Today in my in-box, my daily e-mail from ClickZ caught my eye – Social Commerce 101: Leverage Word of Mouth to Boost Sales by Sam Decker. Social networking and social media are the current, sexy, shiny topics at business and marketing conferences in the real estate industry. Are we using this new marketing venue correctly? Probably not.

In his column, Decker asks these two questions: “What does the ’social’ moniker mean for your business?” and “How does the customer voice really impact bottom-line sales?”

I know that most brokerages are working an angle with the social media platforms, but have they answered these two questions? If your brokerage has, we would love to hear your comments.

I am a member of several brokerage fan pages and I have yet to see one client talk about the company. Most of the pages are postings of listings, educational videos, introductions of new agents and press releases. I have also noticed that many of them have not posted for several weeks. Even one of the largest firms in California hasn’t posted since last summer.

Here are some suggestions from Decker:

• Craft your daily post to get folks talking about your company and your service
• Host promotions and contests on your pages – check out Dunkin’ Donuts on FaceBook
• Upload photos and videos – on FaceBook become a fan of CENTURY 21 M&M and Associates and on YouTube visit one of the Long Realty Company channels

I am so glad that I took time to read this e-mail today as it now has me re-thinking our social commerce at Skirts and also with my industry clients.

My favorite daily e-mail comes from Media Post Publications and it’s the email insider. Last Friday, Ryan Deutsch of StrongMail Systems had a post entitled Monetizing Social Media is about Targeting First, Everything Else Second. I read the post and then I read it again and thought ‘Holy Cow this is Brilliant.’

Although he was speaking of a retail company who wanted to increase participation in their loyalty program, I saw great value in how they sent an invitation to their current customers and asked them to forward the invitation to their friends and to share with them their experience with the loyalty program. The results of this campaign surpassed past ‘un-socialized’ e-mail campaigns by three times!

The majority of our business comes from referrals, right? We ask our buyers and sellers to refer us to their friends and family. It’s word of mouth marketing at its best. So, why not apply the old basics to Web 2.0 (Social Networks and Blogs). Being a true marketer I doodled out a few programs.

• Send an e-mail to all past clients with a link to either your company or business Fan page on Facebook. In the e-mail, ask them to write a few words on your Fan page about their experience with you or your company. Results – you start building a strong referral network online as the comment is also posted on your client’s Facebook page. Don’t just do this for Facebook, do the same for LinkedIn and My Space.
• Find the local ‘Super Influencer’ blogger for your community. These bloggers have great impact upon their readers. These folks are always looking for new content to share with their readers. I would recommend that you reach out to them to arrange a meeting to discuss how you can provide the local real estate data to them to share with their readers. Become the ‘Barbara Corcoran, Real Estate Expert’ for your local market.

I invite you to share with us how you are using Web 2.0 to generate new business for you.

Marketing in real estate has never been so challenging. From traditional flyers, brochures and door knocking, to new media solutions like Facebook and LinkedIn, a person can lose him/herself in the race to keep up. It makes perfect sense then to work with purpose and a plan. After all, time is money. We’ve learned no greater lesson of that than today.

No matter if you hang your license with a brokerage or run your own show, developing a marketing plan for your personal brand is no easy feat. It takes time and focus. However, pulling one together can mean the difference between putting your best foot forward and realizing tremendous success, or wasting valuable money and energy in constant pursuit of results.

The guts of your marketing plan depend on your knowledge and understanding of many factors other than yourself. While you work, you’ll want to have handy an arsenal of resources about your market, your competition, and your business service allies. If you haven’t already done your research, get ready to invest some sweat equity!

Overall, your marketing plan should address the following components. This isn’t meant as an inclusive list; rather, it is simply to get the juices flowing.

About You

• What defines you? Are you a native of the area? If not, what brought you there? Why are you in real estate? Are you involved in the community? Allow yourself to paint a picture and work to engage those unknown prospects who you’d eventually like to attract as clients.
• What is your mission statement or slogan? If people think of you, what few characteristics do you want them to remember? In later years, you’ll look back on how much you’ve grown and evolved, but don’t be scared to put to paper the vision you have for yourself and your business.

To Whom You’ll Market

• You’ll be wise to target your message to those most qualified or likely to appreciate your brand and listings. Are you focusing on the first time home buyer? Or are you aiming for the luxury market? Many commence their careers in real estate taking whatever comes their way; many others decide from the beginning that they want to be especially successful at representing a certain market. The decision is yours!
• If you are a seller’s agent, in which neighborhoods will you focus your efforts? If you’re a buyer’s agent, what is the profile of your best client? What feeder markets are known?
• You should also get busy on updating that Rolodex of friends and acquaintances. In today’s day and age, a significant portion of business is won based on who you know and how you work referrals.

How You’ll Market

• You’ll want to study a step-by-step action plan for marketing individual listings. Most established offices or franchises will have an action plan already developed, as well as the resources you’ll need to put it into motion. One I found particularly thorough (but a tad overwhelming)is Len Moore’s 30-Point Real Estate Marketing Plan.
• If you’re with a brokerage, with which marketing does your company assist? Do you have a marketing director or coordinator with whom you can work?
• Which mediums best reflect your target market? You’ll be tempted with countless options, but you’ll be wise to really evaluate the newspaper, magazine, web site, direct mail or other strategy to make sure the odds of reaching the audience you’re after are in your favor.
• What is your social media strategy? Today, there are many agents who run entire empires from a blog, Facebook, LinkedIn or other web platform. Again, consider your audience and be prepared to put in the time it takes to keep up with the technology.

