BRER Real Estate Marketing Blog

Thanks to Bill Gassett, who consults on Hopkinton MA real estate, I found some good ideas for increasing your exposure in your local market and getting quality incoming links to your blog.

Check out the site www.YourStreet.com.  Once you join, you will be able to:  “post articles, voice your opinion, join a discussion forum, and display your user profile” according to the website.

Bill has found the site helpful because he can send his blog posts to YourStreet and they are posted on the the site’s community page for his market area.   I’m not sure how much juice the incoming links have because there are so many pages on the site, but I think it’s a great opportunity to check out.

YourStreet will also syndicate your blog if they think the content is appropriate.  That will eliminate the need to manually add the post to the site.  Just use one of the feedback forms to request syndiating your blog.

The other site Bill mentioned is www.Topix.com.  Bill says that articles are cached pretty quickly on this site by Google, and Yahoo is showing some of Bill’s articles on Topix as incoming links.

Make the most of your blogging effort - get the word out electronically!

Blogging seems like a fairly safe activity.  You’re working hard to provide information that your readers will find useful.  And, after all, you’re writing a real estate blog - how much trouble could you get into doing that?

Since there have been two major lawsuits recently, it seems like a good time to mention the problems that you can get into, even with a friendly little real estate blog. 

If you look at the suits like the one involving a Florida agent, you’ll see that something written by an educated, savvy REALTOR® turned into a $25 Million lawsuit.  I imagine that the agent wrote the post without having any idea that it would start a lawsuit!

So, this might be a good time to think about how you write your blog posts.  There’s a great list of things to think about on an Inman article.  If you don’t want to read the entire thing, scroll down to the bottom where the list is.

Up until now, social networking sites haven’t proven to be great places for real estate agents to promote their services.  In addition, I haven’t spoken to anyone who thinks social networking sites have been good places to expand their networks in any meaningful way.  If you’ve had a different experience, please speak up!

According to the 2007 NAR Profile on Buyers and Sellers, 68% of the buyers who participated in the survey have never used a social networking web site.  But, I’m wondering if that situation is going to change.

Soon, Any Site Will Be Able to Turn Itself Into a Social Networking Website

Hot on the heels of the announcements by MySpace and Facebook, Google has announced the “preview release” of a product called Google Friend Connect.  By the time you read this, you should be able to get more information at http://www.google.com/friendconnect.  That site is supposed to be live after Google’s Campfire meeting the evening of May 12.

Preliminary Friend Connect Functionality 

So, what is Friend Connect?  Certainly, there will be much more information as time goes on.  But, here’s a user-friendly description as I currently understand it.

Background:

• Right now, there are many social networks out there.  Each network maintains its own data.  If you’re on Facebook, you still need to create a new account if you want to be on MySpace.
• The long-term goal is to create an Internet world where you only have to join one social network site - from that point on, your network will “follow you” to any other sites with a social networking component.  For example,
  • If you have signed up at Facebook, when you go to MySpace you can login with your Facebook ID.
• It’s not clear to me exactly how the interface will work.  Will all your friends on Facebook end up on MySpace if youjoin both networks?  Or, will you be able to interact with only your friends who have also joined MySpace?  Google has said that some type of permission will have to be given, but we’ll need more insight on how that will actually work.

Now, Enter Capabilities like Friend Connect:

• According to Google, Friend Connect is “a service that helps website owners grow traffic by enabling any site on the web to easily provide social features for its visitors.”
• Any website will be able to add social networking features that will reside on their site in an I-Frame.
• That should mean that if I added Friend Connect to this Blog, for example, I’d create a new Social Networking page and frame-in the code to provide the Friend Connect capability.
• At that point, visitors to the blog will be able to interact with existing friends and add new friends to their network from among the people who have signed in to the social networking capability on this blog.

Google describes the benefit this way: 

Without requiring coding experience, Google Friend Connect gives site owners a way to attract and engage more people by giving visitors a way to connect with friends on their websites.

