Social media is a great way for people to stay connected and share information. Whether that information is about your personal life or an article about the latest home prices in your area, it says something about you. And because it’s personal, it’s trusted. According to Nielsen, consumers trust recommendations from friends more than any other form of marketing, such as TV ads, emails or even editorial articles. It’s this trust that makes sharing the core of the social web.
Sharing tools, such as ShareThis have made it easier than ever for people to share content to their friends all over the web. These tools don’t limit people to sharing via copy-and-paste, but allow them to spread information with just a few clicks. With sharing being so easy now, more people are doing it than ever before. According to a July ‘08 Forrester research study 95 percent of online US adults have received a share about a product or service in the previous month.
Making sharing easy is of great value to all types of sites, especially those owned by realtors. Not only does sharing get time-sensitive content in front of more eyes, but also the recipients of shares are more engaged than other users because they have a connection with both the information and the person who shared it with them. Higher engaged users consume more pages on your site and are more likely to turn into qualified leads.
Start looking at your own social networking behavior. You’ll start to see sharing all around you. Facebook and LinkedIn even went as far as to change their status update button to read “Share”, implying that you aren’t simply posting what you are doing to a web page, but you are sharing it with your friends. That is a much more personal act.
The personal connection between people is what social media is built on. It’s just another way for humans to communicate with one another, and a way that’s now expected by your customers. To understand how you can use ShareThis or other social media tools on your site, visit Sharethis.com.
