I often say that social media can be overwhelming if you don't have a plan. However, sometimes without specifics, this might not make sense. So instead of blogging about the theory of planning, I am just going to lay out my personal plan. This is just what works for me, I am sure others have very different strategies and I would be interested in hearing them.
My goals: 1) Reach and educate real estate professionals about Zillow and internet advertising in general. 2) Keep in touch with my sphere of influence 3) Keep abreast of current real estate topics and 4) Keep abreast of local happening in my neighborhood.
Target: Real Estate professionals and Locals
Twitter- This is turning into my favorite business tool because of my short reading and writing attention span. 95% of my tweets are business related and 5% personal. I'll follow back anyone who is in the real estate industry. I won't follow anyone that hasn't uploaded a picture or whose profile description isn't real estate related. I use TweetDeck to sort out those who are particularly interesting to me and any direct messages or replies. I also use TweetDeck to follow these keywords: Zillow, Wicker Park, and the combination of "anyone know" & "Chicago". Finally use the service to follow the hash tags for any conventions that may be happening. (One exception to this is I have a column in TweetDeck that I track Celebrity Tweets, guilty pleasure). I have TweetDeck on constantly throughout the day and just consider it an extension of my email. I believe the quality of the people you follow and who follows you is more important than sheer numbers. I also use Twitter to broadcast my new blog posts.
Facebook- I use Facebook mostly because I personally enjoy it. If I never got business off of it, I would still use it because I enjoy knowing what people I don't regularly hear from are up to and seeing their pictures. 90% of my status updates are personal, about 10% are business or cause related. I don't post anything I wouldn't want my mom to see (she is now a friend of mine!). Since the "groups" function on Facebook is so easy to use, my policy is that I'll follow anyone that has uploaded a picture and some information about themselves and we have at least two mutual friends. The "groups" function then makes sure I don't miss any of the people I really care to know about. I have groups for: good friends, work friends, high school, college years, and family. The main reason I'll 'friend' anyone is that I will use Facebook to broadcast new blog posts and I want to make sure I reach as far as possible. (tip: don't auto post your blogs to facebook, go create a custom link and message). On average, I check Facebook 5 times a day for about 5 minutes each time.
LinkedIn- I probably could do more here, but I use the site in a very passive way, mainly as a Rolodex or resume. I will only connect with people that I would feel confident giving a personal recommendation about. In other words, I must actually know you. I keep my profile as up to date and complete as possible. I occasional will check my Inbox, but not regularly, as most of the stuff that comes thru this site isn't time sensitive. I probably spend an hour a month on the site.
Blogging- Blogging is my home base to get information out. When I first started I thought- I want to reach real estate professionals, where are they hanging out online? So having my blog hosted by Active Rain was an obvious choice. With so many other professionals using the site, it was an automatic audience. Writing for me doesn't come easy and it takes effort for me to post, which is why I don't post as much as I like. My goal is twice a week. I will also occasionally blog on the Zillow Corporate Blog, when there is something to say that affects the real estate community. I guess I average 3 hour a week here.
Commenting on Blogs- Google alerts here are priceless. Whenever my name is mentioned in a blog post, I will leave a comment. I also try to leave at least one comment a day within the Active Rain community. This is an area I wish I was better at because I think commenting can be a huge play. Without commenting on other people's blogs, authoring your own loses something I feel. I guess I average about 2 hours a week leaving comments.
Reading Blogs- As blogs become more popular, there is so much more to read. I have about 40 blogs to which I subscribe to their RSS feeds and new posts go straight into my Inbox in an RSS folder. This way I don't have to constantly go to blogs to check for updates. I can also catch up on my blog reading when I am on planes by setting these feeds up, as I can read them offline. I will scan the featured blogs on ActiveRain daily and just do a few random searches each day. Finally, I find myself more and more just reading blog posts that people Twitter about. Reading blogs takes up about 45 minutes of my day.
Forums- Again, think about where the people you want to reach are hanging out online, and get there. For me, this means Zillow Advice (obviously!). In the Professional section of Zillow Advice, many professionals leave posts about things they need help with, so this needs monitoring if I am going to be of help. I am also interested in what is happening locally, so I subscribe to get alerts whenever anyone leaves a post that is tagged to my neighborhood and Chicago in general. I like to interact with these people as well. The auto alerts are great because I can just click on an email, and give an answer that usually takes me about 2 minutes to type.
YouTube- My goal this year was to get more into video and I am starting to creep into it. At Zillow we have been working this year to create training videos for various parts of the site, we now have about 25 that are hosted by YouTube. I then use all the tools mentioned here to get these out.
Yelp - 100% personal. I admit, I am more of a taker than a giver here. I read reviews for just about any place I go to eat and professional service I use. I try to do a review here about once a month, more because I feel guilty about not giving back because I use the site so much!
This post was a little long, but I hope it gives some meat around how I personally have crafted my social media plan. There isn't a one size fits all this! Sites that people have a lot of success with, that I don't use, for example FlickR and blip.fm and fan pages on Facebook. Any other good tools out there?
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We have boosted our goals for the event as well: