Real Estate Marketing Tips from Joel McDonald of Automated Homefinder

Sometimes the simplest things make the biggest difference.

Joel McDonald -- www.AutomatedHomefinder.com — Wed, 09 Sep 2009 10:28:43 -0500

OK, so I've been marketing my real estate services online since 1996 when my dad told me to get with the times and built a website for me... (Thanks again dad!) However, I was reminded just an hour ago that no matter how long you've been in any business, sometimes we need to just step back to the basics to make sure we're not missing anything.

Having been in the business 15 years this month, I've grown my company so large and we cover such a wide territory that it can be hard to remain focused when it comes to SEO (Search Engine Optimization) strategy. Stompernet - a very successful internet marketing education company - just put out a report by one of their 20 faculty members who is a very well known SEO expert; Dan Thies, and it's amazing how such a simple report can be so useful. When reading their sales page, I was hesitant because the message is a little over the top; "On 9-9-09, Internet Marketing is going to change forever..." Gag. However, after reading the report they sent (in return for giving them my email address) I was surprised to find that there is no hype whatsoever in Dan's report.

It's quite simple actually, and I've forgotten how well it works; Despite the fact that you want to rank for 20 or 30 primary keywords, pick one, layout your optimization strategy for that keyword, and keep working at it until it ranks on the top of the search engines. Only after that, should you move on to the next keyword. Picking the right keyword and focusing all of your efforts (on-page AND off-page) on that single keyword will generate far more business for you by next month, than if you were to focus your efforts on several keywords at once.

When I learned a variation of Dan's strategy several years ago, I was able to take a keyword from #78 on Google to #1 within a week. Duh... How easily we forget. Time to take a look at my analytics & get back to basics.

I don't know if Stompernet going to change internet marketing forever, but if the next 8 free reports are anything like today's it should at least be a fun ride: www.Stompernet999.net

Do you fail more often than succeed?

Joel McDonald -- www.AutomatedHomefinder.com — Tue, 18 Aug 2009 17:00:11 -0500

Do you fail more often than succeed?

If you answered "yes" to the above question - I say "Good for you! Keep it up!" If not, I'd go as far as saying; "If your successes outnumber your failures -- you ain't tryin hard enough."

I was talking with an agent who quit buying leads from an internet lead generation company after 30 days because "most of the leads weren't serious buyers". I asked her what they she was paying for the leads, and it was about $30 each. In response, I asked; "At $30 a piece, what would you consider a successful close rate?" The way I see it, at that price, I could "fail" to close 96 out of 100 leads, and consider that a pretty good success rate. (At an average commission of $7000, I'd be getting just shy of a 1000% return on my investment.) In other words - assuming a 96% failure rate, and an average commission of $7,000 -- every $3000 I spend buying leads would generate an average of $28,000 in commissions.

Ted Williams - Baseball's 7th best hitting record holder of all time once said; "Those that fail 'only' seven times out of ten attempts will be the greatest in the game." In fact, of all of the thousands of professional baseball players in history, less than 1 tenth of one percent of them have an average career "failure rate" of better than 7 in 10.

Quit being so hard on yourself: If the top one tenth of one percent of professional baseball players consider a 70% failure rate - a mark of excellence, why do we as Realtors set such ridiculously high standards for ourselves? Instead of looking at our glass as 96% empty and getting frustrated, why can't we focus on the 4% that is full? Especially if all we need is 4% to get a 1,000% return on investment. In fact, if all we do is focus on raising our success rate from 4% to a measly 5% - we'd give ourselves better than a 30% increase in net profits! (100 leads at $30 per lead with an average commission of $7K would be $25,000 in net profits at 4%, and $32,000 at 5%.) Net profits at 4% close rate would be $25

Whether you're working with internet leads, canvassing neighborhoods with postcards, cold-calling FSBO's/expired listings, social networking/blogging, or doing any other form of prospecting - I'm willing to bet that you're being way too hard on yourself. I have overseen dozens of real estate agents since starting my little Colorado real estate company, and the most common reason I see agents not succeed is because they focused on their rejection rate rather than their acceptance rate, and they didn't fail often enough to start seeing success.

Harland David Sanders, (better known as Colonel Sanders) tried to sell his "Finger Lickin' Good" recipe, and was rejected 1009 times before getting a "yes". Would his secret recipe ever have made it outside of his 142 person restaurant if he drew the line after failing 1000 times in a row?

Woody Allen once said "90% of success is just showing up" and that couldn't be more true when it comes to a salesperson's success. No matter how successful your close rate is, accept the fact that not closing the majority of your leads (however you get them) is simply a part of the business. A system is not "a system" if you don't use it for long enough. Do yourself a favor and whatever system you're using -- make sure to stick with it for at least 2 or 3 times as long as you think you need to. I'd bet dollars to donuts you that if you "just show up" and apply that system in earnest (no matter what that system is) -- you'll be ahead of the other 98% of salespeople who are focusing on the empty part of the proverbial glass.

Every time you don't get business from a lead/prospect - you're one "no" closer to getting a "yes".

If you could ask any question of an online marketing expert...

Joel McDonald -- www.AutomatedHomefinder.com — Thu, 13 Aug 2009 12:37:05 -0500

Next week, I've got the privilege of meeting one-on-one for several hours with a very savvy internet marketer. In addition to getting boatloads of high-quality website traffic in his extremely competitive niche, he is also a high-level internet consultant who operates on a retainer basis. The area he shares his expertise on include:

getting more website traffic by dominating niches
determining the actual value of a lead
converting visitors into good leads
prospecting "best practices" to turn leads into sales

I've got a list of things I'm going to discuss with him, but I want to squeeze every ounce of knowledge I can out of the time I have with him. So I was wondering: If you could ask any question of a knowledgeable internet marketing expert about how to get more business from your online marketing efforts -- what single question would you ask?

PS - I plan on sharing the answers I get, so the more questions, the better! Thanks for your participation.

Getting My Daughter High at the Beach.

Joel McDonald -- www.AutomatedHomefinder.com — Tue, 14 Jul 2009 15:42:18 -0500

Ha ha -- made you look...

Whether writing a blog post, a classified ad for your listing, an Adwords Ad, or anything else - the headline is 90% of the equation when it comes to readership. A boring headline (whether relevant or not) could get 99% less traffic than a compelling headline.

I'm on vacation with my extended family, and my brother took a great picture of my daughter and me playing in the waves. When I shared with my Facebook & Twitter friends, I used a headline something to the effect of "Playing at the beach in North Carolina" I got less than a dozen views in the first hour.

Then, I thought of a funny headline, so for kicks, I deleted the old post and reposted the picture. The jump in response rate was pretty interesting...

Even though it was the same exact picture, and only an hour after the first time I posted, it, my twitter post of "Getting my daughter high at the beach" got over 100 views before an hour had passed. (152 views after 77 minutes, to be exact.)

Next time you're writing an ad that you want to get as many eyeballs on as possible, it might be worth your while to do some pre-testing of a couple titles to see which is the most catchy. Below are a few ways to do your testing:

Set up a BudURL.com account to track your clickthroughs, and post a couple different titles to your Twitter account with a budURL link pointing at your blog post. If one gets a better clickthrough rate than the other, use that title & you're likely to get better readership over time.
If you're testing website content, it might be worth pre-testing by running a couple different Adwords ads with different headlines. Whichever ad has the higher clickthrough rate (which Google automatically tracks for you) should be the winner. Take that ad copy, incorporate it into your web copy, and you'll likely see an increase in the number of website visitors that turn into leads! (For more information from me about Adwords as a traffic source, visit TripleYourTraffic.net.)
Mturk.com is probably one of the best websites I've ever found for testing headlines. In a nutshell, you can get instant feedback for as little as a few pennies per opinion. If you're debating between a couple different headlines for your blog post, press release, or classified ad, "just mturk it"! All you have to do is bid a few pennies per opinion, and ask "Which headline makes you more interested in reading the article that follows: "A) Cute picture of me & my daughter jumping at the beach or B) Getting my daughter high at the beach." For a total of $2.50 (a nickel per opinion) -- 10 minutes later, you could have 50 "votes" from people around the united states who will chime in with what they feel is the more compelling headline...

Next time you want to get traffic to your blog, website, or phone - try adding a little extra zing to your title or headline... I bet you'll see a big difference in response rates.

Do you own a website, or a billboard?

Joel McDonald -- www.AutomatedHomefinder.com — Wed, 08 Jul 2009 18:25:28 -0500

When you've got an awesome website, or an Active Rain blog that you've put your heart and soul into, but you find that your percentage of visitors that turn into actual inquiries is extremely low, you have to ask yourself -- "Do I own a website, or is it a billboard?" If less than 1% of your unique website visitors are turning into actual leads (either from a phone call, email, or filling out a form), the answer is probably the latter.

To turn your "billboard" into a website that turns visitors into leads - which in turn, turns leads into closings, the most important thing is that you have a lead capture mechanism.

Types of lead capture mechanisms: Depending on what sort of lead capture mechanisms you have on your site, your mileage will vary, whether you've got a blog, or a website -- having one of the following conversion tools will drastically increase your conversion rates.

IDX search tools:
1. Depending on your source of traffic, and your marketing message, forced registration IDX search tools tend to convert between 4% & 10% of website visitors into leads. (Forced registration means that visitors must sign in and give a name, email address, and maybe some other contact info before being able to search listings.)
2. Open search (buyers are allowed to browse and look through as many listings as they like. Typically, this option converts far lower percentages than forced registration, but the argument is that the leads are much higher quality when they do contact you. (I prefer forced reg.)
Free reports: Free reports are a great way to generate interest, and usually involve an auto-responder that sends the reports, and follows up with a drip-email campaign of some sort. Depending on how they are set up, these sorts of capture mechanisms can average anywhere between 5% and 40% opt-in rates.
"What's my home worth" form submissions. These are a great lead-capture mechanism for home sellers, and also usually involve some sort of follow up. Typically, you'll see between 1% and 30% of your visitors request a home evaluation depending largely on how compelling your offer is, as well as how targeted the keywords you rank for. (ie: "NEIGHBORHOOD CITY home values" will convert much better than "CITY real estate")
Subscribe to your blog. If you own a blog, you could count a new subscriber as a "conversion". The key is to continue to write engaging content to entice your visitors to subscribe to your blog (that - and making your subscription links as visible and convenient as possible.

