USING MY BLOG TO ENHANCE RELATIONSHIPS WITH CLIENTS & PROSPECTS: Part 1

Bob Stewart is at it again!  He's issued another one of his blogging challenges and for those of us who are up for the challenge, Bob has offered a wicked amount of points for those who can blow Bob out of the blogosphere with our blogging mastery.  All we have to do is answer one question, "How are we using our blog to enhance our existing relationships with clients and prospects?" 

Like all of Bob's challenges, he compels us to think of ways that we can best utilize the time we spend here in the rain on how to improve and/or increase our businesses.

For many here, blogging is their primary marketing method - they do very little marketing anywhere else.  For these folks, they must be using their blogs to their fullest extent.  While blogging isn't my only marketing strategy, it is one where I definitely want to improve my numbers in order for it to be more effective for me. 

Earlier this year, I learned a way to do this by one of AR's own blogging Guru's, Broker Bryant (BB).  If anyone doesn't know this extremely successful (and really funny and entertaining) broker and blogger, then you need to check him out immediately.  BB is an absolute wealth of incredible info about real estate, sales & marketing, negotiating and blogging. 

So what did I learn from BB about using my blog to enhance my existing relationships with clients and prospects?  Don't keep my blog posts simply restricted to my blog.

For example, when a prospect calls me inquiring about getting pre-approved, after the phone call, I follow it up with an email that includes links to a couple of my blog posts about a particular loan program we may have talked about like NSP or the HERO program or maybe the USDA Rural program. 

I follow this same practice when someone emails me inquiring about local down payment assistance programs (dpa) that they may have read about on my blog.  When I follow-up with a response to their requests, I will include links to blogs posts that pertain to info about our market that they need to know like pre-approving with REO bank reps or California Association of Realtors (C.A.R.) mortgage protection program. 

In doing this, it not only got more visitors to my blog but it inspired me to blog more consistently.  Like most bloggers, it's important to know that the time and energy we spend building our blogs is time and energy well spent and that it's actually working.  I recently shared a story about when it really hit me that my blogging was working. 

Shortly after I started promoting my blog to prospects that contacted me, I got a phone call from a woman who had contacted me about getting pre-approved.  Several phone calls and emails later, I had collected all of the necessary documentation I needed to begin her pre-approval.

We agreed to get together so that she could sign off on a mortgage application and all of the necessary disclosures.  She wasn't able to get away from her office to meet me at mine so I agreed to meet her at her office. 

When I got to her office and sat down with her at her desk, I noticed she had my blog up on her computer screen.  She asked me about one of my recent blog posts and afterwards when she closed down my blog, I noticed she had an icon to my blog on her computer desktop. 

I was so beside myself that someone I had just met would be that interested in me to put an icon to my blog on their desktop, it took everything I had at that moment to not just start gushing.

I had an ear to ear grin for the rest of the day thinking of that.  That's when it really hit me that my blogging was working and I was making some really great connections because of it. 

So on that note, thanks BB for great tip on promoting my blog - it's working fabulously, so much so that I started using it on my clients but I think I'll save that for Part 2.

USING MY BLOG TO ENHANCE RELATIONSHIPS WITH CLIENTS & PROSPECTS: Part 2

USING MY BLOG TO ENHANCE RELATIONSHIPS WITH CLIENTS & PROSPECTS: Part 3

Photos courtesy of flickr:  honeytech   brokerbryant   antigone78   peteherb   orcoo