Archive for Insider Insight
20 Twitter Tips for Real Estate Marketers
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This guest post was contributed by Bailey Harris, who writes about homeowners insurance for HomeownersInsurance.org.
Many real estate agents and marketers have begun to use Twitter as a sales and marketing tool. If you have been thinking about doing the same, or if you are simply looking for new ways to use your current Twitter account, the following tips will help get you started.
- Educate yourself. It is important to have an understanding of what Twitter is and how it works before you begin tweeting regularly.
- Learn the lingo. When you begin using Twitter, you will may read or hear strange terms like tweet (a post, message, or update on Twitter), retweet or RT (a reposted message), tweetup (an in-person gathering on Twitter), trending topics (the most mentioned terms on Twitter), and hashtag (a way of tagging or categorizing topics). Learning Twitter lingo will make everything easier to understand.
- Choose your Twitter name carefully. Your Twitter name will be your identity. You could choose to use your own name, a company name, or a keyword term that is somehow related to real estate.
- Add a custom picture. You can use a picture of yourself, an image of your company logo, or a picture of a home you are selling. The key is to choose a an image that looks professional.
- Create a bio. Keep it short and professional. You may also want to consider including your website, phone number, or email address somewhere in your Twitter bio to make it easier for potential clients to reach you.
- Choose a professional background. Twitter offers several backgrounds to choose from. You can also customize the background of your Twitter page using a site like Free Twitter Designer.
- Find people to follow. Following people is a good way to interact with the Twitter community and stay up-to-date on your industry and things that interest you. The people you choose to follow will often reciprocate and follow you as well. You can find people to follow by using the built-in Twitter feature “Suggestions for You” or by exploring Twitter directories, such as WeFollow or Twellow.
- Tweet about properties. Twitter is a great place to market some of the properties you are working with. You can post info about new listings, reduced listings, or neighborhood specials.
- Tweet about open houses. If you have an open house or another special event coming up, you can let other people know about it through your Twitter account.
- Tweet market news and updates. People who are looking for homes like to know what’s going on in the neighborhood they are moving to. Post information about neighborhood events, real estate prices, and other market news.
- Tweet photos and videos. Twitter makes it really easy to share photos and videos online. You can post images of the homes you are selling or video tours of houses and neighborhoods. To do this, you will need to use a free, third party service such as TwitPic or TweeTube.
- Tweet regularly. Posting to Twitter on a regular basis will keep your followers interested and help you maintain your community status.
- Use keywords in your Tweets. Using real estate related keywords or hashtags in your tweets is a good way to help people find the information you are posting. When they type the corresponding term into the Twitter search engine they are much more likely to find you if your posts contain keywords (versus slang, abbreviations, or talk of sandwiches).
- Shorten URLs. It is a good idea to shorten the URLs included in your tweets. This will help you save characters and make your tweets look nicer. A good service to try is bit.ly. Bit.ly is not only free, it also allows you to track data so that you know how many people clicked on the link.
- Participate in the Twitter community. Participation will help you gain more followers and get more out of Twitter. Sharing expertise, asking questions, and retweeting other people’s posts are all good ways of joining in.
- Be personable and professional. Always be as personable and professional as possible when posting on Twitter. It is better to ignore someone you disagree with than it is to get into a sniping fight for the whole world to see.
- Market your Twitter account. Let people know you have a Twitter account through your website, blog, marketing materials, email signatures, and word of mouth.
- Connect your blog and Twitter account. You can and should feed your blog posts or website updates to your Twitter account using Twitterfeed and similar services. This is a no fuss way to post tweets while promoting your blog at the same time.
- Don’t spam or overtweet. Although it is good to tweet on a regular basis, you shouldn’t overdo it or try to hardsell your products or services. This can be considered spammy and will turn other Twitter users off very quickly. If you want to write all of your tweets in one day, you can schedule them to drip on different days and different times with services like Twuffer or FutureTweets.
- Read more. There are a number of online articles and ebooks that can help you learn more about using Twitter to market real estate. Two free ebooks to try include Twitter for Real Estate Twits and A Geek’s Guide to Promoting Yourself and Your Online Business in 140 Characters or Less with Twitter.
