ThoughtBuzz

From SMEs to MNCs to whole industries, businesses of all sizes have begun the great migration into social media. One of the newest members of this great movement is the real-estate industry, having already made noticeable strides in harnessing the power of social media. 

This trend began in the US by real estate professionals who saw moving into social media as a gateway to recovery from the housing crisis. The world has caught on since. Singapore too has seen a surge in social media usage by real estate professionals, which compliments, and will probably, soon completely replace the flyers, mailers, billboards and television commercials we are currently used to.

Ascott, CapitaLand’s wholly owned serviced residence unit, has been in the forefront of social media practice among real estate players in Singapore since 2009. Today the group has a healthy following of over 20,000 fans across different social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter and Flickr.

“Fans following our Facebook page as well as our Twitter feed are privy to exclusive deals, promotions and contests that are only available through our social media platforms. Ascott has also received reservation enquires which translated into actual bookings at our serviced residencies,” said Tony Soh, Chief Corporate Officer of The Ascott Limited.

Belysa Executive Condominium recently had great success, having sold out their 315-unit apartment in just two months! Since May of this year, when they first started offering their units to buyers, their Facebook page saw quite a buzz among prospective buyers. A quick glance at the Belysa page will tell you that they’ve shared the right amount of information, carried out timely and quality engagement with their page visitors and drawn in a healthy amount of traffic into their page.

Blossom Residencies at Segar Road and RiverParc Residence at Punggol - City Development’s latest projects - hope to achieve success similar to Belysa. Their brand-new Facebook pages seem to have gotten off to a good start; it will be interesting to see how their progress unfolds.

More real estate professionals now need to go beyond building four walls and a roof and create a virtual ‘go to place’ where potential buyers and sellers can have an interactive engagement avenue. 

However, most real estate agents in Singapore still think of social media as an avenue to blast out information, not realizing that maintaining dialogue to engage customers is an important aspect of customer relations, and making conversation one-way is just not good enough to maintain a relationship with your customers.

Singaporean’s trust in consumer opinions posted online is relatively high, according to Nielsen. However, social media usage has not been fully realized in the Singapore real estate market. Individual real estate professionals have not yet discovered the full extent of the power of social media, and unless they do, they will not be exploring the full potential of their marketing efforts.

With HDB announcing 25,000 new flats for 2011 and with 10,000 new private homes expected to enter the market in the second half of 2011, real estate professionals need to reach out to Singapore’s rising housing demand - and they can do so by actively and strategically engaging in social media.

In places like the US where social media has become part and parcel of businesses, it is not surprising that 84% of real estate professionals have turned to social media to actively engage with clients, garnering considerable results with leads, sales and brand building. And with 94% of home buyers who look to the internet before making a purchase decision, real estate agents have been successful in making sure their listings, information, advice etc. reach out to the largest number of prospective buyers and sellers.

Could Singapore’s real estate market soon reach a similar figure? Perhaps they can. Judging from the recent Singapore elections and the realization of the effectiveness and reach of social media, the real estate industry in Singapore could do well by fully embracing the potential of social media.

Companies can build excellent customer relations by engaging their consumers online; they can monitor online chatter about themselves, their competitors or the industry at large. or simply build brand recognition - the possibilities are endless. 

Social Media is changing the way we do business. Scott Monty, head of social media at Ford puts it perfectly; “LinkedIn is the business meeting, Facebook is the hallway conversation and Twitter is the cocktail party.”

Its the time for ThoughtBuzz updates again. We have worked hard and listened to you guys and made the dashboard into a much more powerful tool for monitoring which now includes Facebook Fan Pages as well! Access Facebook Fan page analytics right from the ThoughtBuzz dashboard. Some key highlights are

1. Facebook Insights - Your Dashboard now has a new tab named ‘Manage’ which would allow you to manage and check out insights on your brand’s Facebook page! 

You can see details such as:

 - Monthly summary of Total page fans, page views, new fans and new likes

 - Bar charted age group and gender classification

 - 3 line graphs categorized into groups : users, content and interaction

Thats not all ! Our newly enhanced graphical charts provide you an enhanced level of interaction with  

            a. Zoom Mode - Now you can simply click and drag any section of the graph to zoom and focus on the segment you want

             b. Pin Mode - Comparing 2 time periods has never been easier with Pin Mode. A period of interest can be selected and dragged to compare with another time window by simply clicking and dragging.

             c. Export Options - You own the data and you need to be able to export any analysis associated with it. The graphs come with an advanced export option which gives you the choice to save into various formats.

             d. Selective Toggle - Want to see only selected data series from the graph? No hassles, just select the ones that you really  need from the interactive legend to hide/ show any series.

2. Regional Twitter Search - One of the challenges of segregating data on a regional/ country level from twitter has now been eliminated! You now have access to tweets from a specific geography that you choose to look at.

3. Enhanced Facebook Search - You can now read Facebook wall posts, status updates directly under the Facebook tab in your dashboard ensuring you get INSTANT access to all relevant Facebook posts.

4. Compatibility - Our charts are now 100% iPhone/ iPad compatible ! This means that even if your mobile device doesn’t support Adobe Flash, you will still be able to access all charts.

And there’s more on the way! To know more check out the slideshow below

Facebook Fan Page Analytics View more presentations from thoughtbuzz.