Having a great LinkedIn profile is crucial if you want to develop business relationships within this medium.
Understanding keywords and being found is just part of what it takes to have a top LinkedIn profile. Discover 18 powerful ways……………..Read More
Check out the infographic below (albeit a couple of years old now) to see how important it is for real estate agents to have a social media presence.
Via: Fixr [thanks Flixr for the infographic]
One can only assume that social media has become even more important.
By Sorav Jain
Here’s food for thought when you run out of things to tweet about:
Following these tips will make your brand interesting on Twitter, and people will want to participate and connect with you. Over time, this will bring you many friends, followers, analysts, well wishers, prospects and business leads. What more could you ask for!
Get More LinkedIn Strategies here
I received this post from industry expert Tom ‘Big Al’ Schrieter today.
While his expertise is in the network marketing field, do you think his comments apply to other industries?
Here’s his post:
“Social networking is huge. Millions of network marketers effectively avoid rejection, presentation, and personal contact with prospects by playing pen pal and moving pixels on their computer screens.
That’s the good news.
The bad news is that their hours and hours of activity attract and target late-night computer-addicted, socially-challenged, lonely people. They end up emailing and playing pen pal with freebie-seeking, something-for-nothing, lottery-mentality prospects.
And even if they do occasionally sponsor one of these prospects, their new distributor will want to duplicate exactly how they were enrolled, finding other similar prospects on the Internet.
So how do we break this cycle?
One way is to take a viewpoint that the Internet is a great way to make the initial contact. Then, get back to network marketing basics by talking to the prospect personally by telephone, Skype, or in person. Network marketing is a person-to-person business.
Think of the Internet as a way to meet new people from around the world, 24 hours a day. Then, as soon as you can, get people off the Internet chat, autoresponders, landing pages, etc. – and into a real “live” quality conversation”
How do you agents spend their days? In the real world or reality, virtual world?
Let me know by leaving a comment below.
Thanks
Article by Tracy Gold
LinkedIn is a powerful tool for making business connections—but it is just that, a tool. Even the most active users miss on some simple ways to optimize the way they use LinkedIn. This was true for me—I recently attended a seminar on LinkedIn by Colleen McKenna, and learned a few ways to kick my LinkedIn presence up a notch.
Now, I’m not going to give away Colleen’s secret sauce (you’ll have to head to one of her seminars for that) but below are a few tips from both my experience and Colleen’s talk on how to make the most of your LinkedIn presence.
1. Think about your goals. Why are you on LinkedIn? To find new employees, partners, and contractors? To be found? A mix? Your goals should drive your entire presence.
2. Post a picture. Please. Of your face. You should have a professional looking headshot as your LinkedIn photo so people can put a name to a face. If you’re uncomfortable with recruiters or prospective clients seeing your picture next to your professional credentials (a valid concern), you can change your privacy settings so only your connections can see your photo.
3. Use LinkedIn to remember names. LinkedIn can help you with offline networking too—simply checking out someone’s profile after meeting them at a networking event, even if you don’t connect, can help you remember their name and what they do. This is another reason why having a picture is important—it will help people remember you.
4. Make the most of your headline. Colleen really stressed this one—your headline does not have to be your job title alone. Job seekers, use “Talented [Your Profession] Seeking New Opportunity” not “Unemployed.” Students, use “Aspiring [Your Profession] Seeking Internship.” not “Student at [Your University].” Keep it concise, but make sure it communicates what you do and what your skills are. Here’s mine:
5. Post statuses. Updating your status gives you visibility on your connections’ LinkedIn home page. If you have found something online your business connections would like, or have good news to share about your work, spread the word by posting it on LinkedIn.
6. Write a rich but concise summary. Your summary should be about you, not your company—don’t just copy and paste the “about” page of your employer’s website. Your profile should be about what you do at your company, not what the company does as a whole. Tip: use concrete details like results you have generated and tasks you do on a daily basis to show people how awesome you are, not tell them.
