You want to know how agents and brokers are really making money from social media?

It’s not from the engagement. It’s not from the connections they gain.

It’s from SEO.

Most of those making money with social media are doing it by floating their SEO efforts (which means more traffic/conversions). I obviously don’t have access to the hard numbers, but I know someone like Jay Thompson is making money from the SEO juice his site, PhoenixRealEstateGuy, has gained as a result of his social media activity over the past 5+ years. How does that happen? A number of ways. For starters, posts like this link to his site constantly because he’s one of the most well known real estate brokers in the country in the social media world. Secondly, he’s met LOTS of people via social media. And anyone that knows search engine optimization knows the way to win is to know LOTS of other individuals who own websites (and can link back to you). Well, Jay knows a ton of them. Anytime I think of or hear “Phoenix”? I — thousands across the country and world – think of Jay. That’s worth it’s weight in gold when it comes to SEO. Why? Because anytime a conversation about Phoenix comes up, there is a good chance I’m going to link to Jay. Oh yea — and all those conference mentions he gets? They don’t hurt either.

You likely already know getting a site to rank well is hard work if you’re going after even a somewhat competitive keyword. But to succeed on the web, we all know you have to spend time or money on it. You should already know the cost of neglecting SEO. It goes without saying that SEO is certainly a long way from dead. It’s just shifted away from strictly links, links, links as Facebook Likes, Tweets, and Google +1′s are transforming into the more common voting mechanisms of the web. It’s hard to measure precisely, but I think it’s fair to say anyone with a strong social media presence knows their social media efforts are massively helping their own SEO efforts.

Don’t get me wrong. Yes, certainly use social media to increase engagement with your current sphere and find new contacts to increase your sphere of influence, but the real money is made by leveraging your social media to improve your own SEO.

What do you think? Agree or disagree?

**Photo via MarkVitorillo

Fortunately, the power of the Internet remains as strong as ever. In fact, more and more people are establishing a presence online – which means you have more opportunities to use proven networking techniques and tools to grow your network.

Two such tools – online chats and online forums – are, for some reason, ignored by many real estate professionals. But, they can provide a much-needed angle for your efforts to spread the word through an online community.

It’s All About Self-Promotion

As any real estate pro knows, the business is about self-promotion. Most people decide on agents based off of advertisements and word-of-mouth, not through in-depth research of competing agents in a given area. That is why often times, the first agent to make a good impression on a prospective homebuyer takes the cake.

Using online forums and chats is a way to make that first impression. You are putting yourself out there, representing yourself to these buyers who are already making themselves available simply by being online and looking for help with real estate. Maybe they are on a local message board asking questions about the neighborhood. Maybe they are on a real estate message board with queries about closing costs, inspection regulations, or some other area of concern.

No matter what their need, you have an opportunity to promote yourself and what you do – even if you never make a direct offer to represent them!

Choose the Right Hangouts for Message Board Activity

Using forums (or message boards) effectively comes down to choosing the right places and actually using them.

Virtually every metropolitan area in the country has multiple forums dedicated to life within that particular area. Several other subject-specific websites also feature a wide variety of forums that you can utilize in your online communication campaign. It is as simple as creating a profile, browsing through the questions and discussions posted, and contributing.

Try to say anything helpful, even if it is a small suggestion or a short sentence. Have your information prominently displayed, but do not be too pushy – imagine if they were talking about real estate in real life on the sidewalk and you just happened to overhear them as you walked by. Answer the question, be friendly, and the rest will flow accordingly.

Oh, forums aren’t just for clients; they can also be invaluable networking tools with other agents as well.

Using Chats Effectively

Online chats are also very effective for agents and should be included in a communication campaign. You can join general real estate chat rooms, or you can have your own live chat support channel available on your website. The second is highly recommended, if at all possible. This option gives potential clients the ability to click on a button and engage you or one of your staff during business hours, all from the comfort of their home.

After all, if they’re on your website, they have a need – and they can easily reach out to you for help with meeting that need.

Doing the same approach with online chats as with online message boards (i.e. creating a profile and engaging in helpful discussions with clients) is also highly recommended. Ideally, your online networking campaign will be integrated with Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and other tools to keep you at the leading edge of 21^st-century social media communication. (Plus, with Facebook, you can incorporate online chat into your social media seamlessly through its integrated chat function. Pretty cool, huh?)

In short, use both methods often to grow your brand online and communicate easily with your potential customers.

What platform have you mastered? Or are you trying to be all things to all people, on all platforms?

Real estate is no exception. In fact, some could argue that the unique role of buying and selling real estate is tailor-made for social media and modern technology that creates a virtual network of relationships between Realtors and prospective clients for foreclosed homes, distressed properties, and other in-demand parcels.

Therein lies a question, though: How can you determine whether or not your return on investment (ROI) for your social media technology is positive, and then make sure you are properly utilizing your technology?