PS - If your webiste is converting more than 1% of your visitors into leads, you're sitting on a potential goldmine... There is no reason you shouldn't be experimenting with driving as much traffic as possible to your website. In that case, you might be interested in this video.

Real Estate, Schmeal Estate -- How's Your Golf Game?

Joel McDonald -- www.AutomatedHomefinder.com — Thu, 02 Jul 2009 22:22:36 -0500

This week, I spoke with two different AHF agents who had drastically different experiences with something we did system-wide, and I can't help but share...

Last week - when a Forbes article came out announcing Denver as the city with the best housing deals in the nation, we sent a quick note and link to every prospect in our system. With the exception of the prospect's name being inserted, each email sent was identical and went out on the respective agent's behalf to their respective list of prospects. The funny thing is that one agent said he hardly got any response at all, and the other agent called me to say it was the best response rate he had ever seen for a "blanket mailing" (and they were all very positive responses with two of those responses resulting in an appointment being set!)

Why in the world was there such a difference in response rates? That prompted more digging...

Now keep in mind that the two agents I spoke with each have a list of between 1300 and 1500+ prospects in their database who have at some point in time expressed an interest in searching for a home.
Both agents have been using our real estate prospecting system for about the same number of years, and have built their list of prospects at about the same pace.
Both agents were within 10% of each other in terms of the median home price that their lead list is searching for...
Neither of the two agents have a website, and rely predominantly on our system for their marketing/prospecting.
The biggest difference I found was that the two agents lived in slightly different areas, and therefore served different cities, but that couldn't have been it... Afterall -- they're both in the greater Denver metro area.

Then I found it:

The first agent mostly relied on auto-emails, and drip email followup to maintain his relationship with his prospects. He was quick to respond to his prospects when they had questions, and demonstrated exemplary knowledge of the area whenever possible.
The second agent used all of the same auto-generated marketing tools our system provides, but in addition:
- He made a point of writing a personalized email to each and every one of his new leads that didn't give a phone number.
- If he found them on Google, he'd comment about it, and he'd follow them on Facebook or Twitter whenever possible.
- When they gave a phone number, he personally emailed them, and called them within an average of a few hours of them signing up.
- I could tell from his contact log notes that he was going out of his way to get to know his prospects as people. In fact, a lot of the conversations that appear to have gone on had nothing to do with real estate!
- Instead of number of bedrooms & bathrooms a prospect is looking for, I saw notations of how many kids and kids' names. (In one case, I saw the name of a family pet!)
- I saw birthdates and anniversary dates entered in customer profiles.
- I even saw annotations about whether they're golfers, coin collectors, or outdoor enthusiasts...
- The only thing I saw that this agent had been doing that actually cost any money was sending thank-you notes to customers who gave an address via snail mail.
- Needless to say - the other stark difference between the two agents is actual production. Can you guess who is the bigger producer (by a ratio of nearly 4 to 1?)

They might not admit it, but your prospect's favorite subject is themself. Whether your prospect list is 15 people, or 2000 people, no level of automation is a substitute for a good old-fashioned conversation. What can you do to engage your prospects in conversation and find out about one of their passions today?

No one cares how much you know...

Joel McDonald -- www.AutomatedHomefinder.com — Wed, 17 Jun 2009 17:05:33 -0500

Put yourself in a buyer's shoes: You're moving to a new area, and you've signed up with a half a dozen Realtor® property update services. All of those Realtors send you about the same list of properties, and all of those Realtors appear to be reasonably knowledgeable about the market. How are you going to choose which Realtor to work with? When all Realtors send the same properties, and most of them appear to have the same level of competence, a very scientific process must ensue: Eenie, meenie, minie mo... Unfortunately, that's how many buyers choose their Realtor.

15 years ago, before the days of IDX I used to copy and paste MLS information into an email (and snail-mail that same info to those that didn't have email), and getting new clients was like shooting fish in a barrel. These days, just about every Realtor out there has a property-update feature on their website -- not to mention sites like Realtor.com, Zillow, Trulia, and buyers can get whatever information they need. When nothing else differentiates you as a Realtor, you're left to the odds of "My mommy told me to pick the very best one, and you are not it" - 9 out of 10 times.

"No one cares how much you know until they know how much you care." This is why building actual relationships with your prospects (and showing that you care about them as a person) is so extremely important if you want to get their business. In fact, when it comes to getting them to choose you over your dozens of competitors, it's probably more important than actual knowledge of your marketplace. One of the most powerful things we enable our agents to do is talk to their prospects about things other than real estate, and one great way to do that is to keep track of who is moving from where.

Let's say you have a large database of prospects, and you happen to know what states those prospects are moving from. When you see on the news that a category 4 or 5 hurricane is going to hit Louisiana, why not filter for those folks and send a quick email:"Hi <customer>, I see that a category 4 hurricane is likely to hit Louisiana tomorrow. I just wanted to send you a quick note to say that you and your friends & family in Louisiana are in my thoughts and prayers."

When the time comes for those folks to actually pick up and move, who do you think they're going to buy from? One of the agents who have been spewing out tons and tons of property updates with no interaction at all, or you - who actually took time to engage in conversations that allowed you to get to know them as individuals? Not only will you stand out from the crowd because you showed you care, but you'll build valuable friendships in the process.

With our IDX real estate prospecting system, we ask all new buyer prospects where they are moving from for this exact reason. Whether you get 10 leads a month from your system or 500, try adding a "where are you moving from?" field to your inquiry form. If you take advantage of knowing that information, I think you'll be pleasantly surprised -- not only at your increase in conversion rates, but at how much more pleasurable it will be to work with the clients who will naturally gravitate to you because they like you - not because you won the "eenie meenie minie mo" contest.

Can't Listen Live During Our Show? Here are the archives for Social Media Edge (JCKC Radio)

Joel McDonald -- www.AutomatedHomefinder.com — Thu, 04 Jun 2009 22:56:35 -0500

I've been swamped with the recent expansion of Automated Homefinder, and speaking engagements so I haven't contributed to my blog like I should. Reading this post from Jason made me feel compelled to re-post it to make sure no one missed it.

Enjoy!

Via Jason Crouch, Broker - Austin Texas Real Estate (512-796-7653) (Austin Texas Homes, LLC):

Each week, I have a handful of online friends who ask if our weekly radio show "Social Media Edge" (formerly Twitter Tuesday) is recorded, so that they can listen anytime. The essence of Web 2.0 is being able to access information on your own terms, right?

Yes!

In an effort to make it easier to find and check out all of our previous episodes, this post will serve as the definitive spot to locate any past shows, going back to our original shows in early December 2008. I will do my best to keep it updated each week from this point forward.

If you haven't heard our program at all, this would be a good opportunity to pick one that looks interesting to you. :)

Without further ado, here is the entire list to date:

December 2008

That was the first month that I hesitantly dipped my feet into the radio pool, as it were. Listening back to those early attempts, I was struck by how serious I sound. The first couple of shows were 30 minutes, but we later expanded to a full hour.

Jason Crouch and Ken Cook Twitter Tuesday! (30 minutes) - December 9th

Jason Crouch and Ken Cook Twitter Tuesday! (30 minutes) - December 16th

Twitter Tuesday Christmas Show (30 minutes) - December 23rd - includes a visit from a very hungover Santa Claus!

Twitter Tuesday New Year's Resolution Special ONE HOUR! - December 30th - our first one hour show

January 2009

Twitter Tuesday - Guests TS Elliott & Chicke Fitzgerald - January 6th - This was our first show with guests.

Twitter Tuesday - Guests Julie Roads, Walter Charnoff and Erika Napoletano - January 13th

Twitter Tuesday - Guests Brian Carter and Ed Bisquera - January 20th

Twitter Tuesday - Guest Tamara Dorris - January 27th - We shifted to one guest instead of two at that point.

February 2009

Twitter Tuesday Guest Rick Abbott @theDigitalLife - February 3rd

Twitter Tuesday - Guest @BillCrosby Social Media Evangelist - February 10th

Twitter Tuesday - Guest @MikeMueller Vid/LinkedIn - February 17th - This was our first show with Mike Mueller, who has now become a regular part of the show as our roving tech reporter.

@shelisrael (Naked Conversations) - February 24th - Shel Israel is the co-author of "Naked Conversations", which is considered to be one of the seminal books on the topic of business blogging.

March 2009

Twitter Tuesday - Guest @CathyBrowne - March 3rd

Humanizing Business Through Social Media - March 10th - Guest was Erin Hurry, founder of Girls with Goals

Very Special Guest Steve McGranahan - "World's Strongest Redneck"! - March 17th - yes, you read the title correctly

Twitter Tuesday - Guest James Shiner @TweeplePages - March 24th - James is also the founder of Zipvo, which is a terrific real estate video platform

Twitter Tuesday Radio Brad Nix, Matt Fagioli REtechSouth - March 31st

April 2009

Twitter Tuesday w/ Jason Crouch & Ken Cook (JCKC Radio) - April 7th - Guest was Andrew Stone, developer of Twittelator and many other iPhone applications

Twitter Tuesday Radio - Guest Guy Hagen, Founder of Twinfluence - April 14th

Twitter Tuesday Radio - Now "Social Media Edge" - April 21st - After 3.5 months with guests, we decided to take a break for awhile.