7. Explore LinkedIn applications. Colleen encouraged us all to add Amazon’s Reading List application to our LinkedIn profiles. I was skeptical—I wasn’t sure how the fiction I love would be relevant to my professional connections. However, Colleen got more comments on this list, she said, than anything else in her profile. Sure enough, a few hours after I added Reading List to my profile, in came a message from a connection. She had written her senior thesis on Steinbeck and wanted to know what I thought of East of Eden. If you’re not a big book person, you can still enrich your profile with apps like Slideshare for presentations, WordPress for blog posts, and any number of others (the directory is here).
8. Add sections to your profile. LinkedIn offers several sections beyond the standards so users can showcase volunteer experience, projects, foreign languages, even test scores. This is especially helpful for young networkers who may not have extensive work experience, but adding more sections can add weight to any profile.
9. Connect with care. Your LinkedIn network is only as valuable as the strength of your connections. For some professionals—like recruiters or salespeople—it is advantageous to connect generously, but personally, I favor being a tad picky. I’d like to think I could recommend—or at least answer questions about—anyone I am connected to on LinkedIn. If you want to connect with someone and think it might be a stretch, be sure to personalize the message you send with the invite to explain why you want to connect—and why this person should want to connect with you.
10. Join and participate in groups. Some groups are full of spam, but others are generally valuable. For example, in the marketing industry, the Marketing Director Support Group is a great place to get and give advice. Do a little research, think back to your goals, and you’ll likely find a group that will help you reach them. If you can’t find a group, just start one!
Article by Mari Smith
If you have not yet converted your Facebook fan page over to the new Timeline design, your page will automatically convert on March 30th, 2012 which is coming up fast. This post covers the majority of basic settings and features you need to know. Even if you’ve upgraded, you’ll find some tips here!
First, review this marked up screenshot for a tour of most of the features — click the image to view full size (you may need to click again on the image on the next page):
Facebook Timeline for Pages – Guide (click to see full size)
One of the biggest feature changes that many businesses are upset about is the removal of a default landing tab. That is, where you can create a custom landing page for non-fans using an iFrame app, and add rich media, an opt-in box and/or a compelling reason to join your fan page. In addition, many businesses made use of the “like-gating” or “fan-gating” feature on these default custom landing tabs where you could entice your fans to click the Like button and then reward them with a special benefit such as a coupon code, or unique content just for fans.
The good news is you can still have custom tabs, plus the like-gating element still functions. You just can’t set a default landing tab. However, each of your apps still has its own unique URL. That means you can drive traffic to any “landing” page you wish – from within Facebook via ads, your profile and other places as appropriate; and from outside Facebook on your website/blog, other social profiles, tweets, email campaigns, email signature files, and so forth.
With the new Timeline design, you’ll notice the generously large cover image at the top of your page. You may find that you care less and less about a default landing tab with this piece of prime real estate that is always visible to fans and non-fans as they land on your page. The dimensions are 851 pixels wide by 315 pixels high. It’s a wonderful place to showcase photographs and graphics pertaining to your brand/business. Personally, I’m very excited about the cover image! The possibilities are endless… even with the tight rules around what content cannot be placed on cover images (see key point #4 below).
To keep you on track with the change, here’s a list of 21 key points about the new Timeline design:
You have a chance to preview your page(s) first, made all the edits you wish, get it just the way you want it, then publish. Look for the preview option at the top of your page in the old design. Or, see a list of your pages here and turn on page preview mode. Before you publish, at minimum just have an attractive cover image loaded.
Your page will automatically convert on March 30. My advise is don’t wait. There really is no strategic advantage to waiting … okay, maybe if you have a really hot custom landing tab with a like-gating campaign that’s going extremely well. Otherwise, go for the upgrade now and lead the way by educating your fans on all the new features.
