Social Media: the power of “the story”
Social Media to drive Office Leads? You Bet.
I gave a presentation last week on “Harnessing the power of Social Media to build brand, foster community and drive revenue”. While there was definitely a sense of intrigue in the room and while the majority of attendees recognized the importance of this communication tool, just about everyone was trying to figure out how or whether embarking on a Social Media initiative would work for his/her business.
Let me start by bringing this topic down to its very basic form. Now, I’m betting that there will be a few critics out there who will feel I’m over simplifying a complex communication structure – but this overview will provide you with an effective way to wrap your brain around whether or not to put your toe in the water.
The net, net is… Social Media is simply a distribution channel. Like direct mail, print advertising, email, billboards, radio, TV and press releases this forum simply allows you to share your message. The difference, and reason why this media is so powerful is that it allows for true interaction / engagement / two-way communication with your audience.
So, how do you get the most from this medium? There are three core legs to this stool: (1) the Story, (2) Packing the story (3) Distributing the story. In this entry I’ll discuss the first leg and then follow up this week with the other two.
Social Media: Packaging the Story
Packaging Your Story
Planning is critical to the success of a social media initiative. Not to say that we can’t build the plane as we’re flying (many entrepreneurs successfully do), but having the overall vision, goals / objectives, key performance indicators, tactical execution plan, and resources to support that plan are clearly fundamental elements in the process.
So, in this instance, we’ve established our core value proposition. The Unique Bundle of Promise (BOP) that make your competition absolutely irrelevant. The BOP that you’re going to deliver seamlessly to your stakeholder every day. We’ve taken that BOP and created a story calendar. We’re going to build upon these stories over time and share the content with your audience using appropriate voices and media.
Next, we’re going to identify our target audience and build off our BOP story to create messaging that resonates with these specific audiences. We’re going to engage them, wow them and involve them in our discussion. Suggest you begin with the “low hanging fruit”: Existing and previous customers, third-party referrers and people who have inquired. They already know you and hopefully love you. Pick a sample from this segment and start following them. Research and understand what they’re talking about, who they’re talking to, what venues they are using to communicate and what interests them. Get it right with this core group and the viral aspect of this medium is more likely to take over. Read more
Social Media: Distributing the Story
You’ve established your “story”, created a plan to “package” your story and now we’re going to “distribute” the story. It should be noted that these three phases are 100% interrelated. I’m really sharing a linear approach with you for illustrative purposes. But , to be sure, this process is truly one that is living, breathing and evolving. For simplicity, we’re now at Stage 3 which is “Distribution”. Just as with traditional media outlets, you need to choose the right venue to convey your message. Your first choice to efficiently sell commercial office space would not be an print ad in “Star Magazine” or targeting high school students. Right? As such, we suggest the most effective Social Media forums for your commercial real estate products and services are: A Blog, Linkedin, Twitter, YouTube and Flickr. Start there and you have the most critical media covered.
When you’re ready, establish a Blog. This forum will provide you with a powerful platform for your long form messaging. Here, you’ll bring a voice and “life” to your brand. You’ll engage your audience in a dialogue, provide content for reporters and other bloggers to use in their writings (and for linking purposes) and use this tool to increase organic rankings. Think of it this way, rather than have a reporter act as a gatekeeper for your news, you can share your thoughts on techniques businesses can use to prevail in a turbulent marketplace. Why not show your products and services “in action” though client vignettes. Bring your vendor’s best practice to the forefront detailing how the technology that your providing is enhancing your clients business. Target 2-4 posts per week at 150 – 300 words per post.
Consider using multi-media for your blog (for example – adding in a VLog, which is when video assets are used to deliver a message versus words on the page). Add photos and videos of your locations (interior / exterior / show your product in action) and tag them appropriately for organic optimization purposes. Post the photos on Flickr and videos on YouTube with appropriate tags. Now, you are layering on visuals to support your written word. Google Claudia Schiffer to see how powerful visuals + words can be. Don’t load up hundreds of photos at once. Continuously load up a smaller amount. Read more
Social Media: Measuring Success
You’ve made a commitment to invest in a Social Media initiative and your plan is inmotion. Fantastic. You clearly understand your goals and objectives for this program and have aligned the program to support your business in achieving its overall objectives. Along the way you identified the essence of your brand, your unique Bundle of Promises (this is an evolving process but establishing the foundation is a core step). You are creating stories that bring those promises to life. Identifying your most important target audiences, you are packing those stories to ensure relevance. All along you’re keeping your distribution channels in mind so that you can further package your stories to ensure you are properly transmitting your message in each venue. Hang on – you’re not ready to launch yet! Read more
Social Media: The story. We need an “us”.
