Real Estate Agencies Are Missing Out On Social Media

by Greg Vincent, on 7th October, 2009 • 11 Comments

In this week’s figures directly from Facebook, it appears that there are now 6,025,120 people in Australia on Facebook & the stats show that there is a larger percentage of the Australian population on Facebook (27.6%) compared to the US (26.1%) with 79,986,100 users.

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11 Responses to “Real Estate Agencies Are Missing Out On Social Media”

Becky says:
October 7, 2009

Great video. I was interested to see that 78% of consumers trust peer recommendations & only 14% trust advertisements.

I guess where all slowly becoming so used to seeing advertisements that we don’t really notice them as much any more.
Marty says:
October 7, 2009

I liked the bit where it says by 2010 Gen Y will outnumber the Baby Boomers. Look out Boomers here we come. lol

Great site
Greg Vincent says:
October 8, 2009

I love the last question…Still think Social media is a fad?

Social Media is now a way of life.
Braden says:
October 9, 2009

As a wise man once said on twitter- social media is like attending a BBQ. If you spend the whole time talking about yourself and looking for business, no one will like you and you wont get any business. If you be yourself and get to know as many people as you can, the business will come.
Paul Tonich says:
October 9, 2009

Great article Greg! We love the denial in the Perth market. While everyone is still deciding if Social media is wrong or right we’ve been able to create a facebook community of nearly 4000 on our Altitude real estate fan page.
http://www.facebook.com/altitudere. It has allowed us to engage at a level never experienced before. Share opportunities with our past, current and future clients. Position our brand. Build likeability and trust, recruit, sell , list and improve the level of information we receive allowing for better decisions to be made with our direction! People are waiting to see if social media is their ANSWER . Look at this as a tool, be creative and put it to work!
Greg Vincent says:
October 9, 2009

Paul, Great job. I’ve been watching the growth of your Facebook Fan Page with interest.

Like with everything, I understand that it can take a bit of time to get established, but now it appears to have snowballed.

Most agents seem to concentrate most of their marketing around their database, yet a Facebook Fan Page like yours is so much more engaging than any email database could ever be.

Obviously you still run your office database, but when you think about it, sending out an email to your database is only something you could do say once a week. Because, if you sent them more frequently then lots would start to unsubscribe.

Whereas, on Facebook you can communicate with your fans pretty much any time of the day, every day of the week & you can even send your fans an email update from time to time too, if you want to.

PS: Braden, your spot on. It’s definitely the best approach. Agent’s considering using Social Media, ask yourself what can you give, rather than what can you get & you’ll be on the right track with Social Media & everything else to do with online marketing. (It’s the only way to build trusting relationships online).
Janie Prescott says:
October 11, 2009

I understand that Web 2.0 & Social Media are here, but it looks like a complete waste of time to me.

An agent’s database is full of buyers & sellers who are interested in real estate, surely it’s more important to focus on that, rather than trying to find a needle in a haystack through Social Media.
Emily Sim says:
October 16, 2009

It appears the perception of social media is that it creates more work. In fact it can allow you to reach more buyers and sellers faster, with more information which is more accessible by ‘buyers and sellers’ at a cheaper rate as it replaces traditional methods of print media, direct mail and the old favourite letter box dropping. Further if you consider communication with your ‘database’ important, social media does that too.
Roslynne says:
October 20, 2009

What’s so social about Social Media Marketing? I get enough junk mail in my letterbox from agents now, the last thing I need is to have them sending me crap when I’m chatting with my friends on facebook.

If I want an agent I’ll call one when I need them. Janie, you’ve got the right idea. Agents do us all a favour & stick with your database.
Greg Vincent says:
October 22, 2009

Roslynne, Social Media Marketing is the ideal way to build a relationship with potential customers & at the same time Social Media provides these same potential customers with a voice that now expands right across the web.

So if agents approach it the wrong way it can backfire.

The old way of doing business was by push marketing (sending leaflets, direct mail, door knocking or telephone prospecting) to look for customers.

With Social Media it’s more important to engage people in conversations & let people express their opinion (like Braden mentioned earlier) than to try pushing your product.

Roslynne, if you don’t like seeing advertising/marketing on Social Media sites like Facebook, YouTube, etc then I don’t think there’s a whole lot that any of us can do about it, because without the ads the sites wouldn’t be free for anyone to use.
Oriefsnef says:
November 1, 2009

Other variant is possible also