I live in Southwest Florida and I attended a business meeting last night where they had a panel of representatives from many of our area’s major media organizations discussing how the traditional media companies that they work for are currently using social media in their daily business operations. In attendance were representatives from the Naples Daily News, The Fort Myers News Press, FOX 4 WFTX-TV, NBC-2 (Waterman Broadcasting) and BOBFM. From traditional newspapers to radio and TV, the panelist included a fairly broad spectrum of traditional media corporations.

I was both intrigued and rather surprised to find out that many of these organizations really do not know what to do with social media. Though they have all significantly adopted these sites- mostly Twitter and Facebook- they remain unsure and almost skittish about predicting what place social media will have in their organizations in the future. It seemed to me that there was an adoption of practice, but a reluctance and uncertainty as to how to use it to improve their bottom lines. Effectively, they know they need to do it, but they’re not exactly sure why.

The radio stations probably have the clearest perspective on how social media can and will affect their business. They have already established Facebook Fan Pages and are driving traffic to these pages while they are on the air. Though interestingly enough, the disk jockeys remain skeptical on how mentioning these sites on the air will effectively help drive business. They even indicated that many of them were very reluctant in the beginning to even adopt the practice of mentioning their website. That said, the marketing gurus of these agencies clearly see how a mere mention of a contest on the air and encouragement to view their Fan Page causes a spike not only in their Fan Page traffic but to their website as well. They feel this is an excellent indication of how they are reaching a broader base of consumers through their on air to online interactions. Ultimately, they feel that at the end of the week when the Nielsen ratings are taken, the more exposure their consumers have had to their brand through these new media outlets, is and will have a significant impact on their advertising sales.

Radio has also found the celebrity factor useful through sites like Twitter. Though they are only local celebrities, they are well known in the community and appear to be gaining Twitter followers quite quickly. Radio marketing experts feel that through these utilities, they are creating a more human connection and interaction directly with their consumers and radio broadcast personalities. Essentially, now the public can follow what these people do all day even when they are off their air. It was not specifically discussed how their radio personalities feel about this new type of ‘fame’.

TV News Broadcasting is even more interesting from a social media perspective. They indicated that social media is new on the scene at these companies and has not exactly affected their business or changed their strategies from a marketing perspective. However, they said it has definitely changed the way they gather their news. I found this rather interesting- essentially saying that reporters may be starting to ‘listen’ to the Tweets to find interesting news stories as they are happening through their followers. A sort of ‘reverse Tweet’ if you will. They indicated that though there has not been much resistance on the part of the reporters to adopt social media, they do not have any public Facebook profiles where you can interact with them and they are not necessarily actively using it in their day to day reporting business. It will be interesting to see whether or not this trend begins to shift more towards the use of social media to gather news information as its happening around the area and around the world. Certainly the recent election in Iran was an indication on how powerful social media sites can be in broadcasting news as its breaking. It begs the question, however, if the news is free…does the value of these organizations begin to decline?

Which brings me to our local newspapers. I found them to have the most interesting perspective on social media with the Naples Daily News appearing to be a tad more savvy and directed on how they are currently using social media and will continue to use it in the future. The Fort Myers News Press, though certainly well informed on the topic, seems to be a bit less sure of how they intend to utilize it in the long rung. Interestingly enough, none of these outlets have any policies with their employees (including reporters) on the usage of sites like Twitter and Facebook; though the Naples Daily News indicated there is a policy in the works and on its way down the pipeline.

In terms of news dissemination, these local newspaper reps indicated that social media may be changing the delivery of news overall. Whereas news used to be delivered to the people, there is a growing trend of other people delivering news to each other through the use of social media. They related this shift to the notion that we are now getting some of our news from each other via these websites verses directly from news sources. Blogs are one good example of this; many of us get our industry news and information from blog writers- they get their info from other blog writers and so on and so forth. The Fort Myers News Press stated that where just a short year ago much of the news was distributed by news sources and then perhaps ‘tweeted’, the current practice may now include someone tweeting that they are going to write a story, then asking their followers to contribute feedback to the story, then tweeting as they are writing it and finally submitting it via the web where it is then distributed through various news channels.

Finally, all of this begs the question, “Why do it, and how do you measure it?” Many of the panelists were unsure what to say. Newspaper reps were especially unsure; they seemed to feel that because the newspaper industry is changing so quickly that only time would tell exactly where social media would fit into their business objectives. Currently they are able to see a rather significant inrease in traffic to their online new sites from their social pages. Radio reps were a bit more certain. They indicated that they could see clear results in their Nielsen ratings from incorporating social media by the increased traffic to their sites. They indicated this increase of traffic would not online increase and enhance brand awareness, but also turn page views into marketing dollars; after all, these companies all survive on advertising revenue. The banner ads and in some cases commercials they run on their site will get more ad views the higher their traffic. Ultimately, they said, THAT is where social media will begin to show its effectiveness.

