In part 2 of this series we focused on why you should consider implementing a social media and networking strategy. We also identified the tools that could be used to regularly add content to your website, such as blogs, events, news and announcements, property listings, even community forums. We also briefly mentioned some of the SEO benefits that can be achieved by adding fresh content to your website. In this article we describe ways to share that content.
Sharing Content
There are certainly many benefits to regularly adding new content to your website. But there are even more benefits when you begin to share that content.
Manual
As with adding your content, there are a couple of ways to share your content. A manual means by which you can distribute information is to physically log into your Facebook account and/or Twitter account and add content. You can provide links to your own and others’ blogs, news and announcements, and events. You can also post your listings directly on your Facebook wall or send out a tweet of your listing. However, this can be time consuming and frustrating since you may feel that you are duplicating efforts by adding information to your website, then again on Facebook, yet again on Twitter, and possibly even other social networking sites which you may be involved.
Automated
At IMI Software, we have taken the frustration out of the manual process by configuring the blogs, blog comments, news and announcements, event calendars, forum posts, and property listings on our client's websites to automatically post to their Facebook profile or business page and Twitter account. Of course which features you want to share are up to you. Each post to Facebook and Twitter also contains a link back to the page on your website containing the information. Not only are you automatically distributing your content to these social networking sites but you are also creating back links to your website. As mentioned earlier, both of these positively impact SEO.
On our websites the blog, news and announcements, event calendars, property listings database, blog comments, and forum posts all provide RSS syndication in the form of a feed. This means that anyone can subscribe to your RSS feed to receive automatic updates any time something new is posted to any of those areas on your site. This facilitates the sharing of your content, provides a means of automatic notifications of your content and, if someone subscribes to your feeds on another website, creates quality back links to your website. As mentioned a few times, this is a huge SEO benefit.
Check with your website administrator or design company to see if these features are available to you. You can also look into using third party websites, services, and apps that help facilitate this process.
There are many third party websites and services that focus on real estate marketing. Websites such as Postlets provide a service to post, share and syndicate your listings. ActiveRain is a real estate social media and social networking site that provides functionality to create profiles, groups, blogs, and property listings. As of this writing, the Multiple Listing Service of Long Island (MLSLI) includes a free basic account with your MLS subscription to ListHub. ListHub provides a great service that works in conjunction with many MLS services to syndicate your listings on many popular real estate networks such as HotPads, trulia, Yahoo! Real Estate, AOL Real Estate, oodle, and a dozen or so more. Check with your local MLS organization and see if they include this service with your subscription. There are many other websites and services that offer listing syndication and real estate specific social networking.
Social Bookmarking & Sharing Toolbars
Social bookmarking and sharing toolbars are currently very common on websites, and there is no reason why your website should not contain one on every page. Just hover your mouse over the one above or at the right side of this web page to see how it works. Simply put, these toolbars facilitate the sharing of your content and web pages. By allowing your readers to share your content, you can gain more traffic, receive higher link popularity, and hopefully generate leads. A social bookmarking toolbar can help your website gain more visibility in social networking sites including Facebook, Twitter, and the hundreds of other social networking websites that are available. As mentioned in part 1, a visitor to your website that is interested in sharing information can simply hover over the toolbar and select which social networking or bookmarking site they wish to add the content or web page to. They are then directed to the site they choose and the link is then established. Your content has just been shared.
Some social bookmarking toolbars such as SharePost, can also be created in many different languages. International social bookmarking toolbars integrate with many international social bookmarking services, so your visitors are able to share your content with those that speak different languages. Multi-language websites, or content localization, is outside the scope of this article but IMI Software will be introducing content localization functionality in the future. Look for some announcements in this area in coming months.
Social Bookmarking & Sharing Analytics
It is also beneficial to track the sharing that is occurring on your site. Many of the popular bookmarking and sharing services offer free analytics. This provides you with the ability to review statistics such as the regions where your traffic is originating, which browsers are used, and details about which services through which your information was shared. For instance, you could see how many times someone shared information on Facebook, or re-tweeted a blog, or perhaps emailed a friend about a property listing. The bookmarking and sharing analytics is not meant to take the place of a more overall and comprehensive service such as Google Analytics, but rather this is meant to provide specific analysis of your social bookmarking and sharing. This can help you refine the social networking sites where you may want to focus your attention.
AddThis and Sharepost are two very popular free bookmarking and sharing services, but there are a number of others. A simple search using your search engine of choice will return a number of options.
Recap
To summarize: you write your own blog, add some company news, receive an RSS Feed of a local blog, and receive a feed of community events. You also add new listings into your listing database and provide a social bookmarking toolbar that provides you with comprehensive analytics. What is the benefit?
There are numerous benefits. All the individuals who subscribe to your RSS feeds will receive those updates automatically. In addition, these new updates are automatically posted to your Facebook profile or business fan page and your Twitter account. Your website continuously receives information and transmits information. You are constantly adding fresh content to your website, notifying your subscribers, and automatically posting to Facebook and Twitter. You are also providing a means for discussions to evolve around your content by providing readers the opportunityy to leave comments on your blog. By doing this you are sharing your content, reaching a broader audience, providing multiple ways for others to share your content, facilitating discussions, receiving SEO benefits, hopefully driving more traffic to your site and generating quality leads, and the sharing analytics provide details of the sharing and bookmarking that is occurring.
That all sounds great but it does not end there. It is essential to maximize your ROI by getting involved in the conversation. This does not have to be an all encompassing, time-consuming process however. Devoting a small amount of time on a regular basis can be very beneficial. Participating in the conversation will be the focus of part 4.