Principle #1: Don’t Assume Social Media is Free

Leveraging social media technology, while powerful and very cost-efficient, is not free. Having a Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter account costs you nothing monetarily, but it does cost you in terms of time. It takes time to post status updates, add connections or friends, put out tweets, reply to posts, post pictures of foreclosed homes that are available, and build a vibrant online community.

That doesn’t mean it’s not worth it, of course, but one part of accurately leveraging this kind of technology for better ROI means understanding the indirect costs of using social media tools.

Principle #2: Create Measurable Objectives that Make Sense

Many Realtors – and business people in general – find it difficult to accurately measure the benefits of 21^st-century social media technology. Unless you operate a website and track the number of unique visits to your website for foreclosed homes, for example, these concrete numbers are hard to come by.

You can help yourself by developing smart objectives that measure indirect benefits. One reason Realtors use social media is to connect with a target audience to sell, say, foreclosed homes. Investors who are particularly tech-savvy are prime targets for these properties, and use social media quite a bit. You can get an idea of increased interest in foreclosed homes on your website, for example, if you track the number of:

-          Visits to your website

-          Posts/comments on your blog

-          Posts/comments on your Facebook, LinkedIn account

-          Subscriptions to your email/newsletter list

-          Connection requests

This is indirect; none of the above usually has anything to do with a closed sale (people tend to avoid buying homes over the Internet, after all. We’re not there quite yet.). But, what it does reveal is that your social media campaign is generating interest – and that is half the battle.

Principle #3: If You Go, Go All the Way

It doesn’t make sense to do much in life halfway, and social media is no exception. If you are going to have a Facebook account, you might as well have a LinkedIn and Google + account, too. And a Twitter. And a blog.  And other tools that can work together very nicely to create a cohesive marketing strategy.

Otherwise, you are not taking full advantage of social media technology and aren’t maximizing your leverage for optimal ROI. Foreclosed homes and distressed properties are especially good for this maximum approach because they are in demand and investors always want the latest info on an ever-changing market.

Follow the above three principles and you can better leverage your social media campaign for stellar ROI.

The fact is that social objects are “the fuel of the social web” as Social Media Today puts it.

They are the things that people like to share, like and comment on within their networks. A social object can be an announcement, a piece of music, a picture, a compelling video, an idea, a question, a quote… Literally everything can be a social object. As long as it’s in any way relevant for the audience. And as long as it triggers interaction.

We heard about this back in 2007 by Hugh McLeod – his artwork was a clear example of social objects – too bad his blog only returns 404 errors ….maybe he should think of creating redirects into his gallery ….but I digress. **Hugh’s blog was fixed today and has no more 404′s.**  I’m glad Drew gave us his take and some examples here in Geek Estate of how some in our industry are using these.

So how can Social Objects help your business and brand in any way?

If you’re smart, you can bank on the impact of the connection these social objects generate, but you can only achieve this with strategy.  Please don’t misconstrue this to mean that you should create and develop an artificial connection with your audience. Achieving a real connection via a social object is not easy and if overdone, can be interpreted as superficial and fake.

I realized Mojitos were my social object when I was speaking at an Inman conference a few years ago about my lucky mistake (some call it intuitive intelligence, but the truth is that I paid attention to the reaction).  The presentation was about taking on-line efforts off-line and how as REALTORS we need to get off the computer and complement our online marketing efforts with face-to-face interaction.  I announced at that time that my goal was to create some sort of “top of mind awareness” where anytime you would see a mojito, you would think of me.

Hello!!! Knock knock – beginning of conversation, ice-breaker, inadvertent promotion of my business, my brand and my city << BAM!

IDENTIFY

The first step is to identify that common element you have with your audience and elevate that to the next level.  It does not have to be a tangible object either, it can be a concept or an activity.  Interestingly enough, it may already be working for you and you haven’t even identified it yet.  Think of your daily interactions – flickr, blip, shopping, foursquare, food ….  Example:  If it’s a photo, don’t just think photographs are your social object, go deeper and analyze which type of photos generate more conversation and entice your audience to talk to you.

PURPOSE

The next step is not as obvious and will take some  introspection – how can you exploit the connections made to achieve a purpose?

I’ll give you one brilliant example in Miami by Craig Agranoff.  Craig, aka @lapp, has monthly pizza tweet-ups where he gets restaurants to provide free pizza and refreshments to a group of “social media aware individuals”, who will Tweet, Facebook, Instagram and spread the word about the establishment.  Craig is not a foodie, he is not a pizza expert (although one of his websites is worstpizza.com), he is really a tech correspondent and a social engagement consultant.  After going to a few of his tweet-ups I regard him as a powerful connector and would consider him first when it comes to consulting about social media strategies, and doesn’t hurt that I think about him when I eat pizza.