In closing, I should mention that one of the major sponsors of this panel discussion was a local real estate team. They were not on the panel, but it speaks to the growing trend of social media adoption and participation within the real estate space. Nowhere else can you gain the kind of one-on-one interaction with your clients as service professionals than on a social media site. You must learn this practice, embrace it and do all that you can to begin thinking of creative ways to make those personal and professional connections. People do business with people they know and like. Never before has this been more true than today. Embrace this practice and you’ll easily see how social media can and will fit into YOUR business (even if these media giants can’t yet.). Maybe I should direct them to my blog series, 50 Ways to Use your Fan Pages for Business. ;)

Labels: Facebook, Real Estate Marketing, Social Media, traditional media, twitter

Welcome to Part 2 of “50 Ways to Use Your Fan Page”. Each post I will give you 10 more ideas on what kind of information to post and provide on your Facebook Fan Page. I’ll give you unique and creative ideas on how to promote yourself, your listings, your website and your company online using Facebook. I’ll also provide you how-tos on promotion of the page, reading statistics and more.

The next 10 ideas on how to create value and promote your Facebook Fan Page are listed below. If there is something you would like to know more about or if you have an idea or suggestion you feel works, please feel free to let me know or post it below! After all, social media is all about sharing and collaboration. It is only successful when others participate.

1. Post personal photos. Photos are probably one of the most popular uses for Facebook. Photos grab attention and encourage people to take a look at your page. You can and should post personal photos but keep it professional. Make sure you keep in mind that this is a professional fan page and use discretion.

2. Post photos of properties. If you have a particular property that you are featuring on your website and would like to get some extra viewing time on, post an album in the photos section that is of the property. Be sure to put the properties address as the name of the album. For added benefit, go into the settings area of your album and set it to ‘everyone’ can view. That way, even if someone can’t see your profile, they will be able to see that particular photo album. (You can designate settings for each album.)

3. Post photos of events you attend. Make sure you take great photos of any events that you attend. If there are people you know who appear in the photos, get their permission and “tag” them. Tagging can be done as you are uploading your photos or after you have posted them to your album. When you tag a photo of someone, Facebook sends them an email letting them know and encouraging them to visit your page. This is what creates the “community” feel of your page. The more personalization you put on the page, the more likely it will be it gets visited.

4. Start a Discussion. Discussions provide a way to initiate conversation on your profile and encourage people to network with each other. Allow others a chance to communicate with you and your friends. It draws users in creates commentary. Click on the ‘discussions’ tab at the top of your fan page. Click the ‘start new topic’ link and enter the information. Once you’ve entered it, be sure to post on your wall that you’re starting a discussion. Keep it interesting; talk about current market events, or use it as a question and answer session. If you can provide valuable advice, you’ll get fans coming back for more.

5. Advertise your Open Houses. At the top of your fan page is a tab called “Events”. Here you can post upcoming events like your upcoming open houses. You can even attach links to a map for driving directions.

6. Add your own functionality through FBML (Facebook Markup Language). Facebook Mark Up Language allows you to add advanced functionality to your fan Page using this application. If you know HTML, you can design and create your own pages or have someone do it for you. This application will add a box to your Page in which you can render HTML or FBML (Facebook Markup Language) for enhanced Page customization. Click here to add the application: http://harvard.new.facebook.com/apps/application.php?id=4949752878

7. Announce your blog posts. You can advertise new posts to your blog simply by posting it as an update on your wall. You can attach a link directly to your blog that will direct fans right to the article.

8. Use Twitter to drive traffic. Use your Twitter updates to let your followers know of unique and interesting content or new content you’ve posted to your fan page. Cross marketing is an extremely effective way to get social media to work for you.

9. Become a fan yourself. Not only should you make sure that you become a fan of your own fan page through your personal profile, you should also make sure that you become a fan of other causes, companies, brands and people with whom you know and do business. Reaping the benefits of social media means you have to participate in it as well. Make sure you are cultivating the online community by searching around for pages that match your specific interests. A consummate professional pays attention to the causes and companies that matter most to their clients and becomes fans of them as well. One good turn deserves another.

10. Visit at least two fans per week. Social media is like any other kind of socialization. You have to make yourself available to others for it to work. In today’s hectic business climate, you may find it difficult to pick up the phone and call people just to say hello. Facebook profiles make it much easier. Be sure to pick at least two fan’s profiles per week to visit. Post a friendly ‘hello’ on their wall. They will get emailed that you posted and feel good you reached out to them.


