Is your Real Estate website a one-stop shop? - 10/31/11 04:07 PM
There are three problems with taking the one stop shop approach with your website.  First, your information on anything other than your local real estate market is going to be weak relative to professionals’ sites who do this work on a daily basis.  
Second, you may confuse Google about how to classify your site.  If your site has lots of legal information including legal forms you run the risk of your site being classified as a real estate lawyer site.
Third, if you do give these people the information they’re looking for in these related areas then they won’t have … (0 comments)

Use Different Ads For The Same Listings - 10/30/11 06:32 PM
The seemingly obvious solution to getting lost in the Craig’s List real estate ad shuffle is posting your ads multiple times to the site.  San Francisco has always been a bastion for left of centre political thinking, and Craig’s List, having originated in San Francisco, has many democratic/socialist kinds of conventions in their rules and policies.  In fact, Craigslist CEO Jim Buckmaster has told Wall Street “Craigslist has little interest in maximizing profit”.  Not being able to buy your ad premium placement (except in a few cases with job postings in major US cities) anywhere on all Craig’s List sites is … (2 comments)

Real Estate Ads Renewal - 10/29/11 08:24 PM
Change Your Ad Wording When Renewing – one of the things search engines really like is web pages that are updated regularly.  This indicates to them that the page has fresh new information on a regular basis and is therefore most likely part of a superior site to one whose pages’ content change relatively infrequently.  So when you renew your ads change the wording around a bit.  Perhaps briefly mention your latest listings and provide links to them on your website.  If you don’t have any new listings then just shuffle the order of the ones you have mentioned in your ad.  … (6 comments)

Renew your soon to be Expired Ads - 10/29/11 08:22 PM
Renew Your Soon To Be Expired Ads – with both Craig’s List and Kijiji your ads will eventually expire and get removed from these sites unless you stop this from happening.  With Craig’s List your ads will last either 7 days or 45 days, depending on what city you’re posting in.  The busiest sites such as New York City and Los Angeles only allow ads for 7 days to the massive volume of ads being regularly posted (current about 4000 per day in the NYC Real Estate For Sale section!).  Fortunaltely, Kijiji will email you several days before your ad expires asking … (3 comments)

Facebook Friday Recommendations - 10/28/11 10:11 AM
It's Facebook Friday again and I have a great list of newbies to Facebook for you to help. I really enjoy helping others get there because it was equally hard for me at first. So please show them some love and like their pages and tell them you came from Active Rain and Gabrielle Jeans recommended them. Leave your pages in the comment section to if you have them and I would also like your pages. 
Markhamtown Real Estate
Brantford Real Estate
Christina Sheppard
Eric Holman
Liz Hill
Lakeside Living Real Estate
Robert Atkinson
Suzan Pokluda
 
And last but not … (3 comments)

Marketing to a For Sale by Owner - 10/27/11 04:36 PM
Today, because of the internet and technology, more people are trying to sell their own homes than ever before.  There are enough people trying the FSBO route nowadays that you could focus exclusively on wooing FSBOs and have a thriving business.  So it’s important you understand how to engage FSBO online and persuade these people to work with you.
FSBO Ad Sources
Many people who decide to sell FSBO do so because of the internet.  They think advertising online is the way to sell their home because it’s almost always free to advertise online and millions of people are using online … (0 comments)

Breaking the Ice with Clients in Real Estate - 10/26/11 10:17 AM
I have had real estate agents ask me several times how to build rapport with clients to break the ice and establish a good conversation. My answer to this question is what I will list below in this blog post. Rapport is a relationship marked by harmony, conformity and accord and based on this definition, we can tell that people best like other people who are most like them and who they feel comfortable with. It is difficult to establish rapport with someone that you have absolutely nothing in common with.
Think about it, an invitation to someone's home is generally … (6 comments)

