All indicators tell us that people are basing their buying or support decisions on information from their peers.  Blind trust of the source of a marketing message is rare, and why wouldn’t it be when there is so much social input on the Web?  Buyers look for social backup – backup in the form of third-party opinion, viral recommendations and reviews.  If you’re not making that kind of information available to your prospects, you’re probably losing out to your competitors that do.

There are three core principles that comprise a successful social media campaign.

First you need content.  Relevant content.  Interesting content.  Social media is about ‘What’s happening now?’  When you engage prospects through social media you need to give them something valuable, something that gives them a feel for what your product is, something they can weigh in on.  As it applies to a builder or developer, that something is not necessarily product, but what connects that product to the readers’ current interests and your ability to affect their buying decision. 

Those interests revolve around goings-on in the community.  Topics like construction updates, occupancy rates, buyer testimonials, parks full of residents, kids walking to school, shopping opportunities, neighborhood festivals, common area activities. Topics that seem real, current, and make a difference to a buyer – information that can be delivered on an ongoing basis.

Perhaps the best vehicle for this purpose is a news feed or a blog.  Blogs readily handle video, imagery and links to relevant data.  Blogs enable a steady stream of current information that interested prospects can subscribe to in a variety of ways. Ideally, this blog is embedded within a product presence with a video page, photos, floor plans, neighborhood information, and of course ways to contact you directly.  As a requirement, this blog must have subscription and distribution capabilities – your way of engaging and retaining interest in prospects at all stages of the buying decision. 

Second, you need to decide on the vehicle or vehicles you will concentrate on to deliver that rich content to the social Web.  Once you are generating fresh relevant content on a regular basis you need to make sure it is seen by your prospects.  You will need a Web presence to disseminate your content from.  You can build your own, or make it a part of your current Web site, but ideally you should choose to participate in a site that specializes in generating participation on a social media platform – one with a built-in audience that specializes in your industry.

Focus on the largest collective social media space of them all – search engines.  You must be optimized for search and there is no better way to do that than to build relevant content using your topic-oriented blog posts– news updates that incorporate video, images and links.  Building up relevant content posts on the Web is exponentially effective in getting your product to the front of the search engine results.  And unlike Adwords, which get you position as long as you keep paying, organic search engine optimization bring you results far into the future.  They are the gift that keeps on giving.

Search engines, of course, have taken on a new dynamic, and the big ones may not be as dominant in the future.  You need to distribute your content and have a presence where the prospects are – prospects that are spending the majority of their time in a specific social community. This includes the large social communities like YouTube and Facebook as well as the industry-specific.

YouTube is now the second most-used search engine. Do you have sufficient video content to surface in a search on your industry? Do you need to have a channel there?

Facebook doesn’t need anyone to expound on the power of 300 million users. And the fastest growing demographic on Facebook is those 35 years and older.  Do you have a page on Facebook?  Do you update it regularly?  Do you have a fan base?

Twitter is not well understood by many, but what is easy to understand is its power to expose your product to a growing audience.  When you have good content to share, real prospects will follow you on Twitter.

And the many real estate related sites, both local and regional are hungry for good content, another reason to be the provider of such.  It’s worth your effort to seek these out. The best way to do penetrate these sites is to participate in their discussions online and make your content available to them through links. 

The third component of a successful social media effort is knowing how to navigate social etiquette.  There are no hard rules in this arena, only an understanding that your communication is not a sales pitch – it’s a conversation.  You talk to people about things that can really help them understand some aspect of your business or product and they will come to appreciate you and your knowledge – you become real to them. When you engage a prospect with your knowledge and/or feed them information that makes it easy to make a decision, even going so far as to mention your competitors’ alternatives, there is no better trust-building effort.  These efforts, in turn, increase the likelihood of your sales success.  You ask them for the sale too early and you’re a goner in a mouse-click.

Theoretically, social media is free.  That is, of course, if you have the resources to devote the considerable time and knowledge acquisition that it takes to create and fulfill your own strategy.  Many organizations dabble in it, then pay less attention to it over time because it takes a lot of time and they may not see immediate results.  In the meantime the world is going on and more and more of your marketplace is gravitating toward these social outlets.

When people you know say ‘I don’t use social media’, ask them if they’ve done a Web search recently for a product or service.  Ask them if they’ve read a review of a restaurant lately.  Ask them if they’ve read opinions about a particular industry, product or service.  Ask them if they’ve thought about making a buying decision, then gone online to see what other people are saying about it.  That’s right – they use social media. Most everyone does whether they know it or not.  That in itself will ensure social media’s longevity.

If you’re not in the game, now’s the time to get started.

New Home Notebook has everything you need to launch a successful cost-effective social media campaign for your builder community or development.

For more information, call

Nita Tuskan at 312-280-9780 x509 or
Anish Jethmalani at 312-280-9780 x503