5 Reasons Why You Shouldn't Use Social Media

| Social media

5 Reasons Why You Shouldn't Use Social Media

 

Social media has taken the business world by storm and has been preached by social experts and professionals as a must for any online marketing venture.

However, in reality most estate agents have been left disappointed by the social media bubble. Despite the fact social media can have a huge impact on your business, the time and dedication social media takes to be successful isn’t always worth it for many businesses and in most cases social media just isn’t for your business.

Here are 5 reasons why social media just isn’t for you. Is it time to throw in the towel?

1) Your audience isn’t there

Social media is a real time communications channel that billions of people pour into everyday but that doesn’t mean the people you want to target are and sometime if they are, they are just really hard to find. Reaching people on social media isn’t as easy as you might think, especially to start with.

Before you invest time into developing a social presence, make sure your audience is on that social network.

2) Social media isn’t the right platform for you

People love the idea of the potential reach social media has to offer. A single platform with so much interaction, sharing and engagement, how can it fail?

Unfortunately for businesses, most users are highly skilled at tuning out brand related content. And you also have to get an audience in the first place to have a potentially big reach.

However, there are many other marketing channels that deliver better results. If your social efforts aren’t getting you anywhere it may be worth investing your time and money into other marketing strategies such as email marketing or SEO, both of which are proven to deliver better results.

3) You just aren’t getting it

Social media isn’t easy; it takes a lot of research, time, effort and dedication. It usually takes months of constant dedication before you’d start to see any sort of real results.

Social media has been marketed as easy and a sure thing, which led to thousands of estate agents jumping on the bandwagon. They create a business page, upload a logo and maybe some pictures, then nothing or the odd post every few months, yet they expect to see results.

Unless you understand how social media works and how other businesses have found success through social networking then your social campaign probably won’t be successful. If you don’t understand it and aren’t willing to put the effort into researching and actively working on your social pages, then social media probably isn’t for you.

4) You’re there for the wrong reasons

Social media is talked about a lot these days. However, estate agents that don’t understand what people use social media platforms for and what people want from them probably won’t see any kind of success.

Knowing what the customer/user wants is how you become successful with social networking. Just posting all the properties you’ve got for sale isn’t what users want; if they wanted that they would just go to your website. Social media is all about sharing interesting information that will benefit your audience. If you are just there because your competition is, then you probably shouldn’t be there.

5) It’s not free

Social media is technically free but it requires a lot of your time and effort to keep it alive and functioning. It can require paying for ads to boost your reach and build your audience. In reality, it really isn’t free and it’s really not a magical marketing strategy as many claim.

 

Too often articles around the web have made out that social media is some kind of full proof, easy marketing strategy, with success stories that seem just too good to be true (generally because they are). You may have seen articles like 'How to get 10,000 fast', 'shortcuts to 1,000s of fans', 'how to make a viral video'… obviously these aren't necessarily realistic expectations to have.

But this doesn’t mean estate agents can’t find success on social media, in fact a number of estate agents big and small have found great success, however none of these successes have been overnight and all have required a lot of hard work and dedication.

Luke Stanley