In April of 2010, she was laid off from her job and did not know which move to make next.  Personal Training is her passion and she decided that she was going to go for it.  She got her certification, and a job as a personal trainer.  Next she started a blog, a Facebook Fan Page, Youtube Channel and Twitter account.

She was just featured on www.lauraroeder.com (Laura is a top social media expert) for her success in the past 12 months and we came up with a plan to share how she did it.  Below are the 12 Steps to Leverage Social Media in the Next 12 Months.

1. Who are you? What are you writing about? This is your niche. You should be writing to your niche and also be a part of your niche to prove your passion for the topic.
2. Who is your audience? I was writing to people who wanted to live a healthier lifestyle and wanted to share ideas and success stories.
3. HAVE Patience – This is not going to happen overnight. It is going to take time to get a following. Be comfortable with the having approx 50 or so fans after the first month. Treat followers and fans with great respect and get to know THEM.
4. Provide Valuable Content – Only re-posting recipes or others content is not going to get a following. Write from the heart, write posts that will help, inspire, heal and motivate.
5. It is not about YOU – Being a blogger is about serving the community in which you occupy, not promoting yourself (that will come organically). Do as much as you can for others with no expectations besides knowing you may have helped someone.
6. Have a free item to give away. Having consistent viewership is great but it is a one way street. (They come to you) Creating a free report or a newsletter will get people to sign up to your email list and you now can reach them with your content, programs, or services. Mine was www.thegetinshapebooty.com
7. Do some Pro-Bono work – Not only good for your karma, this will help you build social currency. I have a personal training site. Before we launched it, we gave away free memberships to get the community engaged. Those people were also required to provide photos, testimonials, and leave positive feedback on their social media pages.
8. Show you CARE – When I was getting started I would write a thank you email to everyone who signed up for my free give-a-way just introducing myself and asking how I could help.
9. Follow up –People need reminders that you can help them; Also be consistent with your blog, failing to write a post for a couple weeks will kill your viewership before it gets going.
10. Do Free Challenges to get community involvement – I have created a free challenge for people on my Facebook page and people I am involved with on many different forums.
11. Ask your audience what they want, don’t assume you know – You are probably at a level of knowledge for your niche that is ahead of your viewers. Don’t assume they are there with you. If they are asking for the basic of basic steps, make sure to show them how!
12. Find people you want to be like and follow them! Get involved on their page, provide great content and posts and let them know you are also an authority figure in that space. Doing it once won’t cut it. Be a regular on their page helping THEIR viewers remain engaged. I bet you they will make their way over to your site in time!

There are many of you that will you toe the line and be a real estate professional but you really need to BE a real estate professional and have a brand.  Your brand can be anything.  Ask your self the following questions to figure out your brand:

These are just a few and you can spin each question into having several sub-sections very easily.  Now I know what you are thinking…”But Ryan, I do service other clients outside of my town/niche/neighborhood”

GREAT!  That business will still be there, it will.  If you are referable and practice remaining in contact with your past sales and sphere, you will be continuing to receive that business.  (If you don’t want it, refer it out!)

For an example from the above questions, you could be a “first time home buyer specialist in Reading, MA”  In this case, you hit on a couple keywords that will help with your search engine optimization.  Now you have to blog, tweet, facebook, linked in, youtube that you are “first time home buyer specialist in Reading, MA”

Continuing to do this will get you up the search engines and establishing your brand!

Keep in mind, at no time should your pro-active social media marketing replace the day to day communication you should be doing with your sphere and past sales — this could be a talking point when you are calling your sphere to ask for referrals as well!

REMINDER:  Tuesday at 1pm, I will be interviewing Jimmy Mackin from the MLSAPP (www.themlsapp.com) to talk all things Facebook!  sign up here www.optimizedrealestateagent.com/mlsapp

Ryan is a Realtor®, Speaker, Fitness Junkie, and “Real Estate Helper” living in MA

You can get free access to his Social Media Training School HERE

Or click the link for Free Access to Social Media School at optimizedrealestateagent.com

The wonderful people put on a great event and the structure of the event is something like I have not been a part of!

Registration started at 7:45-8:45 and the first session started at 9am but when you show up, you see this board that has all the time slots going north to south and the type of session going east to west and you just grab some chairs and huddle up!

The super cool thing is that if you don’t see something on the board and you know you want to talk/learn/engage with others about, you create it by writing it in one of the empty slots going East to West.

(It is funny, it was my first bar camp and as the day went one, people got more and more comfortable with creating a topic to discuss.  The board was by no ways empty when we got there but it certainly got fuller as the day went on with people creating topics and extending topics (or branching off from original topics)

I without a doubt learned a few new practices to implement in my businesses as well as meeting some cool people. —

I have been wanting to meet Jimmy Mackin from The MLSAPP for a while now…this guy is a Facebook Master and is coming up with some awesome stuff for us Realtors (and other businesses) to implement into our Facebook Pages.  Check Jimmy out HERE and Like his Facebook Page HERE.

When I had the chance to pull Jimmy aside, the guy is pretty popular at these events, he said he would be happy to jump on a call with me to talk about Facebook, strategies to use on Facebook, and his MLSAPP.  Stay tuned for that.

Another session I was fortunate to be in was with Sven Andersen of Re/Max in Winchester.  Check out his site HERE, it is very nice and he had very little to do with doing it.  The concept and what he wanted on the page was all Sven but he has a team of Virtual Assistant’s (VA”S) complete the task. He outsources a lot of what we do and shouldn’t be doing to VA’s.  For me and a lot of Realtors out there, we fill our time with “work” that is not in our unique ability.

Sven is best at selling and talking to prospective clients, not figuring out HTML and uploading pictures to MLS.  The session I had with Sven, if you haven’t figured it out yet, was virtual assistants.  Probably one of the issues that is holding a lot of us back, not because we don’t want more free time to be with prospective clients but because we have control and letting go issues!!!  His site again, is HERE

I have emailed Sven to see if we can interview him so hopefully he will oblige!!

Check out both Sven and Jimmy’s sites!

Next year, put REBAR Camp on your things to do list!

Remember LinkedIn and Twitte training tomorrow at EMAR headquarters 2-4pm!

Ryan is a Realtor®, Speaker, Fitness Junkie, and “Real Estate Helper” living in MA

You can get free access to his Social Media Training School HERE

Or click the link for Free Access to Social Media School at optimizedrealestateagent.com

Don’t imagine, it is here, it has been here and it isn’t going anywhere.

I have always believed that people do business with people and not a title, a specific brand, or “Top Producer”.  YouTube gives you the ability to show off a little bit more of your personality to:

• prospects/leads
• current clients
• current customers
• past sales

Now, I bet the number of emails you’re past clients are getting are minimal but you can bet that in the prospect department they are getting emailed from every real estate shop in town — which is fine because you are using video and you are going to stand out.

Get by step by step directions on how to do this in the YouTube section of the FREE SOCIAL MEDIA SCHOOL

Also get access to trainings on:

• How to make a successful office/team/you video
• How not to video your listings
• Buyer and Seller Video Drip Campaigns
• How to Video your farm
• Client Testimonials

Video is the best way to get your message across — think about it — people are busy and the quicker you cna your message across the better.