While social media has become a very important part of the real estate sales process, many agents still struggle with how to leverage it effectively. They don’t know how to keep up with Facebook, Twitter, etc., and they definitely don’t know how to use the tools for lead generation.
Move, Inc. must have recognized this challenge that agents are facing, and they have come up with a solution to help agents deal with this problem. The company announced this week that they have purchased the SocialBios platform. SocialBios allows individuals and companies to create one social hub for their online profiles through an interactive ‘About Us’ page. The tool simplifies the discovery of shared connections on Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, Foursquare and Google without sacrificing the consumer’s privacy.
The founder of the company is from the real estate industry and his vision for the application is to allow social media to become a method for lead generation. Just like in “real life” when a consumer is looking for an agent or any business relationship they look for people they have something in common with. For example, did the agent go to the same school they did or did she grow up in the same hometown they did? Do they have friends in common? Socialbios replicates this activity online and helps a consumer find an agent that they something in common with. It also makes it really easy to share all of the agent’s social media activity on their website or blog with the addition of one line of code to their website.
“Real estate is inherently a social business. Today’s search experience is highly interactive and instant with the explosion of mobile in real estate. We’re uniquely positioned to lead our industry and connect people naturally through their social graph,” said Scott Boecker, Move’s Chief Product Officer. “This acquisition brings a new element of discovery and creativity to our online real estate marketplace as we evolve our web, mobile and social search experiences.”
From our view it’s very smart for Move, Inc. to find a way to harness the power of social media in a way that makes it extremely easy for agents to take advantage of their social media activity so they don’t have to figure it out for themselves. One of the biggest complaints about social media from agents is that it is really difficult to keep up with and leverage fully. This tool takes care of that for them. It also makes their “About Us” page a lot more interesting and dynamic. They, in effect, can have fresh content on their home page regularly without having to do anymore than what they already do in social media. If they write a Twitter post for example, it will automatically show up on their website. If they post a new listing on their Facebook page that will show up too. Any of their activity in Facebook, Linkedin, Twitter or Foursquare will show up automatically.
Real estate agents and brokers interested in claiming their SocialBios ID can go to SocialBios.com or call the Move support team at 800.878.4166. Definitely worth checking out in our view.
