As a business, you need to utilise the internet if you are to stay in business this year. Your business needs to be using Digital Marketing techniques such as Social Media Marketing, Email Marketing, Mobile Marketing and Website Marketing as a minimum. If you don’t, your competitors most certainly will and will legally steal your market share resulting in lower profit for your business.
There are more people searching online for products and services just like the ones you have to offer than ever before. And with the growth of smart phones and tablets, this trend is set to explode. Your potential client knows what he is after and is now much more qualified and more likely to convert into a paying customer.
More and more businesses are turning to online marketing to find new ways of generating customers and leads. As a business, you need to ensure that search engines such as Google are highlighting your websites and social media profiles in the best possible form.
The growth of the internet over the last few years has been huge. There were 634 million websites in January 2013, with 51 million added in 2012 alone. With 2.4 billion users online, your business cannot afford to ignore this avenue to market.
Facebook has over 1 billion users and Twitter 200 million +. It may surprise you that the average age of Facebook users is 40.5 years; 37.3 years for Twitter. Video marketing is bigger than a lot of people can comprehend. Over 4 billion hours of video are watched by your potential customers in any one month. Add to this photo and image marketing – 300 million photos are added to facebook every day and Instagram has over 5 billion images – and you may begin to understand how powerful the internet really is.
In this free report, you’ll learn 7 digital marketing and social media strategies that you must use in your business today.
Are you an Estate Agent currently using Social Media? If yes, then you could be making a big mistake!
I speak to a lot of Estate Agents every day and am currently helping several with their digital marketing and social media strategies. Time and time again I see estate agents using social media incorrectly – over selling on social media sites can sometimes have the opposite effect to that intended.
With 2.4 billion internet users, 1 billion on facebook and 200 million active users on twitter, your ideal customer is already online and congregating on social media sites. As an Estate Agent, you do not want to alienate your customers by ignoring basic social media guidelines.
As an Estate Agent you should not:
· Post only photos of properties for sale and/or rent – this is overselling and will turn your client base off.
· Talk only about your services to clients – again this is overselling and not the expected norm on social media sites.
· Sell without seeking engagement first – social media is about engaging with your visitors, not selling from the outset.
· Ignore comments from other users – you need to “engage engage engage”
· Talk politics, involve religion – keep your statements and comments neutral at all times. You don’t want to turn customers away.
· Use incorrect language, bad grammar or make spelling mistakes – social media is a public platform viewable by anyone. It is an extension to your business presence and needs to appear professional at all times.
As an Estate Agent you must:
· Use your social media channels daily – I see so many estate agents with social media accounts that have remained dormant for years – this is a wasted resource.
· Talk about topical issues e.g. local property prices, neighbourhood demographics, up and coming areas, local news etc. – this shows that you are human with interests too.
· Add entertaining posts – again, engage with your readership.
· Give an insider perspective to what’s happening with your business – people like to see things that they would not normally see, e.g. pictures of charity events that you have hosted, what you are doing for the community, local schools etc.
· Outsource your social media to a specialist property social media agency – don’t try to do everything yourself. Digital Marketing is a specialism that requires both knowledge and expertise that you as an estate agent do not have time to acquire. It’s best that you concentrate on your business and leave the marketing to an expert.
As an Estate Agent you shouldn’t use social media at all unless you are ready to follow the guidelines in this article. Social media is about building and engaging with communities that share the same interests.
It’s only when you engage with your readership that they will become your clients. As an Estate Agent you should consider employing a social media property expert to handle all your social media for you.
This way you can focus on what you know best.
Our sister company Estate Agent Social Media specialises in Digital Marketing and Social Media For Estate Agents. If you’re an Estate Agent looking to grow your business with a little help from the internet, please contact us via the link below:
We love property and digital marketing and are very good at what we do. Estate Agents love us as we over deliver always. If you’re looking to become the Estate Agent of choice in your local area, please do give me a shout via the link below:
A man once found a butterfly cocoon. He watched it for days on end waiting for the butterfly to emerge. One day a tiny hole appeared in the cocoon and the butterfly started to struggle as it attempted to make its way out into this world.
The butterfly struggled for what seemed like hours but appeared to be making no progress. Concerned that the butterfly might die, the man decided to take action to help the butterfly through the hole.
He snipped the cocoon with a pair of scissors so the butterfly could easily emerge from its tiny home.
Once out, the butterfly didn’t look quite right.
It had a swollen body and small shrivelled wings.
The man watched half expecting the butterfly’s wings to grow and the butterfly to fly off. However, nothing happened.
Sadly, the butterfly spent the remainder of its short life crawling around being unable to fly or support its heavy swollen body with its shrivelled wings.
Unfortunately for the butterfly, the man by helping the butterfly to come out of the cocoon had in fact signed its death warrant.
What the man did not know was that the restricting cocoon and the effort required by the butterfly to eject from that cocoon was what was required to force fluid out of its body and into its wings to enable the butterfly to fly once it left the cocoon.
Sometimes, you may start something and find it very hard to make progress only to give up shortly after.
