5 Steps To Getting Started With Social Media

1. Go to www.facebook.com and set up an account. You can set up a Fan Page or a regular Facebook.  I think NAR recommends a Fan Page.  As a REALTOR, you must advertize your broker as you advertise your business.  Be very aware of compliance issues that you need to address with social media.
2. Start searching for friends and build your friends list or fans list.  After you’ve made a few connections, go to your new friends pages and look through their friends list and request those you know – we are all interconnected!
3. Think through what you post as a status. Some people are all about work, while others are all about play.  Be aware that people really do read your status and form a perception about you. Keep it balanced with work and play. Don’t always talk about real estate; talk about life in general once in a while as well as your family. Just be you…but be aware of the you people are reading about.
4. After you master Facebook, check out Twitter. It is similar to Facebook, but it is shorter and more succinct in the status. Go to www.twitter.com and set up a free account and complete your profile page like Facebook and then you’re off to “tweet land”!  You can follow people on twitter and have them follow you.  If you’re going to a special class or having a night out with the family, you can “tweet” that to those who follow you. You can also set up twitter to update your Facebook status.  So with twitter, you can “kill two birds with one stone” – when you tweet, you are connecting with your Facebook people as well as people who might follow you on twitter.  I do think it’s funny that others care about what I do – I’m just saying that they do.
5. The third big piece of social media is Linked In. You can go to www.linkedin.com and also get connected in a more business like environment. There are many business people who have chosen to stay away from Facebook and Twitter, but they like LinkedIn. I call it Facebook for business people.  You can set up a profile similar to the other two sites and then connect them to each other.  Twitter is great for feeding tons of sites like Facebook and LinkedIn as well as updates to your blog or website.

Make sure that after you get setup in social media – you must keep it current.  People do business with people they KNOW & TRUST!   People have pretty much always been this way –  stay connected and keep building your relationships!

Dwayne Hicks
dhicks@mwestrealty.com
www.mwestrealty.com
www.dhicksonline.com