I am delighted to have been invited to speak at the third Annual NALS Conference on October 4th 2012 in London. (National Approved Lettings Scheme).
I attended last year and thought the quality of the speakers was excellent – from representatives of government to industry leaders – I feel privileged to share the same stage.
See the Speaker programme >>> here.
My talk this year will be entitled ‘Don’t blog, twitter or facebook until you have heard this‘.
My reason is thus:
We are in the third evolution of the web, as we speak, which means that within the last decade it has become a very tangible and real asset to any business. It is a centralised database of knowledge for those that want to use it for a specific purpose. It is in your pocket and in your mind. It sorts, sifts and indexes what you want to know – or more importantly what your clients want to know.
BUT it will only work when you stop telling it what to do. No longer can you control and direct traffic, you have to let the traffic control and direct itself. After all, the ‘traffic knows what it wants, you don’t. It also knows when it wants it, what page it wants it on and it wants it NOW!
This means something. It means that token gestures using the usual suspects like twitter, facebook or casual blogging will not attract, or more importantly, hold the traffic that you want and/or need.
Using social media for the purposes of marketing is, by definition, an oxymoron. There is nothing “social” about marketing. That does not mean that there is anything wrong with it, it’s just not a social action and marketing to the social web is inauthentic.
So the pretext that using FB, Twitter and/or blogging as a casual ‘fit for all’ is destined to be exhaustive. Just because you are using it does not make it right or a commercially viable use of your time.
Knowing how to use a pen will not create a best-selling novel. However, knowing what people want to read may.
Therefore, I will be taking apart the notion of how humans are using the web to find houses, whether that be for let and/or for buying. Moreover, I will be talking about their behaviour online. After all, if you can predict this then everything else will fall into place.
if you know what people want, and you know how they want it, you give it to them in spades. You will then hold the ‘eyeballs’ and when you hold the eyeballs you can make your offers knowing that they want to be there and they won’t ‘bounce’ themselves away.
This may not mean the facebook or twitter is needed! It will also mean that the web is and, more importantly, your understanding of how your prospective clients are using it.
At the NALS Conference I will be turning social media on its head, giving some live demonstrations of it in action, and challenging what you think you know!
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