Posts Tagged ‘reva’
Diary of a Virtual Assistant
Friday, January 28th, 2011
We often get wrapped up in our own world and assume that everybody knows what we know and sees what we see. Your job as a real estate agent is second nature to you. You use terms such as MLS and REO on a regular basis and assume that everybody else knows what you are talking about. More than often though, they don’t. That’s why they trust you with their homes and not themselves.
I often speak to you in this blog and assume that you know exactly how my company works. Instead of assuming you know what a real estate marketing company does, I am going to give you a little insight into what goes on in the inner workings of our office.
For those of you who don’t have experience working with a marketing team, I may open your eyes to new ideas and possibilities. For those of you who value your real estate marketing, I may get your mind rolling in a new direction. Let’s follow my team of VA’s through the day!
8:30 am
Our team arrives, ready to start the day. First thing she does is check her task system. The task system is RealSupport’s way of keeping track of all of the projects and assignments we get from our clients. Some are re-occurring every week (i.e. re-posting Craigslist ads, sending out Seller Reports), while others are big scale projects (Write 4 Keyword-Rich Community Pages for San Francisco Client).
9:00 am
Email check-ups. Periodically throughout the day we get responses from projects we’ve have been working on, but also inquiries of all shapes and sizes.
“What do you think about this Tweetlister thing? Do I need to check this out? Can I link it to my Facebook?”
“I love the Bio you wrote for my website! Where else can I put this???”
“I changed companies this week. Can you update my info on all my sites?”
We proceed to respond to each e-mail, sometimes forwarding them on to a person most appropriate to answer. You see, each team member has their own area of expertise…
Sarah is our resident real estate Social Media guru. When it comes to Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, or any of the other millions of sites, she is your girl. On a daily basis, she tweets interesting information, creates new Facebook Business pages, or figures out how to seamlessly feed one social networking site to the next. Her list grows on a daily basis because there is always something new and exciting that one of our clients “have to have.”
Brandie is our design girl. If a client wants a new logo, a custom header, a postcard design, brochure design, etc. – the task goes to her or a freelance designer, depending on our workload. As you know, esthetics are very important for a real estate agent. No marketing team could survive without a design specialist.
Have you ever found a new site that you want to use, but don’t have the patience to figure it out? Guess what? We have somebody for that too. When it comes to troubleshooting and processes, Ron is your man. When one of our Connecticut clients decided to try QR codes, Ron found a user-friendly website, drafted up a fool-proof checklist, and created a QR code for every listing our client had on the market.
We have another girl, Allie, who has the incredible ability to be in multiple places at once – Evanston IL, Half Moon Bay CA, Lexington MA, Andover MA, and the Big Island of Hawaii, to name a few. No, she doesn’t actually travel to these places. She blogs about them. She has made it her niche to get to know everything about a client’s community so she can speak on their behalf, once a week, on their blogs. She spends her day Googling, reading articles sent from clients (“Blog Food”), and scouring real estate tips to provide our clients with well written, keyword-dense, blog masterpieces.
For all of our statistic-minded clients who like a little less fluff and a little more fact, they go to Lori. With a real estate background and a love for numbers, market statistics was a natural choice for Lori. With years of experience as a virtual assistant, she also has every process down to a science. From foreclosure procedures to the often complicated process of MLS entry, Lori is your girl.
12:00 pm
Lunch Time! A homemade wrap and a much-needed coffee in the lounge. Real estate marketing takes a lot out of you!
1:00 pm
The phone rings (for probably the 100th time that day). It’s from a client we hadn’t heard from in awhile. After going through a lull with her business, it’s back and booming and she’s ready to jump right back on that marketing bandwagon. She wants the full service treatment – listing marketing, blogging, and, of course, a Facebook Business Page. Lori forwards the call straight to Erica. As the Operations Manager, Erica knows everything there is to know about our business and real estate marketing. She gives her the rundown on what she needs to do to get started again. She quickly pulls up her files and finds it will be easy to jump in where we left off.
3:00 pm
A handful of new e-mails arrive to our team account. One is “blog food” from a Maryland client. It’s a news article on living green. It goes to Allie, of course, for blogging material, but also to Sarah so she can use a tidbit from the article to post to the client’s Facebook wall and Tweet to her Twitter. Another is from our Northern Virginia client. It’s her latest market statistics. That goes straight to Ron for seller reporting. He will gather the information together and place it in a well-presented email to send to each seller that client currently has listed.
4:00 pm
Stacey has a kick-off call with our Florida client about his drip campaign. He has sent her a few different ideas that include interesting and unknown facts about golf. Why golf? Because his niche is Golf Communities in Florida and he wants his clients to know that he knows his stuff when it comes to golf. Stacey jots down notes, and takes inventory of the free drip campaign that already comes with his Point2 account, and she begins to tweak each email to make it personal to our client. By the way, Stacey is one of our real estate copywriters. She writes “About Me” pages, Community pages, Drip Campaigns, descriptive ad copy, Newspaper Ads, Tag Lines, and, of course, blogs!
I hope this was helpful in opening your eyes to our world. If you want to become a part of it, all you have to do is give us a call. When it comes to real estate marketing, there really is nothing we don’t do.
