Social Media Tips for the Real Estate Agent

I know as a Real Estate Agent you want to take advantage and leverage all that Social Media has to offer.  I definitely support your quest but I also want to share some tips to help you avoid the over load and confusion of trying to put together a Social Media strategy.

Here are 5 topics that can help you focus on your Social Media strategy:

SOCIALIZE: If I don’t say it enough you need to interact!

Remember they do not call it Social Media if they meant the conversation is to go one way.  To succeed is to comment, discuss, engage and spread your knowledge. If you provide regular and timely interactions your followers WILL appreciate it.

BALANCE: Can you give too much of a good thing?

Ever logged into Facebook and been flooded with irrelevant posts from a business page you were following?  Those pages tend to become white noise to people, so they will begin to ignore the posts or “unlike” you. Be consistent with good quality and relative information.  Try using a content grid if you can.

POPULARITY: You do not need to use every Social Media platform on the planet

Just because it was invented and they call it Social Media doesn’t mean you need to use it.  Don’t spread yourself too thin instead concentrate on a few that you think YOUR buyers/sellers will use. In case you don’t have any idea where your target audience is, I think it is safe to say Facebook and Twitter are a good start.  Also don’t count out Pinterest, it is fast becoming a new craze and used right, it can bring you in a lot of interest.

SIGNIFICANCE: Don’t talk about things your audience does not want to hear

Social Media is all about what is going on, what’s new, what’s exciting and what is relative to your audience.  Become the center of your followers interest.  If your specialty is in the Mesa Arizona area then become the expert, the one who has all the good and juicy news.  Your followers will lean towards the places they get the information they want and they will also tend to like sites that are more relevant and positive, rather than the opposite.

FOCUS: You don’t need 10,000 fans, you need 1 sale or referral

Hundreds of followers does not necessarily mean you will have more success.  A smaller group of interested followers tends to be more successful.  Focus on making your TARGET audience happy and engaged.  After all those are the ones that are really listening.

So now you have it.  My 5 best suggestions for success.  Remember always stay positive and to reply to comments within a day.

If you have some tips, PLEASE share!

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2 Questions to Ask Yourself – Social Media Failure

Let me be the first to say – I feel for you! I cannot image how difficult it must be to sell real estate, raise a family AND be a master internet marketing guru. Every day you’re hit with the NEWEST and the HOTTEST social media craze since the newest and hottest craze yesterday…this post is simply meant to address 2 questions that may ultimately answer your failure with social media.

1. Do You Lack Focus?

Taken from Social Media Today:

“Deciding what not to do is as important as deciding what to do…” – Steve Jobs

There is so much going on in the world of social media, new features, new add-ons, new networks! You need to first decide on 3 things:

1. How much money are you going to spend
2. How much energy do you have to dedicate to your online marketing
3. How much time each week/day you are going to spend – then stick to it!

Setting up 5 social media accounts is great but if you spend 1 hour per week on each – instead of 5 hours on one in particular – you are not going to reap the benefits social media has for your business. You’re not focusing on what is important – you’re focusing on what is now (which is NOT a good business model).

First look at WHERE your consumers are – does you niche service young individuals or retired folks. Are you marketing to a high volume of families with young children or empty nester’s? This answer will help you understand WHAT social media sites you should focus on.

2. Do You Have Realistic Expectations?

Another great quote from Social Media Today: “If you want to make a sale next week, you cannot start marketing today – you should have started three years ago! You cannot throw a Hail Mary pass in the mast minute of the game and expect to win. Marketing and Sales only work is people trust you!” – Seth Godin

He pointed out that you should use:

• Advertising to rent attention
• Inbound marketing to earn attention (trust)

If you do not have the time and energy to invest in your marketing AND want to make money on the internet you need to pay someone to spend that time and energy – simply put.

Do you fall into either of these categories? If so what have you done to boost business? Let us know or contact us for help!

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More on Penguin – Links Strategy

Well it has been several weeks since the introduction on Penguin and the heated topic is LINKS.  I know a lot of people have spent countless hours building a great link strategy but now that Penguin is out you might want to re-look at your links.  Even for sites that have no link strategy it might be a wise idea to look and see where your links are coming from. Part of the Penguin updates seems to look at the type of sites linking to your website, how the anchor text is entered and what kind of links you have.  So this could mean if you have an over abundance of links with the same type of anchor you could trigger a penalty.

So now might be a good time to see what you have and have a plan in place should you need to remove them in a hurry.

The first thing you probably want to do is see what you have. Here are some good sources that will pull your link data;

• Open Site Explorer
• Majestic
• Webmaster tools

So what should you be doing?

Let me preference this.  If you don’t have an extensive link building in place you probably need to do nothing.  But you might be surprised how many backlinks you might have so at the very least use one of the above tools and take a look.

