What’s the biggest currency in social media marketing?
Freshness.
Without making the effort to create fresh and relevant content for your connections, you’re not going to benefit from generating a social media presence for your brand or your professional identity.
Apartmentmarketingblog.com captured this issue neatly in a post last week, describing an apartment community that had taken the effort to put up a Facebook page.
“Pretty Property” put up a Facebook page. Their management company, Pretty Properties Incorporated, has put up several Facebook pages. They faithfully push their Postlet created ads out to all of their friends; all 41 of them. After getting inundated with their ads (as I am a friend of their page), I did a little analysis of their friends. Here it is:
30% of their friends are other apartment communities (why?)
20% are other multifamily professionals (again, why?)
10% are employees of Pretty Place Properties Incorporated (huh?)
20% are possibly residents and/or prospects
20% are businesses that may be service providers for the property
In examining the rest of the Facebook page, it’s equally disappointing. Zero interior photos (even though interior photos are one of the most highly requested items for the ILS’s), zero floor plans (which could be easily uploaded), and boring blocks of text and amenity listings on the ‘info’ page.
The same issues apply for creating a professional presence on a social marketing network.
Ask yourself, at the outset, what kinds of information you are going to share, what the purpose of that information is and how frequently you intend to share it. Be sure to be realistic about whether you have the time and resources to accomplish the goals that you set out.
The outcome is a publishing schedule that you can implement and follow.
When you know what kind of information you want to share, then you need to examine your network to make sure that you’ve got the right people to share it with.
In creating a personal presence in social media, that network is going to be diverse and include a lot of different relationships in your life — both work and personal. That diversity will influence the way you think about positioning your professional information, but don’t let it discourage you from doing it. No one is going to begrudge you being proud about what you do.