Dimensions for the large cover image is 851 x 315 pixels. If you upload an image that’s smaller than these dimensions, it will get stretched to this larger size. The image you upload must be at least 399 pixels wide. Facebook encourages you to change your cover image as often as you wish. Newsflash: each time you change your cover image, this posts on to your wall and goes out into the news feed of your fans. You may find the activity itself doesn’t get great Edgerank (visibility score in the news feed). So, what you can do is hide the activity on your wall, then share the new cover image with a call to action in the textual area, e.g. We’re celebrating 10,000 fans today and just changed our cover image in honor of all of You! Click like if you like! 
(To be clear, that message does *not* go ON your cover image itself. You’re posting your cover image on your wall with the message as a description.)
Do not put contact info, calls to action, or arrows pointing to the Like or Share button on your cover image. See the Page Guidelines here. Contact info should go in your about section. The no calls to action rule is likely because Facebook has been very generous with this large piece of real estate … however, the company does not want us to run hogwild with all manner of promotions and campaigns… for free! Those come at a price and are called Facebook ads! And the new Premium Ads and Reach Generator. And, the one I’m most excited about: Offers (that one is actually free to set up, though currently only available to large brands).
Your profile picture is always a square and is displayed at 125 x 125 pixels or 150 x 150 pixels, depending on the size of someone’s screen. The photo you upload must be at least 180 x 180 pixels. Facebook discourage page owners from changing their profile picture that often. This is the primary, instantly-recognizable image that tracks you throughout Facebook wherever your posts go and wherever you comment as your Page.
You can no longer set a default landing tab. Make good use of the cover image, instead (see #3 above) and the three main apps (see #8 below). Plus, drive traffic to whichever tab you wish (see #7 below).
Custom apps all still function, including the fan-gating feature. Each tab/app still has a unique URL so you can drive traffic from inside or outside Facebook to any ‘landing page’ you wish.
Just below your cover image, your ‘tabs’ are now displayed as apps or views. You can have a max of 12, though only four are always on display. The first one is always Photos and cannot be moved. ‘Views’ are Facebook’s default apps or features such as Photos, Events, Likes, Notes, Map. Apps are all third party apps.
You can add a custom thumbnail image to all your apps. The dimensions are 111 x 74 pixels. These are great areas to get creative and add seamless branding, calls to action, and specials. To add/change a custom thumbnail, first expand all apps by clicking the small down arrow to the right of the four app display. Then hover over any app > click the edit pencil > click Edit Settings > click Change next to Custom Tab Image (opens in a new window) > click Change > upload an image. Voila. The image loads and saves right away. (I have noticed bugs with this feature and have often seen other pages’ thumbnails appear… you may need to upload a couple times to get your image to stick!).
My Irish and Scottish friends across the pond have done a super job of their Timeline branding on Social Stars – the image below shows their creative use of the custom app thumbnails. But do check out their cover image, too. It’s one of my favorites!
Custom App Thumbnail Images on Social Stars UK Fan Page
The like button now tuns to “liked” when clicked. Users can HOVER for options, including adding to an Interest List(s). The Liked button is a great new feature as it visually informs fans that they have already liked the page. However, the hover feature and ability to add pages to Interest Lists is very new and really not obvious at all. (See #11 and my next blog post!)
Facebook Liked Button – Options on Hover
Encourage your fans and visitors to add you to an Interest List; let them know which topic is best, e.g. my Page would be best added to a list called Facebook Tips, or Facebook Marketing, or Social Media Marketing. (Interest Lists are brand new as of March 8th. More on the new Interest Lists in an upcoming post! Speaking of lists, please do subscribe to my popular Facebook Experts and Resources list, with 77 people and pages and currently over 800 subscribers.
Got Facebook questions? Come join my community of over 260,000 fans and subscribers! Just click the Subscribe and Like buttons below to connect with me on Facebook!