Bloggers Sued for Product Endorsement? - April 28th

May 2009

Social Media Edge - Blogging Policies? Friend Feed - May 5th

Hyperlocal and the 2 Pound Doughnut - We All Win - May 12th

More Hyperlocal and Five Tips for Success - May 19th

Amazing Tips Tools and Tricks for Social Media - May 26th

June 2009

Social Media Edge - Tips, Tricks, Tweets and More - June 2nd - Jeremy Blanton also joined us for a new regular feature about blogging/ActiveRain.

If you want to join us live, we broadcast every Tuesday at noon Eastern (11am Central, 10am Mountain time, 9am Pacific) right here: http://blogtalkradio.com/jckc

Here are a couple of testimonials from some familiar faces here on ActiveRain:

"I have followed just about everything Jason has done since I got involved in blogging for the first time roughly 2 years ago. When I heard that he had teamed up with Ken Cook for a "talk radio" show about social media, I knew I had to tune in to it.

After the first episode, I decided I had to be involved. Since that time, my company has been a sponsor of the show providing them with working capital to allow them to give away promotional items to its listeners. I am an avid fan of the show...almost rabid. (In fact, I have not missed a single episode.) The guests are some of the most knowledgeable in the industry and the information I have gained by listening to this show has helped me on just about every facet of my social media usage.

If you are in any way involved in some form of social media, you are missing the boat by missing this show!!"

- Clint Miller, Real Estate Client Referrals

"Ken Cook and Jason Crouch's #jckc Social Media Edge is a regular part of my week. I like to join Ken, Jason and their guests to hear real life applications for social media and get training and tips. As co-founder of TwitterQueens, Inc. I think that they have great information and a wonderful grasp on the applications of social media."

- Lesley Lambert, Founder of TwitterQueens

I hope you can join us this week!

Thanks!

Do you need a bigger/better/faster website?

Joel McDonald -- www.AutomatedHomefinder.com — Mon, 11 May 2009 16:36:24 -0500

Last week, I had two conversations with two different Realtors about systems they should use because their current website just isn't doing it for them. Both agents seemed to think that the grass was greener on the other side of the web, and after a bit of discussion - I suggested that they both try an experiment for a month, and then if they still wanted to get a better website, I'd help them figure out if they really need an upgrade.

The experiment: Call Leads ASAP. Yup. That's it... According to most sources, less than half of internet leads ever get followed up with, and even those that get followed up with don't get a call until more than 24 hours later. Our company allows for our agents to get text-alerts for each/every lead they get. In fact, they can elect to get text alerts only when certain "hot" prospects sign up so that they're not distracted with leads who don't meet a certain minimum set of criteria. Not surprisingly, there is a very high correlation between our top producers (who follow up within the first hour), and other agents who don't follow up as quickly.

Do you need a bigger/better/faster website? My answer is "absolutely not". Whether you have a multi-million dollar CRM tool custom designed to your specs, or a canned solution that hundreds of thousands of other salespeople are using - there is only one thing you can do to exponentially increase your odds of getting a "worthless internet lead" to the closing table. That one thing is calling your prospects as soon as feasibly possible. Heck -- You don't even have to talk about real estate! Just call, talk about whatever comes naturally, and your odds of getting their business will go up exponentially.

How to improve your conversion rate without changing websites/CRM tools: As long as your CRM tool has the capability of receiving email alerts when you get a new lead, you can convert that to a text alert on your phone so you can follow up with your hard-earned leads ASAP:

To get an instant text message as soon as a lead signs up, all you have to do is find out what your carrier's email extension is. Once you know your "email to text" email address, all you have to do is enter that email address in your prospect alert system. For example, if you are with Verizon and your cell phone number is (555) 555-1212, your email address is 5555551212@vtext.com Here are some of the email-to-text addresses for the major cell phone carriers:

Verizon: 10digitnumber@vtext.com
AT&T: 10digitnumber@txt.att.net
T-Mobile: 10digitnumber@tmomail.net
Virgin Mobile: 10digitnumber@vmobl.com
Voicestream: 10digitnumber@voicestream.net
Sprint: 10digitnumber@messaging.sprintpcs.com
Nextel: 10digitnumber@messaging.nextel.com
Alltel: 10digitnumber@message.alltel.com

See results by next month. Before you go looking for a bigger/better system, make a habit of calling your leads as soon as feasibly possible and I promise you'll see a measurable difference in your close rates. It's that simple. If you don't believe me, take a look at an early version of Automated Homefinder from about 10 years ago. It was only a one page site at the time (and had been that way for 2 years), and it was uglier than roadkill, but it worked extremely well for our sales team for one reason: Because we called our leads as soon as possible.

Of course - a very close second when it comes to increasing odds of getting a sale is having a system for semi-automated long-term followup but without the former, the latter is practically worthless.

311,300% ROI - This Boulder Agent is Cruisin

Joel McDonald -- www.AutomatedHomefinder.com — Tue, 05 May 2009 23:15:36 -0500

I had a great phone call from one of the agents in our Automated Homefinder family last week. Matt Kolb -- a Boulder real estate agent and owner of Pedal to Properties -- called to say thanks for a recent closing he had from a lead we sent him. Although I can't take credit since it was he who actually built the relationship with the lead, and earned a fantastic commission in return. I did a quick calculation, and determined that in this case, the $25 lead he bought from us earned him a 311,300% return on investment. It's too bad all of them aren't that good.

We had a wonderful conversation about how although the economy is down, it's the agents who choose not to allow themselves to be victims who will look back on these times and be thankful for them. We also talked about internet leads in general and the fact that success has very little to do with the leads themselves, but instead the systems, followup and attention we give to each of those leads that makes the biggest difference.

Yesterday, he sent a thank you note along with a copy of the check & I thought I'd share:

In addition to being excited about his recent closing, he informed me that this year is going to be his best year yet.

Slow market? Pbbbbbtt.

Even though it wasn't my closing, I can't help but esctatic for Matt considering he only got his license about 4 years ago. He has since built a team of agents at Pedal to Properties after only 2 years in the business. Go Matt!

Matt, BTW has a very interesting business model at Pedal to Properties. If you ever have a Boulder real estate referral (Especially in the Whittier Neighborhood), feel free to look him up.

10 Things You Can Do With Adwords That You Can't Do Organically

Joel McDonald -- www.AutomatedHomefinder.com — Tue, 28 Apr 2009 17:00:39 -0500

I get into discussions with folks all the time about "paid traffic" vs. "free traffic", and my contention is that free traffic is wonderful when you can get it, but the control you get with paid traffic can far outweigh any amount of free traffic that you might get. Much like why many people prefer the precise control of a manual transmission over automatic transmission, paid traffic can have the same benefits when you know what you're doing.

Here are 10 things you can do with Adwords, Yahoo, and MSN Pay-Per-Click marketing (PPC) that simply can't be done (or is very difficult to do) when you're at the mercy of the ever-changing organic search engine algorithms. Apologies in advance - this list is off the top of my head and in no particular order.

Track which keywords convert into leads, and which don't. In most cities, "[CITY] real estate" gets 3 to 10 times as much traffic as "[CITY] [ST] real estate" or "[CITY] [STATE] real estate", but in others, it can be the other way around. I've identified some cities where "[CITY] real estate" only gets 20% more traffic than "[CITY] [STATE] real estate" -- but "[CITY] [STATE] real estate" converts into a lead twice as often. While everyone else is battling it out to be on the first page of Google for "[CITY] real estate" because they assume it is the most searched for phrase, I own the #1, AND #2 spot for "[CITY] [STATE] real estate" and pull in 3 to 20 times as many leads as the other suckers optimizing their sites for the wrong phrase.
Market on other people's websites (including your competitors). Google has this wonderful thing called the Content Network that allows websites (both big and small) to advertise your site - when appropriate by using "Adsense". I'm not talking about going and adding valuable, non-spammy comments on someone elses blog... I'm talking about flat-out advertising where you're telling visitors exactly why they might want to come visit your site. Anytime they display your ad and someone clicks on it, they get paid a few cents, and you can end up getting traffic that simply can't be had elsewhere. I've received very qualified leads from legal blogs, local eateries, and even competitors' websites. In some cases, those leads have cost me as little as twelve cents!
A/B split testing. Wondering if you should offer a "7 deadly mistakes every seller should avoid" report or "7 tips to help sell your home fast, and for top dollar" report? One just might get twice as many signups as the other, but unless you test them side-by-side and track which report has a higher interest from your visitors, it's going to be difficult to tell. With Adwords, all you have to do is have Google drive half of your traffic to one offer, and the other half to the other offer and within a few days, you'll know which offer gets you more leads. (In fact, as long as you are using their tracking code -- they'll tell you which version is better.) If you're not good at math, you can use a tool like splittester.com or Google's own "optimizer tool" that is built into adwords to make the decision for you.
Target two different audiences searching for the exact same term. A person who lives in Dallas Texas searching for "Dallas real estate" can be directed to a page that caters to someone with local knowledge who might also have a home to sell and wants a free market analysis on their home. Throw in a "buy & sell through me and I'll move you for free" type coupon, and you're likely to get a double-header. However, someone living in California searching for "Dallas Real Estate" is most likely considering relocating & you'll be more likely to convert them into a lead if you direct them to a page that offers a free relocation package. Send local sellers to one page directed at sellers, and send people relocating from another state to a different page that offers a free relocation package. This can be done by using the "geotargeting" feature built into Google Adwords.
Get traffic from people searching for your competitors. If "XYZ Realty" has a strong presence in your area, there will be a lot of people looking for "XYZ Realty in [CITY]". Funny thing is that they are usually just looking for real estate information. With the exception of a couple major franchises, there is nothing saying you can't happen to have an ad for your website displayed when someone searches for that term. It doesn't have to make any mention of their company -- just mantioning "[CITY] real estate"
in your ad will get enough of those visitors coming to your site. (This traffic, BTW, can be 50% to 75% less expensive than bidding on "CITY real estate.", and it usually converts into leads at a higher rate. Granted - this could be done organically, but you have to optimize your landing page for that company's name, and that can be hard to do when mentioning a company that you are not affiliated with.
Drive traffic to the highest converting page - not just your home page. It's a proven fact that most websites' lowest converting page on their website is their homepage. This is because visitors are usually required to search for what they are looking for, and the more hoops your visitors have to jump through, the less leads you'll get. However, many search engines display the homepage of your website even though there might be another page within your site that would convert a higher percentage of visitors into leads/sales.
Rank for hundreds of long-tail phrases instantly. Are you a hyper-local marketer? Great. What if instead of spending hundreds of hours writing hyper-local posts, you could simply bid a nickel per click on hundreds of those phrases, and determine which of them get the highest search volume. Then, after spending $5 or $10 on hundreds of visits (and thousands of impressions), write posts based on the phrases that get the most traffic. That way, instead of hundreds of hours writing content for phrases that might, or might not get traffic, you can focus on the phrases that will get you the most traffic possible.
Get exposure 5 minutes from now - even for highly competitive phrases. Again - free traffic is great, but it can take time before the search engines find you and decide that you're "worthy" of being displayed on the first page of the SERPS for the phrases you'd like to get found for. After you take the 10 or 15 minutes required to set up an Adwords account, you pick what keywords you want to rank for, and bid on them. You'd be surprised -- A budget as small as $50 a month could get you a lot of leads if you're smart about what phrases you bid on. The beauty is that you never pay for a click unless your visitors actually click on your ad.
Get the most bang for your buck out of classified ads/postcards. Do you canvas mail neighborhoods, or still run classified ads for your listings? Before you spend who knows how much on such a campaign, test a headline or two via adwords. In a matter of minutes, you could write two or three ads on adwords, and test which ad gets the highest clickthrough rate. After spending $25 to $50 on Adwords, you might find that one ad "pulls" 3 to 5 times as often as the others. The same will likely happen if you use similar language in your newspaper ad or postcard mailing. (This could be done via thousands of postcard mailers, multiple phone lines, and direct response tracking methods, but why bother? It's way cheaper to do via Adwords.)
Switch websites or overhaul your old site, and never worry about losing your hard-earned search engine traffic because Google or Yahoo don't like your new site as much and drop your site from the search terms you were ranking for before. With Adwords, you can change the page you're driving traffic to in about 2 minutes.