This concludes part two of my series. I hope you’re playing around with your fan page and starting to get a hand of its functionality. Check back soon for 10 more ideas as we work towards providing you with 50 ideas on how to use your Facebook Fan Page!

Until then, Happy Socializing!


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CyberSunshine, Inc. is real estate web design firm that has been developing website and intranet applications for the real estate industry since 1998. Regarded as one of the industry's premier technology development companies, and recently named as one of Florida’s Top 100 Small Businesses, CyberSunshine, Inc. enables clients to maximize their marketing and sales potential through the internet by providing flexible, dynamic systems with robust web-based solutions tailored to their specific needs. For additional information call 239-437-2628 or visit http://www.cybersunshine.com.

Labels: CyberSunshine, Facebook, Fan Page, Real Estate Marketing, Real Estate Web Design, Social Media

Facebook Fan Pages are getting a lot of attention lately in the media and rightfully so. Research indicates that 70% of viral marketers report increasing brand awareness as one of the most successful areas of their social marketing campaigns. Not since the onset of the internet and websites have you been given the ability to reach out across the miles to millions of potential prospects in such an exciting and targeted fashion. Best of all, it’s FREE!

As a real estate professional, you are your brand. You create logos around your name and business. If you’re a broker, then brand awareness is even more crucial. If you have an organization, business, product or personality that you intend to keep in business through this year and beyond, well then you’ll want to setup a Facebook Fan Page.

Facebook Fan Pages are customizable pages setup to help a variety of promotional groups “join the conversation with Facebook users”. They allow unlimited users (unlike personal profiles), business-to-consumer interaction, and content sharing. One of the most important aspects, but often overlooked is the fact that they allow you to create a very targeted focus group for your business. If all that still hasn’t convinced you, well then you should know that they are even beginning to show up quite quickly in major search engines. Did I get your attention now? Everything from corporations, major newspapers and television shows to individual celebrities and non-profits can leverage the power of a Facebook Page to promote brand awareness.

Facebook Pages are similar yet quite different from personal profiles. Instead of “friends”, Pages acquire “fans”. Fans are sent updates (posted by page administrators) via news feeds on their personal profiles, which are then promoted to their ‘friends’. Under ‘News Feed’, you’ll see a list of the updates that have been made by your friends. Along the far right hand side of the page you may see thumbnail images with the title along with an announcement that “John Smith” is a fan. Along with it is a link for you to click to “Become a fan”. Page creation can be difficult to find. I’ve provided you a quick link to help you out (you can thank me later). http://www.new.facebook.com/pages/create.php Creating a page is not difficult or time consuming, and involves only a few fields of pertinent information.

1) First, choose the category in which your Page will be seen in the Facebook directory. Select whether you are Local, a Brand or Product, or an Artist, Band or Public Figure. As a real estate professional, you’ll most likely find the right designation under “Local”. Select ‘real estate’ from the drop down menu. (Note: if you want to setup a Page for a non-profit you care about, you’ll find “non-profit” under Brand or Product)

2) Choose your name. This part’s important. Tread carefully!! Once you have chosen it, Facebook does not allow you to change it. It’s also important to know that whatever you choose will be found in the URL of the page, which is great for search engine effectiveness. That’s why you’ll want to make sure that the name you use is the one that you use in all of your other marketing. Now is not the time to be cute – keep it simple and obvious. If you’re not sure, take a look at your marketing tools; business cards and brochures…how do you present yourself? Go with what you see most often in your real estate marketing materials, whether its your name, your company name or a real estate website, select the name that you feel a potential buyer or seller would use to search for you.

3) Finally, perform the “security check”. The security check is just simply a Captcha box that requires you to type in the words you see on the screen. This is just so the system can verify that you are indeed a human.

4) Click ‘Create Page’ and you’re done!

Now what do you do?

1) Take a break and get a treat for yourself…you’ve officially began your social media campaign!

2) Start customizing. Select an image to upload- make sure its professional looking. A logo or photo identifying your Page is critical…don’t leave the goofy question mark you’ll see there (you can change this any time if needed).

3) Fill out the info page. This is good for search engines; add as much as you can and be as descriptive as possible. You want people to relate to your group so they’ll become your fan.

4) Fill the page with useful and interesting content. You’ll want to start obtaining fans but if you have nothing interesting to lend, you won’t have any fans.

If you’re a real estate brokerage, post statistics on your market area, show off your company real estate websites, and brag about your sales numbers. You can announce new agents to your team, brag up a particular listing agent who was a recent top producer or even highlight an agent of the month. Use the page as a way to market your business.

