Social media gives everyone with an internet connection a voice. A very loud one at that. But do you know what is being said about you and your company online?
As an experiment I did a Google search by “Complaint “lj hooker” real estate”. They’re big. Why not? The first item in the search results was an article written by one only Neil Jenman. Many agents in Australia know Neil. Most wish they didn’t. Neil’s article is a tirade about the sale of a property in North Ryde in which three people had been murdered. Jenman uses a pseudo-blog to push his cause. I call it that because he is selective about the comments he publishes on his site. Perhaps Jenman believes that this is a smart strategy. I doubt it. Rather than allowing his supporters to challenge critical comments with their own comments Jenman effectively drives dissenting voices to parts of the internet over which his influence is significantly reduced.
In a similar vein a search on Twitter, provided a short, unsavoury assessment of the services from a Ray White office in Launceston. Equally, it wasn’t difficult to find someone that was ticked off with the services of Raine and Horne Wollongong. I’m betting the agents mentioned don’t have a clue about what’s being said about their business. Any agent that fails to pay attention and respond to their critics invites the very problems now faced by Jenman. Whatever way an agent choses to respond to an online critic it’s best to do it quickly, professionally and proactively. Leaving an online complaint unaddressed is a recipe for it to propagate and become a problem. And the first step in heading off a problem is to know what’s being said about your business in the first place.
Google provide a number of tracking tools. The one I use is Google Alerts which tracks what’s happening in the world of social media and real estate. Alerts can be delivered to an email address or to a feed reader. Once set up an alert requires no ongoing management or effort. But it’s an excellent insurance policy. At the least consider setting up an alert for any mention of you and your company’s name. You may be glad you did.
