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.

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3 Strategies to Future Proof Your Real Estate or Mortgage Business

Disqus fosters a discussion thread rather than just disconnected comments:

As you can see, the layout is much more in line with an actual conversation and a far better format that having to employ the @commentor reply method.

The plug-in also allows interested commentors to continue the discussion via email, very cool for the BlackBerry afflicted ilk such as myself.  Couldn’t tell you how many times I’ve been on the golf course, I mean ‘out of the office’, and felt compelled to throw my $.02 into a comment thread I was following but anguished at the thought of doing so via my pseudo-browser.

Yes I hear you iPhone people, you don’t have this problem, but most of you have AT&T as a service provider…so its a wash.

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Disqus Creates a Discussion Thread Instead of a Disconnected Comment Marathon

Hi Im Rudy at Trulia, a social media guru, inspired this post with a question on Twitter last week.

My initial reaction was ‘Why would anyone want to enter the real estate sales industry today?’ but the prevailing thought became: It would be a great time to enter if you knew how to play the game with new rules and better tools.

The information below is nothing new to the experienced re.net professional, it’s meant to be a simple guide to help a new agent put their feet in the re.net pool without inundating them with too much information.

Study, Subscribe, Crowd Source, and otherwise increase your Social Networking Optimization Skillz.

Read the real estate sites indexed in my re.net tab (for starters).  Look for other sites of interest from their blogrolls.  Commit your favorites to an RSS Reader and read them like the daily newspaper.  Track the latest news, trends and general pulse of the online real estate and mortgage community. If someone writes a post that inspires a question, comment thoughtfully and you’ll likely gain some influential friends along the way.

Once your social base membership increases you will be able to crowd source for  information better than any search engine can provide.    What is crowd sourcing? Leveraging mass collaboration amongst human beings to further ones knowledge and experience levels.

Enroll in social networks like Active Rain, Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn, doing so is a well guided, relatively easy process.  If you get stuck ask someone in the community for help, there’s a high degree of altruism in these spaces.

It’s easy to get a little crazy joining new social networks, it gets even crazier trying to keep up with them all, so choose where you’re going to spend your time carefully.  The communities I mention have all yielded positive returns in exchange for my time spent ‘in’ them.

Active Rain.  The #1 social network for real estate and mortgage professionals.  If the community does nothing else it gives a wide range of feedback, from active professionals to interested consumers, and offers good targeted marketing leverage/exposure.  Most every ‘online’ real estate related professional I’ve run across has contributed to Active Rain at some point in time, it’s a great place to gain online traction.

Twitter is an enterprise class text messaging social network who’s potential upside is best described in my last post.

FaceBook is a more mature, clean version of MySpace in concept and user type.  Throwing sheep, feeding a friend to a Vampire and a slew of other spamapplications argue the contrary, granted.  But, Facebook also allows one to create smaller specialized ‘communities’, affiliate with specific geographic and demographic groups, and otherwise socially promote yourself and your wares for free.  FaceBook can connect you with ALOT of people.

LinkedIn is a resume and networking community for professionals.  If you’re looking for business, products, services and the people that provide them, LinkedIn’s ’six degrees of separation’ community is a great place to crowd source higher level expertise and experience and even land a better job.

Join Trulia Voices and Discussions on Zillow, engage the conversations as people subsequently tend to link back to your home site, which is the goal.  One thing here: answer the damn questions honestly not according to the kool-aid infused NAR psycho-babbletalk rulebook that currently dominates these sites…get in there and mix things up, you’ll stand out and win in the end.

Give away your knowledge and listings freely.

Start a blogsite by paying a service provider (there are a number of them in the RE Tech section of the re.net tab) to create a nice clean ‘home’ in cyberspace for you.  Yes you can do a lot of this yourself for relatively free but thats not where you should be focusing your time.   Allow the professionals to handle most of this, at least the set-up, the cost in time savings alone is worth the price tag.   Don’t make the mistake of putting up an ad hoc site, it’s the first thing most people will see of ‘you’ and first impressions are important.