Contact Carrie
Visit us Online at RealSupportInc.com
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The Importance of Networking- People Need People
Friday, January 21st, 2011
In our social media age, we often lose sight of the value of face to face contact and interaction with actual people. It seems that because we can interact quickly with a multitude of people on five different sites within a matter of minutes; we’re convinced that we’ve done our networking for the day.
Thank goodness we don’t put the same qualifications on our entire life!
Why do we want to get together with friends to talk over dinner when we using our cell phones would be so much more convenient? Why take the time to go to our kids soccer game when we could just as easily watch a video of it on our phone? Ever wonder why we feel the need to go to a coffee shop to work when we could save money and make coffee at home? The answer? Human interaction!
We’re made to want to be around people, to interact with them and share life with them. Why wouldn’t you do the same thing for potential or current clients?
Of course social media is a great tool for interacting with people, but it’s only half of the whole. There is still something to be said for good old fashioned networking, and many successful companies recognize this fact! Google and other large companies are now creating the executive level role of Chief Networking Officer. These CNO’s attend events and create extensive plans for following up with people. Although seemingly basic, this type of networking is something we’ve lost sight of, and it’s time to revisit the past.
Here are a few ways you can regain the art of networking:
Attend Events- Whether it’s real estate related, a community event or volunteer opportunity; attending one to two events a month is a great way to start. Meeting new people is an effective way to get your name and face out there and can be a great way to generate buzz about your business. Imagine the impact you can have with people in your community as you have the opportunity to get to know them and they get to know you. Word of mouth marketing is still the most desired way to market as referrals are priceless!
Send Mail- Postcards, cards and notes are still greatly appreciated by most people! Remembering to send past clients a card for the holidays or on their birthday will be a refreshing surprise! You can also send notes to people you’ve been in contact with from a networking event, your past business contacts or even the manager of your favorite lunch spot where you tend to meet up with clients. This is a great way to stay at the forefront of people’s minds while still maintaining that sense of personal contact.
Make Calls- While not as personal as a face to face conversation; a phone call is still better than a text or Facebook post. Call recent clients, people you met at the farmers market, or the couple you sold a house to last month. You may not have the time to make phone calls every day, but committing to making two phone calls a week will fit into anyone’s schedule. A call will let people know that you care and that you’re willing to take the time to follow up or simple touch base.
I hope these simple networking techniques will spark even more ideas for maintaining personal contact with people and the desire to find a well balanced approach to online and in-person networking. We’re not suggesting that you kick your online presence to the curb; it is important! But this is just a little reminder that, at the end of the day, people need people!
Contact Carrie
Visit us Online at RealSupportInc.com
Join Our LinkedIn Group
Become a Facebook Fan
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Real Estate Resolutions: 7 Good Motivators for 2011
Friday, January 7th, 2011
I don’t know about you, but I absolutely love making new year’s resolutions. As the self-diagnosed Motivational Book Addict, making New Years Resolutions is probably the highlight of my year. This is when I can sit myself down, reflect on the past year, and re-evaluate what I can do differently to make the next year AMAZING. Although I highly recommend making a personal New Year’s Resolution list, this blog is about your Real Estate Resolutions to jump start your marketing plan for 2011.
So get a pen and paper and get ready to motivate yourself. These are just a few ideas to get you thinking. They will most likely spark a few other ideas, getting you really revved up, until you can barely wait for your first new listing of the year.
1. Make a marketing plan
Maybe you have already been skilled in the ways of real estate marketing. You send out postcards, you’ve re-vamped your website, you’ve even attempted a Facebook page. Now, however, is the time to take that next step. Wherever you are with your marketing (“you don’t even have a website” all the way to “you are ranked #3 on Google for your keywords”), find out what you can do to improve upon it. I know that’s frustrating to hear, but there’s always something you can do better. Make a plan laying out everything that you’ve ever wanted for your real estate marketing. Don’t by shy here. This is where you can go crazy.
2. Take Baby Steps
The difficult thing about real estate marketing, is that it can be expensive and time consuming. The best way to tackle your biggest fish is to execute them slowly. Take a look at your “dream marketing plan” and see what you can do realistically. If you have a template website currently and you would like to make it a lot more customized, but can’t afford a custom website right now, start off with working within the parameters of the template to make it more personal to your business. Realsupport.com has some great examples of how you can make websites like Point2 and RealPro look like they were made for you, without the custom website price tag.
3. Create a timeline
Visualization is everything when it comes to reaching your goals. If you can go out and buy a calendar, specifically for the purpose of your real estate marketing, it would serve as the ultimate motivator to accomplish your goals. If you can fill in, to the day, what you are going to do each month for your marketing, you are much more likely to do it. Putting it on the calendar makes it specific, gives it a timeline, and encourages you to get it done.
4. Cardinal Rule: At least one touch per month
Make it a rule for 2011 that you make at least one touch per month with your SOI. Whether that be a postcard, an email, or a phone call, make it a point to keep in touch with your past, present, and potential clients. That means by the end of 2011 you should have reached a handful of buyers and sellers at least 12 times.
