Reasons to Blog

There are four key ways that blogging can have a huge impact on your success as a real estate professional. 

You become an instant authority – When a potential client visits your website they see information about you. They see your face, your pretty design and your well-written sales copy. In 2009, this doesn’t go a long way to convince clients to pick up the phone. However, when a potential client sees your blog they can then trust you as an authority on your local real estate market. They see that you take the time, every week, to write about the market they live in. This solidifies you as a trustworthy professional in their mind. 

Blogs Speed Up Relationships – I have previously likened social networks (things like Twitter, Facebook, ActiveRain) to free billboards around your city. A blog is the same concept but on a much more effective scale. With a blog you’re able to provide value to your readers. Instead of a basic Facebook friend request (which does little for either party), a blog gives users value and when they need to sell their home, they’ll remember the value you’ve given them.

Knowledge – When you begin blogging, that perceived “authority” is not just imaginary, it’s very real. For a committed blogger, their blog is at the top of their mind at all times. They’re constantly scanning for new blog topics and new ways to provide value to their readers. This goes a long way to truly make you an authority on your market. You’ll find that blogging expands your horizons, it opens you up to new, creative perspectives that you may not have otherwise seen. This is often a pleasant, unexpected change that can go a long way to improve your knowledge and your confidence level of the market you work in. 

Convinced yet? Good. Now let’s go over how to be effective with your blog. 

Getting out and writing about anything, anywhere, and in any way is great. That’s the first step, but here’s a few pointers that may help you be as successful as possible with your blogging efforts.

Where to Blog – There are a variety of blogging platforms but, for real estate professionals, you’re looking at one of the best. Using your pre-built ActiveRain blog is an option worth considering. It has your photo and contact information, it’s easy to use and it’s customizable. Another option, if you’re looking for something in addition to ActiveRain, is wordpress.com. They offer free blogs that are a breeze to setup and give you a blog at yourblog.wordpress.com.

What to Blog About – I believe real estate blogs should contain at least 50% local information. Since local leads are the ones you need, it makes sense to blog about your regional market. Updates on market conditions, featured homes in your neighborhood, even local events and activities are all great topics to cover. 

How to Get the Word Out – There’s no one-size-fits-all when it comes to blog marketing and that’s the subject of another entry. But the first step of good marketing is good content. If you’re writing valuable, insightful blog posts several times a week: people will find it and they will love it. Also, once your blog is launched, you want everyone you know to be aware of it. Update your business cards with the blog url (it’ll be the first place clients visit), add it to your email signature, email your contact list about your new blog, add it to Facebook profile, Twitter about it, etc. etc. – everything you can do to make people aware will be valuable in the long run. 

Five years ago the center of an online marketing strategy would have, of course, been a website. However, I firmly believe that moving forward in this era, a blog must be at the center of a marketing strategy. A website about a real estate business is generally just a static advertisement. Clients will visit, look around and leave. However a blog is interactive, it’s fresh and it’s (hopefully) valuable to the audience. Blogs  are marketing tools that can help build relationships, create authority and separate you from the crowd in the 21st century.

Question: Do you have a blog? If so, how have you seen it impact your business? If not, what are you waiting for?

Add your Activerain blog posts to your Facebook profile automatically

Facebook allows you to add the posts from any blog (including those on activerain) to your Facebook profile, which is a great way to get your activerain blog noticed. To do this, first install this Facebook app: http://www.Facebook.com/apps/application.php?id=5315590686. Follow the instructions of the application and enter your “rss feed” url which is http://activerain.com/blogs/username/rss (changing username to your activerain username) and every time you post something on Activerain, it will get posted automatically on your Facebook profile!

Put a “Share this on Facebook” button on your Activerain blog

Facebook created a system where any webpage can be “shared” through your public timeline on Facebook. To see what I mean, take a look at my sidebar under the RealSpace Tours banner is a “Share This on Facebook” link. When it’s clicked, it brings up a box that allows others to automatically post my blog to their Facebook timeline.

To add this link to your Activerain sidebar (just like I have in my sidebar), copy the code below and paste it into your “Blog Settings -> Blog Description” under the “My Settings” menu from your Activerain profile:

<a href=”http://www.facebook.com/share.php?u=http://activerain.com/blogs/username” target=”_blank”>Share on Facebook</a> 

(changing username to your activerain username)

This will allow other Activerainers to easily “share” your Activerain blog with all their facebook friends.

