What Was Your ROI from Social Media in 2009?

If you include a blog in "social media" (and I would argue that you should), then the answer for me is 29 closings in 2009. 5 of those I can attribute to meeting people via Twitter, the remainder for the most part come from the blog.

Sometimes it's difficult to attribute a particular client to a specific site / network as they are all cross-linked and mushed together

Drew - excellent post.

I think (as was started on the Zillow blog) you need to clarify social media. Are we talking about blogging and Zillow advice/T Voices as well? I personally wouldn't consider those "social Meda" but more just online avenues.

Social media (to me) would be how many closings, referrals, listings, etc. have you gotten from the big 3. Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn.

I think that something that should be asked here is, "are you looking for transactions from your social media involvement?" I know many - and what I actually coach - is that this shouldn't be your primary focus (for most). I have agents that are using this for referrals (yes) but more often for the following reasons:

Brand Exposure
Client Communication (touch points)
Learning
Learn some more

That's just my two cents.

Hey Matt-
In my book, I would classify trulia voices and zillow advice as social media.

Drew, when a lead comes in and my agents make an initial call, I have them also connect via Linkedin and Facebook. I have several examples where that has sparked more personal conversations than "all business", which has lead to sales. Also once connected we then get access to more personal information we plug into SalesForce CRM. This allows us to send out the birthday cards and get deeper employment information, education info, and more without the awkward questions. In several instances this has given us an edge over competitors who don't connect with them in the social media space.

On a direct initial lead generation basis, we've set up a Ning Network and invested about $80/mo for 18 months. This has generated us a minimum of 4 real estate revenues, far exceeding the expense.

Drew, the more I think about this post, the more I appreciate it. It's easy for agents like me to get caught up in doing something because it seems like it will work, but then I never ask myself, 'how many deals are closed because of this?'

It seems to basic, but i've come back to this post a few times now. Wow, Facebook might be a big waste of time. But then again.. is it for fun or for business? or both?

Are you talking about advertising done on social media? If not, it's hard for me to calculate ROI, because it's free other than the time you put in. Am I missing something?

My plan for 2010 free stuff on social media - linked my blog to Facebook wall for daily post feed, living blogging/facebooking all my showings and new listings, and overall treating FB more like a part of my business than just a way to show off my kids' pictures.

I'm talking about closed deals as a result of your time spent on social media activities. I know you can't really track the exact amount/% of your time you spend on social media vs other tasks.

In that case, zero ROI. Absolutely zero so far :( Boo. But then again I only started using social media for business about 4 months ago.

And I do have one active buyer right now who didn't know I was a real estate agent until he saw something I put on Facebook. He is buying $500k or so pretty soon. So when that closes, I'll let you know!

I'm not a Realtor, although I was previously a mortgage consultant so I know the industry well-but I thought I might be able to help with a bit of strategy for those of you using social media based on my experience in my current company.

We have seen good evidence that Facebook can be used effectively for direct consumer outreach and it is a fairly easy way to grow your brand being able to directly market to current customers and their friends list. For example, I've seen wineries give away a free bottle of wine to one fan of their FB if they are able to recruit 10 other wine fans to join the group.

Twitter has been quite successful for my company, but as a business to business outreach tool. We've been able to reach out directly to winemakers and even normally untouchable winery owners and consultants which has opened doors that would never have been opened otherwise. For Realtors a good offshoot of this could be marketing to HR professionals at local companies about relocation guides as well as directly marketing at company events.

On top of the two above, we've been able to gain customers, suppliers and quite a bit of SEO benefit from our blogs. Better yet, customers feel like they know us which means the should be(we're brand new so we don't know for sure) more loyal over the long term.

Hope that helps a bit!

Hard stats I don't have, but the anecdotal feedback has been very positive. For the most part our social media activity has been used by potential clients and clients alike as a due diligence exercise. One client in particular ran a Google search on Public Relations and because of our high SEO and online presence offered us a project which lead to an ongoing relationship.

I can safely say that for many in the industry here in New Zealand (as I am sure it is around the world) 2009 was tough, and, if it weren't for the effort we put in to social media, we most likely would not still be here.