• Drive traffic: people who discover interesting sites can bring their friends with them, and can opt-in to publish their activities on those sites back into their social network, attracting even more visitors.
• Increase engagement:access to friends and OpenSocial applications provides more interesting content and richer social experiences.
• Less work: any site can have social components without hiring a programming team or becoming a social network.

The techies are having discussions about whether there is enough compatibility among the different information structures used by various networking sites, and whether the major players should be working together or working independently as they seem to be doing now, banking on open architecture to get all the various data bases to talk to each other to exchange information.

From what I can tell, it sounds like we’re still a ways away from total integration.  But, I think the concept of providing social networking capability on any website is something worth watching very carefully. 

Maybe I’m just getting old, but part of me does wonder if all this accessibility might get to be too much.  If everyone you’re connected to on LinkedIn, for example, finds a great new website and either connects you to it, or sends you an invitation to connect to it…  Will we have any time to do anything besides sit at our computers in a fog??

Any other reactions??

If you’ve been wanting to produce a video or two, but you’ve been stuck on the technology issues, things could get a bit easier if you use a Flip Video, for a number of reasons:

• You don’t have to have a big budget to acquire a device to shoot a video.  The Flip Videos range in price from $120 to $179.
• It’s small - 4″x2″ and only 1″ thick.
• It only has 8 buttons.  I haven’t used one, but I don’t think I could get too messed up with only 8 buttons.
• According to one reviewer, Flip Video produces “startingly good footage”.
• There is built-in software that lets you edit the video and add music
• You can transfer the video to your computer with a USB connection that flips up.

I’m not sure if the resolution would be good enough to fill a large-screen TV, but for posting videos on the Internet, it sounds to me like this would be a great way to go.

I did a coaching session for Point2 Agent last week.  One of the questions was about the value of blogging.  Actually, the question was whether I had statistics about the impact of blogging for a real estate agent.

I don’t have statistics.  But, one place to get some feedback from agents who are active bloggers is at The Real Estate Tomato.  Jim Cronin has published several interviews with bloggers, and this is the latest one.  At the bottom of that post, there are links to several others.

Blogging can be fun, but it is also a real commitment of time and energy.  I’m not sure that blogging is for everyone, and I don’t think you have to maintain a blog to have a successful website. 

But, take a moment to read what other agents are saying about their blogging experience.  It will give you the opportunity to consider different perspectives.

Give Me A Break!

Everyone wants a magic wand to get traffic to their website.  And, wherever there are unfulfilled wishes, there are always lots of people who take advantage of that yearning by offering useless solutions.  Drives me nuts.

The latest in this solution mill came and slapped me in the face the other day, and I can’t help but write about it.  I was pleased to see that someone had left a comment on this blog, and reviewed it in order to respond.  This is what it said:

• Has anyone tried [vendorname] viral internet marketing service. My friend suggested them to me after sucessful 10 day campaign, he had with them. I am going to give this a try today to see how it works. http:// [vendorname].com (this was a live link)

The person who left the comment didn’t use the vendor’s website linked to their name, but their email address was located — guess where?  Yup, the commenter was an employee of the vendor “recommended” in the post.

How stupid do they think we blog owners are?  To me, this is right up there with the emails I get from people who want to give me a few million dollars if I help them transfer money out of some country I’ve never heard of.

Anyone who has a blog, do you look at the comments that are left on your blog?  Do you catch comments like these that don’t make any sense?

The only reason I can think of for people to leave such stupid comments is that they get away with it a large percentage of the time.  For the sake of the rest of us, if you don’t monitor your comments, please start!

