Browsing through a real estate trade magazine supposedly targeted at highly successful agents, I couldn’t help but chuckle at the amount of editorial content and advertising focused on social media and internet marketing: Social media ROI, dominating Google, new media marketing, and crash courses in social media. Of course, internet marketing and especially social media marketing are all the buzz in the real estate world now. I am inundated with invites to webinars, offers for training, and book pitches. In an industry dominated for decades by push marketing techniques, giving real estate agents a little basic technical knowledge, without a thorough orientation on social media culture can have disastrous effects.
It is very revealing to check out the social graphs of the real estate social media magazine writers and the highly-touted social media instructors in the industry. Many real estate instructors have had to adopt their 20 year old course content rather quickly to the ever-accelerating utilization of social media, technology, and other web based innovations. But it’s not enough to learn how to setup a Facebook, twitter or LinkedIn account, build a Facebook business page, or set up a blog if you don’t understand the culture you are stepping into. I don’t see many articles in the trade magazines about social media culture or engagement, just how to control, leverage, and dominate. One absolute truth about the social media culture: it has very little patience with being controlled, leveraged or dominated.
