Real Estate Marketing through Social Media

Participation in all of this new social media (blogs, social networks, wikis etc.) is difficult to gauge but several recent attempts have been made to try and measure audience participation. The latest is Forrester’s new Social Technographics report - which came up with this fascinating segmentation.

What do I think this means for real estate? I would argue that in real estate most of the audience now stands on the  lower rungs of the ladder. But that's evolving quickly as more and more real estate professionals become Joiners, Collectors and Critics. Events like the Bloggers Connect conference will hopefully spur even more to become Creators too.

So what does it mean in marketing terms? Well, if you have a product, service or blog aimed at Realtors you should think about where your most vocal customers (your evangelists) fit. Aim to talk to them using the same tools they are currently using. If your customers are Critics - start a blog. If they are Joiners - talk to them on the social networks. Maybe they are a combination of several segments, so you'll need to do all of the above.

The same holds true if you're marketing a property - think about who are the customers interested in buying it. If it's a funky condo in downtown LA, for example - maybe you need think about getting a profile page on MySpace or Facebook.

Steve Rubel says if you're in PR "cut the above chart out and stick it on your wall" - if you're thinking about real estate marketing, I would suggest you do the same.

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