REBarCamp Charlotte II was held in the cozy suburb of Ballantyne Friday June 11th at a terrific split venue, The Ballantyne Village Theater and The Superior School of Real Estate.  Many thanks to Lori Bee, Chad Huck, Debe Maxwell, Sandy Aichner and Todd Long for organizing a great event.

I decided to present on ‘3 Strategies to Futureproof Your Business’…hoping the cliche-ish title would draw in a few extra attendees.  During my discussion group disguised as a presentation, I spat off a myriad of names of businesses, vendors, websites, and applications that would assist in such ‘Futureproofing’, which I promised to put online for reference.

So, here’s Part 1 of a very general recap of the three ’strategies’ with links to the resources intertwined the best I could.  Actually I’m going to break this into 3 posts rather than cram a 4000 word mini-novel and worry about your head hitting the keyboard as you zone out or pass out…

Strategy #1- Establish Your Blogsite as the Hub of Your Marketing Efforts.

We start at the top of the funnel with Marketing.  REBarCamps are dominated by Social Media presentations since thats what most agents who attend Bar Camps are interested in learning more about.  Give em what they want.

**Disclaimer:  I am not in any way compensated by any company mentioned in this article, outside of the occasional drink…

A Blogsite or Hubsite or content management system (CMS) is an extensible website, one that can be dynamically changed to reflect the current look, feel and opinion of its main proprietor.  Architected thoughtfully, built by a quality engineer using the right parts, a blogsite can be developed into the hub of a potent interactive marketing ecosystem.

Wordpress is the de facto CMS for the real estate and mortgage industries due to the sheer amount of developer support for the open source platform, specifically in the real estate arena.  Yes, you can DIY depending on how how well you understand what is effectively a second language and how much time you have.  In most cases working with a professional will yield far better results far quicker.  I’ve seen the work and know the principles of  Dakno, Real Estate Tomato and Virtual Results, all are well versed in working with Wordpress and Real Estate/Mortgage professionals.

Whatever provider you decide to use, keep your hubsite as aesthetically clean and simple as possible…less is generally more.  You can implement anything below in a well organized, uncluttered manner…take time to funnel and categorize your content thoughtfully.  75 buttons and links and other bling-flair flashing on every single page is more often a distraction than a call to action.

CMS’s with sound interactive marketing (Social Media) strategies should contain some flavor of the following:

Opinion- Have one, please.  Although we’re talking about content management systems and strategies, people don’t hanker for ‘content’.  You’re going to upset 50% of the crowd most of the time so get used to trolls and other nill wishing folks when you actually form and articulate an argument instead of regurgitate what the talking head on the TV said.

Listings- Listings used to be #1 in importance but the industry has evolved to where they are almost ubiquitous.  Its not if you show all the listings and accompanying information anymore, its how and how to get found because of them.  The how resides in User Experience which is paramount to an effective IDX solution.  Certain IDX providers (like Diverse Solutions) include an ‘Indexable‘ option where listings are converted to SE friendly content which creates organic traffic to your hubsite.

Engagement- There are essentially five mediums to engage someone:  Online Comments, Instant Message, Text Message, Email and Phone.  Readily implement each one into your hubsite, giving everyone their own preferred way to contact you.  If someone writes an article that stimulates you to write a post, link back to them.  Give what you get, the law of reciprocity lives and its great for your interactive ecosystem.

Market Statistics- Probably the most underutilized resource of data available to the professional and consumer.  Up until not too long ago, crunching the information required to accurately gauge where a local market was performing and giving qualified advice on the best value for a given property amounted to ordering an appraisal and going off that. The Case Shiller Home Price Index reports on where certain markets were 3 months ago.

Fortunately there are companies like Altos Research that do a great job summarizing local real time housing data, they’ll even generate custom reports for your hubsite.  Look for new market stats providers from initiatives like RPR to MLS’s directly, this field is about to get white hot as vaults of data are being opened for interpretation and presentation.  Visually augmented information of this quality makes you look really smart, is hard to negotiate against and should help better set expectations between consumers and professionals when it comes to establishing sales/buy values for housing.  Of course, add some of your own opinion to the mix.

