Real Estate Web Design and Marketing Blog

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This is a commonly asked question among real estate agents and brokerages. Social media sites are great tools to grow your SOI (sphere of influence), to connect, show value, and get to know others in your community. Notice I never mentioned offering your services. Be guilty of that and you’ll develop a less than favorable reputation in the community. You’ll be marked with the scarlet “S” as a “spammer”! Unfortunately, it’s happening all too often-asking for business on social media sites.

Welcome to the Big Cocktail Party Called Social Media!

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What a privilege it was to be invited on the Tamara Dorris Blog Talk Radio Show on Wednesday, March 24th. Over the next 2 post I will share with you my notes from Tamara’s show. I thought it would be helpful for you to have access to this Neighborhood Marketing Plan for your little corner of the world.

1. While it’s awesome to get those great keywords like city name real estate (example-Dallas real estate), too many real estate agents overlook neighborhood keywords (long-tail searches). And the reality is that people who are searching with those neighborhood-centric keywords actually make stronger, more qualified consumers. Why? Someone searching for “Dallas real estate” is just browsing (tire-kickers) in broad generalities while someone searching for homes for sale in the Dallas neighborhood of Preston Hollow are looking for – well, homes for sale in Preston Hollow. There’s a strong probability they may be 30-60 days out instead of 18 months.
2. If a RE Pro will provide this unique, SEO keyword-rich indexable content it will offer so much search power for the site owner

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Learning How to Use Twitter in Your Business!

What is Twitter?

Often described as public Instant Messenger on steroids, Twitter is micro-blogging in 140 characters. Common “Tweets” include pithy comments, mundane babbling to high-value information and content distribution. The point of Twitter is to be personal and build relationships! Remember, that’s what social media is all about and Twitter is most certainly that – social. If you haven’t heard of Twitter, you been spending too much time under that rock of yours. It’s one of the fastest growing social communities (period!).

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A few weeks ago, Bobby and I were invited to host a special “Guest Expert” webinar to be held on Tuesday, Feburary 24th for Michael Russer’s Online Dominance program. Today, while speaking with Michael, we decided to open this up to all agents, not just those in Online Dominance.
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For all of you who are here from Active Rain to read the rest of the story, welcome to the Dakno Real Estate Marketing blog! Thanks for making the click.

What I Thought Would be a Wasted Afternoon!

With Brad standing in line at the passport office I figured my afternoon was going to be totally unproductive. I walked up to the barista at the Starbucks and placed my order, “grande’ mild blend and a slice of iced lemon pound cake”. She rung it up and said “your bill has been taken care of”. In bewilderment I said “really”. She said “yes”. I wondered who could have performed such a random act of kindness.

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In my last post you learned the back story to the genesis of our set and why we went about building it to stream live videos. Using photo’s taken during the construction process, you will see step by step how our new set came to life! It really was a labor of love.

Keep it Simple Or…..?

After giving the concept a little more thought, I decided the set could offer some serious potential to our local real estate clients. Imagine our clients using the set to video tape helpful “How To” videos, creating client video testimonials and many other applications. Because a strand of our DNA is to do things right and with excellence, we decided the low-budget, cable access, 2 chairs, a plant and a bed sheet would not cut it. We had to go bigger!
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It seems Twitter is all the buzz right now. My relationship with Twitter, like many, has been an interesting journey. At first, I was like so many other Twitter doubters. I even quoted the famous line of “I don’t get Twitter. Does anyone really care that I am eating breakfast or brushing my teeth?” I then decided to take another shot at it. Unfortunately, I again grew frustrated at Twitter because I couldn’t keep up with everyone’s conversations. I mistakenly thought it was because I was following too many people. Frustrated again, I set Twitter aside for a few months. Suddenly, one day it dawned on me. I didn’t have to follow every single conversation on Twitter. I simply could jump in, get a quick snapshot, reply to a few people and jump out. I finally “got” Twitter!

Inman Connect Made Me A Twitterholic!

So off to Inman Connect I went with my renewed love for Twitter. In an effort to make my life easier, I put automation to work for me. I decided to have my Facebook status automatically update based on my Twitter updates. Twitter life was good – so I thought.

From the first session at Iman, I started feverously tweeting different updates about what was happening at the conference. The Twitter community loved it. I knew because I quickly started gaining more and more followers. I thought to myself that I had finally achieved Twitter Zen.

What’s Good Content for Twitter is Not Good for Facebook

My Twitter Zen didn’t last for very long. A tip from Jeff Turner turned into a harsh reality. You see, Jeff mentioned that he’s not a big fan of syncing your Twitter and Facebook status updates because the two social networks appeal to two difference audiences. His point was proven when my Facebook friends started messaging me saying things like “What’s your obsession with this Iman guy” “What the heck is #ICNY” “Your status updates make absolutely no sense!” While the information was quite relevant to the Twitter community (since they knew the context), my Facebook friends had no interest in seeing every detail of the Iman Connect conference.

