Based on a recent Real Estate Beat blog post, I started thinking about WETAG’s efforts in Social Media and how these efforts have affected our business so far. About a year ago, we started thinking about how we should deploy all these web 2.0 things. We knew most of the tools are very U.S. centric and that it would be hard to adapt them for business in Europe, but on the other hand, we knew also that most of the best things in the Internet started in the U.S. and later spread across the world. So we decided to jump on and start blogging, Twittering, running our own Facebook fan page and uploading video to our own YouTube channel.

Our blog, SwissMediterraneanLifestyle.com has had the most impact for WETAG. The SEO value from our blog is the most important aspect of all these new tools to us. Given the fact that we are a rather small market regulated by certain laws that make it a bit more complicated to purchase a property if you are a foreigner, and also considering that we’re in a beautiful, but not too well known, luxury second home market, we’re always looking for ways to increase interest and web site traffic.

So far, we’ve received a very good, and increasing, number of interest and visitors to our own web site through our blog. Numbers of foreign visitors multiplied by many times over the “normal” and so did the number of qualified buyers in the end. Our ranking in search engines improved so much that we are on page number one with a lot of search terms our clients are actually using when looking for real estate. Our blog also provides the opportunity to present ourselves as being the experts in luxury real estate in our market and, as a result, to that, people actually started calling us because they’ve agreed with what we’ve posted on our blog and trust that we know what we are talking about. Right now, we have two qualified high-end buyers who are looking at some properties and they came solely through our blog. Without a doubt, blogging has been our most valuable new tool so far.

The picture looks a bit different if we take a look at our efforts on Twitter and Facebook. Both are tools that haven’t been used that heavily in the past in Europe, but we’re seeing major improvements in their use European wide. Maybe the biggest difference to the U.S. so far, is that people in Europe are more reserved and more cautious to spread out their personal information. In addition, most of the great applications developed for all the iPhones and BlackBerry’s are just not working in Europe yet. Many of these applications are just made for the U.S. market. There is also the fact that usability is limited due to too expensive telephone charges. The good news is that prices have already started to come down and great deal offerings on phone contracts are being offered due to increasing numbers of smart phones. 

Additionally, people following us on Twitter and Facebook are more likely colleagues, media reps and people interested in high-end properties. We are using Twitter as a channel for company related announcements or some interesting information where we think it could be of interest for our followers. For now, I think Twitter is more valuable to me on a private level since I can follow some of the industry leaders who spread their knowledge about real estate and Web 2.0. This is very helpful even more since I am in charge of Wetag Consulting’s endeavours in the world of Social Media, but I also hope to provide some great information and insights on things that are more focused on Europe to people following me. 

In summary, we strongly believe that we’ve positioned ourselves in a great starting position to be on top of many new social web marketing opportunities to run our business as successful as we’ve done in the past using more “traditional” marketing channels.

Posted by: Peter Rabitz, Director, Wetag International, Switzerland. Wetag is a member of Leading Real Estate Companies of the World®.