There has been ‘A Major Change To The Social Media Landscape‘ which could have a much faster impact on Google’s Social Search algorithm and Google+ than many may have first thought.
In what could end up being seen as a brilliant power-play by Google, the battle between them and Facebook is about to heat-up and become very, very interesting…
Whilst there were a few parties showing interest in acquiring Wildfire, I don’t think there were too many who would’ve predicted that Google would end up buying them and paying $US 250 million for the company in the process.
This acquisition could open some incredible doors for Google and their Social Search functionality.
In this great article by Jay Baer, he shares an insight into 4 Reasons Google Bought Wildfire…
1. Access To Social Signal
2. Undercover Brother
3. Launch Adwords for Social
4. Kill the Category
As Jay says…
“Google and Facebook aren’t exactly pals. It’s basically the cold war, with Google as the Soviets; Facebook as the USA; and Twitter as….I guess the British.
What better way to reverse engineer Facebook and take the best of it and improve/incorporate it into Google + than to buy a company (Wildfire) that has under-the-hood access and Facebook favored nation status? Will be VERY interesting to see if Facebook kicks Wildfire out of its Preferred Developer Community, or revokes some measure of access. They might just learn a lesson from Twitter, who recently started cutting off Instagram users from accessing their friends lists on the service.”
As I mentioned in today’s show, here’s what founder of Facebook, Mark Zuckerberg’s sister Randi Zuckerberg had to say on Twitter about the Wildfire acquisition…
After this strategic move by Google, if any agents and/or real estate trainers still have doubts about whether or not Social Media plays an important role in real estate today and in the future, then maybe the fact that Google receives over 2,000,000 search queries every minute of the day (and the fact that some of those searches include Potential Sellers who go looking for Real Estate Agents & Landlords looking for Property Managers) then this Major Change To The Social Media Landscape may be just the announcement to help flick the Social Media light-switch on for a few?
Electric Avenue Wrap Up
Yesterday’s show outlined a HUGE Marketing Blunder Real Estate Agents Should Avoid.
The Major Portals have been getting a FREE ride (via prime real estate) in agent’s marketing for too long! I must say that a comment on yesterday’s show by Lyndon Davey spelt it out beautifully…
“Spot on Greg. I worked for Yellow Pages many years ago and could not understand why advertisers would mention in other advertising mediums, “find us in the Yellow Pages.”
Of course alongside their 10, 15 or 20k advert were all their competitors.Great for the customer – not so good for the advertiser.”
On Tuesday, the show highlighted an Important Decision About Facebook Fan Pages By Advertising Standards Board plus three tips for any businesses with Facebook pages.
…and to kick-off the week, Monday’s show provided an insight into Why Real Estate Agents Should Use Property Videos
I hope you enjoy this week’s episodes. 🙂
5 Comments
Vanessa
This is going to make some very interesting changes to the future of Google rankings. It makes website managers work a lot harder to keep up good rankings and ensuring our sites are interactive. All i can say is… its going to be a massive push on our marketing costs and time to ensure we keep up with the social interaction.
Some real estate agents are going to be a lot better at this than others. I always wonder though whether social media and engaging in your audience, really makes much of an impact on sales or whether its just the PR for small business.
Greg Vincent
Vanessa, without PR how do agents get sales/listings? All media and dialogue are PR, the difference now is that agents can now use these Social media platforms to leverage their message/marketing out to a broader audience (at a fraction of the cost of paying for advertisements) and because they are on the web they are uploaded once & provides PR for the agent forever.
Agents have so much content at their fingertips that they create every single day yet it often gets filed onto a computer, printed and stuffed into a filing cabinet or sits in their email outbox BUT it never gets posted onto the open web where Google can index it, Facebook friends/fans orTwitter followers can see it, Like it, Share it.
If an agents website isn’t interactive then yes they will suffer, but in today’s world if agent’s aren’t interested in encouraging online interaction & dialogue with their customers then those agents are already missing out on an incredible amount of business.
Our industry is one of the least trusted and customers are looking for an agent they can resonate with (trust) and the effective use of Social Media helps to build trust with these clients.
Most people are only calling in 2 agents for appraisals nowadays (according to News Ltd stats and REIQ stats). Even if the agent comes recommended many still get a 2nd opinion.
If you’re not the first one in then you want to do whatever you can to be the other agent called-in and a static cookie-cutter website with agent bios that have been cut from other agent’s bios, slightly modified & then pasted onto a company website is no longer good enough.
If agents are wondering why consumers are wanting them to reduce their fees, it’s because so many agents do their marketing the same way…Social Media platforms are a powerful enabler for those agents who seriously want to stand out (and I mean ‘Stand-Out’) from their competitors!
“All i can say is… its going to be a massive push on our marketing costs and time to ensure we keep up with the social interaction.” Vanessa, here is an episode I did about the biggest cost to agents that might help put those marketing costs into the right perspective… i hope it helps. Cheers 🙂
http://www.gregvincent.com.au/2012/07/11/the-biggest-cost-for-real-estate-agents/
Glenn Rogers
Facebook is almost as important as the web site itself, you would be amazed how many people crawl it every day and how well they respond to ads, and the ads are cheap………..for now.
Google at $1 per click just cant match Facebook.
Agreed that social media is growing with importance as the clock ticks, you can set up a Facebook business site for peanuts BUT you have to know how to do it ……..but do do it.
Glenn Rogers
I didn’t phrase that too well.
What I meant was a Facebook business page if done correctly is almost as important as your actual web site………..an exaggeration of course……but I was a real estate agent after all…………
Greg Vincent
Agree Glenn. Facebook now have approx. 1billion active users and over 50% of FB users visit the site once per day.
Which means that the web is now divided into a series of main silos for viewing content with Facebook for sharing, Google for search (becoming more social), YouTube for video & Twitter for real-time connecting/news.