Am I Relevant: “Digital/Social Media Marketing”

The world we live in has changed and is changing dramatically even as we read this article. The way we communicate and market ourselves is radically changing. We have to change with the culture we live in or we will not be effective. If I use words that we used 50 years ago i would not be relevant. For example, if I said to you, you are the most awful person I have ever had.  

Recently our office experienced a transaction where an agent on the other side had no concept of whether he was relevant to the industry today.

He said to our agent, I have an email address and I can give it to you but I have never used it.  I am not going to focus on this level of relevance in this series.  Lets focus on Am I Relevant in terms of  “Digital Marketing” as a Real Estate Practitioner Agent.

No matter what industry you are in,  the need to market ourselves Digitally has become vital for our success. The majority of  Real Estate agents and practitioners do not use Social Media as source of lead generation or an effective way to network.  Most agents and Real Estate practitioners do not have a Digital Marketing Philosophy nor a Digital Marketing Strategy and this why they are not effective using digital formats to market themselves.

Remember the Yellow pages..  . When last have you used a yellow pages book to search for a company?..... What was Yellow pages’s biggest competitor challenge?.... Google? Asked a young person what is the yellow pages?... they said it is a website.... lol.... What is one  of Google’s biggest challenge? The social media. In SD, there was a couple who were expecting their kids to visit and they were bringing their first grandchild to visit. They needed to get a child seat for their vehicle.  What did they do? did they Google? no.   

They went on Facebook and asked the question, what child seat should we buy for our grandchild visiting?... Within an hour they had 26 comments.

The social media has become a search engine by referral. that is why facebook has even changed their

“Whats on your mind” bar and now is more of a Search bar.. it now says “search for people , places and things”, pics, restaurants etc. 

Google has another challenge, their own little baby they bought for $1,65 billion...Youtube. We all multi task so much that we hardly have time to read...so when searching a receipe, many go on Youtube.. for example, I wanted to make Banana bread, I can search on YouTube and search it there.   

Most Realtors do have a facebook account, twitter account, a You tube channels or even Yelp accounts.  The question is not if they have one, but what do they do with it. Any agent who does not have a Digital strategy and philosophy will unfortunately just be squandering time on Social Media platforms.  So lets look at Digital Marketing Philosophy.

#1. Do you even believe that digital Social platforms are effective in a marketing?

If you don’t even believe it then there is no use of even having a strategy. No matter if you believe it, or do not believe it, you are right. If you do believe it, you will be successful. 

#2. Our culture in 2013 expects that  customers and consumers want greater participation in the way business’s run their Operation. Do you believe that?  Let me give you an example.  The company GAP decided to change their Logo. GAP spent hundreds and thousands of dollars in changing this logo.      

GAP changed it.  Within days of doing this, there was an outcry from thousands of people on Facebook disliking the new logo.