When does it take almost 3 hours to drive 69 miles? When you are trying to get through Washington, DC rush hour traffic, of course. That was the way my day started last Wednesday as I headed from Baltimore to suburban Virginia for the CyberStars® Virginia Regional Summit. No pressure, of course, that I was crawling along and guaranteed to be late for the 9:00 a.m. start. Since I had agreed to do a short presentation on advertising, I was just hoping I wouldn't be late for that, too!

Thank goodness, Lee did the driving. At least I was able to catch up on emails and phone calls as we crept along. With the accelerated marketing event coming up the next morning, and the predictable last-minute craziness that created, I was so grateful to have a chauffer.

Finally…we arrived, and it was great to see twenty of my fellow CyberStars. The meeting was organized by James Nellis and the Nellis Group, and they did a great job along with our fearless leader, Allen. That's me with Randy Rutan, Allen, and James.

My turn to speak came right before lunch. All the presenters had their information on thumb drives that we passed around so everyone had everything. What else would you expect from a room full of techno-types? It's a good thing everyone had my outline since I didn't follow it at all. Yep, I had a mike, a podium stand, and the button to change the slides. I used two out of three, which I guess won't surprise anyone who knows my Type E ways.

My presentation was "Finding Your Sweet Spot in Advertising: The Best of Free and Best of Paid." Since I did a post not long ago about Atlantic City's candy shop, It's Sugar, this title was certainly appropriate. That's where I found my signature candy – brown M&M's, each with an "M" on it. One of my points was that you need to find something unique to promote your self. It doesn't have to be expensive and you can have fun with it. So the night before the presentation I took a bunch of small plastic bags filled with the brown M&Ms and tied each with a brown ribbon. As I was talking about my very own monogrammed candy, I started tossing the individual bags out to the CyberStars. My aim was not too good, but they got the point.

Active Rain was a major topic and I talked about some of the contacts I've made here. I explained Listings by Address as a way to market my properties, blogging about my area, and how I have been found with Realtor.com and the Pikesville post.

I spoke of inspiration and being open to seeing possibilities in unlikely places like, like candy that just happens to have my initial on it. And I also talked about the Roomba that came into my home as a vacuum but that I think will make a terrific settlement gift for my sellers. What they get, though, will be a "Rome-ba" – and they won't forget my name!

The presentation covered a lot, but the beginning and end sum it up. I started with the basics: "You must invest in yourself. By the time you can afford to advertise, you no longer need to." And ended with these thoughts about today's market:

• This is the time you MUST advertise. Don’t cut back on things that are working, but look for low-cost alternatives like Active Rain

• Be creative – don’t do what everyone else does.

• Holidays are great times to advertise – families are together, in their homes, and have the time to think about finding a larger home or maybe finding a place for soon-to-graduate college students.
  

• If you are serious about being in this business, you need to spend money up front for personal promotion.  If you don't believe you can make that money back, then you need to rethink being in real estate.