It is no secret that posting your property listings online is a smart marketing strategy, especially with the most recent report from NAR showing that now 87% of homebuyers use the Internet to search for a home (up from 84% in 2007). If you’re not already doing so, there is no better time than now to start posting your listings online.
People search online for homes in different ways.
While many homebuyers search straight from Google, many others will search for homes and information on the internet via a real estate directory (i.e. Trulia, Zillow, etc.), classified site (i.e. Oodle, Craigslist, etc.), social network (i.e. friend or connection on Facebook, Twitter, etc.), or other. That said, it is also no secret that the more places online that your listings appear; the better your chances are of someone actually finding your properties for sale.
Oodle, a popular online classified site that is continually growing, now powers Facebook Classifieds and AOL Classifieds, which means automatic syndication for your listings to more spaces on the web. ClassifiedFlyerAds has long syndicated real estate property listings to Oodle, along with dozens of other online sites and directories, so we are pleased to hear of the new partnership and growth. We are also pleased and excited at the additional exposure this brings for our members’ listings!
Are you effectively marketing your listings and services online?
Whether writing a title for your online classified flyer or a post on your blog, it is very important to do it right. An effective title can oftentimes be the difference between a successful effort and a flop. Here are some tips to consider:
For Online Classified Flyers
Online flyer ads are great for promoting property listings or real estate services online, but are most effective with a targeted title. Since these ads are syndicated to web directories and indexed by search engines, it’s important to keep targeted search terms in mind.
Think about what you are offering, then think about what your buyers and clients might type into Google when searching for that. An effective flyer ad title will synchronize these two concepts so the searcher finds just what they’re looking for - your online ad.
Many people, to their own detriment, try to title their flyers with catchy phrases, much like they would title an article, essay, or blog post. This creativity is lost on an online flyer, since buyers and clients rarely conduct a search using those phrases.
For Blog Posts
A blog post is a bit of a different ball game. It's great to make your title search engine friendly, but you also want to take your regular readers into consideration. Is your title interesting enough to get their attention and make them want to read more? If not, you have some work to do.
Think about your blog post titles from the reader's perspective. Search engine optimization definitely has its place, but completely ignoring the "interest factor" is not going to encourage readers to return or refer others.
If you are clever enough to title your posts in such a way that they will be search engine friendly and reader friendly, then you’ve found the jackpot! Remember, you can always use tags for an SEO boost, and channels and groups to help readers find your post more easily.
I certainly have not mastered the art myself, but with more experimenting every day, it's coming along! What are your thoughts? Have any tips to share? I'd love to hear them!
I had a client contact me recently and ask “How can I get my services to place in multiple slots on the 1st page of Google?” Knowing that this client’s own website already places well in Google, I offered him a different approach. I offered him this approach because I have only ever seen the same domain rank in 2 spots on the 1st page of Google. My guess is Google intentionally does this so a single domain cannot dominate the entire first page and I think this is good practice on Google’s part.
So you ready for the advice I gave him?
Okay – here it goes…..
Use other online services to enhance your page 1 placement.
Yep, it’s as easy as that. Search Google for the search terms you would ideally like to rank for and see what other directories are coming up for that search. Chances are very high that other free directories or portals will rank. Search for “chula vista ca bank owned property” for an example. See the screenshot below for all the other directories that are ranking on page 1 for “chula vista ca bank owned property”.
Most people will click multiple results on the 1st page so you increase your chances of gaining that client or sale by being in multiple positions on that 1st page.
Let me use Bill Gassett as an example. Bill is an active AR member and is a very savvy internet guy who utilizes online tools to enhance his exposure. Search Google for "metrowest ma real estate". You will see Bill's own website in the 1st two spots. Great job Bill! Following are other sites Bill ranks for all on page 1.
