Welcome to Rex's blog series on social media for real estate dummies. In this blog series, I'll be delving into the buzz around social media. As well as talking about it (which a lot of people are doing), I'll be taking steps to help you understand it, why you should be using on it and how you as real estate agents and agencies can utilise this powerful platform to build a powerhouse brand with current and future clients!In the first few posts, we'll be covering the background:
- What is social media?
- What social media offers you?
- What are the benefits of social media?
- Why you should be utilizing social media.
- How you should implement a social media strategy to build brand awareness.
Some people would recommend jumping straight into the 'how'... My answer is, we'll get to that: social media can be a hard (and long!) slog. Once you understand why social media is important, you'll be able to justify the time and effort needed to build your social media presence.Some of the biggest brands in the world (think Ford, Red Bull, Coke) are pumping millions of dollars into social media presence and marketing with a single aim: brand building. Our view is that greater brand awareness for Real Estate agents means more (and better quality) appraisals, more listings, better buyers, more sales, happier clients and ultimately more money!
Who am I?
I'm the newest member of the Rex Software team. My name is Peter Bongiorni and I have been brought on board as the Software Sales Manager for Queensland. My background has seen me in retail management and more recently in real estate sales.
What makes me qualified to write a blog about social media for real estate?
- I am part of Gen Y - social media is ingrained in our daily lives
- I've been an early adopter to most social media platforms and seen some crash and burn and others flourish
- I developed and/or successfully ran a number of online communities/social networks - long before the terms 'social network' and 'social media' existed
- I know how social media works and how the real estate industry works
What's the point?
You probably would have heard some people say that developing a social media strategy is a waste of time. I'd say that these are probably the same people who said email would never take off as a viable method of communication. They were wrong then, and they're wrong now. Even if you don't fall into this group, you're more than likely struggling to understand what social media is, and how to cost effectively implement a strategy that will net you results.Whatever your position, it's important to understand this: if you are in real estate you must develop and execute a social media strategy. An opportunity exists to lead the industry in using this extraordinarily powerful tool; if you pass it up, you can only blame yourself.
How does Rex fit in to all this?
Rex is committed to constant innovation of real estate software to benefit the real estate industry. Social media is the new frontier for real estate and Rex brings Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn feeds directly to your dashboard; it also pushes your updates to these services from the same location. As new technologies and social media platforms develop, we'll be ready to integrate them into our software so you can be a leader in the industry and not a follower.
What's next?
In the next post: 'What is social media', I'll be covering the reach and nature of the social networks available for agents to use.
