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Tag: Social Media Marketing (page 1 of 1)

November 19, 2008

Unchained Notes: SMM is a Process, Not a Fetish

by

Real Estate Renaissance Man

Author website

This is the third in an ongoing series of posts sharing some of the gold I found at the Unchained Orlando Conference on Social Media Marketing for Real Estate.  The first post was on theme, the second was philosophy and now it’s time to talk nuts and bolts.

You hear a lot about Social Media Marketing. It is variously described as the future of prospecting, a revolutionary version of networking for a 2.0 world, the miracle of permission based marketing and – if I remember correctly – a cure for the common cold.  But more often than not you’re hearing from someone who talks about it as opposed to someone out here in the trenches doing it.  You can always tell because the person just talking about it doesn’t give a whole lot of information on how it works. You hear all the sizzle but what’s needed is for someone to actually throw a big, juicy steak on your plate.  Well, I hope you’re hungry because Brian Brady worked the grill for hours at the Unchained Conference in Orlando and he did not disappoint.  Not only did he serve up the meat of the matter, he cut it into bite size pieces and made it easy to digest.

Why
As with all teaching opportunities, Brian started with the “Why.”  Why do we market and why, specifically, is Social Media Marketing important.  The answer to the first question was easy.  Farming for new customers creates new customers and they are the life-blood of our practice.  It was the answer to the latter question that hit me right between the eyes.  The Internet allows us to automate our Unique Selling Proposition.  Think about the power in that last statement.  Automating your USP and reaching an exponentially larger audience with no extra effort or cost is a magical formula.

Brian identified the five pillars of Social Media Marketing:

  1. Declaration of Identity
  2. Identity by Association
  3. Consumer Generated Conversation
  4. Provider Generated Conversation
  5. Off-Line Conversation

He went on to show us how to “set traps” using these five pillars.  What did he mean by “setting traps?”  Being in the right place at the right time by design Read more

November 17, 2008

Unchained Notes: It’s a Greek Thing

by

Real Estate Renaissance Man

Author website

This is the second in an ongoing series of posts sharing some of the gold I found at the Unchained Orlando Conference on Social Media Marketing for Real Estate.  In the first post: An Outsider’s View from Inside the Hound Pound,  I talked a little about the theme that emerged through all the speakers.  In this, the second post, the theme reveals its philosophy.

Imagine someone handing you a list with ten actions you could use right now to improve your marketing.  Now imagine not only being given the list, but an understanding of the “why” behind the actions on the list.  You would go from an agent that is hungry, to an agent eating a fish, to an agent who knows how to fish in rapid order.  That is what Greg Swann, our first speaker, accomplished when he shared his Unchained Epiphany.

Greg pointed out that most civilizations will do just what is needed to survive and no more.  When faced with a new problem they will do just enough to overcome it but again, no more.  He did not come right out and say it, but I couldn’t help myself thinking of us as a civilization.  All of us involved in the real estate business.  We have our own language, our own goals, our own methods for determining hierarchy and possibly most important, we have our own culture.  We also suffer from the same problems Greg was describing: often doing just what is needed to get by; just enough to solve a problem, pay the bills and move on to the next thing.  Not all cultures operate this way.

The Greeks, as Mr. Swann pointed out, were the first culture to come along and reach for more than just surviving; to become, as Greg said: “a doer for the sake of having done, a thinker for the sake of having thought, a poet for poetry’s own sake.”  We, each and every one of us, has that opportunity.  We are free to succeed and we are free to fail.  We are free to control our business and we are free to believe others Read more

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