- Bill's ActiveRain blog (twice)
- Bill's Blogger blog
- Bill's Localism profile
If I were a buyer or seller searching Google for "metrowest ma real estate", Bill's face would be in front of me 6 times. Guess who I would be contacting to sell me a property or to be my Agent? Yep! Bill would be the man.
So I guess what I am trying to say is think outside the box a little. Yes, ideally everyone would like to rank on page 1 for their own website but you can only grab so many spots for your own site. Use other resources out there to help you dominate more of those 10 spots on the 1st page.
I had a client contact me recently and ask “How can I get my services to place in multiple slots on the 1st page of Google?” Knowing that this client’s own website already places well in Google, I offered him a different approach. I offered him this approach because I have only ever seen the same domain rank in 2 spots on the 1st page of Google. My guess is Google intentionally does this so a single domain cannot dominate the entire first page and I think this is good practice on Google’s part.
So you ready for the advice I gave him?
Okay – here it goes…..
Use other online services to enhance your page 1 placement.
Yep, it’s as easy as that. Search Google for the search terms you would ideally like to rank for and see what other directories are coming up for that search. Chances are very high that other free directories or portals will rank. Search for “chula vista ca bank owned property” for an example. See the screenshot below for all the other directories that are ranking on page 1 for “chula vista ca bank owned property”.
Most people will click multiple results on the 1st page so you increase your chances of gaining that client or sale by being in multiple positions on that 1st page.
Let me use Bill Gassett as an example. Bill is an active AR member and is a very savvy internet guy who utilizes online tools to enhance his exposure. Search Google for "metrowest ma real estate". You will see Bill's own website in the 1st two spots. Great job Bill! Following are other sites Bill ranks for all on page 1.
- Bill's ActiveRain blog (twice)
- Bill's Blogger blog
- Bill's Localism profile
If I were a buyer or seller searching Google for "metrowest ma real estate", Bill's face would be in front of me 6 times. Guess who I would be contacting to sell me a property or to be my Agent? Yep! Bill would be the man.
So I guess what I am trying to say is think outside the box a little. Yes, ideally everyone would like to rank on page 1 for their own website but you can only grab so many spots for your own site. Use other resources out there to help you dominate more of those 10 spots on the 1st page.
The Blog World Expo in Las Vegas was quite an illuminating experience, with each session revealing tips, trends, and tools to help businesses and bloggers get the most out of their online social networking and blogging efforts. There was so much valuable information passed along that it's hard to assign priority and decide what to write about first. But don't worry, I won't continue rambling on in generalities for the remainder of this post, I'm going to get down to the nitty gritty and (hopefully!) teach you what I learned.
When it comes to learning and teaching specifics, I have a list-type personality; don't give me a map, give me step by step directions. Because of this, I'm going to break down what I learned into the most important points and outline them for you here. I'll go into more detail with each point in following posts (oh, the anticipation!), and update this outline with links to them for easy reference. So, without further ado, here's what I learned at the BlogWorld Expo (in no particular order of importance):
1. Blog vs. Website War - Nowadays, is it better to have a blog, a website, or both? Is it good to have multiple blogs? The answer comes in the form of another question. Des Walsh, business coach and social media strategist, asked, "Are you engaging your visitors?" That should be the ultimate goal of any effective online presence.
2. Be Active in Your Sphere - Simply having a presence is not enough, you must have a PRESENCE. According to Rohit Bhargava, author of the Influential Marketing Blog and the book Personality Not Included, says this means having a plan and a purpose for each space you fill online, and actively participating in it. "But wait", you say, "I have profiles in dozens of places online, and therefore cannot possibly be actively involved in all of them". So true! But you must decide on a plan and a purpose for each one, and be consistent.
3. Feed Your Center- So you say you have dozens of profiles online? Do you have a central or focus profile? If your answer was no, then you should get one! Denise Wakeman of The Blog Squad, talked about the importance of having a hub for your followers, friends, visitors, and fans (or whatever else you call your online connections). All of your online activity, including blogs and social networking sites, should point back to this home base. This will help simplify things for your contacts and yourself, as well as boost the ranking for your central blog / website.
