Changing Media Landscape

I had an interesting phone call from a longtime client yesterday who decided to stop advertising in his local print real estate monthly for the next four months and will instead be engaging our report, recommend, revise process.  “RRR” helps our clients improve the search engine placement of their web site and generate more leads from the web.  This client understands the shifting media landscape and I was pleased to see him make his marketing investments accordingly.

The upcoming Media Convergence Conference in New York City, put on by The Economist, launched a video called Shift Happens, that helps put these changes in context.  They posted a fascinating video about the event here:

My favorite statistic: The average American teen sends 2272 text messages a month.

With numbers like that, and the often quoted 2008 NAR study that shows 87% of home buyers use the internet when making a purchase, I wonder how much longer people will continue to disproportionately spend money offline?

Real Estate Blogging Objectives

Tired of blogging? No Time?

Recently I came across this forum post by a beleaguered, blogging Realtor.

“when i first began blogging i was very excited i found out a way to reach the world and express my thoughts.My Real Estate blog began to be filled with content and awesome articles. As i continue to blog and expand my audience and continue to grow my business i have found myself exhausted and overwhelmed. I am exhausted every article requires time and thought something that i really dont have. i recently began looking for a ghost blogger but guess what i haven’t found one yet. Does any one have any suggestions?”

As the season gets busier for Realtors, a common issue is finding time to sit down and write a well written blog post with good content. It is wiser to keep a consistent output rather than flurries of activity, so if you only blog once a month that is preferable to a high frequency of blogs and then nothing at all for long periods. Readers will check in at regular intervals but if there is nothing there for ages you run the risk of losing them completely as they think the blog is dormant. Rather than leave your blog dormant until you find the time and energy to jump back in, consider this:

Read more

Internet Marketing Basics for Realtors: IDX participation

In all the hubbub about listing aggregation services like Trulia and Zillow or the classifieds site Craigslist or any number of other new and emerging real estate services out there, some simple basics can get lost. If you are a real estate professional interested in getting the property you list seen by the most people there’s often a basic tool available to you: MLS IDX participation.

I know that it isn’t new or sexy. In fact, it’s really old. But getting your listing viewed by people who are genuinely interested in buying property can be achieved right out of the gate by participating in your MLS IDX. The people who see your listing via the MLS IDX are likely to have the following traits:

• Interest in buying property vs kicking tires
• Interest in working with a Realtor
• Interest in the geographic region served by your MLS

That’s the basics. If someone meets those characteristics then you probably want them to see your listings. By participating in your MLS IDX program you make it easier for more qualified people to see your listing.

Once you’ve got that basic piece down, then go wild with all the other aggregation and syndication options you can. In some MLS programs they will even handle the syndication themselves. If not, your web developer may be able handle automate the syndication as well (I know the real estate websites we make at Union Street Media can have syndication options enabled).

But start with the basics. Don’t miss out on all those people interested in buying, interested in working with a real estate professional and interested in your area.

Other Readings: Strategies for change

Spending too much time managing new technologies to deal with your core business? You’re not alone. Let’s look at a brace of Harvard Business Review articles that address change, technological disruption and strategies for coping then close it up with an amusing video. Read more

You don’t need a social media strategy

Instead, you should read this post by Chris Brogan. He outlines a tactic that will be very effective. Somewhere along the way, while using this tactic, you will figure out what your strategy should be.

Required skills (which are within your grasp to learn, no holding back please):

• Ability to use online spreadsheet or other data tool (think Google Sheets)
• Ability to use online communication tools such as email and Twitter
• Willingness to continually explore online social networks to find allies

Marketing for Real Estate: A Better Story to Tell

I usually try to stick to the internet marketing side of the real estate discussion and avoid getting into specific pitches and market narratives. But I just read a post I want to make sure my audience reads and discusses.

Seth Godin has a recent post using the marketing of the scientific concepts of evolution and gravity as a metaphor for understanding how you pitch and position your product. The post is brief and uses real estate as an example throughout. The basic premise is that gravity is accepted more easily than evolution because gravity can be quickly demonstrated (drop something vs wait multiple generations to see evolution at work) and because there were no previously held beliefs with which gravity was in conflict.

To restate, what makes a concept easier to sell:

1. Concept does not displace, refute or disagree with a previous concept
2. Concept can be demonstrated very quickly

Seth uses real estate as an example of an easier concept:

Five years ago, if you wanted to persuade people to buy real estate as an investment it was pretty easy.

1. The existing worldview was that real estate was a pretty good investment.
2. You could see, in the course of weeks or months, the price of homes going up.

Magic. Who’s in? Bid, bid, bid.

