Duncan Wierman’s Blog

Creating a "buzz" for your real estate businesses is essential. You got to get the word out.  Social Media is a great place to start.  But where?   There are a few people who promote a "done for you"  method,  BUT BEWARE! 

As I have written before, social media is about engaging an audience,  It its not a "set and forget" one time action. There is no social media marketing wand that someone can wave and target  an audience that  ill automatically start coming to your website. And what works for one person may not work for another.  Throwing up a few pages around on different sites also will not work. See prior post on Web 3 service.

The process of creating a "buzz" doesn't start from creating a Blog or creating a video, it's a social media strategy that encompasses social media and word-of-mouth marketing.  You will find below a compiled a list of social media tools that you can use to build your social media marketing mixes.

1. Blogs

Blogs have become a great tool for social media marketing. That is first because, if optimised correctly, it can be used to drive traffic to a website. A good blog will help in creating internal links, fresh content, active community or non-search engine traffic.

Examples of popular blogs where you can create your account are: Wordpress, Blog.com, Bloggers.com, Typepad etc.

2. Microblogging

Just as blogs, microbloggs offer huge opportunities for business promotion. That is both through content consistency and good optimisation. Few of the most used are: Posterous or Twitter.

3. Online video

The importance of online videos has rapidly increased during the last years. Popular video sharing websites are: YouTube and Vimeo.  There are methodologies that using these services, that will allow you to dominate your competition

4. Photosharing

Social media is all about sharing! Therefore, there are numerous platforms that allow photo sharing with your friends. Some of them are: Flickr, Memeo, and Photobucket.

5. Podcasting Podcasting

is part of the new media tools that are offered to both promote services. Check out Blip or RadioPodcast.com

6. Presentation sharing

Another great way to put your brand's name in the spotlight is by offering presentations on topics of interest for your audience on presentations sharing websites. They are increasingly gaining in popularity nowadays. Some of them are: SlideShare, MyPlick, Scribd, AuthorSTREAM, or Myplick.

7. Social networks:

Applications, fan pages, groups, and personalities Social networks are the place to present, promote yourself as well as to keep in touch with your targeted audience. You can read a list of most popular on our blog on Top social media network sites!

8. Crowd sourcing / Voting

Crowd sourcing is an effective go to market model because it can be used for developing marketing efforts, research, and education.

9. Bookmarking/Tagging

Social bookmarking is a method for Internet users to share, organize, search, and manage bookmarks of web resources. Examples of popular social bookmarking websites: Delicious, Digg, Diigo, Fark, Mixx, MyBlogLog, Newsvine, Propeller, Reddit, Slashdot, StumbleUpon, Yahoo! Buzz. 10. Discussion boards and forums

10. Online forums are a great way to market your products/ services and interact with other professionals or your audience. Engaging your audience in your niche forum can bring high value to your site and brand too.

11. Content aggregation

Content aggregation offers you the chance to bring all news and feeds around your online communities accounts in one place. Some say this is the future of social media. Emerging content aggregation websites: Bloglines, FriendFeed, Lifestream.fm, Lijit.

12. Brand monitoring

Social media is also offering a variety of tools that help businesses understand the positioning of their brand. Popular examples are: Buzzlogic, Radian6 or Reputation Defender.

13. Ratings and reviews

The best way to find out where your website stands or how your brand is perceived by others is through ratings and reviews. See Yelp, Getsatisfaction.

14. Widgets

For those who are trying to promote their own brands, they can create their personalise badges using interesting widgets on Facebook, Twitter and other networks or simply use WidgetBox or Spring Widgets.

15. Wikis

Wikis are our online encyclopaedia. A short list of wikis: Wikipedia, Citizendium, Aboutus, Pbwiki, or Wetpaint.

Along with all the new ways of publishing your content on networking sites, it is important to publish your articles on publishing sites like Ezinearticles, eHow, Google Docs, IdeaMarketers, Yahoo Articles Group and submit your press release on important specialised sites like i-Newswire, PR.com, PressReleasePoint, PRLog.org.

Social Media Marketing can be very confusing at times. There are many networks and channels to choose from, creating presence on all the channels is very time consuming and randomly choosing any network is not a good social media strategy. I can tell you that major corporations are struggling to understand what social media marketing mix they should use to make their brand successful in the online world. You need to have your web marketing strategy include social media too.