Oh my. It’s been a while since my last post. I realize that we do need an “us” in order to keep this “blog” process going. An odd proclamation – I realize. Here’s what I’m thinking. We just rolled out a “ready-to-use” social media platform for one of our residential
Filling Seats Social media Treasure Chest
clients. We created the strategy – established goal / objectives / metrics etc… Our designer created a wonderful looking blog and Sue strategically chose the elements of the blog and URL strategy (local news, weather, inquiry form, flickr and YouTube widget etc…) to reinforce our objectives. Having just performed a “brand discovery” process we clearly knew the company’s Unique Bundle of Promise (uBOP). From there we created a 90-day story platform that very nicely (if I do say so myself) reinforced each element of their uBOP. We packaged those stories for Twitter, their blog, Facebook and Flickr. They now have the foundation for a social media initiative that will take them through the next 90-days. We call it “Social Media in a box”. Or, the Social Media treasure chest since one of our core objectives is to generate high-converting leads that yield $$. Ultimately we provided them with a super cost-efficient and time-efficient and a very powerful marketing tool. In my next post – I’ll include a link to their blog so you can see what I’m talking about (it’s not live yet!).
Webinar Nov 11th: Harnessing Social Media to Drive Results
Young Real Estate Professionals, are you still wondering what all the buzz on social media is about and how you can tap into it to match your business needs?
During this 60-minute dynamic and informative session, attendees will walk away with the core tools to “immediately” reap the benefits from this powerful source.
This Webinar will be held on Nov 11th, 2009
Details are as follows:
Young Real Estate Professionals
Harnessing Social Media to Drive Results
Webinar Nov 11th 2009
1:00 pm EST
http://www.regonline.com/builder/site/Default.aspx?eventid=785224
Key topics include:
• Why Social Media should matter to you
• Establishing program goals and objectives
• Identifying and documenting Key Performance Indicators to assess the program
• Creating the optimal Social Media road map: Avoiding “death by a thousand cuts”
• “Must do” steps to generate leads “now”
• Precautions you must take to yield positive results: “Celebration v. Execution”
Is traditional PR Dead?
PR That Stands Out
I was reading a blog posting on FastCompany.com entitled “Public Relations: Call off the Undertakers”. Wendy Marx who wrote the post addresses a position from a blog on Web 2.0 that “70% of today’s PR firms with their traditional public relations and communication business structure will not survive in the fast-approaching social media avalanche.”
She adamantly argues that PR is thriving as never before. And, she continues to explain that even as newspapers are imploding, the Internet has breathed new life into the category.
All that she says is true. However, she missed the boat in her assessment. The stat is addressing agencies that are not evolving and embracing social media as a core tool in their outreach. And there are a number of them. The fact is, PR agencies are still providing me with pitches that feature little alternative to a traditional approach to PR (press releases, standard pitching, by-lined article placements, events etc..). Just the other day I reviewed a few PR PowerPoints that were presented to me more then a decade ago. I couldn’t tell the difference between a presentation that I received last week – and then. Very disappointing.
I agree. PR is more alive than ever. The distribution channels are simply changing. The way that we tell our stories is changing. We now have the unique ability to tell our stories in long-form messaging (blog, by-liners, press releases, website, Wikipedia), via sound bite messaging (Tweets), through the voice of others (LinkedIn, Facebook, in-person events), visually (Flickr and YouTube) and sonically (iTunes, Utterz). And, the list of tools that are at our disposal goes on almost endlessly. Read more
Please join us for our Webinar: Marketing in a New Economy. Top 7 “Must Do” Tips.
Over the years, we’ve tested a number of marketing initiatives to raise brand awareness and drive leads. Some initiatives included branding train and subway stations, wrapping busses and cars, touring mobile billboards and flying a plane with a flexible officing message over the Dallas Cowboy stadium. Great fun, really. And, these tactics were on strategy to support where that firm’s brand and business was at the time.
But, the fact is, you really need to nail down the basics before testing any out of the box media. During our Webinar on June 25th we are going to share with you a list of basic activities and provide tools to implement those activities the next morning.
Webinar - Don't miss out!Over the years, we
We’ll talk about core initiatives including how to:
- Educate, involve and engage the brokerage community
- Use “PR 3.0″ tools (ie: Social Medai) to really begin to raise awareness and build equity for your brand (and drive leads too!)
- Get more from your existing customer base
- Generate more leads from your website
- Reduce the chance of your sales discussion plummeting down the “price death spiral”
- Increase conversion rate
And, because I just can’t help myself….we are going to talk a bit about “BRAND”
Our discussion will be practical and actionable.
If you have any topics that you would like reviewed, just let us know by leaving a comment. We’ll do our best to address your questions.
We look forward to your participation! Click here for more info and to register.