Link Your Facebook Profile from Activerain & Vice Versa

It almost goes without saying that the most important thing you can do is make sure you have a link and description to your Facebook profile under each Activerain blog post as well as on your Activerain profile page. You should also have a link to your Activerain blog from your Facebook profile.

Join the ActiveRain Facebook Group

We’ve already discussed how you can create a group and fan page for yourself (see here), but joining other groups can be valuable as well. You can interact with other members and grow your friend base. Activerain members even have a group on Facebook: http://www.Facebook.com/group.php?gid=2707000332 – joining this group gives you access to over 1,000 Activerain & Facebook users. What better way to cross promote your profiles?

These are four quick and easy ways to integrate your marketing strategy and cross promote through Facebook and Activerain. Questions on integrating anything above? Additional ideas on cross-promoting? Post them below:

It’s all about interaction on Facebook. It’s a “social” network: interacting, adding friends, talking to users, joining groups, etc. are all vital in order to make the most out of Facebook. The more friends you have (and the more your interact with them), the farther your reach will be and the more opportunities you have to find new, high-value leads. 
  

The Key to Facebook is in the News Feed. When you first login to Facebook, the majority of the page (the entire left side) is used for the “news feed.” When any of your friends update their status, write on your wall, upload new pictures or do virtually anything on Facebook, it will show under your news feed as it’s happening. This means that when users comment on your wall, all of THEIR friends will see your information. When they join your group, all of THEIR friends will see your information. This is where it gets powerful…if you have 20 people a day interacting with you and they each have 100 friends, that’s 2,000 people (mostly local) that will see your name and may potentially click through to your profile – every day, for free.
 

If you don’t have a fan page for yourself, you’re missing out. Facebook allows users to create pages for anyone (including themselves). These are different from profiles in that they can showcase your business more than your personal profile can. An example of this would be “Danny Greene” (whom I just picked randomly) and has 74 “fans” of his real estate business.

Once your page is online, Users can become fans of you. From there, they can leave comments, read more about your business and you can interact as well. Fan pages even provide the opportunity to email all users in a group (i.e. about new listings, open houses or any other newsworthy things you’re doing). This keeps your potential clients actively involved with you and keeps you at the forefront of their minds. 

To create a Facebook page for yourself visit this link: http://www.Facebook.com/pages/create.php
 

Advertise on Facebook. If you have an advertising budget, Facebook is absolutely worth a try. It’s one of the most targeted ways to reach your potential customers. One really powerful thing about the Facebook advertising system is that it even allows you to promote your fan pages (see above) rather than some static, external site. The ads are also extremely targeted: you can place ads that will show only to demographics that you select (i.e. Boston residents age 25-35) and they will be directed back to the Facebook fan page where they will see your information. This is another opportunity to build relationships. Another opportunity to generate leads. 

http://www.Facebook.com/business/?socialads

To recap, four simple tips to get the most from Facebook are:

Interact with the community. Get out there and add friends, send messages and talk to your audience. This gives you dozens (hundreds?) of personal connections with potential real estate clients. 

Use the news feed to your advantage. To do this, get people talking to you and interacting with you on some level, every day.

Setup a fan page. Get your business and your brand a page where users can discuss your business and you can interact on a more targeted level

If you have a budget, advertise. With thousands of local visitors you can target, there’s few places can provide the return on investment that Facebook can.

And of course, the final step is to add me to your friends

Facebook is a social networking website that allows users to interact with friends and take part in discussions and groups created by other users. Setting up an account is fairly self explanatory from the site’s homepage at Facebook.com.

There are several misconceptions about Facebook that need to be addressed before we get started:

Facebook is just a big waste of time – It sure can be. There’s plenty of fun applications and features in Facebook that are absolutely worthless when it comes to business. And there are some that are priceless. It, like everything else, is what you make of it. These articles aim to keep real estate professionals on the right track and away from the clutter. We’ll be looking at what makes Facebook effective for business, especially real estate. All the other fun and exciting (time wasting) features can easily be ignored. 

It’s only for college kids – This is how it began. In the early days, it was a place for college students to meet others at their school. Now, however, it’s becoming one of the most effective business tools for people of any age. In fact, today, users age 26-44 make up over 45% of the total Facebook userbase. 

It’s just for “socializing,” not for business – There are features built into Facebook, as we will see, that are primarily meant to be business tools. From their brilliant advertising system, to fan pages, to the news feed, there’s no other system in the world that’s able to create buzz as quickly or effectively as Facebook.

