Is social media now too crowded?
Last week I was in Exeter training a room full of Estate Agents on using social media for their agencies and one of the subjects we covered was on how to build your following and get your brand seen on the likes of the popular channels such as Twitter and Facebook. Whereas when social media first came on to the scene, those first using it had very little competition in getting their profiles seen and would not have had to put in so much effort as what is required nowadays, only a few random updates and a half completed profile may have attracted attention – The information and style of updating you did was likely to be unique… Do you really think that ‘Charlie bit my finger’ would have made such an impact today as it did back in May, 2007 when it first made it’s appearance and viral explosion on YouTube? Bytheway, Charlie bit my finger now has over 800 million views and for your reference, or to reminisce or if you have been hiding for the last ten years, here is the link to the video on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_OBlgSz8sSM
Many thousands of new accounts are created on each social media platform each and every day, many will be fake / spam ones, but also many will be genuine and simply adding to the crowded arena that holds millions of other users trying to get their message heard above all the noise. Certainly, sponsored / advertising routes can help to gain you extra exposure by promoting your accounts / Tweets / Pages / Videos etc, but unless you have a healthy marketing budget to through at it, you’ll likely not experience much joy as you’ll not be the only one likely targeting your keywords.
Is there simply now too many people using social media to be heard then? I would say no, infact I would twist it round and say that it is great that there are so many people on social media as it means if you get things right, you have a massive audience to be seen / heard by. By concentrating on your key business message and understanding your key target audience, then you can really breakthrough, even if you have just started, to be heard by an active potential ‘new client online community’.
Each of the other estate agencies in your local area may already be on social media, but it is a sure bet that most will not be using social media correctly or to it’s maximum and as I explained to those who I taught last week, this leaves you with a very big open door to walk through and quickly make ground and establish your agency as the go to brand on social media. By following these simple rules, you are likely to be standing out from the crowd:
- Choose a correct name and the same one for each social media account / page you have.
- Make sure that branding is both professional and consistent across each social media platform you use.
- Correctly describe your profile and highlight keywords with hashtags.
- Update each account daily with educational, entertaining and engaging content.
- Be social by sharing other people’s content, retweeting, liking, sharing and commenting go along way to gain positive attention.
- Have your own hashtag and ideally one that is used weekly, ie BlackpoolHour, DevonPropertyHour or #CheapStudentLetsLondon etc, etc.
The basic tips above will get you well on the way and you will soon learn that the more people that are using social media literally means the more exposure and success you can achieve.
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