Nothing is ever going to replace the face to face meeting and the handshake when it comes to the relationship business. Let's make no mistake about it, when you are in the sales profession you are in the relationship business. This is where social media use can help support your business by creating advocates for your brand.
What is an advocate? An advocate is a person who speaks or writes in support or defense of a person, cause, etc. So how do we create advocates for our brand using social media? This has to be one of your goals before getting into your social media strategy. Becoming a thought leader and sharing valuable content on your social platform will allow your following to engage with you as well as share your information across to one of your advocates followings. This is where social media supports your business by getting your message across to those you have not yet reached personally.
An advocate for your brand is, in the basic sense of the word, a referral. An advocate by sharing your information to their following is an introduction to you and your brand. The better the advocate, the more weight the introduction holds. Social media is the best tool online at the present time to share engaging information to a community that your company has compiled.
Now knowing why creating advocates for your brand is essential to all social media strategies, the questions remains: how do we create advocates? There are three steps that need to be taken. First step is by placing this as a clear-cut goal when creating your social strategy. The second step is creating valuable and engaging content that would be worth sharing, and the third step is by becoming an advocate for others. Engagement is the best practice of social media, and being an advocate or having advocates for your brand is the highest form of engagement.
Eric Wilson is special projects director at The New England Real Estate Journal, Norwell, Mass.

For more #CRE news you can follow Eric Wilson on twitter @EP_Wilson