27 Aug Who needs a strategy?

Social is easy right?  Just whack up some listing and maybe a photo of the dog or the kids eating ice cream.  WRONG!

Topic – How to kill your brand on social

Mentor – Joel Leslie

• Have a plan
• Think about your content
• What you say should engage

Marketing Monday – Adam Stewart joins us to discuss partnership breakdowns.

Transcript:

Kevin: And our guest mentor this week is Joel Leslie. Joel is from Propify. Propify online and that’s the …. that’s a portal that’s gonna manage your property on social media for you. Check it out for yourself. There’s a link on [inaudible 00:00:14] one of the pages on RE Uncut. Joel, thank you for joining us. Great to have you in the show.

Joel Leslie: Thank you Kevin. It’s a pleasure to be here.

Kevin: Looking forward to having a chat to you this week because it’s all about social media, obviously ’cause that’s what you’re an expert in, but more particularly about how it is so easy on social media to kill your brand. You say the first thing is about having a strategy-

Joel Leslie: That’s right.

Kevin: Why do you need a strategy on social media when it’s so basic?

Joel Leslie: Yeah but it isn’t basic, Kevin. That’s the big trick with social. Social is another channel for you to reach your target audience.

Kevin: But surely isn’t it just a matter of pumping up a message or putting up some listings? Isn’t’ that what it’s all about?

Joel Leslie: No. No, no, no. And if you can’t talk to your audience or your consumer right, you  actually do damage to your reputation and to your brand and so what I like to say is make sure you have aa strategy in place and you know what your message is every time you talk to them. The last thing you wanna do is put up nonsense social posts that really don’t mean anything and don’t get you any results. Because what can happen sometimes is that the user on social media, let’s say it’s Facebook, they could block you. And that’s the worst thing you could possibly run into.

Kevin: Okay Joel, so what’s involved in a strategy. What would it look like and what needs to be in it?

Joel Leslie: Well the best thing to always do is to seek professional advice or expert opinion. I always encourage people if … specifically in real estate, if you’re … if you’ve got a new marketing message, or you have an intention to have a marketing plan together, to get a marketing plan together, sorry, talk to someone that actually understands marketing. It’s just too easy these days with social to go out there and just start creating things.

Kevin: Is it a marketing manager that you’d go to or is it someone who specialises ins social media? Has it become that defined?

Joel Leslie: It has become defined and the common term now is a community manager. Because it is managing your online community. It no longer are we managing the social media platforms or social media networks. This is about managing your online community and that spans right from Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, you know, through Instagram, but now we have the platform, say, Reddit, which is a very far out and quite an interesting platform where people are discussing trends and topics, and then you have Medium, which is … it’s like a Twitter, but a very content rich platform and the community manager manages that whole environment for you.

Kevin: I’ve heard of the term building a tribe. You mention there about a community manager. Is it one and the same thing? Is that what it is?

Joel Leslie: It is. So you’re managing your tribe and so they more or less are the same thing, and the reason that you do have someone like that to do that for you is to make sure that the message is always consistent, the brand is the same across all the platforms, and you’re talking to the consumer or the user or whoever your target audience is with the right message. And then that also spans into if there’s a complaint, so if we have someone who is a tenant and they have a complaint and they come through your Twitter, what’s the best way to resolve that. And people with the experience in, with that marketing background and are community manager know the best way to counteract that.

Kevin: This role of the community manager that you’re talking about … I mean it’s a fairly important role because that’s the face, that’s the window face of the person, isn’t it? Or the business.

Joel Leslie: That’s right. And companies … big companies do it very well. Like Qantas, you know, Virgin, all the Virgin groups seem to do it very well and they did it very well from the start. They picked up on this. But it comes down to that real estate office as well. You need to manage your own brand, your own reputation, and what happens with you in your community, and your community of those that are around you and follow you on your social media the most.

Kevin: You’re gonna take this a step further tomorrow. We’ll talk about the role of that community manager and who that should be and who you can trust. Joel Leslie is our guest. Joel is from Propify, the website Propify online. A very successful portal in the states and now penetrating well and truly into Australia and New Zealand. You’re gonna hear a lot more about it. Hey Joel, great to catch up. We’ll talk to you again tomorrow morning.

Joel Leslie: Thanks Kevin. Appreciate it.

For more information, check out Propify.