4. Be Yourself - When promoting your listings, your services, your photos, or your experience, it's easy to forget to be personal. You want to impress, impress, impress, but you forget to be transparent (believe me, I've struggled with this myself!). Many, many speakers, including Brian Solis of Future Works, Chris Brogan of social networking fame, and Tony Hsieh, Zappos CEO (@zappos), spoke on how important this is, noting that it is vital to have a personality and be someone that others want to connect with and want to do business with.
5. Twitter - Just do it. Since I've been back from the Expo, I've often referred to it as the "Twitter World Expo" because of the prominent role that Twitter played in the whole thing. Every conference room had Twitter on the big screen, every session mentioned or integrated it, and almost every "guru" sung its praises. If you don't Twitter yet, you may be thinking, "What's it all about and how does it work?". To get started, check out this start guide for Twitter, written by Tony Hsieh, CEO of Zappos, or this video, Twitter in Plain English, by Lee Lefever of CommonCraft. Basically, it's about getting connected and building quality relationships.
There was so much more shared, but I think these are the most relevant and applicable to the AR community. As I go into more detail in following posts, I hope you will be able to apply these tips to your current business (if you haven't done so already!).
Oh yeah, and if you Twitter, you can follow me @candees- I'll follow you back ;)
Before we dive in, I’ll start with three questions:
Do you send regular newsletters to your buyers and/or sellers?
Do you send regular newsletters to your Real Estate contacts?
If YES to the above questions, how much time do you spend? If NO to the above questions, why not?
THE NEWSLETTER
Now to start things off, let’s make sure we are all on the same page when we say the word “Newsletter”. A newsletter is not a weekly installment of your current listings or solicitations to hire you. These types of e-mail marketing strategies do have their place and can produce sales, but are not a “Newsletter”. Rather, a newsletter is something that provides valuable, relevant, and interesting information to the recipient, as is confirmed in this blog post by Justin Premick of AWeber, a leading email marketing company. An effective Real Estate newsletter should definitely include your listings, but also definitely not be limited to them. Try to imagine yourself on the receiving end, and ask, “Would I open and read this e-mail if it arrived in my inbox?”
THE DILEMMA
But herein lies a common dilemma; you want to provide professional and effective newsletters, but lack the time, resources, or natural writing creativity to do it. The Real Estate industry in particular presents uncommon challenges when it comes to time allowances; every minute is crucial and must be used in an effective way that will produce results. Do you really have time to research and write useful articles, design a professional layout, add your listings, and send it off every week? Every month?
THE SOLUTION
What if you could create professional-looking, effective newsletters that featured your listings and interesting content, in a matter of 15 minutes? This is what SimplyConnect, a new email newsletter program from EmailFlyerAds.com, provides to Real Estate professionals. The content is provided for you, and ranges from tips to news to videos to fun, all from a variety of trusted industry sources. This allows you to tailor your newsletter to a number of different target audiences, from buyers, to sellers, to Real Estate pros and more.
The SimplyConnect system is unlike any other newsletter platform because it provides all of the components of a successful newsletter, and costs as little as $9.99. By poking at a few letters on your keyboard and clicking a few times on your mouse, you can create and send a custom newsletter that people will actually read.
"Everything comes to him who hustles while he waits."
- Thomas Edison
I don't need to mention that the real estate market is not exactly "hot" right now. Everyone knows that; homesellers know it, buyers know it, the guy at Starbuck's knows it, and real estate professionals definitely know it. So I won't mention it.
But I will mention the fact that there is quite a lot of complaining going around about it. Sentiments like "Woe are we" and "It's his fault" might serve as some sort of release for those who feel frustrated, and understandably so. We want to know how we got here, we want to know who's responsible, and we want to feel a bit sorry for ourselves and the state we're in - that's natural. But let's not stop there.