If you’re an agent, post open houses to your events, show off your website(s) through link posts, share photos of featured listings and communicate with prospects via updates. Be creative! The more clever you are, the better your Page will be.

5) Finally, start promoting. Remember you are now a needle in a haystack. You need to spread the word about your page. Post your Page information to sites like delicious.com, twitter, your website and your blog.

In my next post, I’ll give you all kinds of information on how to promote your Page, how to update your fans, how to target your updates and more. Until then, Happy Socializing!

Labels: CyberSunshine, Internet Marketing, marketing quick tip, Real Estate Marketing, Real Estate Web Design, Social Media

It’s Spring and love is in the air…so are birds…and as you walk down the street you hear the twitter of birdies and their babies flying about, preparing for the summer ahead. You might even be enjoying one of those fluffy, sugar-coated pieces of heaven we all know and love as “Peeps”. If you’re doing either one of these things, other people want to know and they want to know RIGHT NOW. That's where Twitter comes in...

Twitter is a service for friends, family, and co–workers to communicate and stay connected through the exchange of quick, frequent answers to one simple question: What are you doing? (Source: http://www.Twitter.com)

You have probably heard recently that people are ‘twittering’. For those of you addicted to Facebook and posting status updates, Twitter could be the next best thing to chocolate covered Peeps. (Do they make those? If they do, please let me know where to get them!) But what IS it anyway and how can you use it to benefit your business?

The jury is still out on how Twitter will fit into business, if it will be used at all. Can it go beyond a simple utility that lets people know what you're doing from the grandest of achievements to the most mundane? It seems that the more we retreat into the confines of our offices, delving into the anonymous, ubiquitous world of the internet, the more we long for social interaction and connection. Could it be that the world has gotten so small and yet still feels so big that we all feel completely disconnected from each other? Well if you do, then start Twittering. It allows you to talk about what you’re doing each moment of the day with all of the people who have decided that they care enough to become one of your “followers”.

Once you’ve setup your Twitter account, chose those that you will “follow”. When you follow someone, you are updated when they post to their account. If you’re a news junkie or talk show fan, you can follow your favorites. Find out what their next shows are and get breaking news. Taking it one step further, you can keep in touch with friends by following them and their daily actions. Once you follow them, you’ll get notified when they make updates and you can reply to those updates any time.

How could Twitter benefit your business? If you use Twitter for personal AND business, you might find that you get inundated with too much mindless, mundane updates for it to actually work as a networking site (I prefer Facebook myself). However, I am always open to feedback from those of you who have gained positive connections and/or sales through Twitter (Contact me if you have!) Where I really feel it benefits is from a research and development standpoint – listen to the tweets and you might find it ‘sweet’.

Use Twitter to….

Simply Listen and Learn. As real estate professionals, and especially if you own a real estate business, you should always be keeping up with the latest news and events in your industry. By now you should be getting preference specific news updates like Google alerts on those topics that you care about- your market, local area economic concerns, real estate technology etc. (If you’re not, you better start…email me if you need to know how to set this up). You need to keep up on this information to remain an educated, well-informed service professional for your clients. In keeping with that objective, Twitter CAN help you stay informed. Follow organizations like Inman News, the Real Estate Channel, and even your own local association for updates on things that affect you, your business and your clients.

Learn about your competition. What better way to find out what your competitors are doing…each day more and more real estate businesses are adding “corporate profiles”. Usually a staff member or even an executive is posting updates to their page about their latest business happenings. If you’re lucky, they’re posting information about their newest marketing campaign, strategy, expansions, management practices and more. They’re so busy bragging themselves up, suddenly you know as much about them as their own agents.

Learn about your clients. Regardless of what age range you cater to, get your clients enthused about social media. If you have someone contact you through your website, search for them on Twitter. Follow them if you find them. Read all about their daily lives, family and things they care about then make sure you stay on top of it. If they post that they are sad they lost their dog, send them a note of sympathy. Let them know you care. Thoughtfulness is the key to prosperity.

Remind you what is important. As I was writing this, I took a break to be with my three month old son. He was blissfully playing on his back with a play gym I recently bought him. As I approached him, his eyes lit up and he smiled at me. There was something wonderfully sweet about the fact that he has no idea what Twitter is…or the internet for that matter. I’m going to enjoy and relish in the first few years of his life where he is not inundated with constant communication and social networking. I’m sure by the time he is five he’ll know more about all of this than me…but until then, I’m glad all he’ll know or care about is the color of his “Peeps” not the amount of his Tweets.


Happy Socializing!

Labels: Internet Marketing, Real Estate Marketing, Social Media