If everything was easy in life, how strong would we be?
We need struggles and obstacles to grow not just as people but also in our businesses.
If you see an obstacle, don’t head back or try to crawl around it. Instead, stick your chin up and smash that obstacle down.
It’s only when you overcome an obstacle that you will be able to fly.
It’s now 2013 and I wanted my first post to be a positive one. I read this story a while back but didn’t get a chance to post it on here. I didn’t write this myself.
However, it’s a very powerful story and I’d like you to read it and share it using the Social Media icons at the bottom of the post. The moral of the story is never to give up especially when things get tough. Continue to build relationships with positive people and this will help you immensely both in your personal life and in business.
Don’t ever focus on getting or making money so that you can buy fancy things. Instead, focus on giving and helping others – it’s these relationships that are much more important to you than anything else. Money and wealth are just a by product of this, and will come automatically once you’ve managed the first part of the equation.
When I got home that night as my wife served dinner, I held her hand and said, I’ve got something to tell you.She sat down and ate quietly. Again I observed the hurt in her eyes. Suddenly I didn’t know how to open my mouth.But I had to let her know what I was thinking. I want a divorce. I raised the topic calmly.She didn’t seem to be annoyed by my words, instead she asked me softly, why? I avoided her question.This made her angry. She threw away the chopsticks and shouted at me, you are not a man! That night, we didn’t talk to each other. She was weeping. I knew she wanted to find out what had happened to our marriage.
But I could hardly give her a satisfactory answer; I had lost my heart to Jane. I didn’t love her anymore. I just pitied her! With a deep sense of guilt, I drafted a divorce agreement which stated that she could own our house, our car, and 30% stake of my company. She glanced at it and then tore it into pieces.
The woman who had spent ten years of her life with me had become a stranger. I felt sorry for her wasted time, resources and energy but I could not take back what I had said for I loved Jane so dearly. Finally she cried loudly in front of me, which was what I had expected to see. To me her cry was actually a kind of release.
The idea of divorce which had obsessed me for several weeks seemed to be firmer and clearer now.
The next day, I came back home very late and found her writing something at the table. I didn’t have supper but went straight to sleep and fell asleep very fast because I was tired after an eventful day with Jane. When I woke up, she was still there at the table writing.
I just did not care so I turned over and was asleep again.
In the morning she presented her divorce conditions: she didn’t want anything from me, but needed a month’s notice before the divorce. She requested that in that one month we both struggle to live as normal a life as possible.
Her reasons were simple: our son had his exams in a month’s time and she didn’t want to disrupt him with our broken marriage. This was agreeable to me. But she had something more, she asked me to recall how I had carried her into out bridal room on our wedding day. She requested that every day for the month’s duration I carry her out of our bedroom to the front door ever morning. I thought she was going crazy.
Just to make our last days together bearable I accepted her odd request.
I told Jane about my wife’s divorce conditions. . She laughed loudly and thought it was absurd. No matter what tricks she applies, she has to face the divorce, she said scornfully.
My wife and I hadn’t had any body contact since my divorce intention was explicitly expressed. So when I carried her out on the first day, we both appeared clumsy. Our son clapped behind us, daddy is holding mommy in his arms. His words brought me a sense of pain.
From the bedroom to the sitting room, then to the door, I walked over ten meters with her in my arms. She closed her eyes and said softly; don’t tell our son about the divorce. I nodded, feeling somewhat upset. I put her down outside the door. She went to wait for the bus to work. I drove alone to the office.
On the second day, both of us acted much more easily. She leaned on my chest. I could smell the fragrance of her blouse.
I realized that I hadn’t looked at this woman carefully for a long time. I realized she was not young any more. There were fine wrinkles on her face, her hair was greying! Our marriage had taken its toll on her. For a minute I wondered what I had done to her.
On the fourth day, when I lifted her up, I felt a sense of intimacy returning. This was the woman who had given ten years of her life to me. On the fifth and sixth day, I realized that our sense of intimacy was growing again.
I didn’t tell Jane about this. It became easier to carry her as the month slipped by. Perhaps the everyday workout made me stronger. She was choosing what to wear one morning. She tried on quite a few dresses but could not find a suitable one. Then she sighed, all my dresses have grown bigger.
I suddenly realized that she had grown so thin, that was the reason why I could carry her more easily.
Suddenly it hit me… she had buried so much pain and bitterness in her heart. Subconsciously I reached out and touched her head.
Our son came in at the moment and said, Dad, it’s time to carry mom out. To him, seeing his father carrying his mother out had become an essential part of his life. My wife gestured to our son to come closer and hugged him tightly. I turned my face away because I was afraid I might change my mind at this last minute. I then held her in my arms, walking from the bedroom, through the sitting room, to the hallway.
Her hand surrounded my neck softly and naturally. I held her body tightly; it was just like our wedding day. But her much lighter weight made me sad.
