Antisocial media: Why social media is no place for the hard sell

I had to pause for a moment this week and stop our team at our residential property management agency from spamming our social media fans on Facebook.

We had a couple of properties that we were super keen to get some extra interest on and we were about to start posting them to our Facebook page.

Now, it’s a pretty common strategy by real estate agents, but with the pages I “like” on Facebook for real estate agencies, I’m not typically looking for a property to rent or buy – and I bet most of the people liking their site aren’t either (although they may have been at some time).

I want to hear about their successes, their fun stuff, their new staff, their awards and their challenges and how they’re overcoming them.

Just today I felt a super surge of pride for Paige Mycoskie, whose apparel brand Aviator Nation I follow, when she was announced as one of the best new menswear designers by GQ.

The amount of interest we garnering over at Baby Teresa about a post on our former baby models and what they look like now, or showing one of our donations overseas is a lot more than we’d get if we were just trying to “sell” another romper by posting a picture of it.

Social media blew up (as did their media coverage) when portrait photographer Sue Bryce focused her amazing storytelling on Jill’s story of breast cancer with “The light that shines”.

And this classic “miss-take” photo of me at Elephant Property garnered more likes than almost anything we’ve ever put online (when tongue in cheek I said I would submit it as part of a business awards submission if we hit a target!)

If people want to be sold to there are plenty of venues in which they can have that rammed down their throat. I’ve found that people respond best to social media when it’s light, fun, informative and most of all – a conversation.

How’s your conversation going?

Kirsty Dunphey is the youngest ever Australian Telstra Young Business Woman of the Year, author of two books and a passionate entrepreneur who started her first business at age 15 and opened her own real estate agency at 21.