Global Auction Blog

If you have no idea what the title of this article means, well, don’t feel bad. Not even the most tech savvy among us knew what it meant 2 years ago.

Social Media is expanding and encroaching more into our daily lives everyday. Whether it is truly useful or simply another tech fad is yet to be seen. But with the younger generations living and interacting online this appears to be where the future is and if you want to reach them there is no use advertising in a printed newspaper.

If you want to skip learning about this latest fad, hire a high school student as a summer intern to setup your Social Media branding and advertising. This generation lives and breathes social media ( for good or bad ) and they know the ins and outs of how to get started. Another great starting point would be your local bookstore or www.amazon.com and search for books that cover Social Media Web Strategies.

MySpace and now Facebook have taken over many peoples lives and the time spent per week by all ages of people is more than the time they spend watching TV or reading newspapers according to surveys. How do you get your message across to these people?

Most importantly , if you are using these sites, you can’t blatantly advertise like you would in a newspaper. You must slowly work into and become part of the community. Don’t simply sign up for an account and begin blasting your upcoming sales to everyone that will be your friend.

You have a large group of real world friends at every auction, try to get them involved online to work with you and help promote your sales to their online friends. Also be sure to join any auction communities such as the Friends of AuctionZip.com Facebook group.

Linkedin.com

Linkedin is referred to as Facebook for the Business professional. It is a great networking tool and can help you find some fresh contacts that can help you down the road. It is largely used by corporate level employees, and if you are dealing with lawyers, bankers, large corporations, etc. on a regular basis it looks good to them that you are also using the site. After making a proposal to handle a foreclosure for a lending institution, you can bet they will be checking your Linkedin profile shortly after you leave their office.

Twitter.com

We know that Twitter has become mainstream when Oprah recently signed up and began “twittering” on her show. If you have never seen it, think of twittering as being able to text message everyone you know at once, and your messages are public so you are able to attract new followers .

I attend an Internet Marketing convention in Las Vegas every year, and have watched the early evangelists and adopters of Twitter hype it extensively but I personally could not find a practical use for it in my business or in my life. It was handy to find all the last minute meetups at the conference, but how could I use it to market my business or help auctioneers attract more business?

I can honestly say I don’t know if I see the full value of this yet, but I have begun twittering auction prices live from the auction sales. I am able to take a picture of a tractor for example with my BlackBerry, and send it along with information and the selling price live to my twitter stream for anyone following me to see. I can see the value of this to people like Greg Peterson at www.machinerypete.com to collect data who started his own twitter stream several weeks after I started.

www.AuctioneerTweet.com is a site recently launched by Aaron Traffas in Kansas, which allows you to join their group of auctioneers who are twittering. It is an interesting way to form a community of auctioneers who want to communicate more effectively..

The best part is all these services are free, and will only take up your time to successfully cultivate a long term ROI.

Makes you wonder what we will be learning about 2 years from now? or 5 years? We’ll talk about Blogging in our next article.

Follow me on Twitter at www.twitter.com/auctionguyyy or search for me at www.linkedin.com