Social Network Integration- Other places you ‘hang out’ that are extensions or syndicators of your hubsite…and each should tie back in some way, shape, form or fashion.  There  many (many) opinions on how to engage the communities below down to a very (very) granular level, I’ll leave that to the respective authorities…for this posts purpose, I’m identifying how a few of the more popular venues can interact with your hubsite for communal benefit.

Facebook- ‘Like’ your way to engagement with their syndication button, make sure you (or your developer) implements the ‘Like’ button on your hubsite so people can push your content for you.  Create a Fan Page (for business) and explore using some of the widgets on your hubsite.  There is a strong engagement factor with Facebook, it’s reach is deep and potent to a very relevant audience.  There’s so much more to Facebook, I know this.  Check out LoCo Heather, Mike Mueller, Derek Overbey of Roost or JB140 for some killer Facebook advice.

Twitter- Include a link/button to this text message based social network so potential clients can follow you.  Consider placing your twitter stream on your hub.  ’Social Media’ etiquette (who ever sets such policy) says that tweeting your listings or mortgage rates or anything to do with business is a faux pas, but you are looking for business right?

While I’m sure consumers are interested in where you’re headed for dinner, enjoy that witty sense of humor and general life musings in 140 characters or less…they’re also very interested in what it is you do for a living and what your insights are…thats why they followed you.  If I’m following you and you’re a mortgage broker, I’d like to know where rates are trending, what you think of the market on your blog or other relevant opinion.  As an agent, I would expect to hear about new listings or market news from you.  Your true friends will understand if you occasionally engage in business speak…Im getting tangental, time to move on.

ActiveRain- The largest and most active social network in the real estate space.  ActiveRain is probably the most important social network for you to participate in if you are relatively new to ’social media’.  The sheer volume of information and generally altruistic membership offers tremendous support to those who seek it.  Since 2006 I’ve made some of the most important relationships, both business and personal, on or because of AR…I’m deeply indebted to the community.

AR ranks very well in Search Engine Result Pages (SERPS) for longer tail real estate search queries.  Longer tail search queries (anecdotally at least) suggest a consumer who is much further along in the buying process.  Put one and one together and…you should at the very minimum cross post your opinion within the AR network.  I’ll typically post an article here on my hubsite and post the same into my AR account ~24+ hours later, linking back to my site somewhere in that post.  If you don’t want to deal with the point seeking ‘Thanks for sharing’ comment spam and inbox stuffer, turn off the comments and direct them to engage you within your hubs commenting system.

Some people say AR is just Realtors talking to Realtors, which is what it looks like.  However, people, like consumers people, may not be commenting but they are watching.  I’m routinely contacted via email regarding articles published on AR and know many others who have derived a good bit of business from their engagements on the network, even if it is as simple as outlined above.

An agent/professional would be doing well to have a hub where a given article generated 10,000 page views.  Have a post featured on AR and this is normal, thats 10,000 potential very relevant visits to your hub.

I could give you 5 other reasons why its a good idea to make AR a part of your marketing strategy, similar to FaceBook, but I’m really trying to keep things brief. For more on AR, go sign up or login to AR…theres plenty of people ready to help you around.

Flickr- Online photo sharing and organizing social network.  Rumor has it that Flickr provides for great SEO juice to your hubsite if your business happens to depend on photographs…real estate sales depends on photographs, preferably very good photographs.  For some succinct advice on how, click here.

Posterous- Mobile life streaming, content syndication platform that can seamlessly integrate within your hubsites domain.  A novel way to keep business speak and more personal musings on separate channels within the same soapbox.  Post links, opinion, podcasts, video and pictures from your mobile phone/PDA through Posterous to your hubsite, FaceBook, Flickr and/or Twitter.  They also have a web based platform to manage everything from.

Oh, yeah…create a LinkedIn profile and link back to your hubsite too…

With any social network or 3rd party community, its important that you make it evident where else you ‘hang out’ and give obvious directions as to how to get there.  In other words…loud calls to action on at least the Contact page of your hubsite.  OK, thats it…

Next…Strategy #2: Customer Relation Management and other integrated information systems.