More on Social Media/Blogging
A reader had an interesting comment on my post about social media, which I will re-post in its entirety for the purposes of having a real discussion on the topic:
John - interesting take on CRE-Advice.com. Allow me to give another as a member of that site. CRE-Advice.com is not for you and I in the sense that we get Social Media. We understand the value of a blog, what a tweet is, etc. What CRE-Advice does is generate a around 800,000 unique visits a month, and I have the opportunity to get in front of those visitors. It allows those of us who subscribe to pool our resources to maximize our value on video production, pay per click advertising, etc. It has gotten me on the first page of Google among other things. CRE is an industry lagging behind in regards to Social Media, and while you view this as lowering the bar, I view this as an attempt to drag along those who are lagging behind. Do not assume that all that is written on that site is ghost-written, though your thought that it draws into question the authenticity of the content is something I will need to consider.realtor.co
I don’t want to get into flaming CRE Advice, because I think they are really just trying to present a solution and I think that’s a good thing. But 95% of practitioners out there have no sense of what they should be doing in social media, so I think it’s an important discussion to have. So rather than consider just the case of CRE Advice, let me give some more general thoughts:
- Nothing good happens behind the “pay wall” (in social media anyway). Sites that are available for payment create a problem on the web. Pay walls limit the widespread adoption of web services, which limit their reach and therefore their effectiveness. The web primarily works on network effects. Every user of Facebook increases the value of the service for every other user. Placing your content on a “for pay” site is going to limit its reach because the actual site will be limited in its reach.
- Subscription services create a problem with your online presence in that you do not control the future of your web identity. To make a CRE analogy, imagine that you sign a 12 month lease on a retail space and then you pay for $100,000 in tenant improvements. What are the value of those tenant improvements after your lease expires? Similarly, you have no control over the future cost of a web service and if you are investing time and energy in developing an online presence, you are essentially beholden to whatever the proprietor of the site does with it in the future (including shut it down). If I create content on the web, I should either be in control of its future, or I should have reasonable confidence in the proprietor of the site that my online presence will be safe.
- Social media activities are cumulative in nature, so the value of your work increases over time. I still get noticeable amounts of traffic from posts I wrote last spring. But what if I wrote those posts on a site that I did not have reasonable control over? Or let’s say I wrote them on a pay site and then cancelled my subscription? Would I benefit from the cumulative effects of those posts?
- In the end, content is king. The value of any site will be based on the content it features. There aren’t really any ways around this fact. So if you are going to have a real online presence, it will be because you are generating real content (even if that’s 140 characters at a time).
- Pay per click is one potential way around the problem, but it can get expensive and there is no need to have a social presence in order to benefit from pay per click. For instance, if you are trying to reach people searching google for the keywords “Chicago office broker” it doesn’t necessarily help to have that person directed towards your blog post about the office market. They’re ready to do something so it probably makes more sense to direct them to your corporate website page that says something simple like “Joe Smith, CBRE, $3 million in office transactions in 2009” along with contact information. That’s really the best way to avoid confusing the potential prospect and get ROI on your PPC budget. Sometimes simplicity works best.
To illustrate my point above about the importance of taking anything that requires networks effects out from behind the pay wall, consider the below graph that shows traffic for Loopnet and Costar. (Loopnet is the green line, Costar is the blue line).
An MLS functions primarily on its network effects. Loopnet realizes this and makes the cost of subscribing for the premium version very low, and also offers a free version. Costar on the other hand requires payment for its data services, as well as its Showcase property listing product. But the problem with the Showcase product is that it suffers from Costar’s reputation for being high cost. Costar data services are very good, but expensive, and as a result there is low participation for the services that would benefit from network effects (like the Showcase product).
So if you are pursuing a web strategy that benefits from network effects, reduce the cost of participation as much as you possibly can. The difference is similar to having your advertisement on a billboard next to the freeway, or having your ad on a sign at the end of a cul de sac. People need to see it, and in order for people to see it, it needs to be accessible to an many as possible.
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