Google is Getting Ahead of Me . . . Way Too Fast!

What is/are Ripples?  Does it/do they have Ridges?

So I've been working in the RE/MAX LeadStreet system for years and years . . . and it has been a relatively complete program for Realtors.  Then, social media starts to heat up and Facebook and Google seem to be in some kind of race.  (In fact I blogged about that earlier this month.)  So I've been "digging in" to see what lies in store for those of us Realtor-geeks that can't seem to get enough online presence.

Irises from Instagram Yesterday

And while social media sites keep getting more popular -- especially Facebook, Twitter, Google+, Linked In , YouTube, and Instagram -- some emerging themes for social marketing continue to dominate my thinking.

The first of these is "images."  Photos seem to be the universal "like" for all the sites.  Everyone likes to look at photos, probably why Instagram is so popular.  I don't use Linked In very much, but I understand it has some powerful business applications.  Currently, my favorite for business is Google+. And so, as the title of this article suggests, everytime I go to Google's business sites, there's something new.  Ripples, Hangouts, Badge, Enterprise, Apps, Platform, Sites, etc etc etc.  When I start reading the "what for's," I quickly learn that I'm behind the curve.  I'm not a geek.  I'm not a techie.  I'm a Realtor.  But I'm definitely "in" to marketing.

So the second part of this mind domination effect involves "social interaction."  This is nothing new . . .  it's been discussed since Facebook grew from college kids to peeps my age.  [like the term, "peeps?"]  But it seems to be a trend that isn't going away.

The third part is "information on demand."  Nobody wants your email drip campaigns anymore.  I certainly don't want any!  They clog my inbox with cyber-garbage.  But I've also been teaching "page building" in LeadStreet . . . and many of us have filled the Google space (oops, there's another one) . . . so let's just say - cyber-space - with lots of cyber-garbage pages, too.  My bad!  This "used to work."

Notice when you "Google-search" anything at all, there are 100,000,000,000,000,000 different choices, only 10 of which are on the first page.  So we learned to be in the top 10, but what is it getting us?  The consumer is using our sites, but not converting on our cyber-junk-pages of blah blah blah......more and more listings listings listings.......except that they're all sold before they get to them.

There is something missing . . . the successful integration of all these things, and probably more.  We're found, now let's convert.  Time for a new strategy.  Time for some deeper thinking.

So, I have two questions for today:

Consumers:  what is missing from our websites?

Realtors:  what is missing from our websites?