I know your secret. Honestly…I do.
You aren’t knocking the ball out of the park, regardless of your blogging effort. You play around on Twitter, Facebook, Active Rain, and might even comment on Bloodhound Blog. You’re probably REALLY smart and can’t believe that you’re having problems in business. I know you are; I’ve read most of your blog posts, Tweets, and Facebook messages. You fancy yourself ethical. I believe that, too.
Why is a smart, ethical real estate agent like you failing then?
You got hoodwinked. Tricked. Sold a bill of goods. That snake oil you bought? Web 2.0- it was supposed to be the new way to do business; you just didn’t realize it was gonna take 3-5 years. It’s taking longer than you imagined and you’re stuck. Your spouse is riding your ass as she punches a clock while you play on Twitter. Your kids wonder why you treat the occasional prospect who calls you to Ruth’s Chris while making them eat off the value menu at Mc Donald’s. You’re failing because you bought into the hype and you’re scared to admit that you blew it.
That’s okay- it’s not your fault.
You see, I got hoodwinked too. I was all puffed up, speaking in San Francisco and New York like I was some kind of expert. As I was hob-nobbing with the RE.net, I heard more than one of the “blogging elite” talk about their fear of personal foreclosure. I heard the practitioners talk about losing their homes and the tech gurus talk about how rich they were getting…
…off the poor practitioners whom they appointed “experts”. THAT disgusted me.
I knew I had to make a VERY big change in my life. I was following the “wrong crowd” and if I kept it up, I’d be face-down, lying in the gutter, with no customers at all. I definitely didn’t want that…so I made some changes. Those changes, combined with the things I learned from the folks who DO make money online, grew my business while my competitors were submitting employment applications at the mall.
Let me do my best Joe Biden… It’s not your fault.
Greg Swann and I hosted the Bloodhound Blog UNCHAINED Social Media Marketing Conference (sponsored by Zillow). About one hundred people gathered for three days and listened to the ideas about the brave new world. We learned a few things and changed our Orlando conference to reflect those revelations:
1- SEO matters.
2- SEO can be helped but not manufactured.
3- Organic online branding, which we talk about constantly, does take time. It is the future of marketing for real estate and mortgage brokerage but the critical mass isn’t there, yet. It’s coming and we need to be prepared.
4- You (and I) can go broke waiting for the masses to move to the right side of the learning curve. While we’re waiting, we need to find out EXACTLY how to find those potential buyers and deliver content to them.
5- IDX solutions work. The contact information capture feature, as distasteful as you may find it, works. Joe the Plumber searches for homes online and listings are the bait. Blog content, designed to call Joe to action, augment but can’t replace the contact information capture feature JUST YET. I will stipulate that more savvy consumers demand free access to listings but the average home shopper will give up his contact information to see home listings. There is a way to appease both sets of consumers and Greg Swann will teach you how to do it.
6- Social networking DEFINITELY works but you gotta bridge the digital divide that keeps potential customers behind that cyber-wall.
7- Top of mind status is important. Seth Godin talks about the importance of permission-based marketing but Gary Keller showed you how to do it. I’ll talk about how to advance the MREA idea and integrate it in into your social media efforts.
8- Buying traffic doesn’t suck as much as we think it does. It costs money and it constantly evolves but it DOES work. You’ll have a chance to hear Mitch Ribak discuss this. He is doing volume that places him among the top 50 real estate teams in the country. Mitch gets his business by buying traffic.
9- There is more than one way to “skin the cat”. Kelley Koehler (aka HouseChick) found out how and you’ll have a chance to hear how the HouseChick finds gold in sparsely searched streams for a lot less money. It’s tricky but effective.
Click on the PayPal button shown below to get your $99 ticket for BloodhoundBlog Unchained in Orlando on Friday, November 7th, 2008
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Let’s face it. The RE 2.0 world just ain’t cutting it for practitioners by itself. Oh, there are people making a living through blogging but they aren’t demonstrating break-out results. While we are committed to the future, we live in the present…and the present challenges are just too much for the 2.0 offerings. Here’s what you can learn at the Bloodhound Blog UNCHAINED Online Marketing Conference in Orlando, Friday, November 7, 2008:
Greg Swann will deliver his manifesto about the “brave new world”. If you haven’t heard it, it’s nothing short of amazing. He’ll tell you why you, the real estate practitioner, can disintermediate traditional chokepoints and talk directly to the consumer. He’ll explain how to use the principles of direct response marketing in your online profiles….so they sell your services 24/7/365 (even while you’re fast asleep). He’s teach you how to farm the big guys’ crops by using their strength against them.
I’m going to discuss my ninja-like tactics of social media marketing. I”ll show you how to contribute to a community, position yourself properly online, demonstrate expertise, and have customers to talk about YOU. I’ll share the six words, placed in the proper forum, that led to eight closed loans in a three month period. I’ll show you the single best Facebook feature, the hidden 2.0 feature of LinkedIN, and the best place to find Joe the Homebuyer online (HINT: Joe isn’t in a sea of voices nor is he checking out homevalues).
Alas, while the title suggests that blogging won’t get you to the top, that doesn’t mean that top producers can’t blog. Teri Lussier will show you how to avoid the echo chamber and build a local community through a weblog:
Warning: This is not the Get Rich Quick way of Blogging for Dollars. This is the slow and thoughtful way of connecting, networking, communicating. It doesn’t get you to the top of Google in 30 days, but it does get you as close to belly-to-belly as you can get online. It means you have to pay attention, think, share, discuss. It also means that we may not have anything in common, so I’m going to have to work to find a common ground. It means that I will find something interesting in your posts, and share it on my blog. In other words, it takes time to build relationships locally, which may not be the case with the echo chamber.