This Guest Post was written by Marc Rasmussen who specializes in Sarasota FL Real Estate
Let’s assume you have done a good job promoting your website and you now rank well in Google. The leads are starting to come in more consistently. So, how do you handle these internet leads?
It is much like leads from other sources except now the quantities are probably much higher. The odds of wasting your time on unqualified buyers goes up dramatically.
If you have a website that is producing a good number of leads, your pre-qualification skills become much more important. You need to do your best at figuring out who will turn into a successful transaction and who will waste your time.
It is not uncommon for a prospect to see a home on your real estate website, call you to ask a very specific question like, “are there walk in closets in the third bedroom?” - and then you find out that they are either working with another REALTOR®, need to sell two homes prior to buying, or plan on purchasing in 18 months. These sorts of calls and emails can disrupt your day and prevent you from working with qualified clients.
Making Initial Contact with an Internet Lead
You have to be delicate with some internet leads. If you beat them right over the head with tough questions they might get turned off and call another real estate agent. Initially, I like to ask about the type of home they want and then start asking questions that I need to know.
I vary the questions up, and the order in which I ask them, just to test out the responses. Here is a sample of some of the questions I ask the internet prospect:
1. Are you looking to buy a home or condo?
I could add land or some other property class to this question but I figure the prospect will tell me. This is just to get them thinking about what they want to buy. I make sure to add “to buy” to the sentence. It seems like some people think REALTORs® are showing services.
2. How many beds and baths do you require?
Again, I like to add the property related questions up front. The prospect won’t put their guard up.
3. When are you looking to purchase?
This tells me how to handle the lead. Obviously, I will handle a buyer that needs to buy in 30 days differently than one who is looking to buy in 12 months. Again, I mention “to purchase” in the question. I want to instill the “buy” mentality in their head and not a “let’s look around” mentality.
4. What is a comfortable price range for you?
5. Are you represented by any other REALTORs®?
You would be surprised at how many people contact me about real estate who are already working with another REALTOR®. Many people do not know how REALTORs® are compensated. It is your job to make sure they know.
6. Have you arranged financing or do you plan on paying cash?
This helps reiterate that you are not showing service and that a successful transaction is your goal.
7. Have you been to Sarasota before or is this your first trip?
I love prospects that have been vacationing in my area for years. They are already sold on the area. I get nervous when someone wants to see real estate but have never been to Sarasota before. I like to know this ahead of time. Most potential buyers need to get sold on the area before being sold on a house.
8. What neighborhoods/areas interest you the most?
This one tests their market knowledge and determines how much education they need. I get much more excited if a prospect answers, “we love Lakewood Ranch and University Parkway” versus, “we really don’t know the area at all and just want you to show us around.”
9. Do you have any other needs or wants that I should know about?
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This is a good representation of the questions I ask an Internet lead. I test different variations of questions as well as how many are asked. Some REALTORs® ask way more questions and that is fine. I don’t know if there is a right or wrong way to do this. It boils down to personal preference.
It is ok if you don’t mind taking on every prospect and showing all of them property. I won’t do it because it will just burn me out. I am probably losing transactions for over-qualifying, but to me that is a small price to pay for sanity.
Note from Kathleen: Marc has had a real estate website since 2004. He has built his website to rank #2 on Google for Sarasota Real Estate and #3 for Sarasota Homes for Sale.
This Guest Post was contributed by Kathleen Mackenzie, a writer for Tampa Homes 24-7,
which specializes in Riverview Real Estate.
A combination of two external factors can help you make the most money even in this current economic recession: 1) the over abundance of available and prime real estate due to foreclosures and the overwhelming real estate crisis, and 2) the surge of social networks and social media sparked by the always evolving technology revolution.
If you can tap into both of these factors to build up your portfolio of real estate and learn to strategically navigate and advertise through the world of social media, you can quickly and easily increase your average, usual income.
5 Tips for Using Social Media to Promote Your Listings
It seems like everything and everyone is online these days. Real estate professionals who have already tapped into this growing media world have already seen the benefits of using new social media like Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, or LinkedIn to brand themselves and market their products.