It wasn’t all that long ago that uttering the idea of open listing distribution outside the traditional MLS would get one tarred, feathered and hung from NAR’s flagpole.  Today it’s accepted as necessary for survival. Customers want to see listings, all of them, so give them the most intuitive experience possible.  Make sure your site provider has a really good IDX User Interface (UI).  In other words, you want something that looks almost as good as Redfins, Zillows or Trulias User Interface to redisplay the listings in your farm area.  Push your listings out to these well trafficked sites too.

Consider yourself a real estate journalist, report (blog) on your market  3 times per week.  Mix it up, the stories can vary from statistical to satirical but should always tie back to relative real estate information, and enlighten to otherwise benefit your audience.

Familiarize yourself with various multi-media tools to properly market yourself and the real estate you represent, i.e. Turn Here, Real Estate Shows, even sites as simple as Flickr can help make an otherwise vanilla listing drip with sweet sizzurp.   Teresa and Daniel epitomize this practice.  Current agents and profound bloggers are even developing their own technologies for the benefit of all…

If you notice another professional doing a property or client an underachieving disservice, pass these tools and advice along to them.  There is nothing more frustrating to a buyer and insulting to a seller than reading some boiler-plate MLS description of a property with no (or disposable camera) pictures.

The re.net community is rather ‘cliquish’ and protective of their own.  Differentiating yourself with novel opinion is one thing, personally attacking someone for your benefit will get you ostracized in the greater community.  It should also go without saying that plagiarism is stealing and will get you ‘rubbed out’ too.  Never copy someone’s work without permission or proper citing.

Don’t expect instant success.  Building an audience takes time, at least 3-6 months.

F*@k SEO

A good blogsite provider will build you a site that innately optimizes your content for the search engines.  Many SEO pundits (trust me, you’ll run in to them) will have you chasing your tail focusing on template style (= boring) writing.  You can’t ‘game the system’, trying to do so is often called ‘black hat’ or ‘grey hat’ tactics and will likely get your site penalized.  The best SEO advice anyone can give centers around composing well written, compelling, relevant content and producing it with consistency.  The rest will take care of itself.

The SEO related sites I link too in my re.net index are there because they’ve proven to spur the creative writing juices and address the basic do’s and do nots very well.

The time you spend trying to keep up with SEO tactics is time better spent researching your market data, trends and other far more interesting content to provide your readership and subsequent clients.

Always remember, you should be building an audience not fishing for ‘traffic’.

Don’t call yourself Realtor.

Sorry, but it’s the truth.  Call yourself a licensed practitioner of the real estate arts, marketing guru for real property, property pimp, or whatever.  The name Realtor creates strong feelings of aversion in the mind of a consumer, and the NAR doesn’t like anyone using the word very much anyway.

Drop the confusing acronyms. I get these visions in my head of local NAR meetings where Realtors wear their uniforms with patches and beads sown on, like in boy (or girl) scouts.

Distance yourself from traditional real estate economics.   I’m not saying charge less, I am saying charge whatever you charge, just have it make sense to the consumer.

Don’t put your picture on biz cards or the front page of your website.  People can be shallow, jealous and unforgiving…propping your face up for all to see may be deemed pretentious, too pretty/ugly, or doesn’t look enough like you (so you’re lying).  One of the (many) things I took away from the 4RealzEd.com seminar was Jim Marks demonstrating via a real client example, where simply removing an agents mug from the front page of the website caused a substantially higher click-through rate.

It’s not personal, but its hard for a few good apples to un-spoil the bunch.  For every Jay Thompson, Kris Berg and Teresa Boardman there are a hundred clowns out there insuring the name Realtor elicits a furrowed brow and curled lip on the face of the consumer status-quo.  Imitation is the sincerest form of a compliment, it’s OK to try and emulate what these good folk are doing, the industry is better because of people like them, which leads to:

Pay it forward

For too long the real estate industry has been in competition with itself.

Scarcity breeds scarcity, the bigger you give the bigger you get.  Help out other agents that didn’t get the love you got and make the entire industry a better place than when you arrived.

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5 Tips For The Brave Soul Considering Real Estate Sales As a Career

Blog through both sides of your mouth.

-JC

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Deep Blogging Tips by Jeff Corbett