If you're among the 1% to 2% of Realtors who have a knack for getting respectable volumes of organic traffic, these 10 tips might be of no use to you, but for the rest of us - Adwords can either be a great way of getting additional traffic otherwise not obtainable, or it can be a tool that can be used to increase the efficiency of your SEO efforts.

Let me know your thoughts!

PS - If you ever have a Boulder Colorado real estate referral, please look us up.

Long Tail vs. Short Tail - More Examples From the "Long Tail Evangelist"

Joel McDonald -- www.AutomatedHomefinder.com — Fri, 17 Apr 2009 13:18:35 -0500

A couple weeks ago, I cited an example of how to use off-site linking strategies paired with long-tail phrases to get big (and near instant) movements of the dial in terms of better ranking on the search engines. The example I cited was a friend - Jim Duncan in Charlottesville -- whose blog post went from #7 to #1 solely because of a link to that post from my article. I then followed that post up with another post showing the results. I checked again this morning, and he's still #1 for that phrase, and I'm sure it will stay there for a long time to come.

Why didn't other links I gave out see the same jump in ranks for the phrases I used to link to them? The point here isn't to demonstrate the power of links as much as demonstrating the power of choosing the right phrases (and right pages to link to) in order to get significant movement of the needle.

Jim's neighborhood post went from #7 to #1 in a little over a week, and not only will it very likely stay there with no further effort, but I'm going to go out on a limb and say that he will own the #1 and #2 spots for that neighborhood within a couple weeks. (This is called a "Double Indented listing" and because double indented listings control two of the top 3 spots, they get EVEN MORE traffic than just having a #1 ranking.) Click here to keep an eye on "Fifeville Charlottesville real estate" on Google.
Because I used more competitive phrases for all of the other sites I linked to, I didn't see nearly as impressive of an improvement in terms of rank for those specific phrases.

Disclaimer: Is this a scientific study? Absolutely not, but it's close enough for government work. I look forward to hearing your thoughts.

[Edit] Please note that all of the examples and "before" and "after" rankings are for the phrase I highlited. ie: Teresa Boardman's rankings are for "St. Paul MN real estate agent" -- not St. Paul real estate. I chose this method because it's hard to improve upon #1, but I still wanted to send links to my friends for other phrases where they weren't ranking #1 - albeit less trafficked.[/edit]

Case Study #1: Jim Duncan -- Fifeville Charlottesville real estate - 85% improvement in rank which should yield a 10-15X improvement in traffic for that phrase.

Going from #7 to #1 will likely generate 5 to 10 times as many clicks for him for that phrase. (Granted, it's not searched for often, but:

Those visitors are probably 10x times more likely to buy than someone searching for "Charlottesville real estate".
It takes little to no effort to make it to #1 for long-tail phrases, and results can be seen as early as a few hours after the link-building process begins. If someone had 10 Charlotte neighborhoods ranking #1, they'd probably get as much business as someone ranking #5 or #10 for Charlottesville real estate, and they'd likely be dealing with less "tire kickers".

Case Study #2: Jay Thompson - "Phoenix real estate" - 39% improvement in rank.

By no means am I trying to say that my piddly little link is the reason Jay went from #13 to #7 for "Phoenix real estate", but I'm sure it helped. Going from #13 to #7 is fantastic because it puts you on the first page, but with a phrase as competitive as "INSERT-BIG-CITY real estate", seeing improvements in ranking for that phrase is going to get exponentially harder once you're on the first page.

Case Study #3: Kristal Kraft - "Denver Colorado Real Estate Agent" - 50% improvement in rank.

Moving from #6 to #3 is fantastic, because a site in the top 3 will get a lot more traffic than anyone in #4 through #10. Still, in terms of percentage increase in traffic from that exact phrase - it's nowhere near as good an improvement as going from #7 to #1.

Case Study #4: Teresa Boardman - "St Paul MN real estate" - 40% improvement in rank.

Same observations as Kristal's change in rank/traffic.

Case Study #5: Jason Crouch - "Austin TX Realtor" - 30% improvement in rank.

Although Jason's site bumped from #10 to #7, this won't see much of a change in visitors because sites ranking #5 through #10 tend to see about the same clickthrough rate, regardless of position.

Case Study #6: Marc Rasmussen - "Sarasota FL Realtor" - 0% change in rank.

No change in ranking. I'm guessing that this is because Marc is such a prolific linker that my piddly link didn't even make a dent, but again - this goes to demonstrate the difference in results between long tail phrases and more competitive phrases. ;-)

Case Study #7: Ines Hegdus-Garcia - "Miami Beach real estate agent" - 9% loss in rank.

Ines' example stumped me at first. Then I realized there were TWO reasons for this:

That the post that was being displayed was getting a LOT of "link love" from Ines' home page when I first made note of her #22 position for that phrase. Once that post dropped off of her home page, the number of authoritative links to that post also dropped. (This is why a lot of blogs see a quick 1st page ranking with new posts, but see that post fall off the first page all together after a few weeks.) It'll be interesting to see how her post ranks after Google crawls this page and finds another link to her site
I had a typo in the link I sent her way in that initial post. OOPS! Sorry Ines! I've corrected that now & bet she'll make it to the first page for that phrase after Google finds this page, and re-crawls the old post with the invalid link.

The moral(s) of the story:

I don't care how much content you write for your blog/website -- that's just a small part of the equation. The more important part is the links that point at the posts you want to get found. 6 out of 7 of my case studies were examples of that (and I bet #7 will be a good example in a week or two.)
It's not just links that are important - it's the competitiveness of the phrase, AND the actual anchor text of those links that make a real difference. (In other words, call me lazy, but I'd take 10 or 20 #1 rankings for neighborhoods in any given city over a first page ranking for that city -- anyday. )

Brought to you by your (inserting gratuitous link) Boulder Real Estate guy.

Happy Linking!

The Results Are In -- Links from Active Rain ROCK!

Joel McDonald -- www.AutomatedHomefinder.com — Wed, 08 Apr 2009 20:01:10 -0500

Last week, I wrote a post entitled "Blogging Is Like a Reality TV Show". It had to do with the fact that you don't have to write EVERYTHING on your blog about real estate, but 10% to 20% of the time that you write about your city (or even better - neighborhoods in your city), there is a strategy you can use to rank higher on the search engines to get more traffic. BTW: It's usually well worth the extra 30 to 60 minutes of effort because by ranking in the top 3 for any given search phrase, you are 300% to 1000% more likely to get someone to click through to your website. If you're STILL not a believer in this strategy, read my "case study" about Darryl & his brother Darryl.

At the end of the post, I cited an example using my friend Jim Duncan's blog post about "Fifeville Charlottesville real estate", and noted that he ranked 7th on Google for that phrase. I demonstrated the fact that it takes very little effort (as in -- one link from my Active Rain blog), and let's just say I'm thankful to Active Rain that I don't have egg on my face.

Here's a screenshot of Jim's #1 ranking a week later. Note that he bypassed Zillow, city-data AND the city of Charlottesville itself for "Fifeville Charlottesville Real Estate". Thanks for pulling through AR!

Again, here is the initial post on how you can do the same thing in your area. I hope you go do it, and come back and share your success by commenting here!

When You Absolutely, Positively, Missed a Deadline

Joel McDonald -- www.AutomatedHomefinder.com — Wed, 01 Apr 2009 02:16:18 -0500

Missed Deadline???

Have you ever had an occasion where you represented the buyer, and hired the best inspector possible, attended the inspection, discussed all of the details for your inspection notice, and then noticed that you missed the inspection objection deadline? Or worse -- what about the time you submitted an offer, the seller countered with an offer you KNEW your buyer would accept, but you couldn't reach your buyer before the seller got another offer and rescinded their counteroffer?

