No doubt when you took your home staging training class you were told that having a social media presence is important to the success of your business. What you may not have been told is that not all social media is equal. This is not necessarily meaning that any social media site is better than another, but more to say that each site has it’s unique characteristics and will do different things for you. Today I’ll be talking about Google Plus.
Google Plus and your home staging business
G+ is the social media site that I continue to hear home stagers saying that they simply don’t get. Facebook, Linked In, and Pinterest are the most commonly regularly used site. Twitter is used off and on (though seems to be waning in favor) and Google Plus is met with the cocked head and dismissal. I noticed that some stagers who are typically early adapters and even have G+ accounts simply don’t use it regularly.
Because of this I decided to do a small experiment with one of our SAR Home Staging Training Instructors. Karen Otto, from Plano TX has a great business and has been successfully using social media as long as I’ve known her. She is a strong blogger and knows how to use her blogs, as well as social media to amass a great following and interaction. Still I rarely saw her on G+.
Two mornings I asked her to post from her G+ account using the keywords “Dallas home staging“.
As you can see, within minutes she was #2 of my search (from here in FL) for the phrase “Dallas Home Staging”. Along with it, her photo, which actually makes it jump off the page. This means, for most searchers, that while she was #2, she is probably the link that will be clicked, as it’s the first one noticed.
G+ great for hard to rank search phrases
Karen already owned the #7 spot naturally for Dallas home staging, so perhaps it doesn’t seem so far fetched that she could rank higher even when there is significant competition for these key words. But what happens when you are trying to rank for phrases that are really sought after? Let’s say something like your town + real estate. I am, after all, a Realtor in addition to being a well known St Augustine home stager.
Yesterday, I shared a post from my G+ business page onto my personal page, using the keywords “St Augustine Real Estate“. Today, here are the results. As you can see, I’m #2 in the searches (after ads), just below Zillow and above Realtor.com.
Moving me into a top ranking spot in only one day with a single post on G+ is quite the windfall. Of course, like any other thing, nothing is this simple. You need to get circled, to build a following, and then provide quality content.
Unfortunately not everyone will see your post on G+ just because you are now on the first page. They actually have to be following you, or connected to someone else that you are connected with. This means that interacting and growing your base is paramount to this tactic being at all worthwhile.
Simply creating an account and posting your stuff will not get you the results you are looking for. You MUST build your connections. This means doing things like joining communities, commenting, and sharing other content that people want to follow along. Just like your blog, you’ll need to post quality content to bring followers.
To learn more about this topic, keep reading our blog, follow us on social media, or join us at the 2015 RESA Convention and attend my presentation on the topic!
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