Facebook builds relationships on a whole new level. As a real estate professional, the goal of your business is to build relationships and generate leads that will turn into sales. Traditionally this is done through local advertising, door-knocking, cold-calls, etc. – anything that will get your name and image to the public. What Facebook does best is allow you to meet these potential clients, just as you would offline, but on a much larger scale. As I mentioned, there’s over 245,000 users in Chicago alone, if you’re a real estate professional in the Chicago area, that’s tens of thousands of people who may be looking to buy or sell a home that you can reach out to, for free. 

Leverage is what makes Facebook different from offline marketing. Door knocking can work, I’ve heard of many agents making a great income from just door knocking; however, their success is limited by the number of doors they can physically knock on. Facebook turns this model upside down. By putting a profile online and interacting with other users (as we’ll see tomorrow) on a large scale, clients will being to knock on YOUR door. You’ll have hundreds of potential clients seeing your name, viewing your information and building a relationship with you. 

Part 2 is Coming Tomorrow. Now that we’ve seen what Facebook is capable of, Part 2 will go into more details on how to use Facebook to actually find leads and generate real estate business. And I want to stress the importance of having an account, understanding how to navigate the site and “wrapping your head around” the concept of Facebook before we start the second part. Take some time to look over the site and understand the basic concepts. As always, leave a comment or email me if you need any help. 

However, there are agents who do have their phones ringing off the hook, with so much business coming in they have a hard time handling it all. While all the other agents are complaining about the economy, they’re raking in the clients and moving their inventory. They know something the rest of us don’t. They know how to market on purpose.

The Old Way of Marketing

Taking a trip back 10, 15 years ago, marketing used to be about buying a bench ad or having someone drop off flyers in the neighborhood you’re farming. And it worked. Over time, you’d become a recognizable brand to potential home buyers/sellers and when they needed to move, they’d think of you first. Now, however, there’s 35 other agents doing this too and you’re getting lost in the noise. Getting that listing is nothing more than a lottery.

Marketing in 2008

Sending mass mailers, bulk online newsletters, running magazine and television ads are the cheap, easy, lazy and ineffective ways to market. When your potential clients are buried with dozens of agents bombarding them with the same stale approaches, marketing no longer works like it used to. Unfortunately the golden age of “advertising” is over. Today, with 250 agents in your city vying for the same listing: what is a smart, motivated, experienced agent (much like yourself) to do?

Build connections.

Nowadays, marketing must be intentional and it must be individual. It’s a post on a friend’s wall on facebook, it’s a comment on a blog post, it’s a call to a former client to ask how they like their new home. It’s not a call to an expired listing that’s already been called 10 times this morning and it’s not a stock letter to “Dear Resident.”

Today, I believe your entire client base is going to come from two sources: 1) individuals that know you and how much you personally care about them and 2) their close friends.

I was once in a real estate class where the teacher was going over her marketing strategy. She explained how she disciplines herself to make a certain number of cold calls each day to expired listings. To her, those homeowners are a number on a piece of paper. And sadly, she’s not alone.

The question in 2008 is not how many addresses can I send my mailer to or how many cold calls can I make. As a real estate professional, you should be waking up in the morning and asking yourself, how many people can I meet and help today.

A Client Centered Approach

Agents often find themselves centered on their business, they spend time at networking mixers with other agents, they try to get the highest score on Activerain, they go to office meetings and they believe this is what they should be doing, after all, they’re a real estate agent so they should be doing “real estate agent like” things. The problem is, most of these fellow agents they’re getting to know at these meetings are probably not going to list a home with them!

Wouldn’t it make sense to ditch those networking mixers and instead spend that time volunteering within your community? You may not have as many agent-friends to go out to lunch with, and you may not talk to as many people (numbers) as you would have if you cold called. But what you gain in return is dozens of human beings who get to know you, who see how much you care. You’re no longer a salesperson looking for their business, you’re a friend that also sells homes. When they need to move are they going to call the guy that cold called them during diner last week or are they going to call you, their friend from the community organization/racquetball club/whatever?

Taking this Online

The internet is a goldmine for building relationships and getting to know people in your area. There are many agents who have a double digit number of clients today, all of whom found them online. It is being done, folks, and it is being done by those who understand the need to connect with their clients on a one-on-one basis.

The keyword of marketing in 2008 is community. Your success depends on your ability to become a part of and grow the community.

Offline, it’s easy: get yourself in a position where your neighborhood can rely on you, where you can meet members of the community and impact their lives in a positive way.

Online: the same rules apply. Join facebook, local message boards, follow local residents on twitter, leave comments on blogs written in your city. Anything online that members of your community use, you should be using too.

