BUSINESS Social media Words | Christopher Nye Social media goes visual
You’ve just got the hang of Twitter and here comes yet another time-sucking social media? Pinterest, however, seems made for selling real estate
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ren’t customers more likely to click through to your website after seeing a seductive image of your property than by reading 140 characters about it? Almost entirely visual, with no status updates (hurray!), Pinterest is an online pinboard where users share images. It’s the most popular social
medium after Facebook and Twitter, with 50 million users, especially popular in the US, Philippines, South Africa, India, Australia, Canada and Thailand. Only commercially available since November 2012, already in India, for example, Ernst and Young found that 46% of India’s 40 most media-savvy companies use Pinterest. Its biggest users are women, primarily in the 25 to 44 age group and that’s refl ected in the most popular subject matters including food, design, animals and home interiors. Estate agents have been slower to
cotton on, which is strange because it’s free, easy to use and well suited to selling houses and locations. Knight Frank do use Pinterest. John Williams, their Head of PR and Social Media says: “It’s extremely easy, highly intuitive and image based. Just like an online scrapbook. All of the PR team around the world contribute. We enjoy it.” Opening an account is simple.
Click on the Pinterest for Business button, enter your email address, write a profi le and add a photo. Download the html code for a logo on your website if you like. That’s the hard part done. For each subject, or ‘board’, you choose a title and start uploading images; your own photos or images, ‘repins’ from other people’s boards, or images shared from the internet.
A picture can speak a thousand words. Make sure they’re the right ones
The smart phone app will upload photos automatically.
Agents and developers can use Pinterest in several ways. Most obviously, for listings. A grand house might merit its own board, or group listings together. Label them with locations and types (Lake Como, villa, Italy…) so searchers can fi nd them, and don’t forget to include a
Most obviously, you can use it for your listings
link to your main website. But don’t limit yourself to listings.
For developers it’s a handy way to share images as a resort is built. In Australian, one of Perth’s most innovative realtors Realmark uses Pinterest. “We prefer not to use it solely as a sales tool and would rather pin things that are interesting and/or useful,” says Ashley
Slater. “Items that relate to things happening in the metro and regional areas of Western Australia as well as images and books that inspire us.” (
pinterest.com/realmark/) Sell your local area by pinning
images of attractions and activities, nearby beaches, carnivals, the trendy downtown... And if you don’t have any images of your own, just repin other people’s. They won’t mind, it’s meant for sharing. At Knight Frank, says John Williams: “We use it on a thematic basis to show off ‘best swimming pools’ or ‘best country houses’. We benefi t by the SEO outcome of using another social media channel, by users sharing the content and by creating another interest point for our brand in the digital world.” (
pinterest.com/ knightfrank).
You might be thinking, does social media ever really end up in a sale? Well, Pinterest is a genuinely painless way of reaching potential customers, says John Williams: “Any engaging medium where we can show our beautiful properties at their best has to be good”.
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