If you do have an extensive list of backlinks then you might want to get a plan setup should you need to reduce them in the future.

Start off by getting a master list of all your links.

Then you need to cross reference these links with the ones Google says they see via the Webmaster tools.  Remember that links fit into a few groups.  Those being;

1. Links from free website such as WordPress, Blogger, Weebly etc.
2. Site wide links – easy to spot if you have too many of the same anchor links to the same page on your site from another site.
3. Image based links
4. Directory links
5. Highlight non common domain extensions – .edu, .ac, .uk and other country specific extensions

Once you have your master list then your criteria for removal might be;

1. Too many links from one domain
2. Too many links from the same IP
3. Sites with too narrow matches on anchor text
4. Site with obvious “I am just linking to build my links” or “advertising” types of sites
5. Links from sources not related to your SEO

Getting rid of them

1. There is no easy way to remove a link from another site to yours except to ask nicely.
2. Sites like Blogger / WordPress / Weebly / Squidoo can be removed if you after the above you don’t get satisfaction you can email the site directly asking them to remove the link.

So while it may be too early to pull the trigger on removing links, you should at least have a game plan in mind, see exactly what you have an be prepared for action should you need to begin removing them.  Remember Chance Favors a Prepared Mind!

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Blogging for the Busy Agent

Summer is FAST approaching – meaning the market is heating up and buyers/sellers are ready to move! Here is a quick DIY (do it yourself) home repair list to post on your Facebook pages, blogs or even resource pages on your website:

1. Brightening up an old paint job
2. Bring back the aging deck (a project that’s probably been put off once or twice!)
3. Removing old wall paper to re-purpose a room
4. Replacing flooring (pros and cons of stone flooring)
5. Window replacement and framing

What DIY projects do you find popular among your buyers and sellers this year?

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Can Bing Increase Market Share and Should the Real Estate Agent Care?

At E3, Microsoft announced, among other things, that Internet Explorer is coming to the Xbox 360 this fall. What that means is a ton of new potential users will now be searching using Bing.  Remember Xbox is not just for kids.  Millions of adults use Xbox so this could mean a substantial increase in searches via Bing.

Of course you need to have an Xbox Live Gold account to use Internet Explorer but still that will not dis-wade most of the user base of adults. In any event now Microsoft can push their browser along with Bing to a new and huge user base.

Do you think people will be using a gaming console to search?  Well more than you might think.  Internet Explorer on Xbox will support Kinect and SmartGlass, so users don’t have to use a game controller to operate it.

So what does this mean to the Real Estate Agent.  As always I preach you need to stay in touch with what is going on and to recognize how and where to market to.  In the next coming months maybe you should begin to give Bing more SEO in your marketing plan.

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Real Estate Website Content 101

As a REALTOR® there are many things to consider when writing your web content.

Here is my list of Top 5 items to consider for your content:

1. Don’t make common mistakes when writing your web content

• Spelling and grammatical errors are big problems (save all that ‘informal-ness’ for your blog!)
• Remember this is INTERNET marketing not a newspaper. Your prospect came to your website because they typed ‘any town real estate’ into a search engine – so make sure you have that information on your website
• Make sure your listings information and search widgets are HIGHLY VISIBLE
• Be careful with your lead capture – anything can be found on the internet for FREE. Make sure you give a little before you take!

2. Remember the SEO basics

•  Are your keywords in your H1 (and H2, H3 etc.) title tags?
• Are your keywords evident in your meta data?
• Are you using imagery where applicable?
• Is you content scannable? (easy to read not just a block of text)
• Does your content or web page have a call to action? (what is making your prospect say, hey I’m going to work with this REALTOR®)
• Are you using internal links? (described below)
• Is it easy for your prospect to content you from your website?

3. Don’t forget about internal links!

• Yes external links pointing TO your website is important to SEO but internal links directing your web visitors to relevant information within your website is good for search engines and your prospects!
• Be sure to link keywords and not the words ‘click here’ or ‘more information’ (example: “…find out more on New Jersey mortgage rates here!” — there I would hyperlink the underlined words and link that to my mortgage information page)

4. KEYWORDS

• We’ve posted SO many articles on keywords I thought it best for you to read right from the source
• Learn about keyword density, formatting and spamming
• Learn about keyword research

5. “Do I really have to write this myself?” – Hiring someone to write your content

• You can absolutely hire a freelance writer or company to help with your web content
• Typically you should be looking to spend around $20 – $50 per web page of 300 to 700 words (remember it is quality over quantity!)
• If you do choose to pay someone it may be best to do some research (on your content topic) for your writer in the beginning to get them on the right track
• Copying free articles from the internet is BAD FOR SEO – that just creates duplicate content which search engines hate

We are always looking for hot topics in real estate to blog about – if you have any suggestions or questions please let us know!

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