Build Your Real Estate Business Using Online Strategies

John Skrabec from Live Urban Real Estate in Denver discusses the strategies of building an on-line presence to market your real estate business.

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Interviewer: Today we are talking with John Skrabec, broker-owner of Live Urban Real Estate in Denver. John welcome to the show.

John Skrabec: Dan, good to see you.

Interviewer: Thanks for being here.

John Skrabec: Thanks.

Interviewer: Today we are talking about four things every broker should know about building an online presence.

John Skrabec: Right.

Interviewer: And the first thing when people think online, they are thinking probably spreading out to the masses. Is it still important to kind of pick an area?

John Skrabec: I think its critical to your online success to pick an area. You know weve kind of focused on urban Denver and thats our specific market opportunity and its where we wanted to focus our business, certainly can that be anywhere but having that focus in that priority area certainly helps create a brand, create an identity and starts crafting a brand image that you could build on for building your business.

Interviewer: I dont think a lot of brokers know that even though they are online and they may be advertising with a portal here or doing something here that they can still zero in on a local area, a Greenwood Village or Cherry Hills, whatever it may be.

John Skrabec: Whatever it may be. And I think once you do that, then you have to start delivering the information.

Interviewer: Yeah.

John Skrabec: And becoming the expert in that area and proving to people that you know that area whether its Park Hill or Wash Park or the Highlands or Greenwood Village or Brighton, whatever that might be.

Interviewer: Okay.

John Skrabec: Certainly once you decide that then you start delivering that hyper local information, you know; you have the information about those communities, the schools, the shopping, and the best local coffee shop.

Interviewer: So lets talk about that because every realtor asks the $64,000 question which is; "If Im going to give them content, what do I give them, what do they want to see?"

John Skrabec: Well I think that todays buyers and sellers want to see up to the minute online statistics. Thats where MetroList and PrimeAccess really comes in, we pull active up to the minute data, everyday, feed it into our website, so if you go to the page thats about Bonnie Brae, youre going to find out how many houses are on the market, whats the average asking price, how long will they be on the market, and they will be able to quickly view those listings. And thats what people want, they want that information quickly and its replicating, kind of that one-on-one experience, that you might have with a client at open house or the office, and replicating that experience online and thats what I think is really important to do when youre building an online presence.

Interviewer: Now one of the things that Ive told realtors for ages is that, you know, you cant constantly be selling, particularly when you are delivering content online. Every once in a while you should throw in a mixture of stuff that just kind of like 'news they can use, that type of thing.

John Skrabec: Well and I think thats where kind of the social media, blogging, dialogue kind of comes in and using those channels to be able to do that. We have a lot of our brokers, we have a group blog and weve got 50 brokers in the office, and they are all blogging about those kinds of topics, whats happening in the neighborhoods, whats happening in the market in that specific pocket of homes, neighborhood events, things like that. So we're creating that dialogue, thats also helping drive people to the site.

Interviewer: Yeah. That sounds interesting those statistics, weve got to wrap up now, but the number one reason why people would unfriend you on social networking is too frequent, irrelevant posts.

John Skrabec: Right, and I think that delivering that data, relevant data that people want to hear is critical, we spend a lot of time thinking about that, timely messages that are about the market, people friend Live Urban Real Estate online because they want to know up-to-the-minute real estate information and thats what we deliver to them.

Interviewer: Thank for being with us.

John Skrabec: Dan, a pleasure.

Interviewer: Appreciate it.

John Skrabec: You bet.