Marketing Yourself through Social Marketing

As we all are learning how to adept to these economic conditions, now more than ever, we need to stay focused on exactly what it is we are marketing, that would be ourselves. Speaking as someone who knows, that is all you can count upon. I come from the new home sales business where changing builders is more the rule than the exception. Personally I have worked for nine different builders since 1983, some I left by design, others by desire. What was the most important asset that I took with me each time? My Rolodex and my reputation, those two things are who you are in the business.

Growing up old school it was shoe leather that built that base of contacts. For 5 years straight I hand delivered fliers to the top of 1,200 Realtor desks across the North side of Indianapolis every week. Those "spam" fliers were really an excuse to be walking up and down the aisles of those offices each week, this was when you could walk past the receptionist and go into the offices, and when most Realtors had offices at their brokers. When I was walking up and down handing out these I was able to get face to face time with some of the Realtors, it paid big dividends.

Today, we can do the same thing in a flash of a keystroke after we put forth the effort to build a base of contacts through Social Media like Facebook, Linked in, and Twitter. This is a new phenomenon for most of us, however it is still networking and many of the rules for networking still apply. One is we need as many contacts as we can get, and from those we need to develop strong connections as well. Is it work, yep, but it is well worth it. I find it truly amazing when I talk to someone who is a Realtor or other who makes their living by marketing themselves who are not sold on building a big network, not befriending anyone if they don't know them keeps your circle small.

Let me give you a little tip that I learned the hard way. It didn't dawn on me until after I crossed 1,000 friends. When you add a friend create a list to attach them. I now have a Central Indiana Realtor list, I am developing a political connections list as well as family, friends, etc., this way you can target messages to each according to their interests, or what you want to convey. For instance if I want to hold a meeting and invite Realtors I can do a "Special Event" and send the invitation to over 700 targeted people in one keystroke. If you wait to do after you build a large network it is very time consuming to go back and build later. Once done each new name gets linked to a list the first day.

Today I attended a Real Estate Bar Camp for Social Networking and was thrilled to be able to listen to those more successful in doing so, and meeting and exchanging ideas with so many like minded individuals. Once again, networking, is critical to succeed at anything. I want to point out a few of the topics that I thought would benefit anyone who is interested in learning this skill.

This one idea is one that I had come to through trial and error and was thrilled to hear it was truly a key in marketing yourself in today's crowded cluttered market, to Micro-brand yourself. For decades I was terrified to let anyone know much about who I was personally to keep my professional image as vanilla as possible to not offend anyone. For instance, most of have been told never to talk politics, I even wouldn't mention that I was a fan of Purdue University sports to not offend those from Indiana University.

However, I have personally become so passionate about the direction that the political world is going, I decided I didn't care and started mouthing off. I did in fact lose some Facebook connections, when I started I had 719 Realtor connections, it dropped to 600, but now has bounced back to nearly 800. What I learned is, yes, I will lose some, but those I keep and gain will have more of a connection to me. The speaker today spoke to how we need to get "our" like minded client base, those who share our passions. Be it talking about your cats or dogs, sports, whatever it is you are to be known for be sure it isn't contrived, but your real passion. In other words be real.

The consensus of the seminar today is that we all need to create a large sphere of influence, that isn't anything new. What is new is the mediums. There are some great training opportunities out there to learn about these forums. Find someone in your office who is having success. When I started to try to learn about this I went to those who were successful, I picked my 19 year old son's brain. He was running his photography business through Myspace and had a network of over 10,000 "friends." Another I went to was Kelly Burns with Century 21, she was way ahead of me in the curve, she showed me how she was marketing her homes through it, and some tips and results she was seeing. Then I talked with Steve Dalton who at the time had the largest Twitter following in Indiana, and was using it as a key to his marketing of his mortgage business. I wanted to pick each of their brains, learn as much as I could from each. If you don't have anyone to teach you, contact me, I will be happy to get your started with some 101 level stuff as well as turn you on to others to seek information from.

Bottom line is what you are marketing today is you, no one knows what might happen to any company we may be working. What you can control is that you have a large circle of influence that will follow you to whatever, and where ever you may go.