The Real Estate Neighborhood expert - 10/24/11 10:50 AM
Here are more ways you can become the recognized expert in your farm neighborhood:Demographics: do the research necessary to become an expert on the types of people in the neighborhood. You’ll want to know the people’s age, ethnicity, race, marital status, income, education, languages spoken, and number of children. Present this information on your website. This can be particularly valuable information to people immigrating to Canada from a foreign country. Immigrants often like to ease their transition into a new country by living in communities dominated by people from their country who speak the same language. So providing them with this … (6 comments)

Concepts for your Real Estate website content - 10/21/11 03:58 PM
 
Content matters. It’s important to remember that no matter what your subject matter is, your content has the potential to reach a large audience and help you build your business beyond the SEO benefits. Website content, articles and blog posts are ways to connect your services to relevant, interesting information about the real estate business. Creating copy that is well-written and focuses on interesting topics about the purchase and sale of real estate will help it go beyond increasing your page rank by being linked to and shared by outsiders. Stay on topic. Business writing is not the same as … (7 comments)

Can Twitter help real estate professionals? - 10/21/11 11:55 AM
The biggest problem is techies tend to be poor business people. For every 10 would-be tech entrepreneurs, you’d be lucky to find one with a sustainable business model and a decent business suit. All too often with techies it’s a matter of “technology for technology’s sake”. In other words, the technology is great, but there’s no real need or want in any marketplace for it. Even if there is a need, these techies aren’t likely to capitalize on it.You’ve probably heard about the latest tech kid on the block, Twitter. Millions of people are now using it. So the question naturally … (2 comments)

Mobile Marketing in the Real Estate Space - 10/21/11 11:09 AM
Ten years ago, most agents were made aware that if they did not have a website they would fall behind their colleagues in short order as the industry progressed in that direction. The same can now be said about having a mobile friendly website. There are more than 23 million cell phones in Canada and, for those who haven't noticed, they now come surgically attached to the hands of anyone under the age of 30! Add to that the fact that 43% of first time home buyers fit into the 18-42 year age group and you have a compelling reason to … (2 comments)

Don't take my word for it! - 10/19/11 03:25 PM
Many Real Estate Agents have a website. Most Real Estate Agents have paid developers thousands of dollars to set up their Real Estate website. In 2011, this is not a smart move for your marketing dollars when you have sites like the MoneyMaker website. The MoneyMaker site also provides hosting for our clients. 
A real estate website can be a great way of not only marketing your listings but also generating leads. This can only happen if the tools you are using are expertly designed and managed professionally. You need to ensure that your real estate website hosting is not only reliable but … (1 comments)

SEO for Realtor Websites Continued - 10/19/11 01:03 PM
Reputable companies usually avoid gray hat SEO, but those who don’t know the search engine rules and some agencies will occasionally use one or two of these tactics for getting ahead further with their SEO. Grey hat techniques include:- Paid links IE buying links in directories who aren’t really directories and whose only purpose is providing links- Keyword spamming – excessive instances of relevant keywords in content or ALT tags- Duplicate content or duplicate meta data IE copying content from another site with zero changes or additionsSome paid links such as paid advertising or sponsorship (eg. banner ads, pay per click … (3 comments)

Website SEO Techniques - 10/18/11 03:29 PM
Black Hat Techniques To AvoidKeyword Stuffing – this is deliberately planting extra instances of certain important keywords in your writing beyond what is warranted with what you’re expressing. For instance, if your farm area was Toronto and you wanted to be ranked under searches for “Toronto real estate” a black hat method would be using the word “Toronto” an excessive and gratuitous number of times on each page in your writing (eg. more than 10 times). Your readers will simply recognize this as poor, annoying writing. Another Keyword Stuffing technique is having areas on your page devoted to important keywords (eg. “Toronto … (6 comments)

