Ines Hegedus-Garcia is a real estate agent in Miami, Florida, who uses a number of social media tools to market her business. "I use a variety of applications to reach different groups of people," says Garcia. "Some inhabit one social network such as Facebook, for example, while others are active at Twitter. I get results in different ways from all of them."


"At first, Facebook was a way to reconnect with old friends and high school classmates," says Garcia, who, over time, recognized its potential advantage as a business development tool. "I find just having an active presence there is enough," she adds. While she uses some "soft sell" marketing techniques such as uploading photos of property listings, never is there a pitch to make a purchase.
Garcia's Web site, Miamism.com, incorporates both a blog and a photoblog. Though most of her posts are real estate related, she has created a series called "Miamism Fridays" that feature posts which promote and showcase the area from a local point of view.
She has also set up a Miamism group on Flickr, where she invites others to join using the incentive that she may feature their photos on one of her Miamism Friday posts. "When I do, I let them know and they share the link with friends and family," states Garcia. "It is a way to drive traffic to my site and build exposure among people who may not otherwise have ever heard of me. It is working beautifully. I am seeing leads and referrals coming as a result."
Garcia actively uses Twitter as well. "When I started, it was just a place to have fun and to connect with colleagues in the real estate industry. Then, I began to connect with people locally and realized that Miami has a strong social network community built around Twitter," says Garcia.
Garcia has not limited her interactions to the online world solely. In fact, she finds that what starts out as online connections leads to real world one. "I've been able to turn virtual connections into real ones via local tweetups. These tweetups take on the character of a business networking group such as BNI," she adds. "In one such group comprised of mostly professional people, I am the only Realtor."
One of the most interesting outcomes of Garcia's involvement with social media involves, oddly enough, mojitos! "In December of 2007, I was playing with SEO keywords related to my business, real estate in Miami, when I happened to notice that, at the time, 'mojitos' was the number one keyword searched for in Google. Given that mojitos are a Latin drink and that I am of Latin descent living in Miami, the mention really struck a chord, stated Garcia. "I grabbed my video camera and my husband Rick and, together, we produced a video on how to make a mojito, which I posted to my blog. Since that time, the video has been seen 33,000 times!"
Garcia says that, while the idea has nothing to do with real estate proper, it is something fun that helps keep her top-of-mind with friends and associates so much so that it has become a "social object" associated with her brand. "I regularly post mojito recipes, reviews, photos and videos on my blog and have even gone so far as to setup a Mojitos group on Facebook," she says. "The lesson I've learned is that everyone has the opportunity to find their social object. Keep an eye open for what works for you. Just don't make it mojitos. That's mine!"
This post is part of a series called Social Media Works for Small Business: I Have Proof (See Part 1 and Part 2). It is also excerpted from my new book The Digital Handshake: Seven Proven Strategies to Grow Your Business Using Social Media.