Facebook has just passed google as the number one site on hitwise in the USA.
“The share of visits to Facebook.com for this week has increased 185% over the same week last year, while Google increased only 9% in the same time. Facebook and Google accounted for 14% of all US internet visits last week.”
The meteoric rise in popularity of facebook is evident in the graph
What next for this little company made massive?
Have you harnessed the power of web 2.0 for your business?
Do you even understand what social media networking is?
The aha! moment is upon us, the paradigm is shifting!
If you answered no to these questions you are not alone, the web is full of blogs about making the most of facebook but be careful! Facebook users are smart and experienced (the biggest block of facebook users are aged between 30 and 44), don’t try to sell yourself overtly on social networks, users just ain’t interested. In fact, it can backfire as nestle as recently found out.
Personally, I am an avid facebook user but am still trying to work out how to capitalize on the social networking phenomenon without annoying the huge band of FB friends I have gathered around myself. There are niches within FB that only a regular user will know about. Whole communities are gathered within certain games and applications, each community has their own language within the games and regular users within some of these applications will know most if not all other regular users. Farmville, Mafia Wars, Treasure Hunt, Four Square…. the list goes on.
There is now even a disorder related to Facebook overuse (FAD – Facebook Addiction Disorder). But is Facebook a Fad? It as moved well past critical mass and speaks into the lives of a huge percentage of the literate, Internet using people on our planet. For clues as to how to use this network to your advantage, have a look at what the best in their fields are doing.
And as for Twitter, have a read of this.
In a business sense, you have to join em to beat em!
If you haven’t yet opened a free account, go there now, find your friends, family members, and business acquaintances and begin your own odyssey!
March 23 2010 | General Real Estate and Webmania | 4 Comments »
I’ll admit it. I’m hooked on Facebook. I somehow missed out the whole MySpace craze but Facebook has me hook, line and sinker. Each application and social game on FB has its own resident population or clique. I have made friends with people from all over the world and through the ease and immediacy of this social networking phenomina, know what is happening in their lives on an almost daily or weekly basis.
I have been thinking lately about real estate marketing through social media – should I be marketing my listings in the places where my target markets are these days. Believe me, that’s rarely in the classified sections of your local newspapers or in the Dom Post anymore.
Now, industry social networks like ActiveRain are great for connecting with your peers; but let’s face it, Consumers aren’t hanging out there. If you’re looking for buyers and sellers, in this day and age you need to be a little more creative.
The news that Facebook may launch Local Classifieds got me thinking on how you can take this idea and use social networks like Facebook to really power your business.
Here’s some suggestions:
1. Encourage past clients and new clients to ‘friend’ you or ‘add’ you to their networks. Include links to your profile in your marketing materials, business cards etc. Build out a brand new online “sphere”.
2. Creating Groups – This is the most obvious way to use the site. Create a “Homebuyers” group for example and help first time buyers with their questions. Leverage your expertise to become the expert in the group.
3. Creating a unique Group is also a great way to keep in touch with business networking contacts you meet – maybe it’s at a Property Investors club based on the recent property investment seminar you attended . You can engage in post meeting discussions, share information in a neutral open forum that doesn’t demand the intimacy of an email or telephone contact.
4. Shares – You could use Facebook to market properties to a select group or share properties with your friends . A handy bookmarklet lets you add external links to your Shares. You could add a link to a property from your own site.
Think about it, you could have an exclusive Group of buyers in your market and you could share great listings with them before they hit the mass market.
5. If you’re a blogger, add your RSS feed to your profile. Facebook lets you add a Blog feed to your Notes. You could find new readers and even drive traffic back to your blog by sharing your posts with your network.
I think that maximizing your exposure on social networks like Facebook is going to be increasingly important to small businesses – especially in industries that are already so network-dependent like real estate. Unfortunately, due to the fleeting nature of these sites, the trick is going to be to stay on top of where everyone is. The real danger is arriving too late and finding your audience has already moved on.
September 18 2009 | Webmania | No Comments »