In the meantime, let's search out ways to get around the current roadblocks, like Olympic Northwest Mortgage did in their recent blog post. So what if you don't agree with every suggestion that is offered up - that's not the point. The point is to get creative, get thinking, get marketing, get busy! There are many, many, many ways to get around the slump.
Even if you are not creative, hate video, and just don't do Twitter, there are still so many ways stay above water. Are you on Facebook? Do you create single property sites for your listings? Do you blog regularly? Do you use Squidoo and Hubpages to further promote your listings? Do you make sure you rank well in Google? The list of opportunities is endless!
I work in marketing and communications for ClassifiedFlyerAds.com, focusing on tools and internet technology for real estate professionals. Our most popular tools offer competitive search engine placement and online listing syndication to over 30 real estate directories. We also offer syndicated professional profiles, blog widgets, and virtual tours - free to all subscribed members. I would be happy to discuss our services or answer any questions - just contact me here!
Everyone loves free stuff. After all, why pay money for something you can get without forfeiting any of your hard earned cash? I am not the first to say this, and certainly will not be the last, but FREE always has a cost - maybe not a direct monetary cost, but a true cost nonetheless.
For example, do you use a "free" internet service to promote your listings? If so, you may be surprised at all the little extras that "free" comes with. Like competing advertisements on your listings, limited features and usability, and unnecessary time consumption. It makes no sense for a business to give away their services without getting anything in return... there is always a return.
How many leads, what amount of sales, and how much money might you be losing from visitors who click away from your listings to visit a competitor's advertisement? It makes no sense for you to let competitors advertise in your area, yet this is what you may be doing by using a "free" site or service.
Oftentimes, businesses or services will provide free features with some sort of purchase or membership. While this isn't purely free either, they are tools that are available to you at no extra cost, whether you use them or not. The monetary cost to you is disclosed up front, so you know exactly what you are paying for -- this type of "free" is great and should be taken advantage of!
Be sure to research where you put your time, effort, content, and listings, and evaluate the value of your free service. If it is an acceptable cost, you may have found your spot! If not -- if you are losing leads, sales, traffic and credibility -- then get out of there fast. Run away and place your assets where they will pay you back.
TRUE VALUE is always better than FREE.
I work in marketing and communications for ClassifiedFlyerAds.com, focusing on tools and internet technology for real estate professionals. Our most popular tools offer competitive search engine placement and online listing distribution to over 30 real estate directories. We also offer blog profile syndication, widgets, and virtual tours - free to all subscribed members.
"Being busy does not always mean real work. The object of all work is production or accomplishment, and to either of these ends there must be forethought, system, planning, intelligence, and honest purpose, as well as perspiration. Seeming to do is not doing."
- Thomas Edison
You are guilty of it and so am I. In fact, probably everyone who has ever made an effort to advance their career has been guilty of it. Wasteful, ineffective, and unproductive busy-work. That's exactly the type of work you produce every time you do something yourself that can be done more quickly and easily by someone else. For example, posting your property listings online - how much time do you spend?
"Wait!", you say, "But I save money when I do it myself. I could pay some service to do it, but why on earth would I do that if I can do it just as easily myself?" Well, if you truly can do it just as easily yourself, then have at it! But can you really?
At ClassifiedFlyerAds.com, busy professionals (ahem, you) can create a quality online property listing in 15 minutes from a pre-designed template. And the icing? The listing is automatically posted to over 30 online directories within 24 hours.
So for $12 bucks a month you can spend next to no time at all to promote your listings all over the internet, where over 84% of buyers start their home search.
Or for goodness-knows-how-many-hours you can do it yourself for "free".
How much do you make per hour? How much is your time worth? Are the things you've categorized as "free", really free?
Take a bit of advice from Mr. Edison, and remember, "seeming to do is not doing". Use your time wisely.
