If you don’t have content you don’t have anything. It isn’t enough to simply create an account on any of the multiple social media sites; to stand out from the crowd you must have something of interest to your audience.

Success in social media goes beyond effectively including SEO words or even having a large network. If your content isn’t interesting then it is most likely your page won’t be read and then there goes your efforts to increase your business through social media.

Take the time to consider these sites as a platform to establish yourself as an authority in your area. So what should you add?

Listings – This one is easy. After all, getting the word out on your product is the prime motivator in tuning into social media. Just make sure that listings aren’t the only things you include. Think about it: you wouldn’t spend much time on a site that lacks variety, and neither do your readers. Who wants to read a list of listings anyway? That is why they have you as an agent.

Neighborhood News – Is there a home on the block that has been featured in a prominent publication? Did a neighborhood decide to go green? Or is the neighborhood the kind of place that embraces annual block parties? Share that with your readers.

Favorite Haunts - As an agent you spend plenty of time in your real estate territory. Most likely you’ve become familiar with the restaurants, boutiques, and special mom and pop shops around the area. Feel free to share those kinds of nuggets of information you’re your readers. Readers appreciate that kind of insight.

Staying on top of what is going on in the industry and presenting it in an interesting manner will help strength your social media sites. Get creative and personal, but be careful how personal, after all this is still business.

I read Seth Godin’s blog everyday. He is a true inspiration to me and I love to share his wisdom! The video below is an interview from AMEX’s Open Forum where Seth Godin talks about the value or lack thereof, of social networking for business.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Seth says , “Networking is always important when it’s real and it’s always a useless distraction when it’s fake. What the internet has allowed is an enormous amount of fake networking to take place.” 

Using social media as a marketing tool in your business works when it is real and authentic. Yhose people out there that are constantly trying to sell some thing are quite annoying. Networking is about building relationships. People  work with people theylike and feel comfortable with and trust. If you are constantly pushing your products or services that will be a turnoff.

Those that are using social media correctly are responding to others comments, answering emails promptly, answering phone calls & responding to status updates. In other words they are developing relationships.

Learn About the History of Google

What does this have to do with real estate?  The consumer turns to search engines like Google to look for everything, including real estate .  Understanding how Google works is the first step to improving your internet marketing. 

As the video mentioned, what made the Google experience different from other search engines was the concept that ideas and information on the internet are related and that relationship in the internet world is demonstrated by links.  The relevance of any website can be judged or ranked by how it links or relates to other sites.  Here are a few new geeky terms for today’s vocabulary lesson (all from Wikipedia) :

Backlinks are incoming links to a website or web page. In the search engine optimization (SEO) world, the number of backlinks is an indicator of the popularity or importance of that website or page (though other measures, such as PageRank, are likely to be more important). Outside of SEO, the backlinks of a webpage may be of significant personal or cultural  interest: they indicate who is attracted to that page.

Search Engine Optimization  is the process of editing and organizing the content on a webpage or across a website to increase its potential relevance to specific keywords on specific search engines and importantly ensuring that external links to the site are correctly titled and in abundance. This is done with the aim of achieving a higher organic search  listing and thus increasing the volume of targeted traffic from search engines.

Page Rank is a link analysis  algorithm that assigns a numerical weighting to each element of a hyperlinked set of documents, such as the World Wide Web ,with the purpose of “measuring” its relative importance within the set.

Now that you have added Backlinks, SEO and Page Rank to your geek talk , let’s look at a tool that will show how your website might be doing.

 Meet Website Grader  Go to the website and enter any website you want – yours if you dare – and get your site scored.  There may be things on the report that you don’t understand but with your new found geek skills, you will get the  idea.  As an example, you can find the report for ewm.com here.

 Put your new skills to use.  Google yourself – see what comes up.  How many entries are there for your name that are you and not that other person with your same name?

Grade your website – how did you do? 

I don’t know about you but I know that I want my middle name to be “the”… Randi “the” Manager to be with in Aventura, Fl. Randi “the” Manager with the most productive office in Aventura, Fl.  Seth Godin writes a great blog that I receive every day. I particularly thought the blog about “The” middle name was relevant to our business. The whole idea of farming is becoming “the” realtor in a certain area ! Fortunately I have many agents whose middle names are “the”.  We work together to make them “the” real estate professional  in the area they choose to work in.

Some Tips for Farming

1. Know your numbers! Check the turnover rate in the area you are going to be farming. This is done by the dividing the number of properties that closed during a calendar year by the total number of properties in the  subdivision or building . The higher the percentage the more turnover thus more possibility for business! No point in marketing an area that has no turnover.

2. Be consistent. if you are going to be using direct mail do it regularly once or twice per month. If you are going to be blogging that needs to be done on a regular basis.

3. Know Your competition.

If you are looking to change your middle name the “the”, contact me I’d love to help!