Based on information obtained by the 2008 Social Media Survey of Real Estate and Construction professionals published by MorganSullivan, Inc., social media are not widely used nor understood by many professionals currently working in these industries. Here are a few perceptions or myths held by some of the survey respondents:
Most bloggers are under 30 years old. According to Technorati's annual blogosphere report, 58% of bloggers are 35 or older. There are business benefits to blogging and many marketers are starting to understand the benefits.
Blogging is for geeks and is a waste of time. David Meerman Scott's recent example of how blogging brought Century 21 Real Estate to the top page of the Google search engine is a pretty good example of how quickly a firm can position itself for very little cost. How could positioning your company to get inquiries from clients be a waste of time? When people search for products and services today, they often use search engines like Google. Getting your company on the top page improves your chances of getting inquiries for new business. Blogging is not just for geeks anymore either. Knowledge of HTML code (universal language of the Internet) might be helpful, but it is not required. There are many successful bloggers who don't know how to write HTML code and don't need to because blog hosting providers including WordPress, TypePad, Blogger, and many more, make it quite easy and user friendly to build and operate blogs.
Blogging is time consuming. Some blogs can be time consuming, but many blogs get high traffic with postings of 500 words or less and some tasks including newsletters and press releases can be rolled into blogging allowing smart companies to gain efficiencies in marketing and PR activities.
Social Media would not work in construction or real estate. According to the MorganSullivan survey, many real estate and construction companies rely on word of mouth marketing to win new work. Social media are ways to use the Internet to capitalize on word of mouth marketing. If word of mouth marketing is successful, social media should be successful.
There is no way to track ROI with blogging and Social Media. This one is difficult to prove, but it's also difficult to prove with print advertising, direct mail, and other marketing communication including press releases. Many real estate and construction companies, however, use these old tools because they're confident that they will produce results. Start blogging and include social media sites like digg, diigo, and delicious, and see your web site traffic spike. Getting more clients to come to you seems like ROI to me.
John P. Kreiss |
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