I don’t know what to write on my Real Estate website - 10/18/11 01:22 PM
The internet is like a continent sized forest, and things like search engines and social networking sites are like park rangers or guides. If these people can’t find your website, then your website is like a billboard in the middle of these woods. No one will know it’s there.Search engines endeavor to have the true authorities in any subject matter at the top of their search results. Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is a many faceted discipline that includes unique, compelling content, listings, blogging, press releases, article submissions, and other activities. Consequently, with so many options you must build a content strategy. For … (4 comments)

Online Videos are the new Black - 10/18/11 10:54 AM
Online video has become a powerful marketing tool for all types of businesses. According to the stats from a ComScore report, Canada is the world’s top online video viewing country by percentage. In North America, in the month of December 2010 178 million people watched 33.2 billion videos, with the average viewer watching 187 videos per month. In addition, the month-to-month data clearly points to the fact that watching videos online is a trend that will continue to gain momentum, meaning that we can expect to see a few billion more videos added to next month’s total. Okay, so these numbers are … (2 comments)

Real Estate is like Fishing? - 10/17/11 02:58 PM
Whatever real estate market you’re working in within North America, you’ve no doubt seen a shift toward a buyer’s market in your area in the past few years.  In some markets, a better word is landslide. So with a shift in market conditions, you also need to understand how your advertising should change as well.  A shift to a buyer’s market is all the more reason why you need to understand and use the advertising with a net philosophy.  You’ll get better qualified prospects while avoiding the tire kickers.
Prospecting is a lot like fishing.  Most real estate professionals prospect with … (4 comments)

How quickly are leads judging your website? - 10/14/11 03:17 PM
Many people decide if they want to read long articles by scanning it for headlines first.  So summarize each paragraph with a few carefully chosen words, bold them, and make that the introduction to each of your paragraphs.  Your prospects are far more likely to read part (if the not whole) of the article by being able to readily know which (if any) parts interest them.
It’s also good to break your writing up so that your paragraphs are only a few sentences long.  People will often balk at reading very long paragraphs.
Bullet points are as helpful as having bolded … (4 comments)

Active Rain Kodak Challenge - 10/14/11 12:32 PM
 
My company sells websites, a listing presentation software and I have a training school for Realtors. Majority of the time, I am out on the road at trade shows and events promoting my products and sometimes I forget to print something in my email out that I feel would be necessary to the people I would be speaking to. Especially when there is a printer on site and I am reading the email on my Blackberry.
I was teaching a class this summer and was explaining to the Real estate Agents in my class about some statistic I saw that … (4 comments)

Are you duplicating Ads? - 10/14/11 11:45 AM
The seemingly obvious solution to getting lost in the Craig’s List real estate ad shuffle is posting your ads multiple times to the site.  San Francisco has always been a bastion for left of center political thinking, and Craig’s List, having originated in San Francisco, has many democratic/socialist kinds of conventions in their rules and policies.  In fact, Craigslist CEO Jim Buckmaster has told Wall Street “Craigslist has little interest in maximizing profit”.  Not being able to buy your ad premium placement (except in a few cases with job postings in major US cities) anywhere on all Craig’s List sites is … (3 comments)

Testimonials are the best - 10/14/11 11:34 AM
 
 
 Start a free Trial today. No strings attached
 
 
… (0 comments)

A Real Estate Website Design Software and its features. - 10/13/11 03:33 PM
For those that know me on Active Rain, you may have heard me talk about my MoneyMaker product and I realised I have never written a blog post about it. I would be listing the different features of the MoneyMaker product and you can decide if you wanty to come on board with the thousands of Real Estate Agents that are already using this product.
 