Those can be some of the most frustrating experiences ever, but go easy on yourself. You're a busy professional with a lot going on in your life. You're bound to have those kinds of things happen every once in a while...

For that reason, we've developed a handy application you can attach to Gmail, Outlook, and even iMail that allows you to quickly back-date any email you want to have back-dated. That way, even though you knew you missed the deadline, you can send an email that is time-stamped at an earlier date and time. This is especially useful in the cases where the other party extends a verbal offer or message because your written (and time-stamped) message sent via email trumps their verbal message (due to the statute of frauds.)

To get full details, of this useful "get me out of a pinch" application, simply visit this link. Be sure to check it out during this free beta-testing phase.

Your blog is like a Reality TV Show

Joel McDonald -- www.AutomatedHomefinder.com — Tue, 31 Mar 2009 19:47:25 -0500

First off, let me disclose that I am a "Traffic Guy" who had resisted blogging until last year. I resisted because I have always been able to get plenty of buyer and seller traffic, and thought that blogging wasn't worth the time investment required. In fact, I grew my Boulder real estate company to nearly 60 agents, and I generated the majority of their sales because of the traffic I was able to generate. I figured: "With that kind of traffic - who needs to spend time blogging?" (And to be honest, I envisioned the thought of myself being "a blogger" very much like the image to the right.)

Now, you could say I'm a convert, and I'm trying to motivate the agents on my team to start blogging as a way to convert more of the prospects I'm already giving them, as well as to become less dependent on me for bringing in new business. Some of our agents have jumped in with both feet, and some still haven't. As I was working with the ones that have jumped in with both feet, I realized that most of them were only focusing on one aspect of blogging or the other, but none were focusing on both.

Blogging is like a reality TV show. When I say "one aspect or the other", I am referring to my belief that blogging is like a reality TV show (or any TV show for that matter) in the fact that it has two parts, and neither can survive without the other. TV is paid for by commercials. Without commercials, or sponsorship, network television (as we currently know it) wouldn't exist. Likewise, without good content (the show itself), commercials wouldn't get watched.

Blogging is the same thing. Writing informative & compelling articles about the area, and sharing your thoughts about certain topics (whether real estate related or not) is the equivalent of the TV show. Getting your readers to know and trust you by writing your innermost thoughts, and sharing fun stories is what will keep people coming back to your blog for more. HOWEVER, it's the topics that aren't as fun to write about that will bring in the traffic in droves. Those topics are your city and neighborhood descriptions & market reports.

The funny thing is that most of the agents I'm working with are ONLY writing from one perspective or the other...

Approach #1: The "TV show approach". Many Bloggers take a journalistic approach and write solely about what topics they think are important thinking "SEO be damned - I'm writing for my readers." I applaud that approach (and agree that it should represent the majority of your writing efforts). Afterall - it's that content that your readers (potential clients) will keep coming back for. Unfortunately -- taking only that approach means a slow, uphill climb in terms building a loyal list of readers. (This, BTW, is why I see so many bloggers say it takes 6 to 8 months to "get any traction" from their blogging efforts.)

Approach #2: The infomercial approach. Other bloggers approach it from the other side of the fence, and focus solely on writing "search engine food" for what the majority of people are searching for. By that, I'm referring to people searching for "INSERT-CITY real estate" or "INSERT-NEIGHBORHOOD INSERT-CITY real estate". The good news is that if you do it right, you will get visitors... However, just like a 30 minute infomercial -- they won't keep coming back to your blog because if you're only writing about city and neighborhood descriptions and never anything else -- they'll get pretty bored -- pretty quickly, and won't find a need to ever return to your blog.

The key is balance, and following a similar ratio to what the national TV networks follow is probably a good rule of thumb. Since a 30 minute TV spot consists of about 24 minutes of interesting content, and 6 minutes of commercials, you could try to follow the same rules. Dedicate about 20% of your writing to the local area, and then you can write about whatever you like for the other 80%!

When I say write about whatever you like, I mean it!

Case Study #1:

Ines Hegdus-Garcia - a prolific Miami Beach Real Estate agent (currently ranking #22 on Google for that term) dedicates a day a week to pictures in the area (and she makes an event of it by calling it "Miamism Fridays"). Some people visit her blog just to see those pictures! She also dedicates a lot of time talking about Mojitos. What the heck does an alcoholic beverage have to do with real estate?!?! It doesn't matter - because she gets it... Ines gets the fact that blogging isn't just about showing off your expertise. It's about being who YOU are, and letting those who can relate to you keep coming back for more episodes of "you". When the time is right, they'll watch your commercials (read about neighborhood market stats and search for homes, or ask for home evaluations) so you can pay the bills too, but if you want to make sure your potential customers keep coming back for more, write 80% of your posts to entertain your readers, not educate them. (I'll show you at the end of this post a strategy you can use to get more traffic to your "boring, but traffic generating" city/neighborhood posts - despite them representing less than 20% of your blogging efforts.

Case Study #2:

Another example is Jay Thompson (AKA - The Phoenix Real Estate Guy) who currently ranks 13th for "Phoenix real estate" on Google. Jay knows the area like the back of his hand, and he writes about his opinion on the market quite often. However, he writes about more interesting topics (that aren't written with Search Engine Optimization in mind) far more often. I took a quick perusal through the front page of his blog, and of the 5 most recent posts. One was written with people looking for Phoenix real estate in mind... One out of five. The other 4 posts were written about topics that have very little to do with Phoenix real estate - but all 4 were posts that kept me reading. One has to do with service at a hotel he stayed at in Colorado Springs, another has to do with one of his favorite places to "eat, drink & be merry", another was a quick note to express his frustration with his inbox being full and the fact that emails weren't getting through to him, and the 5th topic was defining a legal term. (Granted - that could be considered real estate related, but when I read it - it was written purely to help anyone who wants to learn about the term "Lis Pendens", and had not even the most remote scent of "local SEO enhancement" associated with it. In other words, if he even closed his post with "if you're ever in the market for a Phoenix home for sale", he would have blown my 80/20 theory out of the water, but considering he wrote that post as a free tidbit for anyone reading his blog (regardless of where they're shopping for a home), I'll count it as "a part of the show vs. a commercial". I bet if you visit his site at any given time, you'll find a similar ratio of 1 "keyword optimized" post for every 4 that are written purely for the benefit/enjoyment of the reader. It's that strategy (and the fact that Jay even makes his keyword optimized posts a very interesting read) that has Jay known as one of the best real estate bloggers in the country.

Case Studies 4, 5, 6, the list goes on...

Kristal Kraft - a fellow agent ranking #6 on google for the term Denver Colorado real estate agent (who I admire despite the fact that she's a competitor), and Teresa Boardman - a St Paul MN real estate agent (#5 on Google) are two bloggers who share their passion for photography first, and real estate second. Jason Crouch (#10 for Austin TX Realtor), and Marc Rasmussen (#7 for the term Sarasota FL Realtor) are both very open about their families in a lot of their writing. When it comes time for a buyer or seller to choose from the dozens of Realtors they have to choose from, I bet dollars to donuts that those buyers & sellers pick their agent based on a shared passion first, and their real estate knowledge second.

Don't get me wrong - I can't turn a boring neighborhood description into poetic prose like Jay & Kristal & so many other bloggers I've had the privilege of knowing can do, but that's not necessary. My goal is to get 10 times more visitors (who are 10 times more likely to buy) coming to my clients' real estate sites by using those "boring neighborhood description commercials" as a gateway to get more search engine traffic. Once those visitors enter my clients' sites, if all they find is a bunch of other neighborhood descriptions used to please the search engine gods, they'll leave. However, if they find 10% to 20% real estate information, and 80% to 90% things to do, funny stories, thought provoking discussions, and things that make you unique - you'll exponentially increase your odds of getting those readers' business.

Now how do you get 10 times as many people to find your blog? The best way to do that is whenever you write a post about a neighborhood in your area (which, remember, should only be 10% or 20% of the time) - don't just settle for that post ranking in the top 10 or top 20 for that neighborhood... If you notice that you only ranked #8, go out and get a couple links that point directly at that neighborhood post. With the exception of highly competitive neighborhoods, you'll be surprised at how often that extra 10 to 20 minutes of effort will get you to #1 for that neighborhood. That #1 ranking will get you 5 to 15 times as many visitors as compared to a #8 ranking, and considering the customers that find your Neighborhood post already have a better idea of what they are looking for than those who are just searching for "INSERT-CITY real estate", you'll be dealing with a far more motivated buyer.

My challenge to you is to put my theory into action and get one of your existing blog posts not in the top 10 - to rank #1 on Google.

Take a look at your existing blog, and find a post you've written about a neighborhood in your area. I don't care if it's only 150 words long - just humor me.
Now, go and search Google and make note of what position you are in when you search for "INSERT-NEIGHBORHOOD INSERT-CITY real estate".
Point a link or two at that exact post. If you're too bashful to ask one of your Active Rain friends to throw a link your way, and don't know where else to get links, write a general interest article about real estate, and throw it up on a free site like GoArticles.com or EzineArticles.com At the end of your article, you'll be able to insert a "resource box" - which will allow you to say something like "If you're ever in the market for INSERT-NIGHBORHOOD INSERT-CITY real estate, visit my site. (And make "INSERT-NEIGHBORHOOD INSERT-CITY real estate" a hyperlink that points directly at your post about that neighborhood.)

**The reason I am giving this advice about a less competitive neighborhood is because you'll see almost INSTANT results, and those results will mean exponentially more visitors to that page from the search engines. The same principle applies to "CITY real estate", but it will take a bit more link-building effort to see a measurable result. Focus on a neighborhood, and you'll likely get a boost to the #1 position (with only one or two links) within a week or two, and it will happen 7 out of 10 times.

Still hesitant? This experiment will take you a half-hour at most, and depending on where that post currently ranks on the search engines -- the results could mean 10X more highly qualified traffic to that page.

