Just Because You Can Doesn’t Mean You Should

Knowing where to put certain information and on which social media platform can be tricky. As real estate agents we could be considered a spammer in one place while completely within reasonable and acceptable behavior at another site. You need to know before you post really. But how do you determine what is what and which is which?

Try to follow the good examples of those already in the space and doing the real estate social media thing. Learn the rules or accepted protocols for the different social media platforms. Perhaps we need to hire a protocol representative for the industry who can tell us exactly what we are to do, and not to do? There are plenty of real estate agents who do it well, like @ginakayRE, @utahREpro, @nobuhata or @darrinfrie, so study those folks.
 

Try to observe and take note of the differences in the spaces and the interactions. Twitter is a “cocktail party” and we all chat with everyone as we flow around the room, it is far less likely that you will disrupt the party if you post a single message with a new listing on it, but conversational is typically the tone. But how you would write something for a tweet is not how you would post it to your LinkedIn status is it?

Keep it professional and respectable on LinkedIn. I forget who said this to me the other day, so please identify yourself so I can credit you, but they said that they thought of everything they posted on LinkedIn while imagining they were wearing a business suit. That was a pretty good analogy. Keep it concise, professional and respectful – and don’t change it too often! Once a day would be plenty I think. If you have to do a status update more than once per day then look toward Facebook.

Facebook is your comfortable circle of friends. If I were to follow the “business suit” analogy this is the crowd I would be comfortable sitting around in a pair of jeans and a casual shirt, they are more likely to “know” you. You can certainly post in a more casual manner here, and certainly more often.

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