Recently I gave a presentation to a group of progressive title representatives and here is the training video recap. This session was one hour and covered Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn.
Please let me know if you have any comments in this thread.
Over the past few years Facebook has seen many changes. You may remember Facebook apps seemed to be the hottest thing around. But it didn’t take long for all of us to try them…and get burned out! Also during this time Twitter burst onto the scene and taught us conversation was far more important. Facebook quickly realized that and made more adjustments bringing us the newsfeed we know and love. The evolution has continued and now brings us a new Lite version of the site and @ status tagging.
Facebook Lite was originally touted as an optimized version of the site for countries with low-bandwidth. However last week over at TechCrunch, Facebook was quoted as saying:
“We decided to roll out Facebook Lite in the U.S. to give users a simple, expedient alternative to facebook.com, and hope that it will fill this need. We have also found that people who are new to Facebook tend to be most interested in a simpler experience, focus on establishing their network of friends and communicating with them by writing on their walls, sending messages, and looking at pictures. We have introduced the Lite site with these new users in mind”.
After taking Lite for a spin, I must admit that I’m very impressed with the simplistic interface. As you can imagine, the newsfeed is the main aspect of the site. It’s very clean and easy to interface with. Clearly positioned at the top are status and media sharing tools; followed by birthday and event notifications.
Now when posting a status update you’ll have the option of tagging your friends in the message…that’s right, just like Twitter. Although Facebook’s implementation works differently, there are obviously similarities starting with the @ symbol. Once you type “@” a drop-down menu will appear with a dynamic list of your friends and other connections even including groups, events, applications and Pages.
When you reference a friend it will send them a notification and post the status update to their wall. Just like traditional tagging in Facebook, your friend can delete the update from their wall. Also worth noting is that the “@” symbol will not be displayed in the published status update.
Well for starters, you’d be better off spending time communicating and engaging your connections than building fancy applications for a page that users may not even visit. Remember it’s not just Facebook Lite you need to be thinking about, it’s also Facebook mobile. (Read here: Mobile now connecting 65 million.) You’ll notice that Lite seems to parallel mobile in terms of its feature set…which may become our new reality. Now I’m not telling you to bail on your business page, it will still be assessable. You will still be able to share business updates and engage with users you just might not need those fancy tabs.
Today over at Jeremiah Owyang blog I learned of a new Podcast that Aaron Stout of Powered created. He invited folks like Brian Morrissey, Susan Getgood and Jeremiah to converse around Facebook for business and specifically how Facebook connect can help with engagement, registration and traffic! The podcast is great and I suggest you take a minute to listen.
It’s hard to believe, but email is starting to become a thing of the past. Social Networks are continuing to dominate online communication. Why spend time attaching a photo in an email when you could just post it to your Facebook page? Why have an email address when you can have your own personal URL? Why email one customer about your businesses promotions when you could tell thousands at once? Why? Why? and more Why’s? The list goes on and when you think hard you may start to wonder…dare I say it…Why even use email? While that question may be a stretch now, soon enough it might be a question you find yourself asking others. Statistics show that Facebook is by far the most popular service for sharing content online. 24% of all content being shared is through Facebook. That easily towers over email’s 11.1%. Even Twitter, which was only started 3 years ago, is as popular of a sharing service as Email.
My point is, if your not in the loop, jump in! You may ask yourself, am I too far behind? or am I too old to start sharing on social platforms? or will the whole world constantly be tracking me? The answer is No. Social media can be utilized by all age groups and you can personally choose what you want to share and who you want to share it with. Below is a list of the top 10 social media sites that I suggest using and why.
This morning we had a webinar covering Facebook Business Essentials and this post is a recap. We covered a lot of ground and promised that we would compile links, slides and video for your review.
If you haven’t connected with us yet, you’ll find us here:
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Here are the PowerPoint slides
Here is the video recap. We had a little problem with the recording, you’ll notice it cuts in about 5 minutes after the presentation started. If you don’t see the player below, you may need to install Microsoft silverlight.
Yesterday we held a webinar for real estate professionals and shared strategies to apply towards Facebook. The turnout was amazing and we had lots of great feedback! So we’ve decided to go forward and schedule the next webinar:
Topic: Twitter for Real Estate
Date: May 7th, 2009
Time: 10am pacific / 1pm eastern
(More details will be available soon.)
I’m still working on rendering a higher quality version of the video, but for now you can feel free to view the original recording from yesterday. Please note this version has not been edited. I should have the updated copy available by midday today.
And a few links to resources mentioned:
Are you interested in implementing social media into your real estate business, but not sure how or where to start, make sure you join Cyberhomes on April 21st at 10am.
We’ll be looking specifically at Facebook as a marketing tool. Did you know that more than 100 million users log on to Facebook at least once each day further positioning the social networking giant as a new and growingly respected communications channel? With these incredible numbers and the fact that Facebook makes it easy to engage with a large but targeted audience, real estate agents are finding Facebook to be a valuable way to engage and connect with consumers. But how should you best implement Facebook into your business? This webinar is designed to expose 12 Facebook marketing strategies you can implement immediately!
Here are a few strategies you’ll learn:
Below you’ll see where the Facebook growth by age group and gender between January and March of 2009:
Don’t forget, REGISTER HERE: https://www2.gotomeeting.com/register/681697514
Whether it’s a large conference or a local event, making new connections is a critical part of the relationship building process. How have you gone about this in the past? Are you walking away from events with the connections you want? Or are you the fly on the wall? Try implementing these tips for your next event:
Below you’ll find the video recording and PowerPoint from yesterday’s webinar. With the homepage design changes that were applied shortly after the webinar, some screens have changed dramatically. I’ll post a follow up resource to address those changes.
I was talking with a seasoned real estate professional recently about jumping into the social media scene with her business. I wasn’t surprised to hear that she was very anxious and unsure about how to best get started. So I thought I would share my thoughts on getting started with social media in 2009!
To start, before you get to deep into any social media plan you need to think about your goals and what you want to achieve. For example, who are you trying to reach specifically? Where do those consumers hang out online? How much time do you have to focus on social media each initiatives week? Once you have the answer to these key questions and have set goals, you can move forward knowing that you have something to gauge your success.
Monitoring
Now that you’ve established goals, it would be a good idea to establish a pulse or monitoring system for your brand and market. Remember that it’s not just mainstream media you’re listening to. With current technology you can easily track individual conversations online. Ask yourself what type of content a prospective client would find if they search you online. This exercise will also help you identify new emerging topics early so that you can implement them into your business, communication plan, or social media objectives.
If you want to setup automatic alerting, one of the most popular free services is Google Alerts. It’s a free email update service offered by Google to help you stay on top of developing news by setting specific keywords to track. (i.e. your name, business, competitor). I would also suggest using tools like SocialMention and WhosTalkin to search user-generated content like blogs, comments, forums, bookmarks, events, and videos. To learn more about monitoring tools, read 7 Ways to find out who’s talking about you.