STILL hesitant? Now it's time to put my own advice to the test. Just for grins - I picked out a friend Jim Duncan's post from nearly a year ago about Fifeville Charlottesville real estate. Despite the fact that he has an EXCELLENT blog with commanding authority in his area, that post is currently only ranked #7 for what is not a very competitive phrase. (Screenshot below.) Whaddya wanna bet that this silly little link (whose "link juice" has been diluted by including about a dozen other links on the same page), from my silly little blog will boost his post to the top 3 for the Google term "Fifeville Charlottesville real estate"?

When is "now" a good time to start strategically building links so you can start getting more traffic to your blog?

For the record, here is a screenshot of RealCentralVA's ranking as of 3-21-09 -- before I sent a link his way:

Don't drink the "TweeterGetter" Kool-Aid

Joel McDonald -- www.AutomatedHomefinder.com — Fri, 13 Feb 2009 09:09:22 -0600

I wrote this at about 2 am this morning, and decided to sleep on it before posting. This morning, after reading it again and getting 5 or 6 more requests to check out TweeterGetter, I'm even more prepared to hit the "submit new post" button.

As you may or may not know, Twitter is a revolutionary socializing website that allows people to communicate 140 characters at a time with people who are following you. The more followers you have, the more people theoretically see your message every time you tweet. Yesterday, I got about a dozen updates from fellow Twitterers talking about how I could get over 15,000 followers if I just jumped on the TwitterGrader bandwagon (in their downline.)

College Flashback: Suddenly, I'm having flashbacks from about 18 years ago when I got a "Dave Rhodes" chain letter in the mail. I was a Freshman in college, and got a letter stating that I'd become a millionaire if I just send $10 to the 5 people listed in the letter. I almost fell for it... Afterall - if it made perfect sense on paper to me, I'm sure at least a thousand other suckers would think the same and send me their money, right?

However, instead of spending the $350 in postage and copier charges (and the $50 "sucker fee" to the five people in my "upline"), to send the letter to 1000 of my "closest friends", I spent about $10.50 to see if it was a scam. I took a twenty dollar bill, tore it in half, put a stamp on an envelope and sent it off to the person at the bottom of the list. (Afterall, he was supposed to almost be a millionaire by now.) Along with the torn twenty dollar bill, I included a note. It said "I was only supposed to send you $10, but instead -- I'll send you the other half of this $20 if you'll just drop me a line and tell me how the Dave Rhodes letter has worked out for you." I included my mailing address, my phone number and my email address. A week later, I got an email from the guy stating that he got $30 in the mail from 3 other folks over a period of about 5 weeks since he sent the letter. I put the other half of the $20 in the mail to him and thanked him for his honest answer. I figured it saved me about $400.

Back to present day: So here I am looking at all of these updates (some from some pretty smart friends) who have taken a sip from the TweeterGetter flavored kool-aid, and have decided to jump on the bandwagon. Why the heck not? How popular would you feel if you suddenly had over 15,000 more followers on Twitter?

My first thought was "heck - I'll try it as long as I don't have to follow them back, but then I decided against it, but there are other "costs" involved. Am I prepared to pay those costs?

I manually review each and every follower I get to decide if I want to follow them back (A portion of my followers are spammers, or have nothing to say that interests me in the least, and I don't want to clutter up my twitter stream with their messages.) It's a lot of work as it is. If I had hundreds or thousands more followers in a matter of days, it would be that much harder to review whether or not I should follow back.
Considering the fact that I won't reciprocate by following people who don't interest me, they'll eventually unfollow me anyway.
The first thing I did was go to the bottom of the list, and check out the twitter profiles of those folks. About the only person I saw that had actually picked up a decent amount of followers had spammed the same message over and over about 60 times over the past 2 days. (yes - 60 times, and he allegedly got 500 followers out of the deal.) I'm surprised he didn't get unfollowed by more people than how many started following him.
Even if this were something of value, and I did decide to try it, there isn't anything to prevent someone from whacking my username, bypassing me (along with the 5 sponsors in my "upline"), and just going straight to the top level at TweeterGrader.com.

Sleep on it: When I was a child, my parents ALWAYS made me wait at least a week when I saw a toy I wanted. After a week, if I STILL wanted it, I could choose to spend my allowance or birthday money on it. Likewise, before YOU decide to spam your Twitter friends telling them how many followers they can get by just following you (along with 5 other people you may or may not know), look up the person at the bottom of the list, and make note of their follower count. Then check that person's follower count tomorrow, and the next day. If they have a lot more followers, and the idea of getting more followers (cough, suckers, cough) is attractive to you, then go for it. If they don't have a lot more followers, you will have saved yourself the trouble and heckling you will otherwise have received from your already loyal list of friends and followers.

If you need to stroke your ego and get more followers for the sake of having higher numbers, you just might get a few hundred more followers by drinkinking the TweeterGetter flavored Kool Aid. Unforunately, you're going to have to spam the heck out of the followers you've worked hard to build relationships with -- and get them to do the same thing if you want to see any real results.

Or... You could just continue down the same path you've been following and keep getting to know your existing list of followers, have engaging conversations about things that interest you, and let people who like what you have to say follow you naturally.

@Joelrunner

Image courtesy of http://www.harryhofnar.com/2008/08/09/holy-ghost-hofnar/

Darryl & His Brother Darryl: A case study about "Long Tail" and Real Estate Marketing

Joel McDonald -- www.AutomatedHomefinder.com — Wed, 11 Feb 2009 10:42:18 -0600

I know I'm preaching to the choir with most of you on Active Rain, but this is for the benefit of the Realtors on my team - most of whom have never blogged, so bear with me.

I was positively esctatic last night…

I talked a couple of the agents on my team into doing some hyper-local blogging, and they each started a blog 6 days ago. Yesterday evening, I got a Google alert about one of those agents’ posts, and when I searched Google, I found that his very first post is in the #1 position on Google for several phrases revolving around that neighborhood!

Even though it isn’t a highly competitive phrase, I was just happy that he could achieve a #1 ranking right out of the gate on a brand-new blog - with only one post!!! He hadn’t even finished his “about me” page! (It took me YEARS to learn how to even make it to the first page of Google without buying advertising or PPC campaigns, let alone make it to #1 for any given phrase.) I shared my elation with my online Twitter friends, and got a sarcastic response from a skeptic: “Good for you! Now you can rake in leads from a phrase that is searched all of a dozen times a week.” I responded with one of my favorite lines: “You may be right.”

For those of you thinking low-volume search phrases aren’t worth the trouble, here is a little story for you. It is inspired by an old favorite show of mine - “Newhart”.

Meet Darryl and his brother Darryl.

Both are Realtors, and both work separately in the same market (which we’ll call “BIG CITY”). They both started a blog at the same time, and both learned the same SEO strategies about search engine marketing.

Darryl 1 decided that since “Big City real estate” got 250,000 searches a month, he was going to roll up his sleeves, and get to the first page of Google to get some of that action. He made his blog all about “Big City”, and all of his optimization efforts focused on phrases like “Big City real estate”, and “Homes in Big City”. Darryl 2 happened to read “The Long Tail” - by Chris Anderson, and decided to optimize for much lower volume phrases by writing a post about “Small Neighborhood Big City real estate”. “Small Neighborhood Big City real estate” only gets about 400 searches a month, but hey, at least Darryl 2 can be a big fish in a little pond if he ranks well for that phrase.

Fast Forward 1 month:

Darryl 1 has written a post and gathered about a dozen links with anchor-text of “Big City real estate”. He does a search, and he’s ranking #250 on Google for that phrase.

Since no one looks beyond result #10 or #20, Darryl 1 isn’t getting any traffic yet.

Darryl 2 writes a post about “Small Neighborhood Big City real estate”, and gathers a few links pointing at that post. He does a search, and finds that he is #1 on Google for “Big City Small neighborhood real estate”, #3 for “Small neighborhood real estate.” and #6 for “Small neighborhood Big City”.

Those 3 phrases combined get about 1000 searches a month on Google, and Darryl 2 sets his first appointment as a result of the traffic he’s getting.

Fast Forward 3 months:

Darryl 1 writes 10 more blog posts, and continues to drive links at his site for the phrase “Big City real estate”.

He’s up to #125 on Google!

Still no traffic though.

After getting himself to #1 for dozens of phrases revolving around “Small Neighborhood”, Darryl 2 decided to write 10 posts about 10 neighborhoods, and is ranking on the first page of Google for 8 out of 10 of those posts.

Combined search engine traffic: 2500 visits a month.

Darryl 2 also has had 2 closings, has 3 clients under agency, and about 300 internet inquiries. As it turns out, even though it’s low volume traffic, his prospects are highly qualified and know exactly what they are looking for.

Fast Forward 6 months:

Darryl 1 has written a few more blog posts, but is still putting the majority of his efforts into link building for the phrase “Big City real estate”.

Still practically zero traffic (and those that are finding him seem to be “tire kickers”.)

But he’s close! He’s now #45 on Google for that high traffic phrase, and can’t wait for that day!!! After all — Once he gets to page one of Google, he’ll hit the motherlode!!!

Darryl 2 has now written about most of the neighborhoods in Big City, and has now moved on to writing about neighborhoods in “Neighboring Big City”.

His listing presentations are now a piece of cake whenever he lists a home in one of the neighborhoods he has written about. Surprisingly, when he tells the sellers that 80% of home buyers start their search on the internet, and then shows that he is #1 for “Neighborhood Big City real estate”, “Big City neighborhood real estate”, “Neighborhood Big City” AND “Neighborhood real estate”, they cancel all of their other interviews with agents.

Total closings to date: 6
Listings on the market:5

Fast Forward 1 year:

Darryl 1 is up to #20 on Google, but has been out-Optimized by several competitors with deeper pockets. It becomes apparent that even though Darryl 1 is starting to see some traffic, making it to the first page of Google is going to take a lot of work. Making #1 is near impossible given the fact that more and more competitors are focusing on this market because of high search volumes.

