Social Networking Ladder, Where do you stand?

So, reading around online today, I came across this article on Forrester about social networks, and where most of us fit in. The best thing is, it allows us to try and look at where the clients we want, may spend most of their time.

Or, maybe you're trying to attract more traffic. You decide that you may want to start a blog, or better yet, maybe you have no idea what you want to do other then you keep hearing of "Social Marketing" floating around the office.

Well before you decide to jump on myspace, create a blog, get into youtube or start podcasting you need to look at one very important thing. What is your client looking for. The image below is a quick breakdown of how some internet users may or may not interact with the web.



For A better breakdown of what all this could mean, read the article here.

But, what does this mean to the blogging real estate agent? Lots. Consider that we can now look the a "Ladder" above and say with almost 100% certinty that the clients we get in front of are part of the spectator portion. This means, we need to make sure we include inforamtion and plenty of it. At least thats how I see it. And yeah we can always break it down more, but I think it's a good start.

What’s Your Follow up?

With more and more people being online, web generated leads have become the norm for most industries. But what really determines your success with a given lead? Well that comes down to your follow up.

I can’t tell you how many times I have talked with Real Estate Agents and all they tell me is how they get leads but never any deals. I had to start questioning my own expertise in the area. But what I found was, what may be common sense to me, may not be for a lot of other people.

Most agents that I spoke to about this admitted that they would only send one email, and that a majority of the time it was a day or two after the prospect had made their inquiry. Some had no idea what to do with the lead at all. This is not good, especially when an email or contact should be made with in 45 minutes, and as personalized as possible.

I know that you may not always have access to a computer. But this is why you need to utilize an auto responder or drip program to start the contact process. But don’t forget, the more personalized the message, the less chance of it getting in a spam filter, and the better chance we have of it being opened.

Here is an older article I read some time ago that will help you gain a better understanding of how important your instant response is, and what direction you may want to take with your email marketing.