You can go back in time to add business milestones on your Timeline. When you do, these will post at the right date, and go out into the news feed of your fans and create more visibility and engagement. The full extent of the actual timeline element of the Timeline design is geared toward what Facebook calls “Legacy Brands” – those brands with historical data spanning decades that they’d like to feature.
Page walls now have four filters: Highlights, Posts by Page, Posts by Others, and Friend Activity. There is no way to set the wall to be posts by everyone. The default is always Highlights. In your page settings (Admin Panel > Manage > Edit Page > Manage Permissions), you can choose to not let anyone write on your wall, or to not display Posts by others. However, I recommend that you leave the settings on to allow everyone to write on your wall, everyone can add photos and videos, and show the box for Recent Posts by Others.
Any post made by the Page can be pinned the top of the wall for up to 7 days. I suggest rotating which posts are pinned and not letting any post sit there for longer than 1-2 days. You never know how many repeat visitors are coming to your Page and you want to keep it fresh for them.
Enjoying this post? Tweet to let me know – just click the button below (opens in a popup, you’ll have a chance to see and edit the tweet!):
Page admins can choose to display any post made by the Page or by others as ‘double wide’ – meaning the post spreads across both columns of the Timeline. Hover over a post and click the star icon to highlight.
Posts made by others (fans and non-fans) are in a small box at the top right called Recent Posts by Others. You can scroll in this field without leaving your wall: first click ‘More Posts’ on the lower left of the box and use your mousewheel or the vertical scroll bar. Or click ‘See All’ for a popup box. For viewing and moderating, it’s easier to view these posts on the Posts by Others wall filter, though, as mentioned in #13 above.
You cannot set a default wall view – it’s always Highlights. I’m seeing a few disappointed page owners talk about this. I tend to agree – the new Timeline for Pages design seems to really favor brands and businesses showcasing themselves vs. making it community-focused. However, with creative use of your cover image and changing it regularly, I believe you can build a wonderful culture of mutual respect between you and your fans. (I’m working on a strategy just now to change up my fan page cover image every 1-3 days; I’m experimenting with montages of featured fans which has been received very well by my Facebook community).
Mari Smith – Facebook Page – Montage of Fans
Page Timelines are personalized for each person viewing: every page wall includes ‘friend activity’ at the top right where the person viewing will see one post from the past from a friend (or a Facebook user to whom the viewer has subscribed). Frankly, I think this is a complete waste of valuable real estate and I’m already tiring of seeing old (no-longer-relevant) posts repeatedly dredged up when viewing my own page and/or other pages while logged in as my profile. I hope, on the next feature overhaul, that Facebook removes this section and replaces with something more valuable – or enlarges the Posts by others area! That’s my $0.02!
In addition to the one post displayed at the top right of the wall, any Admin or visitor to your page can view your Timeline wall via the ‘Friend Activity’ filter mentioned in #13 above.
You can now reposition photos shared by you or others on your page: hover and click the edit pencil, then click Reposition photo, then drag the image where you want it, and click Save.
Fans and visitors can now private Message fan admins – you can turn this feature off in your settings but it might be a good idea to leave it on to encourage connection from prospects! You cannot initiate messages as your page; you can only communicate via Messages when someone contacts you first. The one drawback of yet another method of communication is that you may need to add more community managers to deal with the increase in emails. You’d be surprised at how many people start to contact you via your page!
It takes several more clicks to get to the various settings of your Page now. You may have to dig deep to find features that were once just one click away. For example, to view your Hidden Posts (posts flagged as spam by Facebook that are only visible to Page Admins, to the person/page who made the post, and to friends of that person) – previously it was ONE click on the Hidden Posts link under your Wall on the left. Now, it’s FIVE clicks to get to the same place! Click Admin Panel > Manage > Use Activity Log > All (upper right menu) > Spam. From there, hover over the spam icon to the right of any post that is not spam, and click Unmark as Spam.