Out of curiosity, I visited the website of this company with the great viral marketing service.  Here’s a summary of how they explain their service:

• one of a kind internet viral marketing delivery platform that avoids the issues related to pay per click fraud.  Huh?
• publishers create a message about an advertiser’s product or service, including a link to advertiser website
• the message is posted on a variety of highly related and visited forum, blog and other sites.  Great grammar. . .
• we carefully analyze the rules and regulations of each website before posting their message there to see whether posting such message would be allowed and to ensure that posting is completely relevant to the target audience  Well, they didn’t do a very good job on this blog - their comment was immediately deleted.
• Advertisers only pay for posted messages which remain for a “settle-in” period, a minimum of 5 days or 120 hours  Wow, such a deal!
• advertisers receive fair amount of direct traffic and to benefit in SEO process, while other people talk about it in their own circles and market the product or service even further.  So, in 5 days they think a website will get SEO benefit from an incoming link?  What have they been smoking?
•  Normally messages that “Settle-In” should remain for a very long time, if not indefinitely.  What they’re saying is that if someone hasn’t deleted the message after five days, they probably won’t.  That leads me to believe they’re posting on a lot of abandoned sites, or not enough of us are paying attention!

And, evidently, this company thinks people are going to pay for this service.

The sad thing is that some people probably will.

If you haven’t seen the list of a year’s worth of blog ideas from the RSS Pieces site, now is the time to take a look.

The list is outstanding.  Not just filler, but some really creative ideas. 

Maybe it’s just me, but all the links on the RSS Pieces blog go directly to the comments, not the content.  If that’s happening to you, too, persevere.  It’s worth it.

Have a great weekend.

Here’s a tip about a quick way to get additions for your website, blog, or the handouts you leave with prospects or clients.

NAR has provided a set of 62 different handouts on a variety of topics for home buyers and home sellers.

The buyer handsouts cover topics on getting ready for homeownership, home financing, finding the right home and preparing for the close.  The seller handouts include handouts on what to do before you sell, getting ready for showings and preparing for closing. 

There are even several handouts that are geared toward helping you work with FSBOs to turn them into clients.  One of those is titled “Forms You’ll Need to Sell Your Home” and another “17 Service Providers You’ll Need When You Sell”.   If that doesn’t scare a FSBO, they’re just not paying attention.

These reports are especially handy because the write ups are downloadable in Word files.  You can then easily add your logo and contact information and print them out.  Naturally, if you’re going to use them as is on a website, you’d want to put a “no index” on the page they’re on to prevent the search engines from seeing them as duplicate content.

A better way to use them on a website would be to make an offer of buyers’ and sellers’ guides.  Your visitors would then sign up to receive the guide as a Word or PDF document.

Subprime lending, predatory lenders, foreclosures, short sales - there’s a lot of concern about all of those issues.  And, naturally, as much education as you can provide to your prospects and clients, the better off they’ll be.

NAR has a brochure available called Learn How to Avoid Foreclosure and Keep Your Home.  The brochure was produced jointly by NAR, the Center for Responsible Lending, and NeighborWorks®, and it covers topics such as the types of loans that tend to get homeowners into trouble, and the steps their lenders may be willing to take to assist them in avoiding foreclosure.

Here’s another opportunity to position yourself as an expert, and to provide a professional handout to get people’s attention.  People who may be susceptible to predatory lenders or who want to avoid foreclosure will be likely to keep this type of a handout - and remember the person who gave it to them.

The member cost is $20 for a pack of 50.  For 40 cents a person, it might be an excellent investment.  The brochure could also be a useful resource to help you quickly write a page on your website, or a post on your blog, to address the same issues.

If you’re not a blogging type, consider other ways to increase your visibility in your market area using established real estate social networking websites.

There are some issues with some social networking sites when it comes to real estate.  If you haven’t heard about it yet, you can read the latest move from Facebook at Joel Burslem’s blog.  The bottom line is that Facebook will suspend the account of anyone who is caught posting real estate listings in the marketplace rather than paying for a “Social Ad” to promote the listing.

There are other alternatives, though, that don’t cost money!  One you might want to check out is the Trulia Voices website.

Everyone from consumers to real estate professionals can ask and answer questions.  It’s a real opportunity to display your expertise to consumers in your market area.  For more insight, check out this article on the Inman Blog.

The Inman post talks about active bloggers stepping outside of their blog to gain exposure in other places on the Internet.  However, I think it’s also a great way for a non-blogger to get more involved online.  Answering a consumer’s question is a lot easier than maintaining your own blog!