5. Start blogging
I’ve told you before and I’ll tell you again – blogging can do wonders for your real estate business. Blogging to your clients not only reaches out to them on a more personal level, it also increases your SEO. There really is no downfall to it. The hardest thing about it is keeping it up. If you can’t do it, talk to your Real Estate Virtual Assistant about blogging for you on a regular basis. It really is worth it and you will see results if you do it correctly.
6. Positive Attitude
Okay. Try not to roll your eyes at this one, buy we all need an attitude adjustment. We all know that it has been a rough year for the market, and many of you cannot stop reminding yourself of this fact. But there is nothing better than a clean slate and a new year to change your attitude. Think positive for 2011. It just feels good to say it.
7. Hire a Real Estate Virtual Assistant
The job of a real estate agent requires a ton of responsibilities. Your day-to-day tasks can be very demanding, and stressful, and overwhelming. And that is without the addition of the marketing aspects. A good real estate virtual assistant can take a lot off your plate, as well as take your marketing to the next level. Take a look at our website to see what services we offer. Even if you don’t use us, it’s always okay to ask for help from somebody. A real estate virtual assistant may be just what you need to make this year everything that you imagined it could be.
Have a Very Happy New Year!
Carrie Gable and the team at RealSupport, Inc. are our “VA Quick Tip” columnists offering expertise in real estate marketing, technology and more. RealSupport’s office and team of 9 full-time staff members is located near Chicago, IL. Their successful team works virtually for many top real estate agents and brokers nationwide. Pioneers in the Real Estate Virtual Assistant industry, RealSupport offers marketing, branding, website and logo design, listing marketing, lead generation, technical support, transaction management, social networking, blogging and much more… Just ask!Contact Carrie
Visit us Online at RealSupportInc.com
Join Our LinkedIn Group
Become a Facebook Fan
Follow me on Twitter
The Importance of Capturing Leads
Friday, November 12th, 2010
Well, you don’t want to hold them hostage, but you’d certainly like to capture them! When thinking about your website, you may wonder who (if anyone at all) stops by and how effective your website really is. Wouldn’t it be great to get a list of the visitors that stop by your site, especially those that are truly serious about buying or selling a home?
Now, we know lead capturing is nothing new, but we wanted to revisit the topic and give you some creative ways to ensure you don’t miss out on a great opportunity. You may have a fantastic custom website which is very appealing. Potential clients may click around, view homes for sale, use the area resources page, get information on buying or selling in your area and get a free market report. They may click over to your real estate blog, read about the things going on in your city and find great real estate related information. Going back to your website they view all the homes you’ve sold and read your bio. They’re still considering buying or selling, so they decide not to contact you since they’re just tossing the idea around. And they’re gone.
They’ve gotten all the information they need from you and know key facts about your business and who you are, but you are left with nothing. Is your website effective? Is it being utilized to its fullest potential? Nope.
So, here’s the deal. Not everything on your website can be “free.” If you want to capture the leads that visit your site, you need to do an exchange. People understand that it’s a basic point of business to give something in order to get something and the same rule applies to your website. This can make clients nervous as they feel that potential clients will “catch on” that you’re trying to get their information and simply won’t come back.
The best way to go about it is to be up front. Wherever you decide to put the lead capture on your site, let them know why you want their information. Something as simple as, “Sign up to receive a free market report! We’ll also send you a monthly update of the current market to keep you posted on what’s happening in the City Real Estate Market!” This lets them know that you do want to send them other useful information and how often they can expect to get an email. They’ll appreciate knowing up front what they’re getting into which will also help build trust in who you are as an agent.
You want to be sure what you’re offering them is attractive! They want to know it’s’ worth taking the time to input their email and receive future emails from you. Here are a few creative irresistible ideas on what you can offer – whether real estate related or not!
- Free Market Report
- Top 10 Things to Do in Your City
- Free Home Search
- Coupon for a Free Cup of Coffee (This will generate even more interaction and is a nice way to say ‘thank you’ for stopping by!)
- Free Guide for First Time Home Buyers
The list goes on and on! Capturing leads that come to your website is crucial as it can turn visitors into clients. If you have questions about incorporating effective lead captures onto your website; let us know. As a team of real estate virtual assistants, we’d love to help you turn more visitors into clients! If you have a lead capture system that is effective, feel free to share your success stories!
Contact Carrie
Visit us Online at RealSupportInc.com
Join Our LinkedIn Group
Become a Facebook Fan
Follow me on Twitter
Measure the Success of Your Facebook Business/Fan Page with Facebook Insights
Friday, October 22nd, 2010If you have a Facebook business/fan page, you may know that Facebook Insights are the stats that Facebook compiles for you. You can see what your Facebook fan demographic is, how many page views you’ve gotten for the week, how many active users you have and more.
The Facebook Insight stats are ideal for measuring your success. To review the stats for your page(s), login to Facebook and then go to: http://www.facebook.com/insights. Click “view insights” under the business/fan page you want view stats for. The opening screen should have two charts on it:
#1: The “Users” Chart: This chart is VERY helpful in giving a general summary of how much your fan base is growing and how active the fans are on your page.
This chart explains how many total “fans” you have and how many “monthly active users” you have. “Monthly active users” are Facebook fans that are considered active if they have engaged with, viewed, or consumed content generated by your Facebook page. It also displays how many “Daily New Likes” you have.
