The single best investment you can make in your business as it relates to online marketing is a good great IDX product. If you are spending any resources (time or money being the two most obvious) attempting to get noticed online, your IDX will make or break those efforts. What should your IDX do? Maybe you'd like to join me for a class at ActiveRain University where we talk about linking out of your blog posts and how to set up your links for optimal performance. Half of that class is dedicated to how a capable IDX is set up and why that set up is important..........
Beyond that, a great integrated IDX (meaning your front end website where you show prospects listings talks to your back-end lead management tool) is paramount for lead conversion. Unless things have changed since we had our real estate company in the mid 2000's, agent have a hard time following up with leads over the duration of the home buying process. Some of these people sign up on your site over a year before they need your service. You stop calling them after the first day (maybe you keep trying for a couple of days, but on average it isn't much longer than that). An integrated IDX will tell you a $h!@ ton about that prospect. My favorite thing to know? When they come back to your site............my wife converts leads at a pretty high rate and her ability to know who is looking at homes today has a huge impact on her business. She has thousands of leads she could call today, why not start with the people that raised their hand?
I would have this same feeling whether or not Market Leader owned ActiveRain. In fact, I don't care if you use Market Leader's IDX (although Keller Williams and Century 21 have both aligned with them to offer the product to their agents) as long as you use something that has the same capabilities. If you are going to spend your time blogging to drive interested eyeballs to your business, make sure you have the proper tools to connect with them. I'm going to keep writing about this until I can't find any bad examples of sites to use for my links class from amongst the members on ActiveRain.........
Looks like we are going to be talking about Google+ at RainCamp. It has a pretty good lead in the poll from our announcement of the Raincamp speaker lineup. You did get signed up for RainCamp, right? We have a pretty stellar list of speakers, me excluded. Drop by and check them out and get signed up before all the seats are full. Did I mention it's free?
Has anyone been approached by (or approached) HGTV about doing one of their shows? My wife was recently in contact with a producer for House Hunters, the HGTV show about people finding their next home. She's at the application process and where do they find these people? 5 days of shooting, 8 hours a day? Where are you going to find a client who is willing to take 5 days off from work to do this? You couldn't pay me to spend my vacation with TV camera's following me around for 40 hours so I could be on TV for 30 minutes. I think I've just realized my reality star hopes are dashed..............unless someone is interested in doing a show about hack golfers? I'd be game for that.
I kind of want to throw my hat in the ring to mentor someone for Dick's contest. If you are an ActiveRain member who had someone reach out and assist you during your period of getting acclimated with ActiveRain, I would sure hope you take some time to pay it forward. If you are someone just getting started and you'd like a mentor, maybe this rusty old veteran can help you out. Although, in the spirit of full disclosure, I might not be the best mentor as I'm highly unorganized. But, I do know a few things about using AR effectively. I think it would be fun to take someone just getting started and turn them into a full blown addict!
Baseball season starts tomorrow............except it already started. My Seattle Mariners kicked off the season last week in Japan against the Oakland A's for a two game set. The games started at 3am Seattle time. I Didn't get a chance to watch because I was.....SLEEPING! This was a horrible idea!! It may have worked for a Yankee or a Rangers fan, but let me tell you a little secret about Mariner fans. We only have hope on opening day. After that, we get to actually see our team perform and all hope is gone. And for this season, we didn't even get to see them play, we just got to see a box score. Even worse! So now, as they return to the US for their real opening day, we are 1-1 and already know that our offense is pathetic and our only hope to win is when Felix Hernandez is on the hill (the reason we got one win, even though we had to get it in extra innings and Felix got a no-decision after pitching 8 innings and giving up only one run). Thanks MLB, you ruined the one day each year when a Mariner fan can have hope.
San Dimas High School Football Rules!!! (100 points for the first person that can tell me what movie this is from)
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