This is the first in a 5 -part series about online marketing and effective prospecting in the digital age. A good many of you might be thinking "What the (&*#!) is she talking about?" Am I honestly suggesting that you let your website die a long-overdue and merciful death? Actually, I am.
For those of you wondering if I'm either:
A. a few fries short of a happy meal
B. living under a moss-covered rock
C. both...
let me offer the following bite of a reality sandwich.
Denial is an effective coping mechanism but it changes NOTHING
So, if you don't want to change anything about your life or your business, stop reading now!
Most of you have a very worn-out and unhealthy relationship with your personal agent site but, like most bad relationships, you're probably afraid to end it despite the fact that it provides few or no sales leads.
Are you wondering:
•- "How will I survive alone?"
•- "What if, one day in the future, my website starts giving more than it takes?"
•- "How could I possibly get sales leads without a website? It would be professional suicide!"
Or would it? There are hundreds of thousands if not millions of agents who have at least one website. I know of agents who have twenty or more sites and still get no business from them. And still, the National Association of Realtors reports that the average agent gets only 3% of their business from their own site!
Gulp.... Now what? What do you do with a 97% probability of failure? (failure on your web site's part to do what it's supposed to do.) One possibility is that you recognize that perhaps YOU might do things differently than you have and that it might lead to DIFFERENT results.
Hint: Yes, I am 2000% aware that 85% of home buyers begin their search online. Still you do NOT have to have your own individual web site to have a web PRESENCE.
How to have a web presence without a website
Where are you reading this article? On my own site or on Active Rain's site? Chances are good it's the latter. Why, because ActiveRain has accomplished something you're highly unlikely to accomplish on your own: MOMENTUM, SCALE, SCOPE and last but not least, TRAFFIC.
A site's volume of visitors is a function of its rank with the search engines. ActiveRain's appeal is not its blogging platform which is limited. Its appeal is the fact that it has AGGREGATED content which makes for great Google Juice (the yummy stuff that puts a site higher and higher in search results).
When you have a presence on ActiveRain, even without an outside blog, you're significantly more likely to generate business as a result. There's power in numbers, and there's safety in numbers too.
Take Away: to leverage the power of the Internet to your own advantage, use someone else's site! Benefit from ActiveRain's rank, impressive rate of growth and upward motion.
To prove my point, riddle me this batman:
•- Does your own site rank in nearly the top one thousand sites in the United States?
•- Does your own site have over nine thousand inbound links from other sites?
•- Has your reach into the global pool of online traffic increased 25% in the last 90 days?
Is there more to it than this? Of course there is but you'll have to subscribe to my blog for the next installment in my series "The top 5 reasons to take your site off life support".
Please send me your questions about marketing and I'll be happy to answer and link back to your site if I use your question in a future post.
Joyanne Sloan, Real Estate Marketing Consultant
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