Realtor to First Time Homebuyer: First you folks tell me what you can afford, then we’ll have a good laugh and go on from there.
What is your reason for maintaining a website, participating in social networks, and maybe even blogging in the real estate niche? I can tell you without hesitation that there is ONLY one reason for the work and time I put into these activities ... generating qualified and quality leads.
Sales can sink in more ways than just overall volume. Depending on the market and other factors, you could just be working very hard with less-than-qualified prospects, or some of the toughest clients with unrealistic expectations.
I can tell you without any doubt or hesitation that many real estate professionals are bad-mouthing their Web leads when a major issue is totally under their control. "What, you know anybody can visit my website and I can't control whether they're a pain in the backside or unable to afford a home or not!" Think that if you want, but while I can't control who visits my site, I can control the content they find there and how it meets their needs.
No lawyer jokes please, though they're fun. I say that because out of my last dozen or so clients from all around the country looking for vacation homes or retirement homes in my area, two were Judges, three were attorneys, one was an accountant business owner, one was a multiple branch abstract company owner and several others were self-employed business owners. What trait do these people have in common in most cases? They're very analytical, bottom-line oriented, and you can use another shorter term if you want that starts with "anal."
We're talking about more than half of my clients owning businesses or in some way engaged in highly detailed professions. And, it doesn't hurt that they have some money either! I always ask my clients what they found interesting about my site or why they chose to deal with me. Since I get all of my business from the Internet, it's a safe question to ask. I've been called the "hermit Realtor" by my peers because they never see me out mingling, greeting, joining, sponsoring, or in any print advertising. I am a freelance writer as well, and when I'm not working with a real estate client, I'm sitting in a room alone pounding a keyboard and answering emails from my future clients.
What I usually hear as an answer to my question is that they found content on my real estate site that answered their questions and did so with enough detail that they returned to the site frequently in their property search activities (mostly buyers, as I'm a buyer agency only). So, what they're telling me is that my content satisfies their analytical nature, and I know it's the case because I watch my page views and see that I get great traffic to pages, posts or articles which include topics like:
- What's a survey and what's an ILR (Improvement Location Report)?
- How inspections and repair negotiations work in my market.
- Easements and how they work in a rural area in crossing property for access.
- Water rights questions.
- Water well depths in various areas, and water quality questions.
- What are "exceptions" in a title insurance binder/committment?
- Can you get a title binder exception removed?
- Property sales statistics, more stats, more statisitcal reports, more...
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