Prepping Your Website for the Busy Season, Part 3: Connecting on Social Media

[This article is the third post of our four-part series on how to prep your website for the busy season. Look for the following posts over the next few weeks to make sure that your website is ready for the rush.]

We’ve already talked about market research for the real estate busy season and how to capture the influx of buyers and sellers online. Now, we’ll talk about something even more important: how to connect with those buyers and sellers on social media.

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Facebook vs Blog: Where Should You Post Your Content?

This is the third installment of the Facebook for Business series.

As the number of businesses using multiple social media platforms continues to grow, the question frequently comes up:  Which content should go where?

Is it Facebook content or blog content?

Is it Facebook content or blog content?

The two platforms that provide the biggest source of confusion are blogs and Facebook. There is a purpose for both, and each is ideal for particular types of content. It is important to understand the intention of each of these channels.

So, should you put your next update in your blog or on your Facebook page?

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8 Ways Facebook can Unlock your Business Potential

social-media-peopleThis post is post #2 of the Facebook for Business Series.

Facebook this, Facebook that… You can talk all day about what you can do with this tool, but before getting into the details of how to use the site, we should first establish why to use it.

There are a number of areas where this social networking platform can help your business on and offline. Here are 8 reasons why you should take advantage of them.

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Filtering Noise from Twitter

A Boeing 747-400 passes close to houses shortl...

Can you have too many followers?

10, 50, 100, 500? There is surely a finite amount of conversations any one person can follow and how well relationships can develop by “drive-by” remarks. It is also true of people following you. How do you provide good value to say a thousand people that follow you?

From a business point of view it is sensible to maintain a smaller volume of followers that are truly interested in your business to keep people engaged and vice versa. The best way to achieve this is to grow organically, which is often a good maxim in business. With the use of APIs (application programming interface) that artificially generate lists of friends you risk becoming a spammer. Much like all interaction with the web it is perhaps wiser to focus on good contributions in your local or national community with content that people want to hear about rather than empty tweets that will often get lost among all the other noise.

Relationship building has become the currency of social media and like any relationship needs to be cultivated, therefore putting a marketing hat on and talking “at” people is not going to cut it in this medium and there won’t be much value gained.

What do you think? Leave your comments.

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The Value of Real Estate Video-Bios and Testimonials

_DSC00924Image by gamerscoreblog via Flickr

In a new era of ‘social’ media and more direct communication with buyers, it’s important to remember to be sociable without the appearances of a hard sell. Realtors are very much used to the meet-and-greet with prospective clients so a natural extension of this is to display these skills on the web.

When we here at Union Street Media talk to our Real Estate clients, we frequently hear that before the dominance of real estate websites they received many more direct calls from perspective clients. These days, they say, there are so many more barriers before that initial phone call happens. Many potential clients want to avoid the pressure of a face to face meeting and are more inclined to make contact via email and contact forms. In this sterile online environment, the opportunity for the broker to display his or her knowledge and personality is limited, thus reducing their direct impact on the buyer. In effect, there is so much more run-around before the broker and buyer actually meet and make a personal connection. This is where the video-bio comes in. If used correctly, the video bio can break down these communication barriers to get across the knowledge and personality that you just can’t achieve through email.

We are proud to present our own video bio for Brian Boardman here, which we produced in-house. Clearly comfortable in front of a camera, you get to see a more personable view of him and not just a slick advertisement.

What are the advantages to video bios?

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