Your guide to social media

Below are a few simple tips to get you started and set up with a blog website and some of the most common social media sites – Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn.

Free websites for brokers

As you are just starting out, I recommend you start with a blog site and use it as the core of any promotional broker website. There are several good blog sites that are free. Their templates are extremely professional, leaving you to think about the content you want to add. These are the most common blog sites, which are all great, so it's just a matter of picking one:

WordPress: www.wordpress.com (a 3GB blog is free, but there are paid upgrade options)

Blogger: www.blogger.com (sign in with your Google account. It's a Google tool, so it's free)

Typepad: www.typepad.com (an excellent paid subscription blog site)

So, to begin...

Before we get started, I want to open with a word of caution. Having your social media sites configured is just not good enough! If you are going to set them up and then leave them dormant, then perhaps it's better you don't start in the first place. This might sound counter-intuitive, but, you know what? It's okay. Don't stress about it.

Despite all the lecturing you hear from digital pundits like me, social media is not for everyone and that's perfectly fine. If you genuinely don't have the time to regularly commit to using social media to promote yourself and your business, then odds are you're already pretty successful without it. Keep doing what you're doing (and you can stop reading this article now, too).

However, if you are willing to have a go and commit to an article or a post once a week, then having engaging content that your followers will want to read is going to be key too. But first – let's deal with how to get you started.

Set up your Facebook page

You will want to set up a Facebook page rather than a personal Facebook account. You do this deliberately to keep your personal life and profile separate to your business persona. Your page is an extension of your business. It's the easy way to share updates and more with the people who matter most – your clients and prospects. It's there to help you engage your clients either on desktop or on mobile.

I won't go into too much detail in this article on how to configure, except to mention these three points:

1) Set up your Facebook page at www.facebook.com/pages/create

2) Choose a page name that reflects your business: www.facebook.com/yourbusinessname

3) Use the Facebook Help Centre if you get stuck: www.facebook.com/help/104002523024878

Set up your Twitter handle

Similarly, you'll want to set up a Twitter account that reflects your business, not your personal life. The common convention nowadays is to have a Twitter business account name that looks like @companyname_ yourname.

I admit to feeling pretty hypocritical writing this. Back in 2008, I created a single Twitter account name and made it a melting pot of my hobbies, personal life and now business posts. I think I have deleted all posts and started over again about five times now. With the benefit of hindsight I have been pretty silly.

Setting up a personal Twitter handle and using it for everything (like I have done) is absolutely what you should not do.

To sign up to Twitter: www.twitter.com/signup. The convention is to use the @business name_personal name, eg. @rpdata_leewade for a business account.

Set up your LinkedIn account

LinkedIn is a social networking site for the business community. The purpose of the site is to allow members to establish and document their network of trusted colleagues.

You can sign up for an account at: www.linkedin.com.

LinkedIn will be the slowest and most detailed to configure. So, when you sit down to set up your LinkedIn account, do yourself a favour and have a copy of your resume handy. You will want to refer to it to describe your past employment and roles as you build your professional profile.

Content will always be king

I have a background as a print and broadcast journalist. So I do appreciate and empathise with how difficult it is at times to create content that is both engaging and thought-provoking for your readers.

The best advice I can give is this: sit at a table with a block of post-it notes. On each note, write down the common questions that your clients ask you every single day. I would be very surprised if after 20 minutes you didn't have 50 or more questions written down. Guess what? Each one of those questions is now a topic for a blog article and a myriad of subsequent social media posts.

Here are 15 random topics off the top of my head to get you started. Your challenge is to extend this list to 50-plus before you set up your website and social media accounts.

• Why should we use you and not a bank?
• How much stamp duty should we expect to have to pay?
• How long does settlement usually take?
• Can you recommend a solicitor?
• What do we do next once we win the auction?
• When refinancing – what will the bank care about most?
• Do we need to pay for the valuation or will the bank?
• Why do we need lender's mortgage insurance?
• How long does a mortgage application usually take?
• What are the hidden fees that we should expect to pay?
• Can you just describe the process end-to-end so we understand?
• What may go wrong with the application?
• Which lender has the best interest rate at the moment?
• What documents will we need?
• Why is the bank's internet rate always higher that the Reserve Bank cash rate that gets quoted in the press?

Articles don't have to be long either. Some posts may only be three to four paragraphs in length, while others may be short essays. It's really up to you and how much time you can put aside each week. If you can write down 50 questions on 50 post-it notes then congratulations, you have one year's worth of content ready to go. Now stick them on a calendar and commit to answering a question a week.

My last piece of advice is to just take one baby step at a time. Please try to dampen your own enthusiasm and do not attempt to do it all at once. If you do it will be massively overwhelming and you will likely set yourself up for failure. Instead, please take your time and just sign-up to one social media site today and add another one in three months' time.

Before you know it you will have organically grown a massive network of digitally connected friends and followers who are hanging out for every piece of engaging content that you post.