I was at a meeting the other day and overheard two agents speaking: “This whole social media stuff is stupid. Why should I learn how to share my personal life online, when I can just pick up the phone to call someone?” You’ve probably either heard these comments or said them yourself.

So why should you pay attention to Social Media Marketing? For the same reason that you should have paid attention to the Internet when it first came out, or to websites when they were first developed. I think that I can explain why you should be paying attention to Social Media Marketing in two words: viral exposure. Name any other non-electronic marketing medium, and you have a limited audience, or exposure. In fact the larger the audience you market to, the more you typically pay.

Not so with Social Media Marketing. If you can put together a clever and/or controversial ad or comment, whether you use YouTube, Facebook or other social media, your message can go viral. To put it another way, it will explode to other people in your network or outside your network . . . with NO extra cost. For an idea on how you can get started with Social Media Marketing, take a look at this short “pocket presentation”:

I’ll bet if I give you a date, you can tell me where you were. The date is July 16th 1969. The event is the Apollo 11 liftoff to the moon. No single event other than the walk on the moon has drawn such attention.

From almost less than half a century, technology has taken us from first flight to rocket ships to the moon. And while this has all been quite extraordinary, it may seem that technology has been supplanted by other areas of importance.

If you wonder if technology is still important, look down at your new smartphone or ipad computer. Both have more technology that the triple-redundant computer power placed into the Apollo 11 and later Apollo missions. Lest you think that I wax strong to the “good old days”, these are the “good old days”.

Have you ever been in such an exciting time? Think of what technologies you now have at your fingertips. Phones that can not only call anyone wirelessly anywhere around the world, but see them as well. Play movies and follow your every move via GPS. Calculate mortgage payments and get approximate housing prices on any neighborhood . . . anywhere in the country. Do barcode scanning to get the nutritional values and grocery store information not to mention take photos. And so far I’ve not even left the advantages of the features of the ordinary smartphone device.

If you want to keep up with your sales, you need to keep up with technology. If you need a little more inspiration, take a look at this video. If you’re proud of your country it will bring tears to your eyes.

So you’re trapped at the car wash . . . what do you do? You watch whatever is playing on TV. You’re waiting for a plane . . . what do you do? You watch what’s playing on TV. We’ve grown so acustom to the television and more importantly video, that it’s amazing that more agents aren’t following the trend.

If you want your message to get out and have it make an impact, don’t just tell about it, don’t even show pictures about it. You need to raise the bar and show videos about it. Why? Because only video has the features of moving video, sound, voice over and even musical background if you so choose. Many agents are making huge profits from their video expertise and many new products are coming out to not only assist with video but also video editing as well.

To make my point, I’ve included one of our “Pocket Presentations” on this huge new Internet feature below:

“WOW”!! . . . Is this what your viewers are saying when they look at your website? Unfortunately the answer is typically no. In fact when viewers see most agent websites they react with a yawn. What’s the difference between the two? Dynamic page content. It’s the difference between telling a story and allowing the viewer to interactively experience the story.

Let’s get specific as to what I mean here. I’ve seen many websites where the agent tries to tell the viewer about how to price their home. On the other hand I’ve seen much more successful sites where the agent is giving the viewer a tool to allow them to be able to “ballpark” a price for their home through an interactive, or “dynamic” page. Now in this instance we are not replacing the value of the agent as there is much more to pricing a home, but sellers love this kind of page.

Another example for buyers is that of the mortgage calculator. There are tons of these either with your MLS or as 3rd party widgets that can be used in your websites.

If you’d like to see examples of the best of these types of site pages, take a look at the following short video:

My living is made now by making real estate agents famous. Well, at least their websites famous. I probably see hundreds of websites every month. Of these, I see the good, the bad and the ugly. I have the opportunity to be amongst a rare breed of real estate agent. Those that GET IT! Let me be clear.

If you want to be seen as successful, you need to look successful. I’ve always told people that “Whatever you give to people represents who you are”. It’s no different with your marketing. Those agents who are the most successful right now, even in a down  market are those that can work smart. They are the ones that can make their website work for them. Aside from many tools that can be used successfully, there is one common to all successful agents. . . . Drip marketing.

When I speak of “drip marketing”, I’m not talking about the online newsletter or “how to” articles. I’m talking about the “Subscribe to New Listings” or “Get New Listings by Email” campaigns. These are tools used by the agent to allow the buyer to fill in a form detailing exactly what parameters in a home/condo they are looking for, and then (drum roll) mention that a name, number and email will be needed in order to send these new listings from the MLS to the buyer.

When building these forms, PLEASE make sure you do them right. NEVER ask for their name and email first. They don’t know yet what you’re about to give them. Having them fill out the form of their preferences first gets them hooked in the process and actually makes them want to give you their information.

If you’d like to know more information about how to create a “drip marketing” page for “Subcribing to New Listings”, check out the video below for more information.

With all the real estate SEO focus being put on buyers, sometimes we forget to address sellers, and the benefit that they can be to our overall website. While we should be writing our websites with the buyer in mind, we can also be making money with the seller as well . . . but in a different fashion.

Buyers will find your website looking for the MLS or homes to search. Sellers will see your website because you bring it to them . . . physically. Try this. At your next listing appointment, place on your website their home in the “Featured Listings” portion of your website. (Come on, I know you all have notebook computers by now. It’s time to use them.)