Of course, now times have changed. That first premise (real estate is a pretty good investment) is a bit shaken. People don’t see their home prices going up. In the face of this changed sentiment, Godin notes:

Real estate, of course, has a long row to hoe now. While there may be a long-term story to sell, it’s in conflict to a painfully learned new worldview, and it’s happening slowly. Perhaps there’s a better story to tell.

Sadly, he doesn’t go on to elaborate what that better story is. But those of you who are working in real estate can and should be able to find out what that story is. You’re also in a better position to develop that narrative than anyone else.

Seth does give two tactics to consider when developing your new and better story:

Tactic 1: Try to tell a story that complements an existing story rather than calling it out as false.

Tactic 2: Try to make the ‘proof’ as vivid and immediate as possible. Like an apple falling on your head.

I like to make sure that there are tangible things you can do with information and strategy so I’m going to wrap this up with the following to do list for my real estate audience (and as usual, I bet even if you aren’t in real estate you can find a way to make this stuff work for you):

1. Develop a two sentence version of a real estate marketing “better story” that conforms to the two tactics outlined by Seth Godin above.
2. Change the text on your most visited web page to reflect this new and better story. For backup on this, read my previous post about your making your home page reflective of the current world view.
3. Report back how this works for you. Help some other people change their story in their market.

Help your new readers find your best old posts

Blogs are great for sharing information that is relevant to your business. Fresh content, added at a regular basis, keeps readers coming back and keeps the search engine spiders coming back to index your new content.

However, sometimes good posts get forgotten over time. The content of the blog post may still be relevant, but the post itself is somewhere at the end of a several pages of archives. Those forgotten pages can still serve as landing pages since search engines will display them. However, all your new readers may not get around to digging into your archives to find that good information.

If you want to increase engagement with your new blog readers and also make use of that great content you’ve already posted, here are two tips:

Put your best content in the sidebar

Determine your “required” reading for the sidebar based on posts that are most read, most emailed or when people spend a lot of time on them. That gives you your readers’ input. Then think about pages you think are important and maybe put some of those in there as well. So you’re balancing what you think is important with what your audience thinks is important.

If you’re using your blog for online marketing, it’s important to keep your best and most important content visible at all times. This would information that helps you qualify a lead, or increases engagement to the point of getting a customer to contact you or buy your product/service.

Make a “forgotten in the archives” post

Look through your blog and find good articles on page 2 or 3 of a category archive. Those are good candidates to revive with a “forgotten in the archives” post. Remember that the marketing goal of this kind of post is to help new readers find the good stuff they missed when you were first starting to blog.

It’s even better if you can tie the “forgotten” posts together under a theme or topic and run it with a headline like “4 great blog posts about marketing real estate online” or whatever is relevant to your business. This helps create the foundation for a content cluster (I’ll blog more about that later, but if you look at our Twitter for Business post you’ll get the idea of content clusters).

Another advantage of this type of post is that it doesn’t take a lot of time but provides a lot of value to your newer blog readers. I’ll make an example “forgotten” post tomorrow or later this week to give you a sense of what one might look like.

Here’s a nerdy statement to sum it all up: Fully exploit your intellectual property assets by re-packaging existing content to engage new site visitors and increase marketing value of prior efforts.

Using Google’s Observations to Improve Your Internet Marketing

Google collects and analyzes a massive amount of information about what interests us, how we use information and where we use information. Teasing insights from that data can have a strong impact on your internet marketing direction, strategies and tactics. Take mobile services, for example.

David Wood writes on his blog about a Google presentation about use of mobile services. The presentation, by Sumit Agarwal who is the product manager for Mobile at Google, includes a lot of insight into Google’s approach to developing applications and is very much worth a read (especially if you’re into developing software).

But from a straight-ahead data standpoint here are some interesting revelations about the way people are using mobile devices and Google’s mobile products:

Read more

Critique of the Long Tail

For those of you who have already read my Long Tail and business blogging strategy post, here is a review of a critique printed in the Harvard Business Review. I always like to see opposing viewpoints and I hope you do as well.

If you aren’t Long-tailed out I’ll get a copy of the HBR article and add my own two cents to it.

Internet Marketing Strategies for Real Estate: Listing Syndication

[For our readers who aren't in real estate: this article might still be useful for you with little effort--whenever you see the word "listing" replace it in your mind with "marketing copy" or something similar]

There are a lot of questions and concerns about syndication of mls listing data in the real estate internet marketing space. Let’s start by looking a little bit at a listing and then approaching two potential strategies for using that real estate listing help market a property on the internet. Read more

keep looking »