Falcon.io shows us a new way to look at social media

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My intent in sitting down to a demo of Falcon.io was to provide an update to the social media management software I reviewed more than a year ago.

There have been significant updates. In fact, so much has changed that I was inspired to consider more than just the product, but to deeply ponder what it is social media can do for real estate companies today.

Falcon.io’s interface says it all.

Although most third-party social media tools, from multi-account management tools like Hootsuite to graphics tools such as Canva, focus heavily on content creation, Falcon doesn’t suggest publishing anything until you’re three items down the main navigation menu.

The product is designed around creating audience profiles by “listening” for keywords and terms and watching who your people watch.

Falcon doesn’t suggest publishing anything until you’re three items down the main navigation menu.

Falcon has built the NSA of social media audience monitoring using nothing more than all the hashtags, topics, companies and trends we all follow, like and retweet.

Sure, its publishing tools are plenty slick and user-friendly. Every post can be saved in a library alongside its performance metrics so you know which posts work well and which should be dumped.

Marketing heads can assemble and manage teams, review content, assign conversations, and track every instance of a brand mention.

This is a tool for bigger companies, for the regional offices that want to control how the message comes across in various submarkets.

However, Falcon is more a marketing data tool. It can capture the location, comments, profession, interests, age, and images of your followers.

It also has a comment moderation tool that hones in keywords to determine if there is a positive or negative vibe to what you’re talking about online. (There’s a work-around to determine if “awesome!,” for example, was intended to be sarcastic.)

Social media provides companies with astounding volumes of individual customer data. We share so much even when we think we’re socially reticent.

Those Facebook security settings? Meh. We provide much more valuable data to companies and advertisers in our reactions to political posts and vacation photos than we do in our profile settings.

Falcon.io has found a way to gather all of it and provide it to its users for the benefit of selling their product. It’s almost unfair.

In summary, it’s time real estate agents begin shifting their focus online from content production and making connections to listening to what your target audience has to say.

Social media marketing is now a data game, and tools like Falcon are writing the rules.

Have a technology product you would like to discuss? Email Craig Rowe