Developing an Online Social Media Voice Through Automation

In last week’s article I talked about “How to Develop an Online Social Media Voice People Want to Hang-Out With”. ****

Some of the things we went over were:

• How social media can help you get known as “Number One” in your industry
• Why you needed to decide what your desired outcome would be from your social media presence
• Your social media voice, and how to get other people to want to listen to you
• How social media can help you to grow your business

Don’t Be a Dinosaur

Real estate investors have been notoriously slow to adopt some of the online strategies that will grow their businesses, and it is easy to understand why. They feel like they are just too busy with the day to day activities of those particular businesses to do one more thing. But make no mistake: implementing these online activities and social media strategies will ultimately separate you from your competition. All you have to do is to look at the BiggerPockets site to really understand why you should be taking advantage of social media. What if no one knew about BiggerPockets? What if you had to accidentally find this site or wait for someone to tell you about it? You don’t have to do this because of social media.  

If you are like me, you probably came across it on the internet.

I originally came across BiggerPockets on Facebook.

 One of the best examples I can give you goes back a little over 20 years ago when the internet first surfaced. There were a lot of folks out there; the old timers that exclaimed “that the whole internet thing would never last”. Some of you reading this post are too young to remember the time before the internet. For your generation it has always been here at your disposal.

But there are also a lot of real estate investors that can remember that period of time when there was no internet. Many real estate investors were very slow to adapt. It took a lot of them years to put up websites (if they ever did). But those people that adapted quickly were the real winners of that era.

How to Create an Online Strategy that Takes 30 Minutes (or less) Each Day

There are several FREE online services to take the burden of this online posting off your hands. You can set your routine posts up in advance and pretty much be done with it. The service that most people I know use is called Hootsuite. It is pretty easy to use, and you can set it up so that all your posts will automatically go to Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn. You will be pretty well covered with just those three sites.

Here is how you handle this process:

• You can set up your posts for the entire day by taking a few minutes in the morning or at night.
• You can set them up for a whole week in advance.
• You can outsource this to a virtual assistant someone in your office.

Choose a Mix of Information and Resources

The key to success here is to always provide great content. If you have something like a book that you have created and you are selling it, let’s face it; you did that to make a profit. There is nothing wrong with that. Just don’t only be that “pushy sales person” online, or people will leave you behind in droves. Be a giver first.

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What Are Routine Posts?

So what is a routine post and how often should they be posted each week on each social media site? Remember that you will be setting this up through a service like Hootsuite that will do the actual posting for you. Here is a suggestion for how you can easily do this. Remember that you don’t have to do all of these things at once. Just start small and after a while it will just become a habit.

Once a Day: Post a helpful business article. How about posting one of the articles from BiggerPockets or another favorite site each day? You can also set up Google Alerts for topics you think your readers might like to hear about.

3 to 5 Times per Week: Quotes. Folks love business and inspirational quotes. Just Google “quotes” and in seconds you will have a long list of quotes.

1 to 3 Times per Week: Articles and Blog Posts. Send out notifications of new articles and blog posts each time you write one.

2 to 3 Times per Week: Free Reports or White Papers. Take some time one evening or weekend to create a few Free Reports. Think of things like:

• “10 Tips for Adding Cash Buyers to Your List
• “7 Ways You Can Get Motivated Sellers to Call You
• “How to Sell Your House Fast”

You get the idea. These don’t have to take much time to create. People love freebies and they will drive traffic to your site whether it is a “We Buy Houses Site” or a blog.

1-2 Times per day. Promotions. If you have something for sale like a book you have written or a program you have developed it’s OK to post those. You can use the same formula if you have affiliate products you promote for others. Like I said before, you just don’t want to be that pushy sales person.

Connecting with Your Tribe

Sometimes it’s not enough to (only) connect with these people through social media. When you meet someone online that is special or is a “heavy hitter”, you just might want to take this relationship to the next level. I like to think of this kind of like “dating”.

If you are in the same area, you can arrange to meet with this person and grab a cup of coffee at the local Starbucks. But even if you are in different parts of the world, there are things you can do thanks to Google+ Hangouts and Skype.

It used to be that if you were in different physical locations and you wanted to take your “online business relationship” to the next level folks would just schedule a time to talk on the phone. Now with Skype and Google+ Hangouts it’s easier than ever to add that personal component. There is just nothing like looking someone in the eye and seeing their personality on the other side of the computer screen when you are talking with them. It’s almost as good as meeting them in a coffee shop.

Just Get Started

You’re going to have to trust me on this one; you need to get started.

If you aren’t already using social media in your business, what small steps can you take this week?

Photo: striatic