How this chart can help: This chart can help you figure out when you’re getting a bigger increase in fans and, more importantly, what you’re doing at that time to gain more fans! Maybe you’re tagging local businesses frequently or you’ve posted about events that are of interest to your fan base. You can then change your social networking strategy based on what works.
#2: The “Interactions” Chart: This chart shows you how much feedback you got on your page for the past few weeks.
It tells you how many “likes” and comments you got on your posts for each day. The green lines show how many comments you got on your page and blue line shows how many “likes” you got on your page.
The Daily Post Views and Daily Post Feedback numbers are only calculated from the previous day, so those numbers might not be as beneficial to you.
How this chart can help: You can use this to see which days you got the most feedback/interaction on your page. You can then go back to your page and see what it is that you posted that brought in these results. You can then use that information going forward when deciding what to post.
#3: Fan Demographics: You can see both the gender and age range of your fans, where they’re located, AND what language they speak!
How these charts can help you: If you know what your largest fan demographic is, then you can determine what types of things you need to post and who you’re “talking” to when posting to the page.
#4: Page Views: You can see two types of page views on this chart:
Logged-In Page Views: The total hits to your Facebook page for the past few weeks from people who are logged-in to Facebook. Keep in mind that this could mean that people looked at your page logged-out of Facebook.
Unique Page Views: Total “unique” hits to your page from people logged-in to Facebook. This could be people who aren’t fans or people who don’t visit your page often.
How this chart can help you: If you’re getting more page views than usual on a particular day or week, you can look back at your page and see what type of things you did to get more page views. Maybe you tagged more local businesses in your wall-posts, or maybe you posted a photo album. This can be good information for you to know what you need to do when you’re looking to get more people to look at your page.
Keep in mind that fans will also read your posts on their news feed, and so just because they’re not clicking to go to directly to your page does not mean they’re not reading what you’re posting!
#5: Tab Views: You can see WHICH tabs on the page your users are visiting frequently AND how many “external referrers” you got. External referrers are clicks TO your Facebook page that came FROM an outside website, like google or your website, for example.
Hows this chart can help you: You can know which tabs and areas of your page to pay attention to the most. For example, if you have a high number of users going to the discussion tab on your page, then you know that you should spend some time contributing to the user discussions and adding more discussions to the tab. It’s also good to know which external referrers are working most for your page so you know which websites work best for promoting your page!
#6: Media Consumption: If you post media to your page frequently, this is the perfect chart for you! You’ll see how many photos views, video plays, and audio plays there were on your page that week! The blue line represents video plays, the green line represents audio plays, and the purple line represents photo views.
How this chart can help you:
It shows what type of media your audience enjoys and what day they liked it, so you can go back and see what you posted that day that was so popular! If you put up several community photos, see which albums got the most views and post more photos like those.
If one particular video you posted got a lot of hits, try and make all your videos as successful as that one. It’s important to remember that these charts represent what your fans liked the most on your page, and if you want to keep getting more fans, you have to give the people what they want!
#7: Daily Story Feedback: This shows how many “likes” and comments you’ve had over the course of a few weeks as well as people who un-subscribed or “un-liked” your page.
How this chart can help you:
Just like in your interactions graph, you get to see what day(s) you got a lot of feedback from what you posted and then determine what it is you posted to get that feedback.
You also get to see what isn’t working if you get a large number of fans who unsubscribe to your page on a certain day or week, and that’s also important to know when you’re making changes to your social networking strategy!
#8: Daily Page Activity: This chart refers to how often outside people come to your page and actually post unique content on your page.
It refers to how many people actually posted on your wall instead of just commenting on something you posted, how many people wrote something on your discussion tab, how many people tagged you in a post, and if you have a “reviews” tab, or how many people have posted reviews of you and/or your business!
How this chart can help you: This aspect of your Facebook page is definitely the hardest to get high numbers for! You can use this chart to determine how often you’re inviting your fans to participate on your page. Maybe you need to get more creative to engage your fans!
To sum it all up: Facebook Insights are important to your business page because they show you the when and what and allow you to measure your success. Best of all, your real estate virtual assistant can monitor all of these stats (at least 1x per week) while they’re maintaing your social media presence. Ask your VA to show you a revised version of your social media strategy at least 3x per year!
Carrie Gable and the team at RealSupport, Inc. are our “VA Quick Tip” columnists offering expertise in real estate marketing, technology and more. RealSupport’s office and team of 9 full-time staff members is located near Chicago, IL. Their successful team works virtually for many top real estate agents and brokers nationwide. Pioneers in the Real Estate Virtual Assistant industry, RealSupport offers marketing, branding, website and logo design, listing marketing, lead generation, technical support, transaction management, social networking, blogging and much more… Just ask!Contact Carrie
Visit us Online at RealSupportInc.com
Join Our LinkedIn Group
Become a Facebook Fan
Follow me on Twitter
So I’m on Facebook and Twitter, Now What’s My ROI?
Friday, October 15th, 2010
One of the biggest questions we get asked as Real Estate Virtual Assistants maintaining social media for our clients is, “What’s my ROI?”
