I attend a monthly Meetup called The Vancouver Real Estate Tech Meetup Group . We meet the first Monday of each month and while it is largely a forum for clients of one of the leading web site companies called Ubertor, the information I glean is appropriate for any Realtor who is interested in harvesting the power of the internet.
On May 7th there was presentation by Jordan Behan of Tell Ten Friends Marketing Co. that I thought offered some excellent suggestions to improve the effectiveness of your internet marketing efforts. His actual presentation is available on his web site, but I would like to paraphrase some of the highlights.
The five main areas where you need to concentrate your efforts are:
- Use your email signature.
- Keep a Database of addresses
- Reply to all emails
Your web site
- Your web site is about you, but more importantly it is about what’s in it for your reader.
- Too many “I’s” and “We’s” and not enough “You’s” and “Yours” and the reader will be turned off.
- Jordan mentioned a tool called the We-we monitor which analyzes the “we-ness”: http://www.futurenowinc.com/wewe.htm (We We results)
- Remember your web site is a sales tool.
- Give them options .
- Ask them to take the next step. Ask for the order!
Search Engine Optomization (SEO)
- Put your search terms EVERYWHERE
- Incoming links are the most important criteria for search engine rankings (we think)
- Blogging is a k ey to building traffice
- Traffic will come.
- Try a keyword density checker to see of your search terms are making an impact on search engines: http://www.webconfs.com/keyword-density-checker.php
Blogging
- Be Yourself
- Link to your sources
(Creative Commons license: http://creativecommons.org) - Same rule: value for your visitors.
- Start a free blog: http://www.wordpress.com (like this one)
Social Networking
This is where Jordan really shines and he is the best source of information with respect to social networking. I am not sure if it is an age thing, but to put it into perspective when I graduated from high school our pictures were in black and white.
- Some examples: http://www.youtube.com, http://www.facebook.com.
Good Ideas Are a Dime a Dozen, But Implementation is Priceless 
Real estate blogs are powerful marketing and selling forces because they allow a company or real estate investor to reach new audiences, build a loyal group of interested clients, have interactive communications with clients, and expand your marketing database. Thus, it is imperative that anyone working in real estate have either a website and/or a blog. Internet Real Estate is the wave of the future and it is time for everyone to get onboard.