… (3 comments)

Enjoy Your Real Estate Profession - 10/12/11 04:24 PM
Many people look at those who are successful in any walk of life and think it must take an extraordinary amount of personal sacrifice and discipline to achieve that success, especially financial success.  They think it must take an extraordinary type of person with an iron will to do it.  So they think that to be successful is too difficult and not worth so much sacrifice, and so they think they’re better off than the wealthy.  To them, it’s better to have a steady paycheck, a few comforts and moderate happiness rather than being wealthy and miserable because of all the … (3 comments)

Real Estate Google Adwords Lesson 2.0 - 10/12/11 09:23 AM
When setting up Google Ads, Do not neglect Short Tail keywords.  Even though we may pay more for them, there are fewer of them and so it will be quicker to create ads for them.  We want our website to have a chance of getting exposure to people who are just starting out with their search who have very common and very basic questions and concerns.  If we don’t, we risk losing them to our competitors if prospects find their sites first and stick with them throughout their research and buying process.  That happens with information rich sites not just on … (3 comments)

Real Estate Negotiation Mistakes - 10/11/11 05:08 PM
Poor Presentation Skills
Sales are usually lost due to untrained real estate professionals.  Their biggest shortcoming is poor presentation skills.  When negotiating, the better your presentation skills, the more you’ll close sales.
Good presentations have three components: a visual component, a factual component, and an emotional component.  Integrating all three components is essential for developing your negotiating skills.
Visual Components: skilled negotiators use visual aids (pictures, diagrams, videos, sounds) for making their points more memorable.  An internet-ready laptop is a great platform for your CMA and any online resources you want to show.  For example, you could login to MLS and show … (3 comments)

Improve Your Real Estate Business with Facebook Tools - 10/11/11 03:43 PM
Why do you need to set up Facebook Ads?
Promote Content on Your website to targeted leads  Promote your Fan page to potential clients. Promote events you have.  Its a cheaper way of marketing yourself and your business to millions of people These are great reasons to set-up Facebook Ads in my Opinion. The Director of Social Media at Webtech Dezine seems to agree with me. She held a webinar today teaching MoneyMaker Clients how to set up their Facebook Ads. I think there are some important points to note about Facebook ads. They are very targeted to the desired clients based on … (2 comments)

My Facebook Friday Recommendations - 10/07/11 11:35 AM
Hi Active Rainers,
Its Facebook Friday again. Please help out those on my list and follow them and show some support.
 
Chatam Kent Real Estate
 
Lakeside Living Real Estate
 
Lisa Perry
 
Quinte Real Estate
 
Shannon Muree
 
Carol Faaland
 
Please stop by and show some support. You can also follow me on my social media and post on my wall or tweet at me to let me know you are from Active Rain
… (5 comments)

Real Estate Listing Presentation Success - 10/07/11 11:27 AM
In the real estate industry, the agent with the best marketing tools wins (the listing).
You could be just starting out, a top performer, or managing your own team, but having the right marketing tools is essential to your success!
Did you know that almost 95% of people in the real estate industry are using marketing tools that were created decades ago? Even scarier is the fact that some agents don't even have any marketing tools. In a highly competitive market, how are these agents going to win the listing?
With our professional high end marketing tools, you will blow your … (4 comments)

Real Estate Part-Timers - 10/06/11 03:52 PM
It’s relatively easy to wake up in the morning, go to a job where your day is mostly planned out for you, then go home, and collect a pay check every two weeks.  It’s not so easy when you have to create your own plan for every day, face rejection on a regular basis from prospects, friends and family, not necessarily get paid anything for all of it at the end of the week, and still have the gumption to press on the next week.
Therefore, I think the ideal way for people to start in real estate who lack a … (8 comments)

The art of pricing a Real Estate Listing - 10/06/11 12:21 PM
The Art:
We’ve gathered a lot of data, and we’ve crunched a lot of numbers. Our sold comparables prices have been adjusted to make them more similar to our subject home. We’ve also done the same type of adjusting for the homes currently listed that would be considered competition.
Why do we do the current listings? Sold comparables reflect past history. Even though we’ve taken the most recent sales, they’re still events in the past. There was an existing competitive market at the time of those sales that may not be similar to the current market’s properties.
The motivations of the … (0 comments)