This is a valid question. As an agent, you want to know where your money goes when you’ve hired us to maintain your social networking presence. Thankfully, we’ve found something that might help answer some questions about what your social networking efforts are really doing for you!
The first study that directly showed social media success metrics comes from Business.com’s “Social Media Best Practices: Question & Answer Forums” report. In the midst of all the statistics and analyzing there was a hidden gift: a chart below which listed social media success metrics!
This might not seem like it’s a big deal. You’d think that there would be many more studies that show how successful social media is in marketing. Because social media is such a new medium for business, there aren’t many studies that can show a quantified list of how successful social media really is in the business world. This could possibly be the first cut-and-dry, quantified list of what social media can really do for your business, and we’d like to share it with you:
According to the results of this study, the three most powerful things that social media does for your business are:
1.) It drives traffic to your website: According to this chart, 61% of companies said that social media led to an increase in their website traffic. A Facebook fan page or Twitter profile is just an introduction to who you are as an agent. If people are interested in hearing more about your business, they will click on the link to your website from your fan page to find out more.
2.) It allows you to engage with prospects: The whole idea behind social media is to engage with your network. Having a Facebook fan page and Twitter profile allows you to interact with local businesses and your fans and followers in an easy, accessible way. The more engaging you are on your pages, the more fans you’ll get, and the more fans you get, the better-known you’ll be in your community. You never know, the owner of that local dry-cleaners you’ve been interacting with on Facebook could be looking to sell their house, and your Facebook relationship could lead them to want you as their agent! In this study, 57% of companies said that having a social media presence increased their engagement with prospects.
3.) It builds your brand: Since social media is the trendiest, most popular medium for networking right now, it’s important that you have a social media presence to build your brand. There are more than 400 million users registered on Facebook and over 190 million users on Twitter. The more active of a social media presence you have, the more fans you’ll get, and more fans means that more people on these social media sites know who you are and what your brand is. 54% of the companies in this study said that having an active presence in social media led to more people being aware of their brand.
Those are the three top things that having an active social media presence does for your business. The common theme that they all have is that they would give you more positive exposure in your community, and that leads to more business! 
While these are the more powerful things that social media does for your brand, there are aspects of marketing where social media won’t do as much for you:
1.) It won’t always lead to lead-generation: According to this chart, only 36% of companies said social media led to prospect lead volume and only 33% said that social media led to prospect lead quality. Unfortunately, while interacting with your fans and followers on social media builds your brand and can sometimes lead to client-gain, it doesn’t happen as often as we’d like. Most people still use Google to search for real estate agents, and while having a presence on social media can help increase your SEO, many times future clients are still led to your website, not to your Facebook or Twitter page.
2.) You may not get useful feedback from your customers: Only 23% of companies said that having a Facebook or Twitter account got them useful feedback from their customers. While it’s good to know that there’s less of a chance you’ll be getting negative posts, it’d still be ideal to receive the positive ones! Many people would feel strange about posting their experience as your client in a public medium like social networking, which is why there might not be as much success in this area of social media marketing.
While there are some parts of social media marketing that might not do everything you’d want it to for your company, the results that it can produce are undeniably important. As the times continue to change and social media continues to become a bigger part of our every day lives, eventually the parts where social media marketing is lacking will become just as successful as the areas where it has excelled.
There’s no doubt that brand awareness, community engagement, and website traffic can only positively impact your business, and right now, that is what social media can do for you. The more active you are in social media for real estate, the bigger your brand becomes in your community.
At least now you know what your real ROI is when it comes to social media. We still think it’s a positive and very essential component to your marketing efforts and online presence. Best of all, your real estate virtual assistant can maintain this presence for you!
Carrie Gable and the team at RealSupport, Inc. are our “VA Quick Tip” columnists offering expertise in real estate marketing, technology and more. RealSupport’s office and team of 9 full-time staff members is located near Chicago, IL. Their successful team works virtually for many top real estate agents and brokers nationwide. Pioneers in the Real Estate Virtual Assistant industry, RealSupport offers marketing, branding, website and logo design, listing marketing, lead generation, technical support, transaction management, social networking, blogging and much more… Just ask!Contact Carrie
Visit us Online at RealSupportInc.com
Join Our LinkedIn Group
Become a Facebook Fan
Follow me on Twitter
To Blog or Not to Blog – That’s No Longer the Question
Friday, October 8th, 2010
A few years ago real estate blogging was the big question. It seemed that the creative outlet for avid writers, beginners to novices on any topic or those just wanting to journal their thoughts to the world, was making its entrance onto the real estate scene and agents began to wrestle with whether or not to jump on board. After all, who had time to sit down and write for an ambiguous audience and, ultimately, what would be the point?
As 2010 begins to quickly draw to a close, the question today isn’t if you should blog, but how often, what are your key words to boost your SEO, who are you delegating this to in order to keep your time free, and when can you expect return on your investment. The option for blogging is no longer an option; that is, if you want to stay at the forefront of your real estate market! Let’s quickly look at the answers to each question:
How Often? The absolute minimum is once per week. Ideally, 2-3 times per week! The key to blogging is consistency and frequency.
