Are you building a wall?

I’ve always felt Social Media should attract and engage new connections and enhance existing ones.  I went in search the other day (online) for a few new contacts.  I searched in the usual places; Google, ActiveRain, Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter.  While I added a few it also crystallized the cold stark reality that sometimes what we do and how we do it actually hurts our doing business.

Here’s just a few examples:
(I am applying these to those in the Real Estate Community)

If someone reaches out and requests to connect to you on a social network and you reply with “Do I know you?!?!?!?!?!” You’re building a wall. In social networking you never know where that next referral is going to come from.  Send me a reply like that and our relationship just hit a brick wall.

If your website has only a contact me form and no obvious email address, phone number or anyway of really contacting you – You’re building a wall. Yes, I know it cuts down on spam, but how many potential clients have you lost because they didn’t want to fill out your form?  I send all my email through Gmail for free automatic spam filtering.  It doesn’t stop everything but stops plenty. Question: If you gain one additional client this year would it be worth it to have a few more spam emails?

If you place non working links to your website on your profile (LinkedIn, ActiveRain, Facebook, Twitter)  You’re building a wall. Test and test again.  Do you have a complete profile to begin with?  Profiles are free links to your real business sites.  Why not use them?  Did you know LinkedIn will return a “website not found” if you don’t start your link with http:// ?  Really!  When was the last time you checked yours?

Congratulations, you are an SEO machine!  Your Market Data Reports get you high up on a Google search for your keywords.  However, if you’ve written nothing compelling, nothing that endears a “human” to want to connect with you, what’s the point?  You’re building a wall.

If your site has banner ads, adwords, and affiliate links placed everywhere it raises the question – what business are you really in?  You’re building a wall.

If you purposefully show just the first paragraphs of a post with a “read more…” hoping to drive more traffic to a particular site. Unless those few words convey everything you needed to say, You’re building a wall. The same could be said for incomplete RSS feeds.  there’s very few that I get that I’ll follow to finish reading.  Very few.

If you don’t do everything in your power to make it as easy as you can for any visitor to connect with you on any and every platform you guessed it, You’re building a wall. Think about that for a second.  Social Media should enable a potential client to be able to communicate with you on the level they choose , not yours.  They should be able to do so quickly and easily.  If a client prefers to call you – how hard is it to find your number? If I find your number will I get you or will I get a recording?  Are you a time blocker?  What happens when a time blocker calls another time blocker?   What about email? Facebook? LinkedIn?  Twitter?

I’ll stop there.  This is just my opinion but I think in times like these we shouldn’t be building walls, we should be tearing them down!

Do you have walls?

* original brick wall image courtesy of http://www.flickr.com/photos/vizzzual-dot-com/2226095398/

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