I still remember the week when 5 of our main lenders went out of business and my husband and I were scrambling to find new ones to replace them. All of our relationships with account executives went out of the window in an instant. You know how it is…That special relationship that you have with your specific AE’s.
Times are changing… In the mortgage industry and in the way we do business.
So what is all this talk about social media? Can you really use it in your mortgage business? Isn’t it just a waste of time?
My husband has asked these same questions but after I’ve immersed myself in social media for the past 2 years, he’s starting to come by my desk to find out how I’m sending him all these commercial and residential loan modification leads.
Now when I say immerse, I don’t mean to say that you have to be immersed constantly in social media to see results. Most of my social media strategies only take about 30 minutes a day. There is definitely one thing that you must understand:
Social Media Is Where The People Are These Days
Let’s take a look at some numbers:
The average U.S. Internet user spends more time on Facebook than on Google, Yahoo, YouTube, Microsoft, Wikipedia and Amazon combined. Think about that for a moment.
This statistic is even more staggering: In January 2010, the amount of time the average person spent on Facebook jumped to more than 7 hours.
As you can see with this chart, Facebook has recently surpassed Yahoo in visitors to their site. Facebook currently has an Alexa ranking of 2. They are the second most trafficked website next only to Google!
Most of my leads come directly from Facebook Advertising which is a lot less expensive than Google Adwords but there is definitely more of an audience that will click on our advertisement for commercial relief or when is the right time to refinance webinar advertisement.
It is so much easier to target a specific audience with a FREE webinar using Facebook Advertising especially since there are 39 BILLION page views per month. Don’t you want to get your business in front of these people?
As you can tell, Facebook is a powerful platform to market your business if done correctly. Twitter is also another powerful social media network but most people aren’t sure how to use it most effectively. Be sure to check out my previous post to learn more Twitter strategies. Also follow me on Twitter to get an idea of how to use this platform.
In addition to obtaining new consumer clients, social media is a great avenue to establishing relationships with new account executives and creating new business to business contacts.
Have you started your social media campaign? Let us know in the comments which network appeals to you the most. Stay tuned for more articles here on The Niche Report to give you tips and strategies to market your mortgage business via social media.
Naomi Trower is a mortgage broker and owner of Premier Equity Group, Inc. & Premier Realty Group. She has been training her brokerage team of loan consultants & real estate agents on social media marketing. She is available for consulting on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Wordpress blogging and Active Rain Marketing. Contact her at naomi[at]naomitrower.com for further details. She also has a comprehensive guide featured at http://NaomiTrower.com/ebook.