A recent study showed that: businesses that published at least 5 blog articles in the last 7 days draw 6.9 times more organic search traffic and 1.12 times more referral traffic than those who don’t blog at all. Out of the masses of business, relevant content (1 post per weekday), blog readers will likely find something engaging and proceed to learn more about a company that is actively posting (2-3 times per week).
It’s simple: more blogging = more traffic = more readers = more leads = more clients.
What Are Your Key Words? Blogging for the sake of blogging will not get you anywhere unless you enhance your relevant content with key words that reflect your market, niche and target client.
These are the words people type into a search engine (such as Google) to find what they’re looking for. “Evanston Real Estate,” “Homes for Sale in Evanston,” etc… Don’t believe us? Try typing “Evanston Real Estate” in Google and see what comes up! Did you find JudyNewton.com on the first page? We blog for her every week and her blog has moved her up the Google ladder to the page ONE in less than a year. (Oh, and we also designed her custom real estate website!)
Who Are You Delegating Your Blog Writing To? If you don’t know what to write about, don’t have the time to blog consistently, or wouldn’t know where to begin with creating a blog, linking key words, formatting, etc… your Real Estate Virtual Assistant can help!
Not only can they set up a custom blog that effectively boasts your brand, but they should write custom SEO/keyword rich content for each blog! A VA should understand the importance of current, local and personalized real estate blogging that will draw traffic to your site. Sadly, we’ve seen blogs where a canned article has been copied/pasted. This won’t help your search engine ranking! You should never see the blog that your VA writes for you anywhere else! They will use your key words and link them to your website so that the content is, not only interesting and pertinent for your local readers, but it will increase traffic to your site!
When Can You Expect a Return on Your Investment? It all depends on how often you let your VA blog for you! If we only blogged once a week, linked key words throughout your blog and submitted to Google after each post; you can increase your SEO significantly in less than a year! If we are blogging for you 2-3 times per week, your Google rank will get higher a little faster. Increase your exposure as a key resource within your community which will keep readers coming back for more!
“87.4% of respondents successfully increased measurable SEO objectives as a direct result of blogging.” – TopRankBlog.com
Of the 12.6% that didn’t find measurable SEO results from blogging the main reason given was a lack of time to blog consistently. We’ve seen a blog for one of our clients that we created in June reach the first page of Google due to blogs being posted 2-3 times per week!
A few more blogging statistics…
Many of you understand the value of blogging as you know it’s a sure fire way, when done correctly, to power up your Google Juice and drive traffic to your site. Further research proved the correlation between blogging and SEO. Statistics gathered by Hubspot put a quantitative approach to the growing medium. They found that those who blog have:
- 55% more visitors to their website.
- 97% more links to their website which is a primary factor in where your website shows up in search results. (Want a higher ranking; get quality links to your site).
- 434% more indexed pages. This is the number of pages that show up in search engines. Just because you have a site doesn’t guarantee it is being indexed (findable). Just because some of your pages are in search engines doesn’t mean all of your pages are.
Additional studies show that a blog can be indexed by Google in less than 5 minutes! Geoff Karcher, held a conference in which one session he wanted to prove the power of blogging and search engine results. He wrote a blog about the phrase “search engine marketing made simple experiment” and a mere 4 minutes later, Google had indexed and ranked the blog. Now that’s powerful!
The bottom line…
We could go on about the power of blogging as there are many websites, articles and our own personal experiences with our clients that prove its worth!
The bottom line is this: Blogging is imperative for the growth of your business.
If you haven’t started blogging yet, now is the time! If you’ve been blogging but are experiencing the frustration of not having time and not seeing results, delegate this on-going project to your VA! View our real estate blogging samples for ideas…
You’ll thank us later….
Carrie Gable and the team at RealSupport, Inc. are our “VA Quick Tip” columnists offering expertise in real estate marketing, technology and more. RealSupport’s office and team of 9 full-time staff members is located near Chicago, IL. Their successful team works virtually for many top real estate agents and brokers nationwide. Pioneers in the Real Estate Virtual Assistant industry, RealSupport offers marketing, branding, website and logo design, listing marketing, lead generation, technical support, transaction management, social networking, blogging and much more… Just ask!
I Sent My Real Estate Agent A Text Message And He CALLED Me!
Friday, October 1st, 2010
We’ve said it before and we’ll say it again communicating with Generation Y is so important if you want to appeal to a very large group of people on the market right now.
Still, for most of you, Facebook, Twitter, and especially texting seems like a foreign language.
To help ease the frustration that may come with texting and sometimes even emailing the Generation Y group, here is a quick list of text abbreviations your Gen Y clients may be using. Use it as your cheat sheet. Print it out on a piece of paper and keep it with you throughout your day.