The echo chamber: I’m okay, you’re okay; I’m a Realtor, you’re a Realtor. Ah. A shared experience, a common ground. I may not have to pay too much attention because we have real estate in common. Unlike those local folks who may not want to talk to me at all because I’m a Realtor. You and I can fall into conversation faster, with more ease, talk shop- and it’s all good. Except it isn’t really. Ultimately it’s distracting to someone like me.
Sean Purcell will share how he is listing (and selling) properties “The Bloodhound Way”:
So… within minutes of hanging the sign I had eyeballs from three cars and conversion on one; you have got to love that kind of impact! BTW, the first thing my clients said was they loved the sign. I remarked how standard signs only tell people a house is for sale while marketing for the brokerage. One of the ideas behind a custom sign is to encourage people to stop the car and get out to read the sign (thus increasing the possibility of interest). They replied: ”This should do it. You know… every agent in the area is going to stop and read it!” Just love that.
I told you about Kelley Koehler. Don’t listen to me, listen to Teri Lussier’s description of her presentation “What to Do When Google Doesn’t Love You“:
If you are not paying attention to what the Housechick is doing, you are missing out on one of the sharpest minds in the RE.net. Her Vegas presentation on Pay Per Click marketing was, by all accounts, one of the best sessions of the entire weekend. Watch this space and learn how brilliant and unique marketing can create a kickass online presence. Some take aways that you can put to use whether or not you care to PPC “Win the small battles. Go niche.” Kelley’s focus for her ads is not for broad search terms like “Tucson real estate”, but in very well defined terms like “average sales price for homes in Tucson”, or even more narrow- down to neighborhoods. Then she writes posts to answer that question. She likes to focus on verbs “Buy a home in Tucson”, “Search for a Tucson home”. She’s using concise terms, with a clear benefit, and action words to create her ads. I think using those parameters as a basis for a post and post titles, is a wise idea. Write to that person’s mind, write in an engaging style, you’ve got yourself a blog that has real value for the reader.
I already mentioned Mega-Producer Mitch Ribak. He’s breaking records in a crappy real estate market (The Space Coast ain’t exactly “hot”). How the heck does he do it? Well, this isn’t Mitch’s first rodeo. He’s been involved with internet marketing long before he started in real estate. You’re never gonna believe how he learned it. I asked him and he told me:
One thing most of you don’t know about me as my first Internet business was a Dating
Service. Not only did I have the dating service, I had an advice column called AskMitch.com. Oh and there was the radio show, Ask Mitch The Date Doctor, that played on 45 radio stations around the country.
So, yes, my venture into the Internet back in 1996 came from my imagination that there has to be a better way to do business.
I worked for Great Expectations Video Dating Service as their Director from 1993 to mid 1996. It was the only time since I was 23 that I hadn’t worked for myself. I spent half of 1996 trying to find a company that would build a dating software for me that I could use over the Internet.
Funny thing was that at that time they all told me it wasn’t possible to do data integration over the Internet. I didn’t believe them of course so for a half a year I searched and talked to tons of companies…it just made sense to me.
Finally I found a company that said they had heard of a new type of software that would allow me to do everything I wanted. My customers would now be able to see pictures and profiles of people over the Internet.
Think you might learn something from Mitch Ribak? Don’t say that “you’re business is different from a dating site“- Mitch has close to 350 reasons that verify that it isn’t.
While he’ll share his online marketing expertise with you at UNCHAINED Orlando, I forgot to tell you that he offers it at the e-homes realty network. What I haven’t told you is that Mitch is going to give ALL of the Unchained Orlando attendees two follow-up lessons in addition to a $49 gift (I’ll let him tell you about the gift at the conference).
I know what you’re thinking. Just what have Greg Swann and Brian Brady cooked up now? Dating sites? Long-tail pay-per-click? The Bloodhound Way of listing? Building a community weblog? Cold-calling Facebook profiles? It will NEVER work because I’m a blogger…and the tech guys TOLD me that RE 2.0 works
I’ll say it again, just like Joe Biden. I know you’re secret. Honestly, I do.
So, here’s the deal. I share our secret with you. We were nowhere near the few hundred people we thought might attend the Bloodhound Blog Unchained Online Marketing Conference in Orlando. We did a lousy job promoting it because we were pretty busy. As luck would have it, personal implementation of the principles we discussed in Phoenix caused us both to get REALLY busy in our day jobs. We lowered our expectations and reduced the room size…and that benefits you greatly.
Unchained Orlando will be MUCH more intimate for the attendees. You’ll have better access to Mitch, Kelley, Sean, Teri, Greg, and me. You’ll have a chance to bond with the other folks attending to exchange marketing ideas. I’m toying with the idea of organizing some “mastermind groups” comprised of the people who show up and participate.
We never said we were in this for the money and thank God that our speakers share their wealth so generously. Here’s the problem with the smaller room:
There really aren’t a lot of seats left now.
With two weeks left, our market is pretty limited; that’s why I’m hitting those of you who plan to be in Orlando. If you’re going to the NAR convention, the value we offer, for less than a c-note, will yield a much higher ROI than you’ll get from the convention…
…although I LOVE Kool & The Gang.
When: Friday, November 7th, 2008, 8 am to 8 pm
Where: Crowne Plaza Hotel and Conference Center, Orlando Airport, 5555 Hazeltine National Dr, Orlando, FL 32812
See you in two weeks!
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