Real Estate Lead Generation Tactics - 10/06/11 12:17 PM
Some real estate professionals balk at adding new lead generation strategies to their repertoire because they see it as re-inventing the wheel and are unsure of these strategies’ effectiveness. So wouldn’t it be great if you could generate more leads simply by adding a couple of details to the selling system you’re already using? You can. Here are a few ways of doing it:
3. Get Them Promoting Too!
If you make it clear very soon after you get the listing that you only work by referral and they can help find buyers in their network, help them help you by … (2 comments)

Effective Online Advertising Tactics - 10/06/11 10:41 AM
Also be sure to check your ads once they’re made live to ensure your image is coming up properly.  If you mis-type the above code then all people will see in the ad is a link that leads them nowhere.
Don’t Post Image Only Ads – you can fool the Craig’s List screens by placing ads that only contain an image, but this limits your ad’s ability to get recognized by search engines.  Considering how hugely popular Craig’s List is this is a considerable factor, especially when you can keep renewing your ads and have them running indefinitely with the same link.  … (2 comments)

Steve Jobs iNSPIRATION - 10/06/11 09:36 AM
Steve Jobs was a great inspiration to us all. He re-defined the norm. His innovation took already existing everyday items to a new level and his branding and promotion was out of this world. Majority of the people in North America and other countries now use Ipads, Ipods, Mac books etc. He also touched the lives of our children through movies like Toy story, Finding Nemo etc. Steve Jobs started out as a college drop out. He designed video games but quit that job to backpack across India. Steve Jobs said these decisions later shaped his creative vision. 
"You can't connect … (3 comments)

Your Listing Presentation must contain... - 10/05/11 04:52 PM
Here are a few things your listing presentation package must have:
1.  Media Kit
Here’s how I define a media kit.  You have a prospect who wants to sell, but not for a few months, so they don’t want to see you or any other real estate professionals at the moment.  They know when they’ll be selling, so they ask you to call them around that time.  In times past, real estate professionals only sent a business card and perhaps a thank you card and personal brochure to the prospect in this waiting period.  But today, you should send a lot … (3 comments)

Why FSBO's will always need a Realtor - 10/05/11 03:29 PM
People Dislike Negotiating
There’s one thing that’s truly indispensable about real estate professionals and why we’ll always be needed: our negotiating abilities.  Most people hate negotiating.  Many also assume that a FSBO won’t allow the buyer to have a real estate professional negotiating on their behalf, so they won’t even want to make an offer, even though they’re interested in the home.  They would rather look at homes where they can have a professional doing the negotiating for them.
A FSBO’s Legal Liability
When the buyer and seller are acting alone, they usually won’t have a lawyer.  So they both subject … (2 comments)

Home Buyers are buying into a neighborhood - 10/04/11 03:11 PM
Today’s home buyers are buying a home just as much as they’re buying into a neighborhood.  So it’s not enough to just sell people on the features and benefits of your listings.  You need to sell them on the features and benefits of each listing’s neighborhood as well.  You do that by becoming a neighborhood expert.  But if you are currently working several different farm neighborhoods, it’ll be difficult to establish yourself as an expert in all of them.  So focus on one particular neighborhood (ideally the one you live in) and design your website strictly with that neighborhood in mind.  … (4 comments)

Real Estate Google Adwords Lesson - 10/03/11 11:18 AM
Have The Searcher’s Keywords Appear In Your Ad Title
Just as with newspaper articles, the first thing people see is your ad’s headline, so it’s critical you hook your prospects’ interest with these headlines. A little known fact amongst Adwords advertisers is you can have a searcher’s exact keywords appear in your ad title and in your ad body.  These are known as Keyword Insertion Ads.  For instance, if someone searches for “Toronto real estate” you can have only the words “Toronto real estate” appear in your ad title.  The only restriction is ad titles can only be 25 characters max.  … (3 comments)

 

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