Text Abbreviation Cheat Sheet:
• IDK: I don’t know
• BRB: Be right back
• TTYL: Talk to you later
• LOL: Laughing out loud
• L8r: Later
• 2moro: Tomorrow
• BTW: By the way
• B4: Before
• TX: Thanks
• G2G: Got to go
• TY: Thank you
• NP: No problem
• .02: Your (or my) 2 cents worth
• TMI: Too Much Information
• 4COL: For Crying Out Loud
• JK: Just Kidding
• AFAIK: As Far As I Know
• CULA: See You Later Alligator
• BOT: Back on Topic
• : – ) or =) Smiley Face
• 
Big Smile
• 
Frown
• ; ) or ; – ) Winky Face
• 
Cheeky, Playful
• :-O Surprise, Shock
• :’( Crying
• : | Straight Face; Grim
• : – / Skeptical
• ^5 High Five
When you see it spelled out for you, it seems to make perfect sense. But when you are in the midst of your day and you receive a text from your FTHB (First Time Home Buyer) client saying “IDK how I feel about it yet 
I G2G to class & will call u L8r or 2moro 
,” you can whip out your cheat sheet and figure it out right away.
Also, note that a lot of phones now make the Emoticons available as a texting option. You simply have to put your phone into “Emoticon” mode while texting and you should find a variety of smiley faces, sad faces, winky faces, etc. – already typed out for you.
We hope this short list helped. There are a lot of other ways that Generation Y is shaking up the way we do business today. We are guessing next on your list will be social networking. We’re here to help with that as well. We all are aware that Facebook and Twitter are making a big impact on the Real Estate world. Just like texting, there is no use fighting it. If you can’t beat em’, join em’!
TTYL!
Carrie Gable and the team at RealSupport, Inc. are our “VA Quick Tip” columnists offering expertise in real estate marketing, technology and more. RealSupport’s office and team of 9 full-time staff members is located near Chicago, IL. Their successful team works virtually for many top real estate agents and brokers nationwide. Pioneers in the Real Estate Virtual Assistant industry, RealSupport offers marketing, branding, website and logo design, listing marketing, lead generation, technical support, transaction management, social networking, blogging and much more… Just ask!
Finding Your Real Estate Niche
Friday, September 24th, 2010
Our responsibilities as a team of Real Estate Virtual Assistants include helping our real estate agent client’s re-vamp their websites and perfect their marketing strategies. We understand that these can be very daunting tasks to take on as a real estate agent. Many of our new clients come to us without a strategic marketing plan. When we ask what their specialty is, the answer is often “sellers “or “buyers.”
Giving us this information to start with is good, however, it makes our job of effectively marketing YOU a lot more difficult. How can we possibly improve your SEO (search engine optimization) with a target market as broad as “buyers” or “sellers?” The best way to establish your presence on the internet is by “owning” your own keywords.
Every real estate agent “specializes” in buying and/or selling. This is not a specific niche. You need to find something that you are known for, that people come to you for and that you excel at. Otherwise, what is going to make you stand out from the hordes of other agents out there? What is going to want to make the customer stop at your website?
We understand that you don’t want to pigeon hole your business. Your biggest fear is missing a potential client who came to your website looking for an agent, but realized you only did business with “first time home buyers” so they moved on.
What you don’t realize, however, is that you may be doing just as much damage, if not more, by making your market too broad. When it comes to marketing, it is always easier to work with a niche.
Let’s take a look at a few of our client’s who have honed their niche market:
Oak Shores Realty: The vacation home specialists in the Lake Nacimiento area in California.
Many of the agents in this brokerage are local homeowners who possess an intimate knowledge of the area. Oak Shores is known for their weekly email blasts with the newest Lake Homes on the market, their informative blog (which we write!), their monthly newsletter with all the latest happenings in the Lake Nacimiento area, and live webcam of the Lake Nacimiento dock on their website.
StartingPoint Realty: Chicago’s first time home buyer agency. 
These agents focus on making home buying as simple as possible for the first time home buyer. To appeal to the younger homebuyer, they have built their marketing plan up to include weekly first time home buying seminars, various YouTube videos featured on their website, a strong Facebook presence, and a monthly newsletter with awesome information about home buying and more.
Helena Talbot: The empty nest homeowner’s agent.
Taking advantage of her Northern Virginia setting with its strong focus on golfing, horseback riding and historic towns, Helena positioned herself as the expert to the recently independent-of-child homebuyer.
Joy Rice: Joy Rice shows us that your focus does not have to be on the home itself, but can be as simple as a shared interest with your clients.
As a big dog lover, Joy was well aware that her area of Flower Mound Texas is full of people just like her who consider their dogs as part of the family. Her brand came together nicely when she was able to feature her dogs as a reoccurring mascot throughout her website, a YouTube news report with advice for dog-home owners, and a custom written drip email campaign with little tidbits about dogs on each email.
Good Option For All:
At this point, I am guessing there are still a lot of you who are skeptical about getting that specific with your target market. We understand your concerns and always suggest a second option for our clients that is hard to turn down. If you can’t see yourself focusing on one target market, then you can always market yourself as the expert for your area.
It seems like an obvious choice, but you would not believe how many clients we come across who fail to mention their community, their city, even their state, on the home page of their website. If you can position yourself as the expert to your community, then you present a compelling argument to any prospective client to use you as their agent.
Steps You Can Take:
1.) Talk with your real estate virtual assistant and have them start blogging (consistently) for you. Whether you already have one or you haven’t even considered one because writing is not your strong suit, it’s time to jump on the blogging bandwagon. It is one of the easiest and cost effective ways to organically improve your SEO and communicate with the public. It’s also the perfect place to serve as an expert in your market. If you chose to be an expert in your community, your VA can write about the events, the organizations, and the fun things to do in your area.
