Tag Archives: Real estate

creating community: part 2

Money Mart
Image by Thomas Hawk via Flickr

Just over a month ago I blogged about creating community: part 1.  The beginning of this story was a refresher on my experience with GREENtuity and my first lessons in creating communities online.

The next step of my journey brings us to a company I used to work for called RealCash.

RealCash was a finance company in the residential real estate space.  They factored a portion of an agent’s earned commissions.  In short, RealCash was the Money Mart equivalent for real estate agents.

My role with the company was in marketing.  I put together email campaigns, trade show strategies and even set-up strategic partnerships with major real estate companies across Canada.  After a while, due to market conditions, I was forced to slash our budget and look for creative ways to market for free.

Enter social media.  Here are some lessons I learned:

Blogging:

Almost everyday I blogged.  And the results were phenomenal!  Searching for “commission advance in Canada” on Google resulted in RealCash moving from the 5th page to the 1st page.  Not bad I’d say.  Remember, we had a zero budget for marketing at this stage.

Active Rain:

Active Rain is the social network for professionals involved in the real estate space in North America.  After leaving RealCash more than six months ago I STILL receive calls from people finding the RealCash profile online through searching online.

Facebook:

Would you ever tell your professional friends, family and close friends that you use “Money Mart”?  Neither would I.   Facebook didn’t result in any community traction at all.

Twitter:

A great tool that RealCash used to promote itself as a thought leader in the real estate social space.

Overall, RealCash had success at creating an online community online.  So much so that potential clients called alot.  How much?  Too much. RealCash advanced more financial resources than they had access to.  Now they’re out of business.  Yikes!

What’s the overall lesson:  Don’t make promises (on social media or otherwise) that the company’s bank account can’t cash.

To be continued…