Try this, instead of spending 2 hours in realtor-centered networks, cut back to 1 hour and spend the other hour actively posting in a local home and garden forum (or whatever you have in your city). Instead of that friday morning meeting where your co-agents get together and complain about how bad the economy is, spend that time on facebook commenting on photos of members in your community. The bottom line is, start building relationships. It will transform your marketing and, most importantly, transform the size of your client base.

Question:

We’re all here to help each other succeed and I want to hear some of your experiences. Your last 3 clients: where did they come from? How did they find you? I’m sure this community, our community, would love to hear how you’ve been successful in building a client base.

My Story

I’m Andrew Olson, the founder of RealSpace Tours and Blog.RST. I’ve had 5 years of experience in the web development and online marketing industries. I’ve managed the development and successful launches of dozens of internet related projects. My specialties are building well-designed web applications and effectively using internet advertising tools to grow a brand and a business. Aside from the internet and marketing, I have a huge passion for and interest in real estate. I love buildings, architecture, development, home sales and the real estate industry as a whole.

Enter: RealSpace Tours

One day, while looking at homes online, I noticed how pathetic most of the online tours were (sorry, but it’s true). I decided there had to be a better way to create tours…

I was resolved: I ditched my other projects and spent the next few months studying the virtual tour industry; I had to create a system that gave agents something that could truly help them easily create better tours and generate more business. What I found were 4 important things:

One, most of the home tours on the internet look like they were created 15 years ago – tours should be beautiful, not just something that “works.” 

Two, tours need to be easy to create - if it takes an agent more than 5 minutes to create a tour, something needs to be fixed. 

Three tours that no one sees are worthless – if there’s no built in marketing tools to promote the listing, what’s the point? 

Four, the economy is tough, a virtual tour system shouldn’t cost more than it needs to – agents shouldn’t have to pay $300 per tour or expensive setup charges. 

This is why I created RealSpace Tours; I want real estate agents to have a virtual tour platform that’s easy to use, generates gorgeous tours, has built in promotion tools and is extremely cost efficient on any budget. And we’ve done a great job creating this, I’m so proud of the system we’re coming out with. 

More About our Platform

RealSpace Tours will be launching in mid-October. 

The tour creation system is one simple page and produces a full, gorgeous, customizable website for the property, instantly.

The tour includes a video slideshow, photo gallery, map view, detailed specs on the home and a “request more information” link to help agents capture leads from buyers.

All users are provided with a beautiful homepage that lists all their active and recently sold properties. 

The system has integrated marketing tools that allow agents to promote their tours across a variety of websites, including Realtor.com

RealSpace Tours is smart: users are able to see how many times their tours have been viewed, track leads from interested buyers and print reports on activity – all with the click of a button. 

The system will cost just $27.99 per month and will allow users to upload an unlimited number of tours.

More info is coming over the next 2-3 weeks. To learn more, you can sign up for our launch here.

About Blog.RealSpace Tours

Okay, now that we’ve gotten that out of the way, let’s talk about Blog.RST. First off, Blog.RST is not about RealSpace Tours, it’s not a way to talk about how cool RealSpace Tours is (RealSpace Tours doesn’t need a blog to talk about how great it is – it can do that on it’s own). Instead, this blog is all about helping real estate agents effectively use internet marketing to grow their business, their brand, their client base and their success. Teaching real estate professionals how to use the valuable (and often underused) resources available through the internet is something that I’m passionate about; this blog will provide 5 fresh articles every week with the sole aim of growing your real estate business and brand through online marketing. 

If you’re one of the (many) agents that believes the internet is largely a waste of time and doesn’t sell homes or add to your bottom line; let me be the first to tell you, it is a goldmine for Realtors. I personally know several agents who are working with multiple clients at this time; all of which found the agents from a smart use of internet marketing. It can be done and it is being done. And that is what this blog is about: fresh content, 5 days a week, internet marketing, generating results in your real estate business. 

The Community

Finally I have one request of you as a reader: this blog is not intended to be something for you to look at, it is interactive. When you read a post and have a though or question, please leave a comment on it. The community will answer and it will generate a discussion. The site is a place for learning, growing and discussion; your insights, questions, answers and comments will create value for the entire Blog.RST community.

If you have a question, idea, or just want to talk real estate marketing, send me an email or contact me through the big button at the top; I reply to every message I receive. Also, if you have ideas for new posts or would like to submit a guest post, email me about that as well. I’m looking forward to working with you to create value in your business.