Ok campers, Social Media is becoming more & more prevalent for the builder crowd and that’s awesome.  Just a short two years ago it was nearly non existent but the lights are getting switched on and people are starting to realize its importance. This wont be another boring post about how
essential Social Media Marketing is to your business, I think you get that and quite frankly I’m getting tired of reading that shtick.

So there you are, coming in droves and appearing in my thread. Home Builders! I can’t say for certain but I think I’m connected to all of you or at least a fan of your pages. Way cool, but here’s the thing and I say this with nothing but love in my heart.

You’re doing it wrong!

Please take a moment and listen to what I’m saying because if you’re going to jump into Social Media then you have to make sure you’re using it in the most effective way possible as with any marketing endeavor.

Allow me to start with a story. As I mentioned before I’m connected to the bulk of home builders on Facebook which means that the bulk of the posts I read are from home builders. Duh, right?

Here is what I typically see. “This beautiful home…..blah blah blah” or “This new plan……blah blah blah” or “Come visit us at….blah blah blah”. What is this except for written commercials or as some like to call it, spamola. Now, before you get all frustrated allow me finish the point. The other day I took the time to pick just one these builders and I examined their follower list. I went through each follower one by one (more than 100) trying to determine why they could be following this home builder. What I found was a long list of industry people or industry businesses (like myself) along with what appeared to be friends from church, co-workers and a few that I just couldn’t tell who they were. Hopefully prospective home buyers right?

So, the question that begs to be asked is, when you’re posting this umm, spam; To whom are you talking to? Or in other words, who are you trying to sell? Who is seeing your advertisements? In the case mentioned above, no one that will be buying a home anytime soon if ever right? So to be completely blunt, it’s a waste of your time to post that stuff.

You see Facebook was never meant to be another place for you to place your ads. It’s meant for building relationships and allowing the consumers who follow you to see another side of your business. The real you. They want to know the personality behind your brand, the real, uncut and transparent you. If I’m a potential home buyer and I’m thinking of following you the first thing I’m going to do is look at your wall to see what you post. If all I see is “buy this buy that” umm, no thanks. But if I see you, you’re sense of humor, your comments about current events, your interaction with other people, your weaknesses and vulnerabilities then yep, I’m in. Sound strange? Not really. So many people have already said that Social Media is like a cocktail party. How would you respond if someone at a social gathering just walked up and forced his business card in your hand and started selling? Get the picture?

So this post could easily branch off to so many other topics about how to post, what to post and how to get your consumers to follow you but I’ll save that for a follow up post. First, I’d like to get your comments, responses and or reactions to this post.

Have you analyzed your followers? Do you know whose following you? If so, what kind of response do you get from spam like posts? I’d truly like to know. Leave your comments below.

P.S. If you wanna know which builder it was you’re gonna have to call me and I’ll let you know if it was you. If it wasn’t you and I can’t tell you who it was.

Allow me to tax your memory a bit. Tom Cruise in a little movie called Top Gun, remember that? Of course you do.

One of my favorite scenes is when Maverick gets his butt chewed out for his fly by of the tower. They called it “buzzing the tower”. One of the hi ranking officers spilled coffee all over the front of his shirt when Mav buzzed by after telling him “Negative Ghost Rider the pattern is full.” In other words, don’t do it because the airport is too busy.
Historically this maneuver is done as some kind of victory stunt. It’s a military “woot!” or “look at me!” Take a look at the video.

Now a question for you.
Are you a social media Ghost Rider? Do you just buzz the towers of Facebook and Twitter every  now and then just to promote your latest victory or “woot” your latest blog? You see I spend a lot of
time in the social media hive spots…..uhh, probably too much time and from time to time I see the fly by’s. Someone that doesn’t engage in any way other than by just posting his latest achievement or worse, his latest product to sell. I’m so tempted to say “hey Maverick! The pattern is full!”

The question you need to ask yourself is “am I really plugged into social media, really?” In other words, are you really grasping the spirit of what the social media revolution is all about?
What is it all about? Good question.

Relationships, trust and discovery.

Really, at the heart of social media is this issue of relationships. Since beginning my own social media participation I can’t tell you how many people I have started relationships with that I have never even met face to face. People I speak to daily about a
multitude of topics and many of the topics have nothing to do with my industry. I’ve even hired someone for  my company based on what I learned about her from her Facebook presence. The bottom line is, in this new world people want to know who they’re doing business with on a personal level. This is only accomplished by engaging your followers and friends. Flying by just to shout out  your latest cool thing is just social media spam and we all know how we feel about spam.

There is a handy little button on Facebook when you hover over someone’s post that says “Hide” and when you  click on that your posts go away, all of them and you know what else? You’ll never know you’ve been hidden which means that even though you think you have an audience for your self promotion, it’s falling on deaf ears.

Trust is something we all want from our friends. When it comes to eCommerce, trust is paramount and social media provides an avenue for you to build trust with your consumers. How do you accomplish this? It’s simple, be yourself. Talk about the little things in your life that highlights your humanity. In other words, don’t be afraid to talk about your weaknesses, what you’re reading, what weird thing happened to you today etc. Just be you. If you try to be someone you’re not, it will come out eventually.
And that’s not good. Talk about losing followers!

Lastly, discovery. It’s so cool to discover the unique personality behind a brand, behind a cold static online presence. One my all time favorite bands is on Facebook and I connected with them and now we actually chat from time to time. How awesome is that? That same feeling of discovery happens when a consumer connects to your company and discovers the actual living breathing person behind the company entity.
By the time they actually knock on your door to do any business they’ll feel like they already know you. Instant trust. If you can conquer the trust factor, well you can do anything.

Don’t be a social media fly by. Nobody loves a Maverick in the airspace. Stop a while, engage and show the world who you are.