I work in marketing and communications for ClassifiedFlyerAds.com, focusing on tools and internet technology for real estate professionals. Our most popular tools offer competitive search engine placement and online listing distribution to over 30 real estate directories. We also offer blog profile syndication, widgets, and virtual tours - free to all subscribed members.
"Genius is one percent inspiration and ninety-nine percent perspiration."
- Thomas Edison
If you are just tuning in, this post is Part 3 of a 5 week serieson how to "motivate and help real estate professionals think outside the box and try new things" with their marketing. Using quotes from the great American inventor, Thomas Edison, my goal is to inspire you to reflect on your current strategies and consider trying new ones.
So back to my title, "Your Great Idea is Worthless". I mean it, and ol' Edison's got my back on that. How many discussions, meetings, thoughts, or casual chats have you been a part of where a seemingly "great idea" was present? Did it ever come to pass? The answer to that question depends on whether or not anyone took action to make that idea a reality. An idea, no matter how inspired, no matter how original, no matter how potentially life-changing, will not amount to anything if effort is not applied. How many ideas have you had that were never realized because you let them just hang out in your head?
Now, not every idea you have is going to be great. There is nothing wrong with being reasonable, and weighing the potential pros and cons of something before investing time and money into it. That is different from doing nothing at all. But I challenge you to take a risk and give that inspiration a try! Post #1 in this series, "The Difference Between Permanent Failure and a Bump in the Road" addresses the fear that sometimes comes with trying something new.
Remember, just putting an idea into motion isn't enough, that's not the "perspiration" that Thomas Edison spoke of. You need to commit to it, work at it, and give it a chance to succeed. What great ideas have you had? What ideas have you heard of, that sound like they're great? Will you let them remain worthless, or become genius?
I work in marketing and communications for ClassifiedFlyerAds.com, focusing on tools and internet technology for real estate professionals. Our most popular tools offer competitive search engine placement and online listing distribution to over 30 real estate directories. We also offer blog profile syndication, widgets, and virtual tours - free to all subscribed members.
"I never perfected an invention that I did not think about in terms of the service it might give others... I find out what the world needs, then I proceed to invent."
- Thomas Edison
Sounds simple, right? We all have needs; we need a car, we need a mobile phone, we need a faster way to travel, communicate, and do business. Our needs are what have driven technology and advancement for centuries. So the question is, do you know what your clients need? Let's hope so, because oftentimes, they haveno idea what they need! Remeber, you are the experienced professional, and first and foremost, your clients need you. Now, what else do they need?
With recent reports showing nearly 85% of homebuyers searching the internet for homes, you definitely need to market listings there. Are you? Do you utilize listing syndication, single property websites, blogging, search engine ranking, the MLS, and all of the other internet tools at your disposal?
Also, with technology advancing at a rate faster than ever, are you connected in all the ways you should be? Do you use blogs, mobile features, and virtual tours? Do you know what a "widget is? Let's hope so, because these are the things that will not only allow you to keep up with your competition, but to also stay a step ahead.
Remember, in order to give your clients what they need, you need to know what that is. Best of luck in your search to give people what they need!
I work in marketing and communications for ClassifiedFlyerAds.com, focusing on tools and internet technology for real estate professionals. Our most popular tools offer competitive search engine placement and online listing distribution to over 30 real estate directories. We also offer blog profile syndication, widgets, and virtual tours - free to all subscribed members.
Disclaimer: ActiveRain Corp. does not necessarily endorse the real estate agents, loan officers and brokers listed on this site. These real estate profiles, blogs and blog entries are provided here as a courtesy to our visitors to help them make an informed decision when buying or selling a house. ActiveRain Corp. takes no responsibility for the content in these profiles, that are written by the members of this community.
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For example, do you use a "free" internet service to promote your listings? If so, you may be surprised at all the little extras that "free" comes with. Like competing advertisements on your listings, limited features and usability, and unnecessary time consumption. It makes no sense for a business to give away their services without getting anything in return... there is always a return.
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