If Darryl 1 ever does make it there, he’ll learn that although the traffic volumes are higher, the leads are of lower quality than the leads Darryl 2 has been getting for the past year.

Darryl 2 bought the “Waybury Inn” in “Small Neighborhood” to accomodate all of his out of town clients, and has 3 writers to continue to focus on Long tail topics such as restaurants in the area, hotels, etc.

As it turns out, because he has so many “low traffic, long tail blog posts” about areas within “Big City”, he is now ranking on page 1 for “Big City real estate” too!

Darryl 1 is now going to work for Darryl 2 on a 50% split as a showing agent until he gets his blog up to the first page of Google for "Big City real estate."

OK, OK — I realize that is a bit of an exaggeration, but the moral of the story is two-fold:

Anyone can blog, and it doesn't have to be earth-shattering journalism. The important thing is that it is written with the reader's benefit in mind. Optimize for the right long-tail topic and you'll rank with almost no effort at all.
Cumulative traffic from dozens of long tail phrases with low search volumes can easily equal (or surpass) the traffic of one heavily searched phrase, and it could very well be higher quality traffic.

Don't waste a gift from the search engine gods...

Joel McDonald -- www.AutomatedHomefinder.com — Tue, 10 Feb 2009 13:43:17 -0600

I participate on a lot of internet and real estate forums, and often see people talking about making it to the top 10 on google for a certain phrase. It's always wonderful to see your efforts rewarded by getting decent placement on the search engines (and hopefully more traffic to your site.) However, there is no reason you need to stop at only one top 10 ranking for a certain phrase on the search engines. By that, I don't mean that you should get multiple phrases ranking (I'm assuming that's a given). What I'm saying is that it's possible to own that phrase for 2, 4, or even 10 of the top 10 search engine results for that phrase.

When you are surprised at how quickly one of your blog posts ranks in the top 10 for a certain search phrase, instead of bragging to your friends about it, exploit it! Take your easy ranking as a sign, and try to knock a few of your competitors off that first page by getting another one of YOUR sites to rank as well. I'm not saying you should go and register mutiple top-level domains... I'm simply saying there are plenty of other free resources that you can get to rank just as easily (if not easier).

For example:
Let's say you wrote a blog post about "PurplePink Town", and to your surprise, it ranked in the top 10 for "Homes for sale in PurplePink town" within a day or two of posting it. Keep your excitement to yourself, and get yourself even more exposure for variations of that phrase on other free web properties.

It's called "Parasytic Marketing".
There are hundreds of various ways you can get free exposure on the web, AND when done properly, it can both boost your website's exposure as well as reduce your competitors' exposure. Here are a couple tips:

Video:
Don't let the word "video" scare you. You don't even need to own a video camera! All you need is several digital pictures of a neighborhood, or of a home you are selling, and you can make video! Windows Movie Maker (or iMovie on a Mac) makes it extremely easy to make a slide-show of still pictures, spruce it up with some transitions, and add some background music. Add a little plug for your website, and you've got a promotional tool that will rank on the search engines and drive traffic to your website! If you're still intimidated at the prospect of creating video, sign up for an account at RealEstateShows.com. It's about $10 a month, and comes with a free 14 day trial.

After you've got a video you want to share, why limit yourself to uploading to just one video site? RealEstateShows, Youtube, Viddler, Vimeo,Yahoo Video, GoogleVideo, and MySpace are all video sites that have been known to rank very well on the search engines. Sometimes - they rank within minutes of posting the video, and with the proper tags and titles, they could possibly rank better than your original blog post! (But that's a good thing because your single video could be one, two or even five more spot in the top 10 for you, and that many less slots for your competitors.) Here's a little secret: Sign up for a free account at TubeMogul.com, upload your video once, and get it distributed to all of the major video hosting networks for free!

Free Blogging sites:
Wordpress.org, Blogger, HubPages, Squiddo & ActiveRain/Localism are just a few out of dozens of free blogging/social platforms out there. After you write that post about "PinkPurple Town" that ranks so well on the search engines, write a few other versions of it and post it on one or two of your your other free blogs so you can get them ranking on the search engines too! (Don't get me wrong -- I'm not saying to spam the blogosphere with duplicate content. A true re-write should have different perspectives about the same topic.) All of those blogs should have your phone number, and a link to your home search tool, so you'll have that many more opportunities to capture more leads.

Good luck, and remember: Ranking well on the search engines from simply writing a blog post and doing no other SEO is a gift... Don't waste it.

I'm still not doing very well on the search engines...

Joel McDonald -- www.AutomatedHomefinder.com — Thu, 05 Feb 2009 11:25:56 -0600

I did it again. I was doing my morning reading on Active Rain, and stumbled across a post from last week having nothing to do with what I was looking for. However it was a request for help and I couldn't help but comment back. Before I knew it, I wrote a novel on the subject & figured it made a better blog post than a comment.

Hi _______,

I stumbled across your post asking for help on how to get your blog posts ranking better on the search engines while looking for another topic, and couldn't help but chime in.

If you write a phenomenal blog post, you MAY find that you get decent rankings, but it's not because Google (or Yahoo) actually read your post and gave it a good grade... It's because other bloggers out there read it, and linked to it, or you somehow got links pointing back at that post, and when you did rank, readers visited, poked around your site, and maybe even left some comments for you!

However, it's not always possible to write earth-shattering posts that get noticed without a little help.

Here are a few tips:

On page optimization:

Pick a keyphrase. Make sure a keyphrase you want to rank for is included in your title, as well as in the body of your message. Don't be spammy about it. Once in the title, and once or twice per 300 to 500 words is fine. (It also can't hurt to occasionally use a strong tag around your keyphrase too.) Don't get me wrong... You should still focus on QUALITY content -- it's just that tweaking title tags, and optimizing keyword density isn't going to get you NEARLY as far as getting more links will get you. In fact, I wrote a post just yesterday about how to write quality content for your real estate blog.

Off page optimization:

Focus less on your own content, and more on getting awareness out about your content. Believe it or not, the majority of why you rank well on the search engines only has about 10% to do with your site itself. The other 90% of weight in determining your rank on the search engines has everything to do with who is linking to you, and how fresh your content is. (And since comments keep blog posts fresh, getting comments on your blog is an extremely important off-site optimization tactic.)

Start networking on Twitter & Facebook. Whenever you write a post that you think would be interesting to the people in those social networks, send a status update (Facebook) and/or a Tweet (Twitter) with a link to your blog post. Visitors will come, and some will even comment.

Start commenting on other people's blogs. Don't leave lame statements like "great post", or "I couldn't agree more" without saying anything else. ADD VALUE to their conversation, and visitors will be compelled to visit your site. In addition, by commenting elsewhere you're scattering a trail of breadcrumbs all over the web leading back to your site.

Write guest-posts on other sites. I don't care how prolific a blogger is, sometimes they just don't have the energy to keep it up and getting some help is almost always well received. Offer to write content for other people's sites. The only condition is that you get a link (that is not "nofollowed") back to your site. 9 times out of 10, the blogger or website owner will gladly take you up on it. I've received one-way links from very authoritative sites simply by picking up the phone and saying "I like your site & what you have to say. I'd love to contribute content to help you out."

Every time you write a post that you'd like to rank for, rather than passively waiting to see if you'll climb from #20 on Google, try this:

immediately comment on other people's blogs who share similar interests (tread lightly when commenting on competitors' sites.) You're bound to get visitors to your site (and some will comment - which boosts your credibility.)
Announce your post on Twitter, Facebook or any other social networks you're on.
Try to write a guest post on someone else's site, and link back to that specific post using the keyphrase that you want to rank for as your link. (This is called "deep linking" and is EXTREMELY effective.)
- If you are intimidated at the idea of contacting someone to write a guest post, set up a free account at squidoo.com or hubpages.com and write content there.) The point is to be proactive about getting links pointing back at the specific post you want to rank better.

There are dozens of other easy strategies you can use to boost traffic to your website, but I promised Matt Fagioli & Brad Nix that I'd save those for my presentation called "10 things you can do to boost search engine rankings without ever touching your website" at ReTechSouth.com on Friday, March 20, 2009.

"Let's Make a Deal" Real Estate

Joel McDonald -- www.AutomatedHomefinder.com — Thu, 29 Jan 2009 08:08:46 -0600

A friend on twitter was posting various riddles, and I remembered one that my dad told me when I was a kid. Unfortunately, it was too long for Twitter, so I'm posting it here, just for fun.

Riddle me this:

You're buying a house, and everything is set for a smooth closing. When you arrive at the closing table, there are two envelopes on the table. It turns out that the sellers were in a good mood because they had just won the lottery. They're still feeling a little giddy about the whole thing, and decide to have a little fun with you.

Although the envelopes both look and weigh exactly the same, one envelope has all of the documents you are to sign just as planned. However, the other envelope has enough cash to pay for the house in full. Pick one envelope, and you'll have a loan on the home just as you had planned. Pick the other, and you'll own the home free and clear - right then and there.

The only two people who know which envelope is "the winner" - are the two sellers. No matter what question you ask - one of them is guaranteed to lie to you, and one of them is guaranteed to tell you the truth. Unfortunately, you have no way of knowing which one will lie and which one will tell the truth. You are also told that you are only allowed to ask them one question. (You must ask each of them the same question.)

If you are only allowed to ask them one question, what question will you ask in order to pick the envelope that will get your home paid off in full?

Inman Connect Recap

Joel McDonald -- www.AutomatedHomefinder.com — Fri, 09 Jan 2009 20:07:13 -0600

Wednesday, I wrote about my spontaneous decision to come to Inman NY & am sure glad I did. I wasn't even sure I'd get in because my ticket wasn't in my name. (I got a free ticket thanks to my fantastic Twitter friend (and Cleveland Realtor) @CleveCarole who couldn't go. (Yet another reason I love Twitter. Carole -- I owe you big! Thanks so much for the ticket!) I'm now awaiting to board my plane back home & thought I'd send a shout-out to some of the fantastic folks I met up with at Inman Connect.