2.) Next, you need to talk to your VA about your website. An experienced virtual assistant should be able to perform a website analysis. After their analysis, they should present you with a strategic plan for a content and design makeover. Their recommendations may include writing custom content, designing custom elements, (banner, footer, buttons, etc.) incorporating irresistible offers and more. Make sure they’re writing your content with a focus on your new niche market. Aim to have at least one page (or more!) that can only be found on your website because only you are an expert on that topic and you’ve made the smart decision to invest in custom written content.
If you chose community, your VA can write several community pages for your site. If you chose First Time Home Buyers, then feature a step by step page of what to expect from the home buying process. If you are environmentally friendly, feature a page on the best Green Resources on the web. The list (and our ideas) go on.
3.) Lastly, try to find a few irresistible offers that you can boast about. Mr. Internet wrote a great article with examples of irresistible offers. Remember: make your irresistible offers specific to YOUR niche/community!
It’s so important that you do something to stand out amongst the crowd. In this internet-crazed world, it is easy to get lost at the bottom of the search engine barrel. The chances of you coming out on top are a lot higher if you can appeal to a smaller group of people that are searching for “Empty Nest Homeowner in Loudoun County Virgina,” than compete against all of the other “John Doe: Home Buying Experts.”
Have a great weekend!
Carrie Gable and the team at RealSupport, Inc. are our “VA Quick Tip” columnists offering expertise in real estate marketing, technology and more. RealSupport’s office and team of 9 full-time staff members is located near Chicago, IL. Their successful team works virtually for many top real estate agents and brokers nationwide. Pioneers in the Real Estate Virtual Assistant industry, RealSupport offers marketing, branding, website and logo design, listing marketing, lead generation, technical support, transaction management, social networking, blogging and much more… Just ask!
Facebook Marketplace: A Powerful Resource for All Savvy Agents
Friday, September 17th, 2010
Facebook recently became the number one website in the world. It is used by millions of people, easily accessible, and free. Facebook has a great resource called the Facebook Marketplace which users are utilizing to sell anything from concert tickets to cars to, yes, houses and apartments.
More and more agents are beginning to incorporate Facebook Marketplace into their listing marketing efforts and there are multiple reasons why we feel that it is an important resource when it comes to marketing your listings:
Marketplace is easy to use: Adding your listings to Marketplace is almost as simple as posting them to your fan page wall.
1.) Login to Facebook
2.) Search for Marketplace in the top search bar to go to the Marketplace application.
3.) Click the “Post a listing” button at the top right of the page.
4.) Location: Enter your city, state.
5.) Category: Choose houses or rentals, which ever is appropriate.
6.) Fill out the form will all of the details about your listing and click “Post”
The listing will then show up on both your personal profile as well as your Facebook friends’ newsfeeds as “Betty Broker is selling a house on Facebook Marketplace” or something similar.
Facebook Marketplace has a soft-sell approach: Many agents feel uncomfortable posting listings on their own Facebook profile or fan page for fear of being perceived as a pushy sales professional. The great thing about Facebook Marketplace is that it’s an appropriate place to post listings because the feature is meant for advertising things you want to sell (or rent)!
Facebook users only search Marketplace if they’re interested in buying (or renting) something, therefore it is the perfect place for agents to advertise their listings to interested buyers/renters.
Your listings are exposed to a large number of people: Facebook Marketplace is set up so that your listing is visible to people other than just your friends. People can opt to see listings from friends, friends of friends, and their entire network!
The average number of friends per Facebook user is between 150-200 friends, and many have even more than that. If you have at least 200 Facebook friends, and each of those friends have at least 200 friends, that means your listing is exposed to 40,000 instantly. 
(Note: Facebook users do have the ability to disable notifications and emails from Facebook, so this number can change). This is in addition to other Facebook users that aren’t friends with you OR your friends, but just happen to be searching on Marketplace for their next home!
Facebook Marketplace creates a solid network that’s trustworthy: There are very specific ways to search on Facebook Marketplace so that you’re only viewing ads from people you know or friends of people you know. This creates a sense of confidence in the person that you’re buying from. As an agent, if you have 40,000+ people who know someone you know, that’s a large network of people who would trust in you as an agent. It’s a great way to not only market your property, but also yourself.
The easy, accessible, and quick nature of Facebook Marketplace is perfect for enhancing your listing marketing efforts and getting your name out there to a large volume of people. We feel that this resource is something that all agents should ask their Real Estate Virtual Assistant to incorporate into their social networking/marketing efforts.
Remember: Social networking for real estate is a very powerful tool and if you aren’t utilizing it to the fullest potential, you’re missing out on potential clients.
Have a great weekend!
Carrie Gable and the team at RealSupport, Inc. are our “VA Quick Tip” columnists offering expertise in real estate marketing, technology and more. RealSupport’s office and team of 9 full-time staff members is located near Chicago, IL. Their successful team works virtually for many top real estate agents and brokers nationwide. Pioneers in the Real Estate Virtual Assistant industry, RealSupport offers marketing, branding, website and logo design, listing marketing, lead generation, technical support, transaction management, social networking, blogging and much more… Just ask!
