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Social Networking for realtors

This should be interesting as a little experiment.

Do realtors really respond to social networks ? I guess 41,152 members says that there must be some interest in this.

I'm curious to know how many realtors are actively marketing on the internet. Obviously you all have websites, and maybe a blog? But are you buying google ad words, are you optimizing your pages for google, creating off site keyword links to your site to improve your ranking?

Not really sure what the stats are on these types of things, I'm guessing that this community has a pretty tech savvy group of realtors but is this the norm? or the exception. I'm going to guess the exception.

Look forward to meeting some of you online here.

We provide web marketing services as well as audio promotion with our SellFM.com Talking Signs

Posted by Riel Roussopoulos - SEO & Web Strategy Expert on 08/02/2007 09:04 PM

Comments (8)

talking sign, talking house, web marketing, real estate marketing, fm radio, radio marketing

8 Comments on Social Networking for realtors

AUG

2007

Just because the # at the top says 41,152 members doesn't mean those are active members! I'm willing to wager that two-thirds of those 'members' have not even blogged once...when I go through just the people in my area, about 540 - or + most of them don't blog at all. There is a small handful that regularly blog! So I say they don't care for the 'social networking' part...and I also say they have NO clue as to how much they are missing out on!

:) Thanks Mary

My experience here in vancouver has been that it's like pulling teeth to get realtors to try new things.

They seem content to distribute postcards and cold call people, and very few have grasped the concept of engaging people that are already searching for their service, rather than trying to force it on people that are not.

I have yet to meet any realtors that buy google adwords unless their brokers are doing it for them. And the whole trend of using your name as your main website, rather than something linked to the community you are trying to farm is so backwards to how people think on the web.

I have had huge success with a site we designed for a client called LiveInStrathcona.com With a little keyword optimizing we're placing on the top page for all sorts of variations on the community name (strathcona) plus homes / properties / listings ...

It has catapulted his business from being a buyers agent to listing and selling 15 homes last month.

The whole focus being more on the community than on his real estate business or the listings, they are just part of the site. Yet it's skyrocketed him to the first page on google for his area and it's shown a huge impact on his bottom line.

Anyway, I'm ranting :) I just love figuring out this stuff and it always amazes me when more people don't take advantage of these types of strategies... or wont try them for fear of being different.

I'm hoping I can change some minds :)

AUG

2007

Welcome to ActiveRain and congratulations on your first post!

FEB

I've found that blogging and adwords have given me a great opportunity to combine business with pleasure. The articles I write provide me with quality links to send interested parties and add to my organic searches as well as good landing sites for my adwords. It has been a win/win for me.

MAR

I have started social networking about 1 month ago. I thought this was a thing for the younger generation, but I will admit, I love it. I find myself looking forward to getting home so that I can get on the internet and communicate with hundreds of collegues and new friends I have met through social networking. I have alot to learn, but look forward to it. I recruit and training new agents that start with our company and I explain the importance of social networking and how it can help their career as a realtor. I still have cold feet on blogging, not sure what to blog about and would it be of interest to anyone. I will overcome this obstacle. Michelle Cappabianca

JUN

In my opinion most agents have no clue what social networking is and how it works.

As you mentioned above they are content to send out post cards and cold call, then when they try to get into social networking they use the same tactics and wonder why it doesn't work. It's not their fault. We all grew up watching TV and listening to the radio. Interrupt marketing has been a part of our culture since the beginning. The problem is that these old school tactics don't work on new school media.

I think it's important for the REALTORs that choose to participate to set the example for the others.

Right now the internet is still wide open. There's a limited window of opportunity to claim your "social real estate." I think what your doing is great Riel. I'm not sure why agents are always so narcissistic trying to claim their name over their farm area. It makes no sense, but that's what they were taught so they continue doing what they have always done.

The future belongs to Social REATORs.

Jonathan Rivera

The Real-Techguy

Wow, Johnathan,

Thanks so much for your detailed comments, I agree with you 100%

It's been interesting (since this was my first post... looking like almost 2 years ago now) to see how real estate agents react to our promotional strategies.

Despite taking Rick from a 20% market share to over 90% market share in his farm (all without his picture mind you) they still have a "show me" attitude.

So much so that we stopped trying to sell our community solution directly to agents, and build them ourselves instead.

It's easier to sell agents the leads off the site, than it is to get them to invest in their own marketing.

Ironic, since in the end, we make way more money referring business to them than we do in actually selling them to same solutions we use to get those leads for them in the first place.

Apparently in this fied, it's easier to simply sell them fish, than to teach them to fish for them selves.

Oh well... their loss is our gain.

Riel

OCT

A few months ago, a realtor stopped into my office and asked me if SEO was right for them. I surprised him with my answer. I said, “I’m not sure, let’s find out.” In general, SEO works best for people that are selling really expensive items. This is because all things being equal, doing 100 SEO for something worth $1 generally only brings 2x as much traffic as doing SEO for a website selling things worth $10,000. The conversion rate for the website selling $1 trinkets is going to be lower then the one selling a $10,000 service, but not by as much as you might think. The conversion rate depends on the • quality of the product • quality of the website • competitiveness of the pricing (or at least perceived competiteveness). So, to give you actual numbers… If we did SEO for a website that sells $1 widgets, we might get them 10,000 extra visitors/ month at the end of the first year. This might sound like a lot, but you can only expect them to sell widgets to two to five percent of the visitors. So, they’ll make $200-$500. Let’s consider the people selling the $10,000 product. They might only have a 0.5% conversion and get an additional 2,000 visitors/ month at the end of the first year. I’m being quite conservative here. 2,000 visitors x 0.5% = 10 sales/month, or $100,000/month in revenue. Pretty amazing, isn’t it. If you want to do SEO for your website, you need to find an expensive item to sell. What’s the most expensive item that the average person sells during their lifetime? It’s their home. The realtor isn’t generating $200k in revenue every time he/she sells a home. The realtor might be generating $10k in commission revenue. But still, the numbers are impressive. As a realtor, you can expect a SEO campaign with e reasonably budget (around $5,000/month) to generate around $100,000/month in revenue. This works out to a return on Investment (ROI) of $20 in revenue for every $1 invested in SEO. I finished this discussion and the realtor said three words. “Let’s do it.” He thought for a moment, and added another word “now”. If you’d looking for a good how-to document that describes almost everything you need to know, then check out this PDF.: http://www.bergstrom-seo.com/resources/google-search-engine-optimization-starter-guide.pdf. It’s a pretty long document (22 pages) but it tells you everything that you need to know about SEO. Good luck! You can find more about how SEO relates to the real estate industry here: http://www.bergstrom-seo.com/articles/2009/10/seo-and-real-estate/

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