To really make this feature prominant, add background music, voice over and/or titles to your listing presentation on the “Featured Listings”. While it probably won’t have taken you too long to do, it will look like it took HOURS. Plus it will really impress the seller. For more information on this and other areas for sellers and Featured Listings, watch the video below:

You may know that NAR has told us that the number 1 reason that viewers/prospects to your website will stick around is for the “Search The MLS” or “Property Search” feature. This can be an invaluable feature on your website to get you bookmarked for current and later use for assisting your prospects. If your prospects see you as an aid to their real estate search, they will find it easier to work with you later on. Also, if they find a home during this search, you are the one they will likely call.

But there are things that you should know to make sure that they call you instead of possibly the listing agent. Much of this is handled with the way you handle “Search The MLS”. Are you asking your prospects for the Name, Email, Address, Phone Number, Age, Educational Background BEFORE you let them see the MLS? Of course not. But that’s what it feels like to your prospect when you simply ask them to fill out a short registration form before you allow them to search the MLS.

If you are one of the heavy hitters in real estate you know that our business is all about service. With that in mind, if you have a “Search The MLS” link/button on your website, ALWAYS go straight to the search parameters, and then ask them for their information. Many agents will even allow the prospect to make so many searches before they force the prospect to “opt in” or “sign up” for the service. At least by doing this, you’ve seen the service that you’re being asked to sign up for.

There are many other good ideas in the following video that will help you to use the “Search The MLS” to your advantage:

In our last post, we discussed the three major areas that the new Google Caffeine will be looking for these three important areas are:

1. An important “keyword rich” domain name
2. A “keyword rich” Title (and Titles throughout your site), and
3. Keyword rich content

The easiest and most effective thing that you can do to your website to get noticed by the major search engines is to change your Title, using rich keyword phrases. For example, if you lived in Denver and you wanted to focus on luxury condos, you might want to use the Title “Denver Colorado Luxury Condos”. If you really want to make a powerful statement with Google, add more features such as “Denver Colorado Luxury Condos and Beautiful Estate Living”. So far we’ve used 56 characters and spaces. Keep in mind that Google will only read the first 66 characters and spaces. After that, it’s as if there is nothing there. Yahoo on the other had will read up to 110 characters and spaces, so put your second best information next.

For more information on the power of what you can do with building effective Titles, take a look at the following video:

Many people are starting to wonder “Hey what’s happened to my Google rankings?” Simple. Google has recently (as of June 8th) changed its entire algorithm, or the way that they decide who gets to be on top of their search engine. Google is now faster, more relevant and doesn’t care as much about many of the areas that were important before.

So what are the major changes? Well Google is trying to cut through all the spam and find out which really are the best and most relevant websites for the search being applied. To get to the bottom line of this, Google first looks at your Domain Name. Is it relevant to the search or is it only relevant to you (BarbaraSmith.com for example). A highly keyword rich Domain Name might be MyDenverRealEstate.com or LuxuryCondosInDenver.com. In this case, if I’m looking for “luxury condos in Denver”, Google says WOW, this website’s Domain Name is part of their search. It MUST be relevant.

The second area that Google looks at is the Title of the website (located at the uppermost part of the browser). If you start off the Title as with our previous example of say, Denver Luxury Condos (the words don’t need to be in the same order as the search) then bells and whistles go off for Google. It tells Google that this website is REALLY relevant to the search being made.

Finally, and probably the most changed area is the area of content. If you write about yourself on your Home Page, Google figures that your website is only about yourself. Therefore you must write about what the buyer wants to read about. If your content is laced with information about Denver luxury condos, you are ripe for climbing the Google ladder.

There is MUCH more that Google has changed in its new Google Caffeine, but these 3 steps will get you headed in the right direction. In addition, you can get additional information with this “pocket presentation” about getting a good domain name.

Quick. Who is the largest bookseller in the world? If you said Amazon, you’re right. But the key point is why. The largest bookseller for decades has been Barnes & Noble (established in 1873). Yet Amazon was only established in 1994 in Jeff Bezos’ garage. Why the huge surge in sales by Amazon? We call it the “Long Tail Theory”, based upon the book of the same name by Chris Anderson.

Wikipedia puts the explanation of the “long tail theory” this way: “The Long Tail or long tail refers to the statistical property that a larger share of population rests within the tail of a probability distribution than observed under a ‘normal’ distribution. This has gained popularity in recent times as a retailing concept describing the niche strategy of selling a large number of unique items in relatively small quantities – usually in addition to selling fewer popular items in large quantities.

In other words, because of store space, Barnes & Noble could only sell the more competitive or popular books. Amazon however realized that by using the Internet as a warehouse, they could pull from the most obscure books, thus giving them more sales.

How does this effect real estate agents and their website rankings? Consider the fact that you live in Denver, and you want to be found by the search engines under “Denver real estate” or “Denver homes”. The odds of this happening today are 23.8 million to 1 or 30 million to 1 respectively. However if you instead focus on the “minor” keyword phrases that are requested, you can much more easily get found on the 1st page of Google. For example “Denver luxury condos” is 1.92 million to 1 and “homes for sale in metropolitan Denver” is only 165 thousand to 1. While these numbers still may seem out of reach, we find with our firm anything within 3 million is easy to catch within a few months.

This short “pocket presentation” will give you all you an overview of why this is so important to you and also give you a link to the full video on this topic that will show you how to do this yourself.