I looked back at my Facebook Wall and quickly saw what they were referring to. It was ridden with tons of updates about a conference that they had no interest in. My effort to automate my social media back fired! Needless to say, I quickly disabled my Twitter/Facebook sync and now update the two sites separately with difference (relevant) pieces of information.

Automation Isn’t Always the Best Choice

The entire point of automation is to reach more for less – basically increase your ROI. But it’s important to see how much time you are actually saving compared to the benefit of a personal touch. Let me give you one more quick example.

ActiveRain gives you the ability to automatically update Twitter every time you write a new blog post on ActiveRain. On the surface, it seems like a great feature. Right? WRONG! That’s because the Twitter update looks something like this… “Just Posted on ActiveRain – www.activerain.com/blah.” Now doesn’t that make you want to just run out and view the blog post? <sarcasm> Sure, having this automation saves you 20 seconds in having to manually update your Twitter status, but the problem is that it doesn’t compel anyone to actually click the link! What good is automation if it doesn’t increase your ROI? Instead, what if you took just 20 seconds to personally go to twitter.com and tease your blog post?

I asked Bobby (@rewebcoach) to help me out testing this. Instead of using the standard automated “just posted at…” approach, he created a personal tweet on a recent blog post. It was simple but a great Twitter tease. “Loose Lips Sinks Ships” and a link to the article was all he put on Twitter. Yet he had over 50 people immediately click to view his article. Why? Because it wasn’t the canned tweet that so many people see continually roll across their Twitter stream. In other words, those few seconds to create that personal tweet was much more valuable than zero seconds to create something that would have yielded zero results.

Automation Still has Its Place

Don’t get me wrong. I still love automation and I think it’s a great way to extend your social reach. But it’s important to make sure you understand when to use it and when not to use it. Just because you can save yourself a few seconds here and there, doesn’t mean you always should.

To Your Success,

Brad Carroll
Follow me on Twitter: @dakno

Recently I’ve been sharing recently with our Dakno clients and my friends over at Active Rain about the need to expand their Internet presence by exploring the awesome applications available on the iPhone. Yes, you to can begin to broaden your web presence by using the tools that power the iPhone apps.

Map It Anyway!

Even if you don’t own an iPhone, you can begin to map your properties, your favorite restaurants, your area’s bike repair shop, or any other significant location by adding it to the website called Platial. Once the business, neighborhood school or your condo building is mapped and properly “tagged”, you’ll begin to enjoy enhanced search engine ranking as well as maybe a few more site visitors who happen to click over to your blog or website to view more information from their iPhone.

Demonstrate You Are a Tech-savvy Giant of an Agent!

The next time you have a listing appointment, say this to your potential client, “Because it is my fudiciary responsibility is to deliver the absolute best home selling results by helping you sell your property quicker and for maximum value, I utilize every means available to expose your property to as many potential buyers as possible. One of the many ways I accomplish this goal is by syndicating your property on many high-traffic national websites, and I also target the mobile computing tools available on the cell phone.” Follow that by saying; “There have been more than 3 million new generation 3G iPhones recently purchased by tech-savvy consumers and many of those same consumers will utilize their iPhone to help them search for their next home. To ensure your home is visible to those users, I will upload your home to numerous iPhone application powered websites like Trulia.com and Nearby (powered by Platial.com). That way I know your home is reaching even more potential home buyers.”

If You Use Those Lines!

If you happen to mention what I suggested above and you secure a listing, by all means come back here and leave a comment. Now go map your area and dominate your market (and think about buying a new iPhone especially if you close on that listing you just secured :>).

Until my next post,

Bobby

P.S. For a slightly different take on the same topic, be sure to visit my Crystal Coast Blog – it’s your Emerald Isle Real Estate and Rental Resource!

Post Update!

Scottsdale real estate agent Heather Tawes Nelson emailed me to say she dug into Platial.com and discovered from their “Terms & Conditions” that the site doesn’t permit commercial advertising. I suggest you refrain from “advertising” your listings on Platial.com. To take advantage of the Google power and the potential additional eyeballs you could capture, I say work the “I recommend this restaurant” or “this condo building is really close to this awesome gym.” The way you play by the rules. To me mapping schools, recommending businesses and the like are fairgame. Thanks Heather for the email – good call!

The ActiveRain Customizer Project has been extremely successful. However, there are a few people who seem to have had a few problems successfully customizing their blog. With this in mind, I have written a quick FAQs post to hopefully clear up some issues. If you are interested in obtaining free technical support, please read through the questions below. It covers common problems and tells you how to obtain free support. If you are interested in Dakno Marketing assisting you with the design or implementation of your custom ActiveRain blog, please contact us. We will offer this service at our standard rate of $75/hour.

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I recently wrote a post on how to Customize your ActiveRain blog. But my original approach required digging into CSS and HTML. I quickly realized that this could be over the heads of some people in the Active Rain community. So I went back to the drawing board and developed a way for ActiveRain users to easily customize their blog without any knowledge of CSS or HTML. It’s called the ActiveRain Custom Blog Generator. You simply answer a few questions, and hit submit. The Generator does all the hard work for you. Be sure to check it out.

If you haven’t already signed up with ActiveRain, then read this first, then setup your own account.