BRER Real Estate Marketing Blog

If you don’t have a blog incorporated into your website, here are a few places you should evaluate for starting a blog.

Find a Free Real Estate Blog in an Established Community

There are many places to start a free blog.  You’d want to find a blog community that focuses on real estate to give your blog more credibility than a general site like Blogger, for example.

You’d also want to establish your blog in a community that will improve your chances of being noticed by the search engines.  Just as Squidoo lenses get more attention from the search engines because of the strength of the Squidoo community, there are equivalents in the world of real estate blogging.

Check These Real Estate Blog Communities

Here are three communities that fit the criteria mentioned above, in alphabetical order.

Active Rain - If you’re not a member of the Active Rain community yet, you might want to join even if you don’t host your blog there.  The community has over 36,000 members from many different real estate related industries.  It’s a great place to chat with and learn from other real estate professionals.
 
A free blog is included with your membership, and you can indicate whether your blog entries can be seen by community members only (for topics you want to discuss with other professionals) or by consumers (home buyers/sellers).  I have seen feedback on several blogs that indicate consumers do contact members based on their consumer-oriented blog posts.

RealTown - RealTown is a real estate community founded by the folks at Internet Crusade.  You may be familiar with their RealTalk listserv/forum, e-Pro courses and forum, and they provide a variety of other services to the industry.

I tried out one of their blogs and found it very user-friendly.  And your blog will get the advantage of being in a strong authority site for the industry.

Real Estate Webmasters - This is the newest community from a blogging standpoint.  It is sponsored by the same people who established the Real Estate Webmasters forum.  So, while their blog community is relatively new, the blogs share the search engine love from their established forum.  If you want a free listing in the directory, keep in mind that a link on your home page is required, but there are other alternatives (see this post’s comments).

Why Squidoo?

I know, you’re thinking: “But, I don’t have time to manage another website!” The good news is that a Squidoo “lens”, which is just another word for web page, doesn’t require much upkeep. This article will talk about ways to tweak the lens so that you have fresh content without a lot of ongoing maintenance.

The reason you need a Squidoo lens is that the search engines love Squidoo lenses. So, if you’ve decided the time has come to jump in, here are five steps that will make creating a lens as painless as possible.

There are lots of things you can do with a Squidoo lens. And, if you look at a variety of them, you’ll discover all the different variations. These five steps describe a way to create an interesting lens that will attract traffic and help you drive that traffic to your website.

Then, once you have the basics down, if you want to get fancy, there’s plenty of opportunity!

This is a long post, and I didn’t have time to upload any pretty pictures, so prepare yourself!

Read the rest of this entry »

You can make the most of your real estate blog by 1) providing useful content for your visitors, 2) including the keyword phrases you are targeting, and 3) using your blog to link to your website.

Put Useful Information on Your Real Estate Blog

I’ve talked about ideas for topics you can write about before.  Another way to come up with great content is just to keep your “antenna” out as you go through your day.  If someone asks you an intelligent question, your response might be a great blog post.  If one client asked the question, odds are there are other folks who are confused about the same issue.

The other day, I was talking to one of my clients about the subject of blog post topics.  Our conversation reminded her of a telephone call she’d had that day with one of her clients. The couple had recently written a contract on a new home. They told her they were very excited because they’d just purchased new applicances for their new home - on credit.

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The June Newsletter is published, and you can read the online version or sign up to receive a copy in your mailbox each month. 

In summary, there are two resources you really should review.  First, an article about voice mail etiquette caught my eye when I discovered that the five things you shouldn’t include in your outgoing message were in mine!  Don’t frustrate your callers - read this article and you might make a quick change to your outgoing message like I did!

The second is an article about the 10 steps you can take to become a neighborhood expert. Everyone says that you should be one, but this article has 10 very innovative ways to actually make it happen.   And, even better, the ideas aren’t expensive or nearly impossible for a normal human being.  Quite refreshing and very informative.

Enjoy!

If you want to start your own Squidoo lens, there is a lot of information to help you out.

• A lensmaster named Jack Lee has some great pages devoted to getting started on Squidoo.  Refer to the list of his lenses on his profile page.
• The Squidoo FAQ page
• SquidU (the Squid University)
• Squid Forum
• Lots of lenses on how to Squidoo

Since the Squidoo pages can often rank well in the search engines, it can be an excellent way to improve your real estate website’s ranking by establishing quality incoming links to your site.  Want to give it a try?   Get Started Now!

If you want to know how to add links and bold text on your Squidoo page, read on!

Read the rest of this entry »

Squidoo - it’s a weird name for an online community consisting of highly diverse quality content and links.  You may think of it as similar to Wikipedia.  It’s free, it provides a similar level of search engine exposure, and quality pages can rise in the search engines rapidly.  Creating pages on Squidoo can be an excellent way to increase your Internet presence and give a boost to the search engine visibility of your real estate website.  But, there are also major differences.

• Squidoo pages are called lenses - indicating a focus on a particular topic
• Individuals can easily create one or hundreds of lenses
• A lens generates revenue based on the Google ads displayed on each page - that revenue can be donated to charity or go to the “lensmaster”
• A lens can also generate revenue if products are sold on the lens

You really can’t appreciate the site unless you visit it.  And, the statistics as of early June, 2007 indicate that 9,000,000 visitors are visiting the site each month.

