Home Builders are finding success with Social Media. Find out how from industry social media consultant Carol Flammer. This presentation is from the BHI Road Show.
Blog a top 5 referral sources within first month of launch – many of top referral sites are blogs and social media sites. Reduced budgets reduced direct search, social media increased referring sites and keywords.
More than 200 fans within a week of launch, story about pastor’s wife and agent.
Chick fil a nugget drop success – overall success of program maintaining site traffic in down market They post articles about the community, events, info from the builders involved A local New Years event near the community was posted on the Heron blog. The story had 250 hits in 3 day period! If you have a large community, or a significant number of homeowners, a blog is a great way to involve them (get those referral #s up!) The more information on your communities that is “out there” the better your search engine results can be. AREF – is a VERY popular local real estate blog. It has VERY solid Search Engine Results (which Carol will talk about later) Look for local real estate Blogs in your area – just google “real estate blog – Richmond” for example to see if there are any around you The handout you received gives you a few resources for starting your own blog. The set up is fairly simple – and YES – you CAN do it yourself!
250 visitors within a 5 day period looking for NY Eve events
Now 6 of top 10 SERP results
but after just seven months they were already showing an increase in Internet traffic to roughly 23 percent to 48 percent of their total walk-in traffic, depending on the community, with half of those converting into sales. Include key words and anchor text where possible Increases SEO to website through social media optimization Some of our Favorites: NHDBuzz, PR.com, PRLog, PRZoom, PRWeb, etc. Do your research! Some PR sites are free, some require a membership fee and others you pay per release. PRnewswire and Businesswire – paid sites
Used Text to Win to build events database, attract people to their concerts, etc.
Budget cuts, reduced spending, increased sales. 35% increase in overall web traffic, a 93% increase in keywords and a 76% increase in referring URLs Reporters are constantly searching the Internet for stories. This is just one way to keep your name in front of them.
Here are some examples of builders using flickr – Toll Brothers & David Weekly Homes Next we will go more in depth with case studies. Dina . . .
How do you effectively provide ROI for your social media marketing program? Many of these sites may be “free” but the time you invest in them is valuable. There are two key metrics to watch on your website tracking report – after all, everything you do in social media links back to your main web site, right? An effective social media program should Increase the number of incoming keywords to your website. Looking at Google Analytics for a 30 day period last fall, we see that 8,232 keywords brought more than 11,000 visitors to AtlantaRealEstateForum through the search engines.
Another key metric is referring URLs – again look at your main website’s analytics. An effective social media program will demonstrate an increase in this metric. Traffic on the Heron Bay website shows 1013 visits from 183 referring websites for the 30 day period following the launch of their social media program. They only had 89 referring visits the previous 30 days
Return on Investment: Reputation Management When you Google your name, do you like what you see? Chances are if you don’t like what you see. . . Neither do your potential buyers. None of us want to see SERP results featuring the Rip off report, Complaints forums or negative homeowner blogs. Populating your SERP results with positive stories will go a long way toward combating negative online press. Here is an example of a buider, Sharp Residential, who has populated their search results with positive stories and placements through public relations and social media. Don’t let anyone tell you that if you Google your name & Don’t like what you see that you can’t change it – you can with the right social media tools.