So, those are 21 key points I’ve compiled. I’m sure there are many more to add – stay tuned for additional posts on the subject of the new Timeline for both Pages and personal Profiles. Meantime, here are even more tips and resources to help you on this journey of mastering the latest round of Facebook changes. (I hope your seatbelt is fastened; it’s been non-stop at Facebook HQ for some time now what with the IPO.)
If you’re brand new to the Timeline design for Pages, this handy video by the Facebook team is well worth the 3.5 minute watch:
Unlike many of Facebook’s past product launches and feature upgrades, the company has outdone itself this time with the comprehensive range of guidance for the Timeline design for pages. The following resources are all from Facebook:
I have spoken to a lot of real estate agents lately. The last few times I have spoken at events, real estate agents have come up to me and asked questions about how they can do a better job of marketing their properties – and themselves – using social media and online marketing.
I should tell you that I have never tried to sell my own home before, either online or offline.
However, I have worked with a few real estate agents and brokers now, and the following suggestions have all been successful to varying degrees in their businesses once we implemented them.
So here is what every real estate agent should be doing with social media:
1. Ride The Facebook Wave.
With around 800 million users in the world – and around 15 million in Australia – to ignore Facebook when designing an online marketing strategy would be pretty silly.
But to engage in Facebook without a plan or to engage in Facebook without any other complimentary ideas would be just as silly.
The Facebook strategy for real estate should comprise of 4 applications: Facebook Pages, Facebook Groups, Facebook Ads and Facebook Places.
Facebook Page
This one is a no-brainer. They are free to set up, have great functionality and usability features, and more than 20 million people connect with one of them every day.
A Facebook Page can be set up for an agency, an agent, or even individual properties that agents are trying to sell.
It’s important that a Facebook Page includes the following features:
* exclusive content for fans and non-fans * engaging content that encourages comments, likes and interactions * uniform branding with your other online content and * lots of great images and videos.
Facebook Groups
By that, I mean the NEW Facebook Groups.
You can now create small, exclusive groups around a real estate business, group of developers or buyers or sellers, even around people who are interested in an individual property.
One of the best features of the new Facebook Groups is the chat facility where you can host an online chat session between yourself and people in your group in real time. The individuals in the chat don’t need to be ‘friends’ on Facebook which means you can use the chat for negotiations, promoting new listings, or promoting events and upcoming open houses and so on.
Facebook Ads
A big part of what we do online is designing, implementing, testing and reporting on Facebook Ad Campaigns. And some of what we do has become promoting property sales (and rentals) for real estate agencies.
The beauty of this kind of advertising – as opposed to traditionally advertising property sales and rentals in local print or even on radio – is that you can target the ads very specifically to the users you want to reach.
Using Facebook Ads has been the single most positive change to the online marketing efforts or real estate agencies’ we work with that we have made in the last few months.
With research showing that nearly 90% of people move within a 7km radius of where they currently live, this makes geographic targeting pretty easy in most cases. But it doesn’t end there. You can target your ads using demographic filters as well – age, gender, education, likes and interests and so on.
Facebook Places and FourSquare
Both of these applications, one inside the Facebook platform and one outside of it, are based on the geographic location of the users.
For instance, if a user has a smartphone and one of the apps on that phone, they can have local specials, discounts, or – in the case of real estate, open houses or new listings, promoted to them directly on their phones. And it’s not invasive or spammy because the users have already opted in to the service.
Some real estate agents we have worked with had little success previously with Twitter, but mostly because they weren’t using it correctly or they didn’t have a strategy around it either.
There are 3 really good ways to use Twitter in real estate: having a corporate account for an agency, having individual (but corporate branded) accounts for individual agents, and having an account exclusively for new listings.
Agency Corporate Account
This is the most obvious use of Twitter and is probably the most dry and boring one as well.
