Social Networks (aka Your Phone)
The internet has become one giant casual conversation. Perfect for word of mouth marketing and an opportunity for professionals to reach thousands of people by participating. The main ones are easy to identify. Facebook, MySpace and Linkedin are the biggies, but there are several others you can use to reach a highly targeted audience. If you ever have a question of about demographics in a social network refer to quantcast.com and you should get a better picture of the inside of a community. When getting involved with social networks, you need to remember a few things first.
1. You must be very polite
2. Do not ever spam messages
3. It’s easy to collect friends, followers, and fans, but it is just as easy to lose them.
4. Read this posting first

For real estate, you might as well forget about MySpace. Its demographic is too young and has shown to be less affluent. If you absolutely think MySpace is where your target is, you can build a custom profile and upload unlimited listings. One thing you might want to keep an eye is their development of a business portal they are releasing in March. I might be helpful to move inventory, but keep the demographics in mind before you dedicate too much time.

Facebook is much better than MySpace in terms of its demographic. Facebook is naturally viral meaning activities of your connections are broadcasted to one another automatically. Facebook also provides free classified listings and the ability for businesses to build a page to post whatever they like (think listings). The point is to get the message out there appropriately. I might say this several times, but it is true that people are turning to friends and social networks when they are looking to make a purchase decision. If you decided to have a business presence, you will be ahead of 99% of every other company out there.

Linkedin should not be used to advertise products, so until they build in the function, do NOT even try. Use Linkedin to meet people, connect old acquaintances and build your business reputation. Let me give you some fun facts about Linkedin.
• Nearly 60% of users have incomes of $93,000
• Executives with an average income of $104,000 make up 28%
• Those with incomes between $200-$350k were seven times more likely to have at least 150 connections.
I won’t say more, just build a profile, search your contact database for users and start finding others you want to know better. I have received recommendations, business and questions on Linkedin and it’s always a pleasure to converse with its members.

Twitter is called “micro blogging.” Information is shared using short 140 character messages. I may seem a little stupid at first (I felt the same way at first) but what Twitter does is flatten out the hierarchy of communication. For example: I have over 400 followers tuning into my updates relevant to social media marketing and other interests such as my Portland Trailblazers. On the other hand I follow around 500 other people’s updates. What this creates is a giant buzz room for information. It also allows me to talk to people quickly that I normally would never have access to. The founders of Twitter and I have chatted or “tweeted” back and forth, several venture capitalist have tweeted with me about topics, I even tweeted with the founders of multiple multimillion dollar start-ups with simple 140 character messages. Twitters demographic is highly educated and you can separate people into groups with a large array of tools provided by 3rd parties (see my blog post for more information). You can also find users by industry at www.twellow.com

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