Social Media

Social Media - Jared Dreyer, Dreyer Group Mortgages Inc.

Today I am going to be talking about the main Social Media mediums and how each of them relates to your business.
I am going to cover each of the “major” social media mediums, their purpose, their audience, and your expected time commitment to maximize your success with each.
First of all, Social Media. Connecting with people and communities online, in real time, is here to stay and growing exponentially. So it definitely is something to consider as a growth strategy for your business.

The first social media we will discuss is Twitter
Envision a bird on a wire – chirping about their day – some birds will listen and others will not. The birds that listen become your followers and you continue to chirp/ tweet and attract more birds.
The purpose of twitter for personal use is talking about what you ate for lunch, your weekend with the family or a great shoe sale. For business it something quite different. You can be very intentional with your business purpose and message in twitter. You could tweet about a new listing, properties you are looking for, your recent sale and how it went – short and sweet. This is an active medium.
It is now current, up to the hour, day, minute information about your business. Twitter is best done on a hand held device because of the frequency in which you need to tweet. The expected time commitment is a minimum of once a day. 2-3 times a day is optimum though. The audience is primarily business partners, your potential clients, existing clients and past clients. Plus other random people and groups that pick you up along the way. Expected results: I tweet about 4 times a day and have over 1500 tweets since January of this year and 780 followers. I have generated direct business through twittering but more importantly build new business contacts. I too have had 2 PR media opportunities as a result of twittering by connecting with an editor for the Vancouver Sun and ad manager on News 1130.

The second social media I would like to address is blogging and Blog Spot . Blog Spot is a great place to generate business connections. It is longer medium than twitter. Blogging is like writing a short news article. It could be a few sentences or a few paragraphs. You could blog about your views on the direction of the real estate market, a community event you sponsored, your business partners and why you would refer them. Re purpose economic updates and post on your blog. It is a larger medium with more broad news topics related to your business. Your audience would be anyone in your industry or related industries, clients and referral partners that view you as an expert in your field. For best results, you would want to blog once a week – maximum once a day. I have been blogging for 2 years and again had been in the media as a result as well build relationships in many areas that benefit my business as well as solidified new partner referral relationships.

Another great medium is You Tube. If you have an iphone 4, you can video and upload to You tube right away. You could You tube your clients testimonials, speak about new listings. You want to upload a new video ever 2 weeks to a month. Once you start it really becomes easy and you see life in a different way as you learn to spot opportunities that would be good to speak about or video.

Ok, lets move on to Linked in. linked in is another online community. It is a community of business people connecting with each other. It is easy to set up with no real maintenance other then accepting other requests to join your network. It is like an online business directory with opportunities to link and connect with businesses you work with or support. It’s one of those things that it is just good to be there.

Finally my nemesis personally but great for businesses is Facebook. Facebook is one of the very best ways to get plugged into large communities and connect quickly to opportunities. For business I recommend doing a personal page – set up as business. There are Fan pages good but you cannot update information and connect as deeply with your community. Facebook takes time to set up. Blog Spot and Twitter are quicker to create and become more of a long list of copy whereby Face book takes longer to set up initially and is more robust. It gets easier to manage as you learn more about how it works and you get into it. It needs to cover many areas of your business and look full and updated. Facebook should be updated at least once a week. You can update “status update” by posing on your “wall” or sending a shorter “status update”. Facebook is great for adding credibility and awareness to your brand and can also generate solid business. Facebook ads can work well to but that’s a whole other topic.

Some final points about Social Media:

All of these mediums can be focused geographically.

The worst thing you can do is to start on this marketing strategy and then stop. There is nothing unsatisfying and credibility limiting than looking at a website’s blog that has not been updated for 6 months. You need to be selective with your social media choices and set a schedule and stick to it.

The important thing to remember is that Social Media only covers one portion of your overall marketing plan and it can easily take over your live. So need to pick and choose. You don’t have to do them all. But if you do choose one, do it well. And pick what makes sense and you can commit to over the long term and what you have capacity for – and does this fit within your overall marketing strategy.

All of these efforts do expand your network and opens up more opportunity to generate business form new and varied communities you may otherwise would not be exposed to.

If you are interested in having any of these Social Networks set up for you, contact our Markeing Manager at 604 536-3802