Discusion on social media with Drew Burks

This is a reprint of an article in the August 2010 edition of the California Assoc of Realtors (CAR) magazine – featuring our very own Drew Burks.

Social Media Means Business

How some firms are beefing up their marketing efforts with social media, by Alex A Kecskes

Social media marketing can be extraordinarily effective, creating brand awareness, boosting existing customer loyalty, and adding new demographics to your customer base.

Whether it’s Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, or hosted blogs, social media tools can play a key role in building solid customer relationships and leveraging your traditional marketing efforts.

In fact, more than 60 percent of Fortune 1000 companies with a Web site will connect to or host some type of online community.

Let’s take a look at how a small real estate brokerage and a mega brokerage are using social media marketing.

A Sales Force Multiplier for a Real Estate Team Drew Burks, a full-time real estate broker and technology consultant, manages eight REALTORS® and uses social media as a sales force multiplier to expand and retain his growing client base.

“Until recently, [marketing] was all outbound. In real estate, that was the person who had the largest geographic farm. They could send direct mail, be on bus benches, billboards, etc.

Today, armed with social media tools, a new agent can go into virtually any market and, in a very short time, either dominate or take a fair market share from a seasoned agent.

If a prospect sees two fans on one broker’s blog and 2,000 on another, it’s a no-brainer who they’ll want to do business with.”

Burks uses social media to branch out and establish new relationships as well as manage current relationships. “We used to prospect and use the phone to ‘dial for dollars’ as the saying goes,” notes Burks.

“Now we can connect with people in a very authentic way, and do it far faster than traditional prospecting.”

How are the REALTORS® he manages using these social media tools? “This year, I have three who fully exploit blogging, Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube,” says Burks. “And they’re more productive than all 36 agents I had last year.”

Burks combines Facebook, YouTube, and other outlets into a comprehensive toolkit. “All the content we create goes on my blog, which is like the hub of my social media wheel,” says Burks.

“So if I take a video of a property, I’ll upload it to my YouTube channel, then embed that YouTube video into my blog. I’ll then auto-post an update status on my Facebook and Twitter accounts to drive people back to the specific blog post.”

Social media marketing differs from social networking in that the former is a conscious strategy to direct attention back to the brand or company using social networking tools such as Facebook and Twitter. Social media marketing encourages consumers and followers to engage with the brand.

Take Burks’ conscious use of Facebook, which he uses at least six to 10 hours a day. It has helped him define his demographics.

“Facebook’s Insights Analytics identifies my online audience,” he notes. “About 55 to 60 percent of the people I engage with are typically female, 45 to 60 years old. This tells me that if I wanted to do any traditional outbound advertising, I’d have to target that demographic."

“Between Facebook and my blog, I would say about 90 percent of my business comes from these two sources.”

He admits that the hot thing right now is video. “It’s huge. I have a couple of
different channels on YouTube. I gear the content to the audience and try to record short, typically one- to four-minute videos every day.” Burks currently manages two blogs: 92101condosforsale.com (a consumer blog) and webrealestatetools.com (a broker’s blog).

While Burks uses Twitter to get quick exposure or to drive traffic, either to a listing or to a specific blog post, it’s also become a powerful testing tool. “I leverage the power of automated tweets for testing,” says Burks. “At the end of last year, I completely automated my Twitter account. I used Google Alerts and Twitter Feed to auto-populate a tweet three times a day.

Those tweets would go onto my Facebook page. The automated tweets and posts got as many if not more comments than anything I do personally. While it’s not as authentic, if you can use the Alerts to provide relevant content, all you need is a little babysitting to stay on top of your Twitter or Facebook posts.

Social media marketing uses social networks, online communities, blogs, wikis, or any other online collaborative media for marketing, sales, public relations, and customer service.