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.
