Social Media- Figuring Out What Works

Image Courtesy of Will Lions & Creativecommons.org

Impact of Social Media

As we all spend time talking and reading about the impact of Social Media in our lives and our businesses, from a business perspective, there is not a lot of quantifiable data that shows a hard return on the time and effort spent in blogging or twittering. At least not a lot that I have found yet. Then again, there has not been a lot of good empirical data surrounding the “pull through” rate on static web site inquiries, and we’ve been using them for a whole lot longer.  The “pull through” rate is the percentage of visitors that actually convert to contracts. We start our definition with a consumer who has provided us with a valid email address and/or phone number. We then divide those contracts by the number of potential clients to determine our “pull through” or success rate.

Seeing What Works

When we started to monitor our web responses, we really didn’t put much credence in the numbers until we had collected information for a year. I know that a year seems like a long time, but the amount of data needs to be large enough to have some significance in developing the statistics. We have now been monitoring our company web site for years and we can track the traffic month-by-month and year-by-year, seeing where strategies increase or decrease our responses from different sources. We have actually developed our own empirical data because everyone else was providing us with statistics meant to prove the value of their product, not to provide us with unbiased information.

That having been said, the whole concept of building trust and relationships on line to impact our real world business is just common sense.  If people want to remain anonymous when they begin their search for real estate professionals, and we honor their request while building their confidence through interaction in the virtual and actual communities, we will probably be at the front of the line when they go to choose who will represent them. However, we each need to compile data on our efforts so that we know what we do that works and what we do that doesn’t work.

Monitor Your Responses

Maybe being in Twitter has a greater impact on your online presence then Blogging. Maybe you should spend your time commenting instead of writing blogs. Maybe you need to post videos instead of writing. But whatever you do, it would probably make sense to monitor your responses before you made any large decisions about your strategy, though tweaking your presence to increase responses makes perfect sense during the whole process. While the need to engage is obvious and urgent, the method of your particular engagement is a matter of personal skills and preferences.

So experiment, have fun, be conversational, and let yourself show through in all of your efforts, and keep records of what is working in the short run and in the long run. Every day is a new adventure, and learning from your experience may be the greatest adventure of all.