I believe that the most powerful internet marketing strategy for real estate investors ever created on the internet is social media marketing. That’s right. Social media is extremely powerful and one of the easiest marketing strategies you can incorporate into your real estate business.
What is Social Media Marketing?
According to Wikipedia:
Social media is online content created by people using highly accessible and scalable publishing technologies. Social media is a shift in how people discover, read and share news, information and content; it’s a fusion of sociology and technology, transforming monologues (one to many) into dialogues (many to many) and is the democratization of information, transforming people from content readers into publishers. Social media has become extremely popular because it allows people to connect in the online world to form relationships for personal, political and business use.
Social media allows people to connect with each other on levels, otherwise not possible. It allows people to get away from the usual commercial marketing messages — interruption marketing — that we see on the TV, and closes the barriers that usually exist between the user and the provider. Here’s the best part: social media allows people to build relationships that can turn into something bigger, much bigger.
Some of the most popular social media networks are facebook.com, twitter.com, linkedin.com, youtube.com and yes, biggerpockets.com. When you sign up on these sites for your free account, remember to not abuse the network.
If people use social media to get away from commercialism, how do we use it for marketing?
Here’s how you should look at social media. (I learned this analogy from Perry Belcher). When you go into an existing social media network, think of it as going to a block party. When you go to a block party, you don’t know anyone there, right?
Therefore, you go up to them and introduce yourself along the lines of: “Hi My name is Peter Kolat. It’s very nice to meet you.” You don’t go up to them and say: “Hi, my name is Peter Kolat. I am a real estate investor. Do you know anyone who needs to sell a house?”
Here’s the Big Secret to Social Media Marketing
Build relationships, build relationship and build relationships.
Don’t sell your products and/or services right off the bat. Otherwise, people who are already there will likely ignore what you say. Instead, you need to be a servant — help people out, provide great advice and minimize the amount of selling. People use social media to get away from selling.
Believe me, if you just do what I just shared with you, people you meet will ask you to tell them what you sell. That, my friends, makes selling your products and services much easier that trying to force your product or service down their throat.
Here’s one more piece of advice for you; When you use social media marketing, be iton facebook, twitter or biggerpockets, keep your commercial content to about 10-15% at most! The rest of the content you share with people within your network should be fun, educational, helpful and something that will actually BENEFIT the network, and the users that are linked to you within that network.
I hope this short article has been helpful. I strongly recommend you use social media in your business because it can take your business to the next level. I know that for a fact because several of my students have already experienced this phenomenon. If you have any questions, post them here within the comments and I’ll either try to answer them here or write another article about it next week.
One last thing, if you have any questions, I’m pretty active here on BiggerPockets. Send me a message and I’ll be more than happy to help you.
To Your Success,
Peter Kolat
Related posts:
- Social Network Marketing: Can You Have Too Many Profiles?
- How To Use Your Social Media Profile To Increase The Search Engine Rankings Of Your Real Estate Website
- How to Create an Effective Business Social Networking Profile
- Some New Publicity for the New BiggerPockets Real Estate Social Network
- Do You Want To Know The Most Powerful Word In Real Estate Investing?
Article Author: Peter KolatPeter has written 31 articles for us.
Visit Peter's Website: http://www.realestateids.com
Peter Kolat is a Real Estate Internet Marketing genius. He's been consulting for many real estate gurus in the real estate industry. His Free Internet Marketing Techniques helped many real estate investors & agents dominate their real estate markets on the internet. No wonder he's been called the "Polish Pulverizer."
Joshua Dorkin
{ 12 comments… read them below or add one }
Good article. Drives me crazy when I get spammed by realtors or whomever using social media to just blast their products and services. I am almost certain that this tactic has never worked for them, so I wonder why do they keep on doing it.
Guess they never learned the secret that you layout here so quietly, BUILD RELATIONSHIPS, BUILD RELATIONSHIPS, BUILD RELATIONSHIPS!
It must be like everything else in life. The easy place to hide something is right in front of people. And the secret of social media is obviously relationship building on a massive scale, but guess that is just too obvious.
Thanks for the insight!
.-= Freddie Taylor´s last blog ..Get Rich on the Government’s Dime =-.
I have been using social media since college, I started out creating Friendster account. I think it’s already obsolete. Twitter and Facebook are the “in” thing. I believe social media is really a powerful marketing tool today. Almost all have accounts in this social media sites.
Thanks Freddie. You are so right. A lot of real estate professionals make this mistake and it just does not work all that well. You are a living proof. It drives you crazy!
I appreciate your comment and love how you answer the question
Remember, it all start with a relationship.
To Your Success,
Peter Kolat
.-= Peter Kolat´s last blog ..How To Take Advantage of Google To Find More RealEstate Leads =-.
Peter, thank you encouraging social media relationships versus spamming!
Social media is a double edged sword, it can turn me just as quickly as it can get me excited about working with someone. it’s pretty easy to tell the difference between the people “who get it” and those who don’t!
.-= Build Bankroll´s last blog ..House #14 – Close Escrow 8/5 =-.
I’ve used social media marketing on some of my real estate projects and I must say that it works beautifully. Especially when I manage to get small communities talking about the value of their property with their neighbours – online!
.-= Dalesh Kowlesar´s last blog ..Another Open Source Project =-.
Great Comment Dalesh,
Now that’s what I call power of social media marketing. When you get people talking about the neighborhood and your property, you’ll have a lot easier job selling to.
Heck, you can even use it in your marketing saying that people are talking about your property ON THE INTERNET!
How’s that for social proof!
To Your Success,
Peter Kolat
.-= Peter Kolat´s last blog ..How To Take Advantage of Google To Find More RealEstate Leads =-.
This is so true, build relationships with everyone from Facebook to Twitter to LinkedIn – the new social media – web 2.0. Great article!
I couldn’t agree more. Social media is really creating buzz right now as the most effective ways in internet marketing. It is important to build relationships, don’t talk business right away but instead like what you said, help them first, give advise…etc
Great post… It really is all about building
relationships. It’s so funny how people are
forgetting this.
They are just out spamming each other trying
to sell people. People don’t like to be sold… build
rapport and they will be attracted to your stuff.
Great value here:)
.-= Eric Goldstein´s last blog ..Centerpointe Review: Learn To Meditate Like A Zen Monk =-.
Thanks for such a great follow comment Eric. You are totally right and I bet you are saying that from experience.
It amazes me how building relationships, especially in the real estate business, can help you become more successful.
To Your Success,
Peter Kolat
Nice post Peter.
I think that the perceived problems that exist with social media are the same perceived problems that exist with face to face interactions, and it is this:
Most people do not want to be sold to. They want to feel that they are making a decision to by based exclusively upon their own independent thinking. If they feel pressured by sales people, they are likely to get their back up, and put up their guard. Good sales people understand this, and take an approach that allows the buyer to come to the final decision by themselves.
The same can be said for social media. If the social media advertising is very subtle and tactful, it can be very effective. In this circumstance, people do not feel that they are being sold at all. An example of this is selling through social proof.
At the end of the day, I am a big fan of social media, and the powerful impact it can have.
Regards,
Neil Uttamsingh.
.-= Neil Uttamsingh´s last blog ..When was the last time you got a personalized hand written note? =-.
That’s a great point Neil. I like the way you laid it out for us here. However, great salesmen sell in a way that a person feels like they made the decision himself/herself whereas the salesman made the decision for them.
If one can master a skill of selling without selling where he/she makes the other person feel like they made the decision themselves and they feel good about the decision, that person will be extremely successful in his/her life.
To Your Success,
Peter Kolat
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