Still important though, particularly from a branding perspective, the corporate account of an agency is a great way to let people know that you are at least engaging in modern and progressive ways to sell homes, and also a good portal to list general information, tips and other information about the agency and its services.
Individual Agents’ Accounts
A lot of agents may already have their own Twitter account, but for an agency, it’s important that the agents retain some of the corporate branding in their Twitter presence as well.
For instance, John Smith from ABC Real Estate might have already been tweeting as @JohnSmith for a couple of years, but he should also have an account that includes the agency, for example, @JohnSmithatABC.
This adds an extra dimension, though, and you should have some monitoring in place to ensure that your branding isn’t being compromised by any of the agents using it to promote themselves exclusively.
New Listings Account
When someone is looking to purchase a house, one problem for them is usually that there are not enough listings or not enough of the right listings around.
They will know about every single property being sold in their target area and price range and will be hungry for news of new listings that perhaps other buyers don’t know about yet.
This is where your ‘New Listings’ Twitter account comes in. They follow the account on Twitter and when a new listing comes up, they can be one of the first to know about it. Actually, they can be the first to know about it, if you promote the fact that listings will appear there for a set time before being publicised elsewhere – a great way to build follower numbers as well.
A lot of real estate agents will already be a member of Linkedin, but not a lot of them are doing a great job of using the full features of the platform.
Linkedin is a great way to sell properties (indirectly) but more importantly, it’s a great way to promote yourself online.
And on Linkedin, real estate agents should be doing that by using two different approaches: the Linkedin Profile and Linkedin Groups.
Linkedin Profile
This is the ordinary account that every Linkedin user has. But there are ways to really pimp it and make it so much more effective.
Linkedin Groups
Similar in some ways to the Facebook Groups, the Linkedin Groups include features like an automatic email distribution of new content and a way for you to promote listings, news and other information about your agency to other members of the group on Linkedin.
You can start your own group about real estate news, upcoming events, or new listings in a particular geographic area. You can also invite some of your VIP clients to be part of a special group where you give exclusive content to them as way of reward for their support of you in the past.
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If you are a regular on this blog, you will know that I love YouTube.
The world’s second largest search engine, YouTube is also a darling of Google who own it, which means that any video you upload to this video-sharing juggernaut is treated very favourably by Google when potential buyers sit down to research new properties.
Nothing tells a story like someone telling a story in video.
You can do a walk-through of the property, interview the sellers, interview the neighbours, showcase unique features of the property, even get video testimonials from potential buyers at open houses – the potential of online video is almost limitless.
But you have to do it properly. And by that, I don’t mean get a professional TV-quality film crew to do it, but you don’t want it looking too ‘rustic’ either.
We have a lot of experience making video for clients (as well as thousands of YouTube users tested) in all kinds of industries including real estate and property sales, so if you would like us to take care of your video production, editing, captioning and uploading to YouTube, please let us know.
You should be utilising some sort of cloud application like Tungle.Me or even Google Calendar so that you can easily organise viewings, open houses, client meetings and so on and not have to rely on administration staff to do it for you, as well as avoiding the likelihood of double booking yourself and generally looking unprofessional to potential buyers or sellers.
By syncing your existing calendar with Tungle.Me you can:
* Eliminate double-bookings, time zone mishaps and the back-and-forth of finding a time to meet * Easily schedule meetings, inside or outside your organisation * Invite others to schedule with you, without having to sign up
Podcasts and webinars now give you the opportunity to reach a large number of people without those people ever having to leave their desk or home.
Podcasts are audio recordings which can be listened to online or downloaded to listen to later from audio-sharing applications like iTunes.
Webinars are virtual meetings where you can present on a particular topic using a webcam on your own computer and people can watch the webinar in their office or home on their own computers.
A lot of webinar applications don’t even require the participants to sign up or download anything, just click on the link that you provide prior to the webinar.
These can be a great way to establish your credibility as an expert in real estate, while also allowing you to target potential buyers and sellers in any given market.