1. Create a Brand. The first thing you should do is create a brand for yourself or a company name. Come up with an image or logo that can be easily identified and associated with the brand you create. Set up profiles for your brand on any social media website that you come across. A variety of people use these different sites for different purposes, and tapping into all of them will maximize the number and types of people that you can reach and market your real estate to.
2. Make Your Yard Signs Social. Make sure that each for sale, for lease, or for rent sign you place in front of your locations indicate that you can be reached on the sites you’ve signed into and set up accounts on. And be consistent, place that brand or company name and logo on the sign so that you reinforce the connection between your name, the logo that signifies your company, and the locations that you are marketing.
3. Use Video Tours on Your Social Media Sites. Using a simple point and shoot camera, most of which are enabled with video options, film a video tour of each of your locations. This will supplement the photos you have already been taken, and placing them on each of your social media profiles will allow people outside your usual market to view and tour each of your locations.
This will also make the selling or renting process much less tedious; if people are able to view your real estate on the internet before coming to view the location, then those who actually schedule appointments to view it in person will already have expressed interest in perhaps buying or renting your location.
4. Learn From Others. In addition to consistently posting up your listings online and sharing videos with prospective buyers and sellers, you also can receive tips from people from areas you might never have even ventured to about potential future deals. And communicating with the online community of other real estate professionals can help you hone your own methods and techniques for buying and selling listings.
5. Show Your Expertise. You can also build up your consumer base by taking your sites and profiles to the next level, giving your own personal and professional opinions and perspectives about the real estate market. This will build the trust your consumers place in you and will keep them returning to you for your helpful advice.
This guest post was written by Chicago Lofts specialist, Mert Sahinoglu.
Real Estate professionals spend many hours on many different wireless connections. Here are three branding opportunities for both private and public internet connections.
Wireless Home/Office Internet Connections
For your office create two connections:
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Secure password protected for office use only.
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Wireless hotspot public access.
Add a signal reinforcement device to make sure that the signal can be received well outside your office. Name both channels with your website domain name(s) (especially the public one). Branding your wireless hotspot is a great goodwill gesture that will remind them of your brand every time they turn on their computer.
Bluetooth Phones
Agents who use Bluetooth phones should name their Bluetooth profiles as their domain names. Especially in crowded public locations; people who have similar Bluetooth connections scan for other Bluetooth profiles frequently.
Public Computer Connections
If you ever visit an Internet café, a university or a library public computer; turn the default home page of all browsers on the computer to your website. There is nothing like free advertising for your real estate site in a public Internet access area.
Six Tips for Online Branding
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This guest post was written by Richard Soto, Broker – VIPRealty, marketing Houston real estate and recruiting experienced agents in Houston, San Antonio and Dallas
How do your clients and prospects choose you? Why should they call you over another agent? With hundreds of agents working in your same area why are you the most qualified?
Your brand as a real estate agent or broker is how prospective clients and buyers view you as a professional. Branding is not just a trade name or a logo, rather, it is the ability to recognize a name, and the reputation of quality behind it.
Tips For Online Real Estate Branding
Always use a professional portrait – Your photo is your business icon. Potential buyers and clients will call real estate professionals that they trust, and that trust starts with a likable photo. Be sure you get yours done in a professional studio, with hair and makeup styling if necessary. The face you present to the world should be the face of trust and confidence.
Highlight your differentiation – Like any business, you must emphasize what sets you apart from the competition, also known as the Unique Sales Proposition. What are your differential factors? Do you specialize in condos? High-end luxury homes? Does your record back a 90 day or less closing? Be sure your branding tells prospects why they should choose you.
Get a professionally designed website – The website you use to advertise your real estate services and listed properties must work on the highest levels. Easy navigation. Fast loading. Proper listing views, tours, and information. If you can’t do this yourself, hire a professional web designer.
Write articles – Part of good real estate agent branding is becoming known as an expert or specialist. Try publishing a blog with your website with helpful articles. It is also advisable to guest blog for other important websites.
Post online seminars – Another way to gain exposure as an expert is to produce informational seminars. YouTube is a great place to post your short informational video about special niche topics in real estate.
Social network standing – And finally, you must have a social network presence as part of your branding. At popular sites like Twitter, Facebook, and others, you get valuable exposure, gather contact lists, and have a place to gain valuable leads.
