A real estate agent commented on my post on SEO vs. SMO saying that SEO was more important to them since their business is a numbers game, however I use search engines everyday, only to land on sites which are uninteresting and have nothing to persuade me to utilize their services.

All I'm say is, SEO isn't everything. Not even in real estate. I've worked in the real estate industry before and seen that building relationships is also very important in the industry. Showing up at the top of a search list is a great start, but SMO increases word of mouth.

However, I also know that generating the right type of buzz isn't easy. SEO almost seems easier because it is a science and directly measurable. SMO requires the type of strategy that is measured in mentions and people-to-people relationships. This is no disrespect for those skilled at SEO, but if you're at the top of my search results with nothing to differentiate you from the rest, I'm still looking at the rest of the results, especially for something so important as a real estate agent.

How can you differentiate yourself?

Rohit Bhargava wrote this great article about 6 Non-Salesy Ways to Ask Your Customers to Promote You, and I especially like the idea taken from Flip on sharing the credit, making it easy for your customers to spread word about you by making it automatic.

One of GoDaddy's competitiors took advantage of GoDaddy's Super Bowl advertisement failure by offering disillusioned GoDaddy fans their services on Twitter. This is capitalizing on your competitor's weaknesses at its finest.

Or you could go the other way, and capitalize on your critics. I'm not sure if this one will work all the time, but a pizzeria in San Francisco gained a lot of buzz on the web by taking their one-star Yelp reviews and turning them into t-shirts for their employees. I suppose it challenges the customers to say whether or not the critics are right.

Either way, innovative businesses are proving that different is a good thing, and it is leading to sales and success.