This is the fourth in a series of five posts on social media marketing for agents.
Social Media: The Affordable Marketing Solution
It is quite difficult to understand why an agent would want to spend a fortune on conventional advertising when there are new and advanced methods that are less expensive and that actually generate measurable results.
Social media is a prime example. Social media networks are websites that allow people to socialize or connect with friends, family or businesses. There are millions of users on the top social media sites, so they are a goldmine for connecting with consumers.
These sites are free to join and offer a wide variety of features that enhance easy connection and sharing of information. Businesses across the world are steadily joining the various online social media sites such as Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Google+, Pinterest, YouTube and many others.
Social media networks are known to influence people, which is why they are so powerful when it comes to marketing. Print and electronic advertising are now financially out of reach for most agents today. Not only that, but they are no longer as effective as they used to be.
The good thing about social media that makes it superior to other marketing strategies is the ability for an agent to interact with their prospects and customers directly.
If you want to maintain your customers while attracting new ones, social media marketing could be the vehicle you need.
The Viral Nature of Social Media Marketing
Social media refers to websites that allow users to interact with other people by sharing information. Social media sites across the web have a massive amount of users:
LinkedIn has around 100 million users, Twitter boasts of well over 100 million users, and Facebook takes the lead with approximately 1 billion active users.
These numbers alone show you the potential power that social media can bring to small businesses that want to reach out to consumers.
For instance, if you had immediate, daily contact with 100 local consumers through social media, you will have the opportunity to build a relationship with them on a consistent basis. What could this do to your bottom line?
Not only that, but social media platforms are setup in a way that will allow your audience to do some of the marketing for you. For example, let’s say you post a status update that involves a new listing on your Facebook Business Page. Your fans can easily share this with their friends, family, and other contacts with a click of a button.
This is known as “going viral” in the social media world. Before you know it, this new listing may have been exposed to hundreds of people; some who may end up contacting you for more information.
To attract more attention, you can use coupons and special offers in your social media circle. Although many people may contact you just to redeem the offer, many of them will end up becoming potential clients as well.
Social Media is the one of the easiest ways to interact with your prospects and customers directly. Technology has made social media an inevitable phenomenon and as an agent, there is no choice other than to embrace it and utilize its features to expand your business and increase profits.
Next week I’ll explore some more features of social media marketing for agents.
