If Content is King then is Social Media Conversation Queen?
Marketing is changing, the way we communicate our brands is changing and the way we engage with brands is also changing. Yes, traditional marketing techniques are still with us, but the likes of mobile internet access and social media has opened up a whole new world and importantly, opened up much more opportunity. Years ago we may have been restricted on how far our marketing efforts went by our marketing spend, today we have the freedom to explore a marketing drive that can cost us next to nothing – A great Twitter account can achieve, as was then, the results of a full page advert in the Yellow Pages.
Only a generation ago, we would have been reliant on mainly traditional marketing methods of which most would have cost you to use, ie that size of advert in the Yellow Pages, colour or black and white adverts in the local newspaper or of course, the better placement on the high street and design of shop front etc. Today, we have the internet, emails, social media and I would even say the likes of television advertising is now within reach to even independent estate agents due to the volume of channels we have – I remember very well in childhood days only having three channels at home and the excitement when Channel 4 launched! Where to advertise and how to advertise your estate agency options are growing.
So, with many more marketing options – What should you be choosing to spend your time and budgets on?
As an estate agent, you have to be online and be on one or more of the major property portals. You should have email marketing set up, have looked at Google Ads, responsive website for mobile usage and a quality website and branding, presence in local newspapers, business cards, for sale signs, leaflets and more… In this blog though we will take a quick look at Social Media and Blogging. We are hearing more and more about these two so does it really have any impact on the success of your business?
In today’s environment the news that people want or are attracted to finds them rather than them having to go searching for it. We are spending more and more time on our mobile devices searching through the internet and social media and with the abundance of content out there, we are becoming more and more frustrated at having to spend time finding things that matter to us and our patience is at a far lower level than it was only a few years – How many of us these days would spend our valuable minutes looking for that piece of information within a book that we are not sure the name of nor if it exists within our local library? We expect to go online and start to type away and our thoughts are predicted (predictive text) and the best results are delivered to us and the information we require is only a click away – And that information needs to be delivered in abbreviated format initially to engage us.
It may sound hard my descriptions above, but I believe them to be true or least heading towards what I predict. Yes, we like to spend time online and for many of us this is a leisure activity, we do enjoy watching videos, flicking through images and reading fine content, but the art nowadays is how to grab our attention in order that we spend time on your website which in turn increases your brand awareness and ideally business transactions.
Content is King…. Yes I would run with that. By having the best and most up to date and relevant content to what your target audience will be searching for will increase your chances of both being found online and browsers engaging with you. The structure of how you present your content is also very important and you must pay attention to how you title your content (blogs/editorials) and also towards the images you use – These will pull in browsers… Then it is over to the quality of what you have written and if it is sufficient to net a few minutes of a person time online. Blog writing is a tremendously good way of increasing traffic to your website, improving your SEO and also giving you content to share out on social media.
Social Media conversation is Queen? Sounds good to me as much of what is on social media, especially for businesses, are sound bites to attract attention and pull people over to capture websites which contains the further information that will engage people or get them to take action, ie purchase, subscribe, share email, bid, answer questions etc. The frequency of what you share on social media at the times your audiences are most active, will generally determine the success you have. The correctly titled post, catchy image/video, put out at the best moment on a well maintained social media account will equal click-throughs and engagement activity.
You want to be seen as the source of information online, both having the content that people are searching for, initially abbreviated on social media to lead people on to your website where the detailed content sits. You then want to have sufficiently engaged you audience so that they look in to the products / services you offer which you should have on view whilst that person is reading your content. If they are reading up on schools in their local area by way of a blog you have written on your website, then ideally the listings presented down the side of the page should be those close to schools and this being highlighted, ie ‘Our property listings that are under 1 mile from award winning schools‘ – Simple advice, but many will not present their full content this way.
Content is certainly King which sits next to a very social media conversational Queen!
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