On the last day, when I held her in my arms I could hardly move a step. Our son had gone to school. I held her tightly and said, I hadn’t noticed that our life lacked intimacy. I drove to the office…. jumped out of the car swiftly without locking the door. I was afraid any delay would make me change my mind…I walked upstairs. Jane opened the door and I said to her, Sorry, Jane, I do not want the divorce anymore. She looked at me, astonished, and then touched my forehead. Do you have a fever? She said. I moved her hand off my head. Sorry, Jane, I said, I won’t divorce.
My marriage life was boring probably because she and I didn’t value the details of our lives, not because we didn’t love each other anymore. Now I realize that since I carried her into my home on our wedding day I am supposed to hold her until death do us apart.
Jane seemed to suddenly wake up. She gave me a loud slap and then slammed the door and burst into tears. I walked downstairs and drove away.
At the floral shop on the way, I ordered a bouquet of flowers for my wife. The salesgirl asked me what to write on the card. I smiled and wrote, I’ll carry you out every morning until death do us apart. That evening I arrived home, flowers in my hands, a smile on my face, I run up stairs, only to find my wife in bed – dead.
My wife had been fighting CANCER for months and I was so busy with Jane to even notice. She knew that she would die soon and she wanted to save me from the whatever negative reaction from our son, in case we pushed through with the divorce – so that I was at least, in the eyes of our son – a loving husband.
The small details of your lives are what really matter in a relationship. It is not the mansion, the car, property, the money in the bank. These create an environment conducive for happiness but cannot give happiness in themselves.
So find time to be your spouse’s friend and do those little things for each other that build intimacy. Do have a real happy marriage! If you don’t share this, nothing will happen to you. If you do, you just might save a marriage or a life. Many of life’s failures are people who did not realize how close they were to success when they gave up.
I’ve certainly read a lot of books in my time including many books on Social Media and Digital Marketing. I don’t know about you, but whenever I pick a book for whatever reason, I like to see that book address that reason succinctly.
There are so many books out there well over several hundred pages long and full of waffle – if you’ve ever read this type of book, you’ll know what I mean. I’ve bought so many courses before to learn about a certain topic only to find that 90% of that course covers basic stuff that I already know, and 10% of that course covers what I’m looking for.
When I first started writing Like Follow Engage, I found that the book was becoming far too long a bit like the books I’ve talked about above. My initial intention was always to keep the book below 100 pages. I really hate it when I can’t complete a book because it’s just too long, and I didn’t want my readers to experience the same problems.
That’s why I’ve cut the book right down and tried my utmost to stay on topic and address the most important aspects of using Social Media for your business today.
In Like Follow Engage I’ve cut down on the waffle and created a book which focuses on only those techniques and strategies that work today. If you had an understanding of Pareto’s rule, and applied this to Social Media, you would know that you only need to focus on the most important Social Media Engines.
There are hundreds of Social Media sites on the internet; however, you only need to focus on a few of them – the one’s that will make the most difference to your business – and that’s what I’ve addressed in this book.
I’ve kept the book short intentionally as I didn’t want to create an Encyclopaedia on Social Media. What I am publishing is a book on the most EFFECTIVE Social Media strategies for your business today. Once the book is ready, you will be able to get it from this website:
If you as a Business are not effectively using, as a minimum, Facebook, Twitter and YouTube, you will be left behind in 2013. I can’t stress enough, the importance of being found online especially in 2013 and beyond. Smart Phones and Tablets are now being increasingly used to source products and services and my question to you is, what is your online positioning? How do you fair on Google, Facebook, Twitter, YouTube……..
If you want to find out how Social Media can help your Business, you may contact me via our sister Website Kiyani Media, otherwise, get yourself a copy of Like Follow Engage.
Have a Great end to 2012, and I wish you all the best in 2013. I hope we are able to work together in the near future.
After I’ve spoken, I’ve often been asked if I had any copies of my book with me and I’ve always been embarrassed and said “sorry, it’s not finished yet”
The website for Like Follow Engage will soon be complete and you should be able to order your Social Media Book direct from the website too.
I’ve written this book at a time when a lot of companies are still refusing to utilise the power of Social Media Marketing, and are instead opting to use the same old media methods such as newspaper and Yellow Pages advertising, because it’s the only thing they know.
Today, the economy is still suffering and any organisation that fails to engage with their customers using Web 2.0 technologies will be left behind and face the serious threat of loss of business and in some cases bankruptcy as we have seen time and time again this year.
In February 2013, I’m speaking at Aston University in Birmingham and here I will again address the issues facing business today and the importance of effectively using what works Today, rather than what worked in the nineties.
If you as a Business are not effectively using, as a minimum, Facebook, Twitter and YouTube, you will be left behind in 2013. I can’t stress enough, the importance of being found online especially in 2013 and beyond. Smart Phones and Tablets are now being increasingly used to source products and services and my question to you is, what is your online positioning? How do you fair on Google, Facebook, Twitter, YouTube……..
If you want to find out how Social Media can help your Business, you may contact me via our sister Website Kiyani Media, otherwise, get yourself a copy of Like Follow Engage.
Have a Great end to 2012, and I wish you all the best in 2013. I hope we are able to work together in the near future.
