We’ve already established in our post from yesterday afternoon that social media is easy to start, but hard to maintain, and even harder to maintain well. It seems as though, by analyzing our Pulse results, that more builders are leveraging outside help to manage, or at least supplement the management, of their social media efforts. And according to the Pulse respondents, that results in more effective social media use, and more sales directly attributable to social media. In fact, 59% of builders who have traced sales to social media activity and 58% of builders who rate their social media as effective or highly effective involve an agency or other third party in their management.
We know, we know. “Employ an agency!” so says the digital marketing firm (insert groans from the audience). Of course we here at ONeil Interactive (shameless plug) are slightly biased, but we wouldn’t have social media management on our menu of services if builders didn’t see at least some value to the knowledge and assistance we’re providing. You don’t always have to go outside your organization to get help, just ask around for the people in your company that use and enjoy using social media to give you some pointers. However, the data doesn’t lie. Just look at the handy dandy infographic. Your chances of winning a game of tug of war are much greater if you have more people on your side, especially if those people are big and strong and experts in winning tug of war.
Chad and Robert from the NAHB staff will be giving a talk later this morning called Best Practices in Maintaining a Blog from 11:00-11:45 in Sales Central. This may give some support to the notion of employing outside help for your social media initiatives!