Customer Service Standards

• This topic deserves special attention. You’ll be known for your detailed eye – or lack of one! Study the pros and those most successful in your office or networking group.
• Consider handwritten notes and personal phone calls. Consider a birthday card program or a client appreciation gift. Everything you do should be done with a personal touch that is in line with your personal brand. In fact, nothing should be random.

Finally, you’ll want to establish a budget and consider seriously just exactly how you plan to pay to implement your marketing plan. Ask any veteran of real estate: it takes time and putting one foot in front of the other to realize your momentum. Take care not to get ahead of yourself and spend money that is not yet yours, but do find a balance in representing your brand and your listings that allows you to act responsibly and fiscally conscious.

In closing, know that no marketing plan is set in stone. Indeed, its owner should be on constant watch for new efficiencies and methods. This doesn’t mean that you’ll try and/or buy every offer out there. But it does mean you’ll know yourself and your plan well enough to spot new strategies you can incorporate into your daily efforts. A smart marketer is always in the know! Good luck!

I admit it. I’m addicted to the energizing wake-up effect of my morning coffee. The buzz that stimulates my brain, pumps adrenaline, and gets me moving every day is my cup of joe – my jolt of caffeine.

The folks at Google must feel the same way about their coffee. Either that, or they ‘woke up’ on their own.

With both Twitter and Facebook launching real time search engines, Google won’t be left behind. For the past few months, Google engineers have been working on the architecture for the ‘next-generation’ of Google search. Their new framework, codename Caffeine, promises to improve the speed, accuracy, size and comprehensiveness of the search experience.

It is a search engine’s job to:
1) Crawl countless numbers of web pages
2) Index the pages really well, and
3) Serve up the results fast

Those of us familiar with SEO know Google is always changing their algorithms. These algorithms determine the order in which search results are displayed. Caffeine, however, is an infrastructure change – and a HUGE one at that. Google is rewriting a large portion of their indexing system. The indexing system determines which pages will be displayed in the search results — not necessarily the order of the results. A web page must first be indexed by Google before it even has a chance to be displayed in the search results.

The new Google is FAST – about double the speed. Don’t believe me. Check out Caffeine for yourself. Google released a ‘developer version’ of the new search tool in order to gather feedback from the Search community. Most Google users won’t notice much of a difference at this point in time, but internet marketers and those focused on search optimization will and should expect to see changes in search results as well.

Mike McDonald of WebProNews did a great interview with Google engineer and evangelist, Matt Cutts (fyi – the good stuff starts at 1:17 seconds into the video). Matt shares how this infrastructure change is an ‘under the hood’ rework that will allow Google to be more powerful, flexible and robust in how they index sites going forward.

If you’re feeling a bit techie, you can also check out Google Webmaster Central’s Blog and read some feedback from the developer community.

Caffeine or no caffeine, Google Search is on the move.

Recently, while I was waiting for a doctor’s appointment, I glanced around the waiting room and noticed how many people were using their cell phones. No, they weren’t talking on them (as we all know that is “SO RUDE!”) but they were texting.

Both young and old were just tapping away. I was sitting by an 8 year old girl whose fingers were flying. Curious, I asked her about her texting habits. She told me that her mom gave her and her sister unlimited texting on their cell phone. However, the two children were limited to the number of calls they could make each month. Needless to say, my mind started thinking about how texting could aid in our industry today and in the future.

If you recall, Joe Biden was announced to the world as Barack Obama’s vice presidential candidate over SMS text messaging. Nielsen estimates that the Biden text was received by 2.9 million mobile phone users in the US over the course of that weekend last August, making it one of the biggest, broadest mobile marketing stunts to date.

In a recent Nielsen Mobile Report, it’s found that text messaging has become the prevalent form of mobile communication worldwide. According to the report, Americans are sending more text messages than making calls on their cell phones. Such mobile usage is really an indicator of customer behavior. Consumers who can be reached through their mobile behave in ways that require different tactics than other channels. Here are other highlights from the report:

• U.S. mobile users sent an average of 357 texts per month in the second quarter of 2008 versus an average of 204 calls in the same period.

• In the last two years text messaging has grown a whopping 351%.

• The pre-teen – age 24 seem to have the highest recall of any advertising text messaging at 53%.

• When you look at the other age categories: 25 yrs-34 yrs had a recall of 16%; 35 yrs-54 yrs recall was 12%; and 55 yrs and older remembered only 10%.

• It’s also stated that African-American and Hispanic mobile subscribers are more likely than the typical texter to engage with some form of text messaging advertising.

With more than 82 million people texting on a regular basis, shouldn’t we consider having this in our marketing budget?

In the Nielsen report it states, “This goes to say that text messaging has embedded itself in the American communication lifestyle,” and our industry needs to start planning on how we use this technology.

So, how does the real estate marketer begin engaging buyers and sellers with this form of marketing when one has the standard 160 characters to tell her story?

First of all I recommend that you learn more about how to use this technology to the fullest. One very useful site is the Mobile Marketing Association. Here you’ll find posted guidelines for using text messaging, consumer best practices, case studies and much more.

Next learn from non-real estate companies which are using this media in their marketing plans such as Coke and Domino’s Pizza. American Airlines uses text messages to remind travelers of their itinerary and alert them of delayed flights and gate changes. And, many more retailers are using texting to send sales alerts and coupons.

How do we engage the population of prospects out there using texting? Are you already putting a strategy to work for your own business? Post a comment here and let’s see if we can find the best practice of texting in the real estate industry.