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CanTree Recipe Cookbook Recipe Submission Deadline – July 1 As a creative way to raise funds for CanTree, the CanTree Committee is publishing a cookbook, with you as our recipe contributor. If you are interested in submitting a recipe or two, please send your favorite recipes as soon as possible. To [...] Are you doing drip email to buyer and seller prospects? If not, you surely know agents who are. With the free nature of email, it has become a much abused form of communication. And, drip email from many real estate professionals is little more than automated periodic spam. With filters and rules in email systems, it’s easy to have your drip emails trashed on arrival, so you never know that they aren’t being read. One broker used a service that let him know that only about 125 out of 800 of his regular emails were being read. But, I’m not saying that regular (call them drip if you like) emails are ineffective. They can be one of your most effective lead generators that will bring in commissions on a regular basis. The idea is to first slow down the drips, and second deliver something worthwhile and valuable to the recipient. This is NOT: IDX stands for Internet Data Exchange. It is a system in which the broker members of a local Multiple Listing Service agree to share their listings in a common database for broker use, as well as marketing release within strict guidelines. All participating brokers can display the IDX on their websites according to the guidelines. What is displayed must be the agreed-upon information fields, and no others. What happens in many MLS’s is the old “hold back information so they’ll call you” mentality. Or, the listing brokers believe that too many fields in the IDX will allow the consumer to avoid contacting a Realtor for more information. When that mentality is in place, the data fields displayed are usually limited, with many not shown that most consumers would consider as necessary. Continue reading: IDX – Using Protectionism Against the Competition for Leads Yesterday we received a call from a reporter with CBS Channel 13, looking to do a story on real estate agents who uses Twitter, Facebook and other new media to help sell real estate. He ended up interviewing both Rob McQuade and Erin Attardi and they were featured on CBS Nightly News.
You can view the segment here: http://cbs13.com/video/?id=52343%40kovr.dayport.com What do you want a website or blog to accomplish for you? Are you only interested in listings? If so, you want to present a nice site that showcases listings well for future presentations and business generation. Do you also want buyers? That expands the need for content to accommodate those who need to learn about the area, the process of buying a home, negotiations, and more. Now, disregard all of the above! That’s the standard thinking that creates “standard” websites. Standard websites create standard business volume. Exceptional websites create exceptional income. Don’t use a thought process that assumes, incorrectly, several things: Continue reading: Location, Location, Location? – Content, Content, Content! When you’re developing a real estate website plan, there are a great many things to consider. From a very broad perspective, there are two major areas of concern: Site Look and Design – This is important, but don’t place your planning emphasis in the wrong areas. You want a pleasing site, with colors and presentation that invites the visitor to stay a while. If you’re working with a site design or theme vendor, they have probably researched visitor behavior, and their template and design choices likely are structured with this in mind. [...] The ultimate success of your business will probably be tied closely to your success on the Internet. Your website or blog is your storefront in a very big world. It’s easy to get a dry cleaning customer if they pass your store every day on their way home from work. It’s a lot harder to capture a real estate lead from an armchair buyer or seller clicking around the World Wide Web. Just entering the key phrase “real estate” into a Google search yields a whopping 589 Million results! In your area, county, or town, there are thousands of web search results related to real estate. They’re not going to drive by, so how do you stand out and get found? We all know that we need to continually work on SEO, and many pay to advertise with pay-per-click marketing. Those are fundamental and effective things we must do. But, what else can we do that’s cost effective and will bring us more site visitors? Continue reading: SEO and PPC for Traffic – But There’s More The Internet is changing the way that Realtors do business and market themselves to such an extent that some will just not be around in a few short years. Survival of the fittest is the way of the world, and the fittest in real estate will be those agents and brokers who understand the new Internet consumer and how to engage them from first contact through a commission. The very first contact that most of you with websites or blogs will have with a consumer will usually be their visit to your site to search for listings. And, you will probably never know that they were there. They come anonymously, and they want to stay that way. They want to find homes or land that meets their requirements and, on this first visit, they do not want to be contacted or to talk to you. If you ever want to talk to these people, ever, then pay heed to the TEN COMMANDMENTS OF IDX. Continue reading: The Ten Commandments of a Successful IDX Solution It’s a pretty sure bet that you have a cell phone. What about text messaging, do you use it? If you don’t, consider yourself in a very small minority. Nielsen Mobile surveys shows that by the second quarter of 2008, text messages had exceeded the number of cell phone calls by an impressive margin. And, if you think it’s all just teenagers who don’t buy or sell real estate, think again. The facts show that every age group up through 44 years old sent more text messages than they made cell phone voice calls. And it was close on the 45 to 54 group. The plain truth is that text messaging is becoming a wildly popular way to exchange information. And, huge marketers and retailers are now doing text message marketing to bring in consumers. You can actually get a coupon text message and show it in a restaurant for a discount. In the movie “Field Of Dreams” Ray Kinsella (Kevin Costner) hears voices from his corn field saying “If you build it, they will come”. Kinsella thinks the voices mean for him to build a baseball diamond. So Kinsella plowed under a portion of his corn field, built a base ball diamond and waited for them to come. If Kinsella were a Realtor instead of a corn farmer, his interpretation may have been to build a website instead. When it comes to the web, a lot of Realtors think just like Kinsella did at the beginning of Field of Dreams, they think just building a decent website is enough to attract clients and customers to it. “If you build it, they will come” they think. They leave their web site traffic generation strategy to search engine hits alone. But in reality that won’t work. Realtors need to advertise their websites to make them successful. While search engine hits definitely are in the cards, getting a page one search engine ranking takes some effort. Continue reading: Why You Need To Advertise Your Real Estate Website |
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Thursday, June 18th, 2009
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