clients.  The one thing they all have in common, other than being able to absorb a LOT of your time, should be your…

Blog.

Your Blog is Where Your Heart Is

Yep, I’m saying that you should treat your blog like you would your home.  In thinking of your blog as your home, let’s stretch the analogy a little further.

You invite a bunch of “followers” to your home for a get together.  They drive to your home, come in through the front door, admire your taste in [fill in whatever hobbies float your boat], grab a drink and head out to the deck where the grill is working its magic.

Once you’ve gathered a few folks in this manner, you simply have a good time.  Make sure everyone’s comfortable, the conversation is good and the food and drink are plentiful.

5.  Secret everyone knows:  most of Twitter is just linking to blogs and content on the open web.  Being the end product people are actually interested in and focus their attention on is where your ideas will be studied carefully, not in the cacophony of Twitter.

Easy, right?

Unfortunately, what some folks on SocNets think they should do is usher you directly into the dining room, whip out a white board and begin to sell you the latest and greatest widget designed to get you your heart’s desire.

Where’s the warm up?  What happened to “folks don’t want to be sold, they want to buy?” If I’m in someone’s house, I want to know more about THEM, not their product or service!

As you engage your SocNets, remember that you should have a place where folks from any SocNet can learn more about you and how you do business.  A blog is perfect to showcase yourself and your knowledge of your marketplace.  In addition to being able to showcase your service and knowledge, folks will see how you handle yourself; they will get to see a lot of who you are just by how you communicate and what you communicate.

We’re Real Estate Agents, Dang it!

We are social by nature.  We have a deep rooted desire to be out and about, chatting with folks around town and learning who needs to move.  We get the idea of not pushing our services, because we don’t like having services pushed on us.

With that in mind, here are a few tips to integrate your website and/or blog with your SocNet presence:

Do’s

• Be yourself
• Fill out your SocNet profiles with links to your site and/or blog, noting that you are a real estate agent (Dang it!);
• Share information that is relevant, deemed interesting (stufftotweet.com) and is of interest to you;
• Periodically mention in your SocNet chats about being in real estate
• Connect with folks around the country – when they think of someone moving to or from your area, often times, you’ll be the only real estate agent they know in your marketplace (works well with other agents and lenders across the internet)
• Be sure to compliment, engage and converse with others across your SocNets (re-tweeting on twitter, for example, is a great way to engage with others on twitter)

Don’t

• Constantly push your services or the fact that you are an agent (people want to buy not be sold, remember?)
• Be someone you are not
• Blather to the SocNets with no direct purpose (is it really a conversation if no one responds?)
• Reveal intimate/personal stuff via SocNets – remember, the Google has a better memory than an Elephant
  • And really? How creepy if you knew THAT about your real estate agent? eek!
• Complain