It is very important to identify which channels are suitable for your business depending on your target audience /demographic.  Real Estate Investors who treat their businesses seriously must plan a step by step online marketing strategy.  My Platinum Virtual Investing and Marketing System will help guide you all the way and it provides SUPPORT by telephone , email, and remote access to help you  succeed.

Get it now at http://www.duncanwierman.com/secrets

In the world of marketing, there are no shortcuts. The way to any successful marketing campaign has always been paved with hard work. Of course, this does not mean that you cannot have occasional and sporadic successes once in a while when you are not putting any significant effort into it. However, if you are looking for longer term and sustainable breakthrough, you have to expend considerable amount of effort in order to reap accordingly.

It is all-to-easy for one to always gravitate towards what seems like the easiest solution to any circumstance. Unfortunately, many real estate investors have fallen into this trap by expecting lead generating companies and web site companies ( think Web 3.0)  to provide them with hundreds of quality, ready-to-buy leads virtually at the drop of a hat, and that will take them towards the echelons of real estate success. At a time when the market has taken a slight downturn, many investors, and more so new investor’s, quickly turn to the Internet in order to generate profitable leads. This is not a bad idea in theory.

The hard truth however is this; there is no magic pill when it comes to reliable real estate leads. A daily commitment to growing the business and aiming for success is something that is required of the investor. Persistent effort is of fundamental importance. The old fashioned approach of generating and building leads at a personal level is still fundamental today. Trying to build on hundreds of leads simply forwarded to your email address by a link building firm is not something that is sustainable.

But is using lead generation firms really that bad? Well, at first glance, a lead generation firm would appear enticingly convenient and sweat free. These companies will correctly or otherwise claim to have the ability to make available to you hundreds or even thousands of solid leads for your choosing. However, taking a deeper look (before you sign up hopefully!) at these firms will start to reveal the reason for the growing dissatisfaction with their service.

One of the most brazenly absurd issues you may discover is the listing of either false names or persons that have completely no interest in real estate. All this is done under the guise of “pre-screened” names with the generous supply of phone numbers, and addresses from people within your area of business. You will be lucky to get away with a tongue lashing if you end up being the umpteenth investor to give someone a call that has not interest in buying real estate nor did permission to be contacted on the same.

To be fair to the lead generation companies, one of the problems inherent with the lead generation firm’s internal process is that sometimes they are unable to either identify or define the actual motive of the persons who are giving over their contact information; and it sometimes has a lot to do with how the information is collected. For instance, they could have provided their contacts just to get past a web form and access certain information for free. You could almost view this as the extraction of information under duress. Therefore, when you as the real estate  investor make the call, you will find someone that is not only interested but cannot even remember when and why they provided their contact information. At the end, you will be left with wasted telephone costs and probably an earful of vitriol from the ‘potential client’.

Lead generation in the real estate market should not just be a way of building a list of names as is wont of contemporary lead generation houses. True leads must be built on clear communication and unambiguous declaration of intentions by both parties i.e. the investor as well as the potential buyer. It will demand the commitment of significant resources including time in order to bring out its true authenticity.

This is one of the main reasons why if you want leads that work, the buck will stop with one person and one person only: you. Why should you pay and rely on someone else to get you good leads whereas all they will do is generate a lot of spam email and eventually forward you a legion of probably already irate contacts that will add no value to your real estate agency? In any case, it does not take any effort to generate such redundant information. You can just as easily go into a directory and do so yourself if it is just contacts that you needed!

Therefore, start to employ the strategies and tools that are already easily accessible to you and that will enable you to start to quickly build the requisite and legitimate leads. For instance, you can take advantage of social networking sites to put the word out there on your business and providing information on the kind of real estate you are selling or buying. Most of the largest social networking sites are absolutely free. This will also be a great opportunity to demonstrate what value potential buyers and sellers can derive from using your services as opposed to dealing directly with either party.

Then hit the pavement or get members of your team to do so. Participate in professional forums (not necessarily on real estate), trade exhibitions, recreational events and other such forums that allow you to interact with a crowd. You can use this setting to provide distinctive and yet not necessarily expensive gift items that will keep you at the back of people’s minds.