No, the picture of Jay, Jeff, Heather & Andy was not staged! I couldn't resist taking a picture of my fellow Twitterers tweeting away in the middle of a crowded NYC bar.

I learned a lot at the conference, but rarely had my camera with me. However, I did have it with me at the various parties put on by Active Rain, and Altos Research. Besides it's the after-hours networking that make for fun connections, as well as fantastic networking opportunities! Let's just say I hung out with some really good "networkers" & some good negotiators. I was even able to witness a certain someone practice his "negotiating" with the bartender to sell him an open bottle of wine, and then negotiated with New York's finest about his open container in Times Square.

If there is one thing I've learned from this conference (and other real estate conferences I've gone to in the past), it's how amazingly powerful relationships with other Realtors & professionals around the country can be. I got my real estate license in 1994, and hardly ever went to conferences figuring I'd be better off spending the time marketing, or doing something more directly in my control. However, you never know what you're not learning that could be that next big breakthrough for your business. Even more important are the connections and referral opportunities that open up because of the amazing connections you will make with amazing people from around the country who also attend these events.

I can't wait to see everyone again at the next event I go to which I think is going to be REtechSouth. (I'm hoping to do it with a little more planning this time.)

That's all for now, folks. I'm about to board my plane & head home to see my wonderful wife & kids.

Inman Connect Real Estate Conference -- NYC

Joel McDonald -- www.AutomatedHomefinder.com — Wed, 07 Jan 2009 01:09:42 -0600

Tonight, I did something totally out of character, but I'm really excited about it!

I've got a lot going on, and months ago, had reluctantly decided I shouldn't go to the Inman Connect Event that starts tomorrow in New York. Then, today, I was watching the twitter stream of the goings-on at REBARCAMP - which was scheduled for the day before the start of Inman (at the same hotel). As I saw pictures of friends I've met at previous conferences, online friends I've been wanting to meet, and quotes from speakers talking about subjects I like, I decided I just had to get there. So I booked a flight, grabbed a room, and will be on a plane first thing in the morning. Woo Hoo!

It makes no sense whatsoever considering I'm presenting to 50 agents on Monday about marketing & SEO, I haven't even finished preparing the presentation, and I JUST returned from taking 11 days off for the holidays! But what the heck -- I decided late last year that I was going to make a bigger effort to continue to learn ways to improve my company, and this is a great way to start off the year! Besides, I've got a 4 hour flight, two 3 hour batteries for my laptop, and a checklist of what I was supposed to be working on this week. I now just have to get it done between my trips to and from from New York. What the heck - I never work more efficiently than when I'm up against a deadline anyway, and this is in the interest of continuing education (as well as hanging out with a bunch of awesome and VERY smart Realtors®!)

If you'd like to keep an eye on what's going on at the conference as it happens, feel free to follow me on Twitter as I'll be doing my best to tweet notable quotes from the army of amazing talent scheduled to be at the conference.

My Twitter feed can be found here.

Image courtesy of Inman.com

Ever feel like this??

Joel McDonald -- www.AutomatedHomefinder.com — Fri, 19 Dec 2008 08:56:49 -0600

Marianne Snygg, a Realtor in Monument CO who also goes by "@McSnygg", organized a Tweetup in Colorado Springs that I had the pleasure of attending. Among many other wonderful Twitterers and conversations, the conversation that stuck out the most was the speeding ticket stories from Derek "reninja" Wagner. (For the two or three of you who don't already know, @Mizzle & @reninja are a couple hilarious Realtors in Colorado Springs.)

Our "speeding ticket battle wounds" conversation reminded me of a real estate joke:

A guy gets pulled over for speeding & the following conversation ensues:

Officer: "May I have proof of insurance & your real estate license please?"

Driver: "I'm sorry officer, but don't you want my driver's license?

Officer: No -- not everyone has their driver's license.

Do YOU ever feel like that?

Happy Friday!

-- @Joelrunner

Social Networking Webinar Tonight

Joel McDonald -- www.AutomatedHomefinder.com — Thu, 18 Dec 2008 12:03:56 -0600

Hey folks,

I just got an email announcing that Perry Belcher is doing a free webinar tonight at 9pm Eastern. I follow Perry on Twitter & he's a very entertaining guy. Considering he's NOT in real estate, I'll be on the call just to get a perspective about social media from someone other than a Realtor... (Much like me - he views places like Facebook, Twitter, Myspace, etc as social platforms to drive traffic to your blog/website in ways that simply can't be done via traditional SEO methods (or traditional marketing methods for that matter.)

If you're still wondering about how you can apply mediums like Twitter & Facebook to your business, this might be of interest to you. Just thought I'd share.

Thursday, December 18, 2008. 9pm Eastern Standard Time.

If you'd like to check it out, feel free. http://www.winningatsocialmedia.com/?page_id=3

@Joelrunner

"Only a few people in my town are on Twitter".

Joel McDonald -- www.AutomatedHomefinder.com — Tue, 16 Dec 2008 16:27:45 -0600

I realize I'm risking typecasting myself as a "Twitter fanatic" by posting this, but oh well -- I am, so here it is...

A blogging friend informed me they signed up for Twitter, but only saw a few people from their area on TwitterLocal "worth following". She further clarified that even those people weren't talking about anything even remotely related to her or real estate. As I wrote out my response, I decided it might also be a helpful blog post.

Hi ________,

Good for you for signing up!!! What's your "handle"?

Twitter is like a party. As far as conversations "about you" or "about real estate" think of it this way: If you go to a party with 100 people, 20 of them are statistically likely to be moving within the next year. HOWEVER, the odds of actually overhearing them talking about real estate are slim to none. (And the odds of them talking about YOU are even slimmer.) Try to direct their conversations in the way of how you can help them with all of their real estate needs, and you'd be an outcast. Engage in ongoing conversations, however, and interject that you are a Realtor ONLY when appropriate -- and you'll get plenty of business.

Entering Twitter conversations is the exact same thing. If they're talking about local happenings, enter into those conversations, then follow them, and get to know them. If you like knitting, search for conversations about knitting with people (whether from your area or not). By talking with people around the world about things that YOU are passionate about, the people in your network who share those passions WILL take notice, and they'll want to do business with you when the time is right. (Some of those people live in your town, but many of them live elsewhere but know someone in your town, and others live elsewhere but will be moving to your town someday.) For what it's worth, I wrote a 3-part series on how to find discussions going on right now that you might be able to jump in on - further expanding your network.

The power is in the network. The power of any social network isn't necessarily in the conversations you have with people striking up a deal. It's with people OVERHEARING you talk about things that you are passionate about, and then either taking action and getting to know you more or better yet - reach out to THEIR network and get THEIR friends in touch with you...

Last week, we had a DenverTweetup, and someone from SPAIN who is following me saw the announcement. She knew she had a few followers on HER list from the Denver area, so without even being asked, she "retweeted" my announcement to her list. I barely know her, but she was willing to help out becauase she saw value in my tweet that she could contribute to. That's the power of social networking.

As another example: I see people in my network mention that they're moving somewhere, or getting a job in that area almost daily. In those cases, I REGULARLY tell them to get in touch with my twitter friends who I know work in that area. In fact, I make it a daily effort to do that for SOMEONE in my network. If you were to "recommend" yourself without already knowing them, you'd be a twitter spammer (and possibly get blocked), but if I recommend them, they just might listen because a non self-serving recommendation from someone else carries a lot more credibility. (Besides, it costs me nothing to do so. Why wouldn't I help a fellow Twitterer out?) The point isn't "follow Joel so he recommends me", but that there are other people on twitter who will certainly do that for you once they've gotten to know you, and once you have friends like that, there is no limit to how much business you might get.

Help one, be seen by many. Just like Realtors who host talk-radio shows about real estate love it when someone calls in and they get a deal out of it -- that's not why they do the radio show. They do it so they can share their knowledge with that one person, and have 10,000 or 20,000 OTHER people benefit from that knowledge. By helping one or two people during the phone call, thousands of others establish them as an expert in that area, and then when the time is right for them, they just might do business with them.

Real Estate Marketing Tips from Joel McDonald of Automated Homefinder

Sometimes the simplest things make the biggest difference.

Do you fail more often than succeed?

If *you* could ask any question of an online marketing expert...

Getting My Daughter High at the Beach.

Do you own a website, or a billboard?

Real Estate, Schmeal Estate -- How's Your Golf Game?

No one cares how much you know...

Can't Listen Live During Our Show? Here are the archives for Social Media Edge (JCKC Radio)

Yes!

December 2008

January 2009

February 2009

March 2009

April 2009

May 2009

June 2009

If you want to join us live, we broadcast every Tuesday at noon Eastern (11am Central, 10am Mountain time, 9am Pacific) right here: http://blogtalkradio.com/jckc

Do you need a bigger/better/faster website?

311,300% ROI - This Boulder Agent is Cruisin

10 Things You Can Do With Adwords That You Can't Do Organically

Long Tail vs. Short Tail - More Examples From the "Long Tail Evangelist"

The Results Are In -- Links from Active Rain ROCK!

When You Absolutely, Positively, Missed a Deadline

Your blog is like a Reality TV Show

Don't drink the "TweeterGetter" Kool-Aid

Darryl & His Brother Darryl: A case study about "Long Tail" and Real Estate Marketing

Don't waste a gift from the search engine gods...

I'm still not doing very well on the search engines...

"Let's Make a Deal" Real Estate

Inman Connect Recap

Inman Connect Real Estate Conference -- NYC

Ever feel like this??

Social Networking Webinar Tonight

"Only a few people in my town are on Twitter".

If you could ask any question of an online marketing expert...