Real Estate Social Media Marketing: The good, bad and the ignorant
Tuesday, July 8, 2008 at 07:13AM The whole concept of social media marketing is anti-pressure and this is a welcomed relief in sales. Pressure is a poor substitute for skillful presentation of service offerings. Yet, even service offering presentation isn't what social media marketing is about in essence. Social media marketing is about you, and through you your company and through your company your offering. The offering is implicit, not explicit -- and the company is almost beside the point, unless the company somehow adds to or takes away from "you". In other words "you" may be a great person, very well liked in social media circles, yet your company is viewed negatively. In this case a person may want to consider a change in employment (or change the perception of the company if the negative perception has been erroneously created) -- the beauty of it is that you carry your social following with you. "You" have become valuable.
This has been true in offline business, but networks have been smaller -- a particular salesperson might be liked in the community, but the company has a bad reputation. However, online, there is the opportunity to create quite a following, and you have to be careful defending your company if the company deserves the poor perception. "Your" reputation might be sullied, because many eyes and ears are taking note.
Transparency is forced once you become a known player in social media marketing. It's like every person in town can see and hear you. Online visibility is much more comprehensive than offline visibility. Offline you might have a conversation with a colleague and the conversation is between the two of you -- online, unless it's done privately through email, lots of people are listening to lots of conversations.
It pays to be careful. Some companies don't understand 2.0 and it's just another opportunity to apply pressure tactics to drum up business. These companies, once they discover your social media value, may put pressure on you to utilize 2.0 to pressure-market the company. I know human nature too well, and I know company mental models too well. Even the companies who express a 2.0 understanding will be under pressure to increase revenues. This pressure does funny things to people and they forget original principles when results are not immediate and the mindset is reduced to quarterly earnings. They may say, "F*ck the socializing, we need bucks out of these bozos!"
Plus, these companies are not going to understand and accept transparency like you do. Oh, transparency is great when it's profitable and market-useful, but if transparency means that pressure tactics are revealed and rendered useless, the companies may prefer a little more opacity. The person who has developed street cred in the social environment will find loyalties challenged and will be forced to make decisions -- do you believe in 2.0? Will you allow your company to use you to manipulate the principles of 2.0? Should you take your social value elsewhere to an understanding company?
It's difficult to measure this value. Are the companies right? Do you need to apply a little pressure to make 2.0 profitable or is all the talk about a new way of doing business true? The test will soon come as 2.0 companies have to answer to investors. I foresee a litmus test being applied as a huge shake-out takes place -- who will hold to their principles and who will revert to pressure for immediate results. We'll see who really believed and who was pretending. Vision is difficult to maintain when pressure mounts. The pressure I'm talking about is passed along in the system -- from investors to companies to employees to consumers. Will the anti-pressure of 2.0 be seen as naive, or will companies and individuals stand up and defend their principles in the face of pressure? 2.0 might be anti-pressure, but traditional business is all about pressure. Turning this pressure into something new and different and succeeding is a big challenge and requires true belief and courage.
Those who have value will be challenged, and everyone is watching.
Reader Comments (5)
I can only assume you are making reference to Plaxo and their disastrous misuse of our data back in 2005:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plaxo#Criticism
The Plaxo fiasco fits your above described "Pressure" scenario, nut a lot of smart companies learned from that ( Obviously Plaxo didn't as they were just bought by Comcast for 15 million ).
I personally have never experienced any pressure from ebay, amazon or Flickr, all ground breaking "Web 2.0" companies that rake in billions every year. Smaller companies that have not yet gained as much market share have a wealth of tools available to them to cultivate earnings without betraying the trust of the users ( ala Plaxo ). Those tools include things like APML ( http://apml.org ) and advertising revenue sharing like on YouTube.
I agree with this post's strong tone encouraging us all to be demanding users, ask for transparency, reject any web site or service that doesn't state its intent up front about your rights as a user. I also ask that each "Web 2.0" company be judged on its own merits and not lumped into the bad apple crate with Plaxo.
it's definitely an interesting time to be in business.
when i see companies using web20 for business i see two main ways:
1) brand presence - similar to how large corps use advertising. nike throws up a billboard with a photo and the "just do it" tag. they're not telling you to buy the shoe, they're just trying to be everywhere and build brand recognition. online, companies are doing much the same thing... not selling, but creating brand association
2) foot-in-the-door - similar to the old door-to-door vacuum salesmen, jumping into conversations with "that's a great point and i have a product/service that's just right for you." if you have value in a socnet then they're gonna use you as their salesman.
the challenge and difference between these two styles is "i need to eat a meal tonight" versus "i can harvest a feast later."
i don't think we'll ever see an end to either style. it's simply up to us as the end-user/consumer to vote with our wallets.
"I personally have never experienced any pressure from ebay, amazon or Flickr, all ground breaking "Web 2.0" companies that rake in billions every year."
It's more of an intuition and early warning signs I see. It's premature to call anyone out, but as I said, I've seen for a long time how companies react to pressure, and in the new 2.0 environment it will be telling once the pressure to make money hits.
This is more a prediction and warning to good people doing a good job at fairly new companies with SMM.
Yes, Mark, the winners will be chosen based on their actions.
My thought is that the consumer should demand transparency and we should expect it from the consumer. The transparency proposition falls short when it is gamed by customers.
We should set expectations of our customers equal to the expectations they have of us; direct, straightforward communication with a defined agenda
Amen, Brian. This is a focus that is vital if 2.0 is going to be authentic.
Someone wrote a post about registration on websites. I require registration but I explain that in order for me to develop a home search program that is useful they will have to give a name and an email. It's all upfront and so far today I've had 7 registrations.
I usually average about 4 a day.