It took Barnes and Noble (the biggest book store in USA) 32 years to reach $1 billion in turnover and it took Amazon 4 years. The shots that took down Osama bin Laden were shots heard ’round the Twitterverse. A mind-boggling record of 12.4 million tweets per hour(5,106 tweets per second around the time of President Obama’s speech) helped to place all topics connected to the biggest news story of the year at number one. 2/3 of the global internet population visits social networks. 5 billion people in the world are on mobile and connected. 2.6 billion minutes are spent on Facebook every day. 13 hours of YouTube is uploaded every minute. 100 000 000 YouTube videos viewed every day. If Facebook were a country in terms of population it would be the fouth largest in the world! As of 2009, 78% of social media users interact with companies or brands via new media sites and tools, an increase of 32% from 2008.
If you don’t understand social media and get involved you will go out of business. Agreed it is not vital at the moment, but it is impossible to ignore the trends and by the time it comes it will be too late. Robert Kiyosaki (Rich Dad Poor Dad) in his latest book Conspiracy of the Rich, said the best way to build wealth was to follow long term trends and this is certainly one you need to know about!
The beauty with social media is that you can’t spend your way to the top. The only way to build a credible reputation is through time and consistency of you application. This is known as social proofing where you build a following (like your account in Ebay and the way you perform). One day we will all have a social proof, which will be like you ID for both yourself and your company. Your track record will follow you. This is awesome as those that are experts and deliver a valuable service or product will be able to charge more and those that don’t perform will go out of business or have to seriously discount their prices. No more developers selling properties and then building rubbish or dodgy estate agents getting away with murder. You will only be as valuable as your track record and with the transparency of the internet; everyone will be able to see your performance. As Steven Covey says, the 21st Century is the Trust Economy and everything is going to be determined by trust and your social proof will be your indicator or the factor it is based on.
The best way to be successful is to model the best, learn what they are doing and then follow them. It is no coincidence that the best in the world are putting a huge focus into their social media strategies.
Anyone think it is only for kids? By the summer of 2009, over one-third of US Facebook users were over the age of 35 and about half that group was over 45. Early in 2009, InsideFacebook.com reported that the fastest growing demographic on Facebook was women over 55.
The sooner you start the sooner you start to build that track record and most importantly your social proof. You need to be on Facebook, YouTube, Twitter and Linked In at a minimum and you have to start to learn about video as this is the future.
This was a friendly reminder to the property industry to start communicating, or seriously consider the consequences.
If you have any questions please contact me on scott@doubleyoursales.co.za. I would love to know your thoughts.
