How Do Realtors Demonstrate Community
Through a conversation in Twitter, I happened across Life in Bonita Springs, a blog by Chris Griffith (aka Twitterzilla). The first post that caught my eye was a beautiful shot of a public area called Coconut Point, with a really small dog in the foreground. The blog post was about a “small dogs only social.” Wow, I thought. Now that’s something you don’t see every day. It got me thinking.
Realty Has a LOT to Benefit From With These Tools
There are lots of ways social media can be applied, but look at real estate. If your job is to sell community, you can do lots of things. Create a videoblog of interviews of people in the community you’re trying to sell into. Build an events page or community site where people can gather, share their stories, post events, and express themselves. Take mountains of photos on Flickr, showing off the best in community art, as well as some of the finer homes.
But How Does It All Tie Together?
If I’m reading a community or realty blog, how will I convert from a blog reader into a home buyer? What are the right ways to convert me gently? For example, on Chris’s blog, I see the sidebar has ways to connect me to her. If I’m an RSS subscriber, I won’t ever see that, and there’s nothing in the post to connect me to business.
This is great, if the only goal is to keep people in the community aware of what’s going on in the community, but if another goal of the blog is to sell homes, is there a way we could gently convert me?
Or should you?
What’s Your Take?
Technically, we’re all prospective customers of realtors. What would attract you, were you to stumble into an interesting blog about real estate, or about a community?
Further, if the community where you lived right now (is it a community? Do you know each other?) had social media tools in place, how could you see them being used?
Curious to see your take on this.
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The Social Media 100 is a project by Chris Brogan dedicated to writing 100 useful blog posts in a row about the tools, techniques, and strategies behind using social media for your business, your organization, or your own personal interests. Swing by [chrisbrogan.com] for more posts in the series, and if you have topic ideas, feel free to share them, as this is a group project, and your opinion matters.
Get the entire series by subscribing to this blog, and subscribe to my free newsletter here.
Photo credit, Kevin Dooley
Social Media Starter Moves for Real Estate
Disclaimer right up front: I’m not in the real estate biz, so I’ll write this from the perspective of what I’ve observed and what might be useful. Some REAL real estate pro can come and fix this on their own blog, and it’d likely be better. Why would I ever let a simple thing like inexperience get in the way of sharing my opinion?
Show Me the House
The first and most obvious thing I think the real estate world can (and should) be doing is buying video cameras and shooting their own walkthroughs. You don’t have to be a pro. You DO have to know how not to make something look horrible, but that comes with trial and error.
Pick up a Video Camera
If you don’t already own a video camera, two ends of the spectrum that I’d recommend for realtors are:
Sanyo Xacti VPC-E1 for a nicer rig (around $400) , or the Flip Video Ultra Series Camcorder for around $160.
The Xacti is a higher end picture. The Flip is YouTube quality. Honestly, the Flip is the camera for the job, but some folks want the best, so it’s up to you. Me? I’d buy the Flip. (Personally, I use a digital camera’s movie setting to shoot most of my stuff).
Editing
Now, to actually do it, you have two options: learn how to edit things easily in iMovie (Mac) or Windows Media Maker (PC), or pay someone to edit what you shoot. Benefits of A are that you can do it when you need it and your time is all you pay. Benefits of B are that the editor will be good at what they do, will save you time, and will know what to do next. Drawback of B is that it costs and you have no control of when you get back your files, depending on how professional your person is.
Posting the Video
Last step to putting a video up is to find hosting for the video so that you can then embed it on your blog. YouTube makes sense for two reasons. One, it’s easy and most people can navigate it. Two, it becomes a second market for your homes if you’ve added captions at the end that show how to contact you.
If you want a different look and feel from YouTube, you can try Blip.tv, Brightcove, Vimeo and a gazillion other companies who host video and have a nifty player.
I could probably write a series on just how to add video to your world, but I’m in the middle of another series, so let’s leave it there for now. If you want helping DOING any of this, let me know and I’ll point you to the right resources.
Ways Your Blog Will Help
First, blogging about certain properties you’re hoping to move will give you an obvious potential return, but that might be limited. Instead, think of what buyers and sellers might need to know, and what they might need to know about you. You’re likely going to weigh this information heavily on the sell side, and that’s okay, so make your website a great place to learn about things like “curb appeal” and how to declutter a home for better show-ability. Give people ideas that have added thousands back to the sale price of your clients’ homes.
Testimonials
People are so itchy about asking for testimonials. Don’t be. Ask. Ask your clients with whom you’ve had a great business experience to comment. Want to get really edgy? Be willing to post someone’s negative comments about your business with them, and don’t be defensive. Instead, just thank them.
The Secret Sauce
As a media maker, you can do things that will add to one’s impressions of a potential new home. You can shoot video of the general neighborhood, add Flickr photos of some selling points of the town, record audio reports of people’s general feelings of the town. Can you imagine the impact that might make? You could potentially take a “normal looking” house and demonstrate the value of the home’s setting through media.
Will everyone care? No. WIll you have a chance to reach more folks? I’m betting yes.
What’s your take?
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The Social Media 100 is a project by Chris Brogan dedicated to writing 100 useful blog posts in a row about the tools, techniques, and strategies behind using social media for your business, your organization, or your own personal interests. Swing by [chrisbrogan.com] for more posts in the series, and if you have topic ideas, feel free to share them, as this is a group project, and your opinion matters.
Get the entire series by subscribing to this blog, and subscribe to my free newsletter here.
Photo credit, dry icons