MESSAGE

And lastly – think about the message you communicate, the opportunity these bring and how your execution of that message will evolve over time.  I can honestly say that my mojitos have taken a turn through the years, but the process is never-ending and it’s why I love this medium so much.  You need to constantly analyze, tweak and adapt to your evolving market.

What is the best way to utilize social media to drive traffic back to your website?

Whereas your website is (or should be) great at conversion, but attracting traffic to it is hard. It’s just the opposite with social media – traffic is easy, but conversion is difficult. It’s the challenge everyone wants to figure out — how to drive traffic back to your website using social media so you can convert that traffic to clients?

Before we get too far on this subject, there is a post over on Virtual Results that you should read prior to this — What is Posterous and How Is It Useful to a Real Estate Agent.

The high level answer is quite simple — make sure as many of your social media updates as possible contain links back to a destination with built in conversion tools. If that end destination is your actual website, great. If that destination is your posterous blog (that’s skinned to look like your website like this), that’s great too. Of course, it’s a given you should not SPAM your network with links. You should, however, use your social media accounts to promote the GREAT content (not to be confused with ALL your content) you are producing consistently on your website.

How are you using social media to drive traffic back to your website?

A number of real estate professionals are already using it in hopes of getting ahead of the competition. Everyday, there seems to be new articles stating how amazing Google+ is, how it will annihilate Twitter, take out Facebook, etc. But, as with every social media platform you choose to spend your time on, you need to analyze the return on investment before devoting your time to it. With social media, it’s my belief that the focus should always be to maximize your reach and engagement by using the platforms where your potential clients already are.

Let’s take Twitter back in it’s early days as an example. Twitter launched in 2006 and had a significant number of users back in 2007. While working at Zillow, David and I only had so many hours in the day to keep up with social media as well as get our day jobs done. In 2007, it was not the most efficient use of our time to use Twitter to further the Zillow brand with agents. However, once Twitter got a point where we could reach more people using that platform than blogging and blog commenting (probably sometime in late 2008), we both shifted a significant chunk of our social media time there. Neither of us could justify diving into Twitter until there were more Zillow conversations occurring on Twitter than on blogs. Did we lose out on a year of relationship building with some early adopters? Sure. But were most of those early adopters still blogging? Yes. So, did we totally lose touch with them simply because they were using Twitter a year ahead of us? No.

Don’t get me wrong, there is value to Google+ — and it will likely become one of the largest social platforms on the planet in time. But is the platform the best use of your social media time RIGHT NOW? That’s the question you should be asking yourself.

As for me? Let’s just say I’ll let the early adopters I trust (such as Jeff Turner) evaluate and gauge whether it’s a platform worth spending my time on. If someone like Turner shifts all his social media time to Google+, then I’ll think about doing the same. I’m betting it’ll be at least another 6 months until Google+ reaches a point where it rivals the effectiveness of Twitter or Facebook.

Remember, there are only so many hours in the day to spend utilizing social media and you need to maximize that time if you want to succeed.

Sphere building is something I’ve spent a lot, and I mean a lot, of time thinking about. Similar to most real estate agents, sphere building is something I spend a lot of time on. Darin is right; the focus of sphere building should be primarily about maintaining existing relationships and allowing your network to grow organically. Way too many people spend an inordinate amount of time trying to build new connections with strangers when, in reality, they should be spending valuable time with their existing network. Strengthening existing relationships will lead to new ones in time — I can assure you of that (if you’re doing it right).

It’s not rocket science. Who do I help the most in life? My closest friends and business connections; not random strangers who reach out to me once or twice.

As Darin says, when it comes to sphere building, take care of your home turf first.

There. I said it. Like anything else in life, success with social media takes time and effort. It shouldn’t be a surprise to anyone that social media is not the silver bullet and it never will be.

In every industry, there are always things that are overhyped because marketers need something to talk about. I believe that social media (along with QR Codes) is one of those things right now in the real estate industry. From conference go-ers I trust, I hear that “social media sessions are overflowing” at every conference over the past 6 months. Everyone (and their mother) is now offering or charging for social media training. Most of you know I’m a huge proponent of social media – if done right, it’s one of the most powerful marketing tools available. But to succeed, you have to be doing it for the right reasons. And the right reason is not “just for the money” or because you heard someone at a conference say “you have to be on social media”. The right reasons include the desire to help others through their problems, share your life’s stories, put the truth out there, and the love of building relationships. Unfortunately, I sense that the reason most agents are running toward social media like a chicken with its head cut off is the exact the reason they will fail — it’s all about the $$.

Want to succeed with social media?

Be genuine, help others, have a real strategy, and execute.

Want to make thousands, do little to zero work, and have leads and clients pounding on your phones tomorrow?

Get a clue. And a new profession.

Sorry, I’ll get off my soapbox now.

Right now, his Facebook page has 60 fan and his website has 10 likes. I’ll be interested to hear his results at the end of March when his contest ends.