One is the loneliest number… so get social!

I was reading an article today (which was really an advertisement in disguise), and it got me to thinking about social media in the business world. The article is entitled Social Business is the Only Business (http://gizmodo.com/social-business-is-the-only-business-473452408). It points out that “…we spend 110 billion minutes using social media every month. That’s 22 percent of all the time we spend online.” That is a lot of time, but how can we use it in the business world to our advantage?

I spoke with the agents in Fairhaven a few weeks ago about using Facebook and Pinterest to establish and cultivate “personal” connections via social media. Through establishing these connections, you have a vast network of people ready and willing to refer you to anyone they know of with a real estate need. But, the question kept coming up, how does social media benefit us? How will this make us make sales? The answer is, that is not really the question to ask. Rather than directly leading to sales, social media is best as a social platform, not a business platform. You aren’t making sales through social media, you are gaining contacts; the sales come later, and happen outside of social media.

But this viewpoint of social media is in the context of connecting with potential clients. What about connecting with your coworkers? Sure, there is LinkedIn, which is fantastic for making business connections if you are looking for a new position/new employee or if you’re wanting to meet others in your field, but what about using social media to collaborate with your coworkers? The article above states quite accurately that while social media “can refer to the kind of stuff you do on your downtime… ‘social business’ means embedding the right social tools, media, and practices into the ongoing activities of your organization.” Will we be using Facebook to collaborate on sales? No. We do have one very powerful social and collaborative tool at our disposal, however. Yes, I’m talking about Office 365.

Office 365 is the epitome of a “social tool” and cultivates “social practices” if used correctly. Many, if not most of the agents, regularly collaborate with other agents to sell properties. In addition to collaborating with other agents, many have assistants who are also being collaborated with. This creates a lot of emails, with a lot of attachments and a lot of different versions. This is a problem! I think this video sums it up the best 

Note: this video is explaining Google Docs, not Office 365, but the principle is the same.

With Office 365 Home Premium, your office documents have gone social. They are saved in the cloud, and with just a click of a button, you can share your documents with anyone else. Other parties don’t even need to have Office, they can go to your document and use Microsoft’s Office online editor. No longer is there a need to send files back and forth; all parties can edit it, and there is only one copy to keep track of! This is surely the future of document creation and editing.