The site is the brain-child of the marketing/business guru, Seth Godin.  You may be most familiar with him as the author of The Guerilla Marketing Handbook, The Big Red Fez: How to Make Any Web Site Better, or one of his other books.  Besides his participation on Squidoo, Seth has a blog called, appropriately, Seth Godin’s Blog.

Participating on Squidoo is pretty easy.  For some of the content you’ll want to add to a lens page, you will need to know some simple html commands, such as how to bold text and add links.  But, other than that, no programming knowledge is required!

Check out our first Squidoo lens on Real Estate Website Strategies.

While you’re there, please rate the lens by clicking on the stars at the top left of the screen, and leave any comments or ideas here, or on the comment section at the bottom of the lens!

And, if you want to give it a try, create your own page right now!

For more information on starting your own lens, check out our blog post that contains a  short list of places to get assistance, and an explanation of how to bold text and add links in the Squidoo Text modules.

And, check out the Five Steps to Create a Squidoo Lens.

If I develop a brand and logo for my real estate consulting business, how will that brand coexist with my broker’s brand?

That’s a question I hear quite often.  The answer is that broker and agent brands work very effectively together.

First, you need to keep reminding yourself that you are an independent business owner.  You are not an employee of your broker’s firm.  If that seems difficult to establish as a mind-set, remind yourself about the last time you received a paycheck or W-2 from your broker.

And, marketing-savvy brokers appreciate the fact that any marketing strategies you use to increase your revenue are also in their best interest.  Of course, not all brokers are marketing-savvy.

Here are several ways to think about how your brand and your broker’s work together:

• Your broker is Chevrolet - you are the Corvette
• Your broker is Johnson & Johnson - you are Tylenol
• Your broker is Canon - you are the Multi-Pass Printer
• And, well, you get the idea

You wouldn’t walk into a Chevrolet dealership and say, “I’m interested in the little sports car”, and you don’t want people calling your broker saying, “I want to talk to the tall guy”.

Broker brands/logos and agent brands/logos are good for everyone.

You Do Have a Home Search on Your Website, Don’t You?

If you are a real estate agent or broker, you probably have a real estate website.  If you don’t, you’re getting into deeper trouble every day.  Take a look at the reasons why you need a real estate website, and get one - fast.

Assuming you do have a website, one of the decisions you made at some point was the type of home search you would provide for your visitors.  If you have a real estate website, but you don’t offer a home search for your area, you need to review our Big Ten things you should look for in a real estate website.

If you have a home search, you evidently know that one of the key reasons Internet buyers and sellers visit online sites is to search for homes.  Buyers are checking out the market and sellers are checking out the competition.

Alternatives for Adding a Home Search

You are typically faced with two alternatives for providing an online home search.  First, the MLS you belong to may provide a search that you can incorporate into your website.  The advantages to using the search provided by your MLS is that those search capabilities are usually either free or very low-priced.  But, that may not be your best alternative.

Your second alternative is to find a third-party IDX MLS vendor.  There are a number of advantages to using this type of a search.  Third-party vendors provide a number of additional capabilities that benefit you and your site visitors.  At a minimum, those vendors typically provide the ability for your site visitors to establish an account and login to your home search.   The result is that:

• Your can start a relationship with your site visitors.  You can use that contact from your site visitor to start establishing a relationship and to tailor your services to their needs.  (See What To Do with Your Leads, Part I and Part II).
• Your visitors can save home search criteria.  There is nothing more boring than entering the price range of homes, number of bedrooms, etc etc  You can help make your site “sticky” by letting your visitors define a search once, save it, and then quickly re-run the search when they visit your site again.
• Your visitors can save listings.  When a site visitor finds a listing of interest, they can “save” that listing and find it again easily - another big time saver.
• Your visitors can request automatic e-mail updates.  When homes that meet their search criteria are added to the MLS, they will automatically receive an e-mail notification.  This saves time for your visitor, and you’re not responsible for manually setting up an automatic notification with your MLS.  It’s a win-win situation.

But, My MLS Doesn’t Provide a Third-Party Alternative

Don’t be so sure!!  In my experience, there are three ways an MLS organization approaches the issue of third party IDX vendors.

1. There are absolutely no third party IDX vendors
2. There are third party IDX vendors approved by the MLS and very often those companies are listed on the MLS website - or, if you call the MLS, the person responsible for the online search will give you the names of the third party vendors
3. There are third party vendors who can supply you with a home search for your MLS listings, but the vendors are not listed on the MLS website, and the MLS employees will often swear to you that no such vendors exist

I’ve never been able to figure out how the third category came to be.  But, there has been more than one time where clients and I have checked with the MLS, only to be told theirs was the only alternative.  Then, a bit of web surfing proves the opposite.

This post was inspired by a conversation I had today with a member of ECAR (Emerald Coast Association of REALTORS).  While the agent had never heard of any third party vendors, and the MLS website does not list any, if you’re in that part of Florida, you’ll be glad to know that there are at least two very viable 3rd party IDX MLS vendors for your website.