Social Networking and Real Estate

Remember the good old days when you could make some useful contacts, get referrals and meet prospective clients through events like your kids, dinners with neighbors or even casual lunch dates with friends? Fortunately some of these things still exist and prove to be extremely useful for gaining new clients for your real estate business. However, people are becoming less social offline and more social online. What does this mean for you and your real estate business?

Most likely by now you have felt the impact of the social networking phenomenon on the real estate industry. Agents everywhere are using websites like Facebook,Twitter, LinkedIn and various other networking portals for everything from advertising listings to sharing their favorite things.

Many would agree that social media is emerging as one of the easiest forms of marketing for standard retail products and services, but what about the big purchases? Let’s first take a look at a couple websites that are two present day examples that prove this trend Face book and LinkedIn.

-Face book: has quickly become one of the largest social networking sites in the world with over 100 million users. Started by a college kid (now a multi-millionaire), Face book has grown from a simple college leisure site to one of the most powerful, far reaching social networks on the web.

You can join as many communities at Face book, to which you are target for. Either the keyword is relevant to any kind of business like: Costa Rica Real Estate

-LinkedIn: also started with humble beginnings, but has grown to become the largest business networking site in its domain. LinkedIn allows professionals from all industries to network with like-minded professionals and/or network to find new jobs or employees.

LinkedIn gives you the option of listing your webpages within your profile and you also have the option to add the link using ‘anchor text’ which search engines love. In case you are wondering what ‘anchor text’ is…it’s when a link to your page is hidden behind relevant keyword text like: Costa Rica Real Estate

You are keeping current with these web marketing trends and have already been taking advantage of these networks. Now, what if I asked you how your Twitter or Friend Feed accounts are doing? Or how many of your Flicker or TwitPic photos have penetrated your market? Or even, how many views have your YouTube or WellcomeMat videos received in the past month? Starting to feel behind the times?

With over 85% of real estate transactions starting online, your prospective clients are on the web. Whether they are doing searches on Google, conversing with friends on Face book or watching community videos on WellcomeMat, people looking to buy, sell or invest in real estate flock to the Internet to gather as much information as possible before making one of the largest financial transactions of their lifetime.

At the end I must say that real estate marketers should not jump ship on social media just yet. Social media glory has come and gone with small businesses and retail; however, recent technological advances hint that real estate may just be entering its time in the sun.
Costa Rica Real Estate
Costa Rica Real Estate