5 Ways Social Media Can Grow Your Business

When it comes to branding and marketing in the 21st century, social media has become the number one source for getting your message to the people you want to reach. Aside from branding, social media offers agents multiple opportunities to enhance their results in areas such as sales, customer service, public relations, client retention, and research and development.

Consider your Facebook page. The goal is to connect with "fans," get your brand message out to them, have them start talking about your message or their connections and then link up to even more potential clients. That's the entire goal of social marketing – to use technology to build, maintain and grow ongoing, positive relationships with clients and potential clients.

Here are six projected trends that all agents and brokers should be integrating into his or her social marketing strategy in 2014.

1. Social Signals are Running the Show - Social media plays an increasingly critical role in being found. Search engine gurus are reporting that Google's algorithms are increasingly relying on signals from social networks more than traditional avenues like backlinks and other technical cues, because users are actively curating and engaging with the content there (Search Engine Watch). Pages with a high number of likes, shares, Tweets and +1s stand out because of a very high volume of social signals. Consumer activity on social networks continues to rise, and content that they're engaging with correlates with good rankings (Search Metrics). That is why writing, posting and sharing helpful (and local) information is key.