RISMEDIA, June 12, 2009-Every time I read some gushing article about how important it is that every agent blog, Twitter and otherwise waste hours posting generally pointless or mindless information online, I want to retch. Sometimes I think all these experts telling you that you must Twitter, Digg, FURL, MySpace, REDDIT or Stumbleupon (to name just a few) have taken leave of their senses. With few and notable exceptions, the vast majority of real estate professionals trying to succeed on these social toys fail.
“How can you ignore the hundreds of thousands/millions who are doing this?” is the logic advanced by the cheerleaders of time wasting. Just this morning, I read a column in another newsletter where a pundit stated with a straight face that he read a restaurant review on Yelp! (yet another social networking site) from a lady with whom he has now developed the “kind of trust that agents seek to build with their clients.” When does all this become just too much to participate in without losing your complete IQ?
These time sinks are so intrusive in our lives that experts say our children are experiencing delayed transition from adolescence to adulthood: they’re too busy texting, posting and blogging to even complete a cohesive line of thought and they are more tethered to their devices than any young person should be.
Scientists tell us that IQ diminishes greatly when we are distracted by e-mail, cell phones, texts, etc., but these experts are telling you to set yourself up to be distracted hundreds of times a day by trivial things not connected with work? Come on! (The fellow writing the “you’ve got to Twitter” article I read today did reference a Twitterer who sent out 1459 Tweets about real estate without getting one response, which I though summed up the issue rather nicely, but-I digress.)
What about real estate agents?
Two reporters-John Swansburg and Jeremy Singer-Vine-reported the following in Microsoft Corporations’ SLATE magazine: “After examining some 300,000 Twitter accounts, a Harvard Business School Professor reported last week that 10% of the services users account for 90% of tweets. The study dovetails with recent analysis by the media research firm Nielsen Research asserting that over 60% of Twitter users do not return from one month to the next. Both findings suggest that, so far, Twitter has been considerably better at signing up users than keeping them.”
The most common reaction I hear from people I know who have rushed to join Twitter, a.k.a. “the next big thing” goes something like this: “I don’t get it. What is the point of this thing?”
Well, the point surely is not to sell houses. Harvard Business School wouldn’t have missed that.
A large part of this rush to endorse social networking is fear of missing the next Google. Google began as a humble provider of information; a useful service given free to all who inquired. Of course, while we were all wondering at how good Google was, Google was building a massive database that would allow it to charge everyone billions of dollars to access their findings via pay-per-click advertising. Good for them. Google became the darling of the business schools and of the business model for online companies: give whatever away free and then sell advertising on it.
Look around our industry at the most successful social marketing sites: many of them have burned through considerable capital in building their businesses and they serve audiences who value them each in their own way, but what profits are they making? Will they ever mimic Google’s success? Who can tell? What about you? Can you afford to allocate your time and effort to things that are of such dubious import? Are you expecting an economic return for Twittering?
Much of what is going on with all these types of sites is that they are building a database/user base to which they someday hope to sell things. “Hope” is the operative word. I hope every agent Twittering sells houses on Twitter, but that won’t make it so.
Better brains than mine have tried to make money with this kind of stuff, and failed. When Facebook first came upon the scene, a company immediately announced an application to post listings there. I said then what I say now: Facebook is not where people go to look at homes. I was viewed as ‘out of touch’ and ‘too set in my ways to get it.’ (However, years later, no one is selling homes on Facebook with any regularity and the services company ‘sold off’ their application they were so proud to announce. Selling price was not disclosed, but it was rumored to be “Take away free.”) Look at youtube.com: no less a powerhouse than Google bought them for a gazillion dollars, because ‘they ramped up to millions of users in record time!’ Fortunately for Google, they can afford flights of whimsy like buying YouTube (because they collect billions of dollars from realtors trying to sell homes via their pay-per-click), but even they haven’t made a penny of profit from doing so, as of today. Of course, if all this twaddle about Twitter makes some media giant shell out a few billion for Twitter, they’ll be very successful.
Most real estate agents will never make any meaningful revenue from so many of these socially useful social networking sites. Therefore, my advice is to stay away. Spend your hard working time doing something that can really pay off for you, like following up good leads and selling houses. If you think I am nuts, remember that 90% of agents don’t even sell homes from their websites! How about figuring out how to get leads from the Internett before branching off into Twitterdom?
“Social” is a lot different than “Business”
Before every blogger with an attitude shows up in the comments section-please take note: there are a good number of people who have made blogs help them in their marketing, but as a percentage of all realtors, it is miniscule. That is my message here, not that no one succeeds, but that so few succeed that hyping such things is counterproductive in relation to the average agent trying hard to get in on the 87% of residential real estate transactions that begin online.
Social is more than an adjective; social networking is more of a pleasure than a business. It’s affinity marketing taken to the extreme. It’s yakking it up for the purpose of yakking it up, in most cases. How can following an information source on Twitter help you sell more houses today? With the constant bombardment of messages, you’ll soon forget anything relevant as you struggle to keep up with continuous distraction and input. Just because the material is good doesn’t mean the practice will benefit anyone. What is the business benefit of knowing that Adam Lambert just came out in Rolling Stone (Do you even know who Adam Lambert is?)? Sure, it can make for interesting conversations, but does this stuff really help you sell homes?
Harvard Business School stated no opinion on that, but it is safe to say from their droll summarization of their findings about Twitter sign-ups who make one Tweet and never return that they think the entire process is of dubious merit. My opinion is that Twitter and the rest are harmless entertainment and can grow to be a real way to waste lots of time. I think selling homes is a serious business; one where distractions and bad advice only make the job harder.
The next big thing is on your desk, right now
Look; I’m sure the folks at Twitter are really nice. They’ve signed up a lot of users. The same goes for all those blogs and social networking sites. I wish them all well and hope they have even greater success and profit in the future.
However, none of these social networking sites possess anywhere near the value inherent in Google, Yahoo, and bing, especially for real estate agents and brokers. Why? Because over 880 million real estate-related searches are conducted just on Google every month by the real arbiters of what matters in real estate: the home buyers. That’s where homeowners go to look at homes and that’s where you should be to greet them and convert them into your customers.
For any real estate agent to be misdirected into placing the bulk of their efforts in these wonderful social toys is the worst example of that timeless statement that the road to hell is paved with good intentions.
Until 880 million people are searching Twitter for real estate-related things each month, I wouldn’t make becoming a Twitterer a priority.
Folks, it’s not about emulating the rare agent who sells lots of homes online with Twitter or any other social networking tool: it’s about emulating the hundreds of agents who sell 10-20+ homes annually with their online marketing services for REALTORS©. Let others be socially hip; you be the one with the ongoing leads and sales to Internett buyers! If you’d like to get in on selling homes online, get the booklet offered below and start there.
Mike Parker (mparker@theblackwatercg.com) specializes in online marketing services for Realtors® and real estate professionals. To request a free review of your online marketing and website to determine if it is set up properly to be effective click here and it will be evaluated free. Also feel free to obtain the new booklet “REAL LEADSTM - How to get them and Sell Homes Online,” FREE with no obligation. Just write to realleads@CompassInternettSystems.com and they’ll send you a copy and no one will call you.
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Read more: http://rismedia.com/2009-06-11/online-marketing-twitter-twaddle-harvard-business-school-and-social-networking/#ixzz0I9qBjkHH&C
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