Best Viral Buzz

Some lead, some follow, some teach… I spend a lot of time taking about how different marketing programs can help to contribute to generating REALTOR leads, as well as how marketing is more than just letters and flyers. I also spend a fair amount of time reading and learning from people who I view as opinion leaders and peers in the real estate and marketing industries (See Blogs That I Digg.) However, I think I may have discovered one of the few people that really understand how all of this new technology can be used to catapult your brand and turn your into a super star.

We have all been talking about the power of real estate blogs, podcasts, real estate widgets and the multitude of new technologies that have come out of Web 2.0. However, I will be the first to admit that my understanding of how all of this new technology can be applied cohesively to generate universal brand awareness is limited. I understand how to use the technology and understand its implications, but until now was not fully cognizant of the underlying factors that make the 2.0 marketing technologies effective.

Fortunately, I have found the blog of a guy that seems to fully comprehend exactly how all of this new technology can be applied specifically to creating marketing buzz and brand awareness. The Blog is WordSpreadsQuickly.com which is hosted by buzz marketing pioneer Todd Tweedy. His blog has nothing to do with real estate; in fact many of his posts are directed to some of his larger commercial clients like Volkswagen. However, the approach that he uses to create viral brand awareness should translate into the real estate industry with just a little modification. The guy is on the board of directors for the Viral & Buzz Marketing Association (I hadn’t heard of it either, but the title sounds like a group I need to know about) and is using Web 2.0 technology to generate viral buzz for his clients. The article that initially caught my attention was his commentary: Promotion and Publishing with Blogs

I will be following Todds commentary closely and adding his blog to my list of favorites. If nothing else, I will learn how to host a planning meeting in SecondLife.

How are online social networks going to change the real estate industry?

I’m going to play devil’s advocate for a moment. Many of us are online and blogging specifically to attract attention, drive web traffic and hopefully close clients. I love to write, but even I have an ulterior motive when I evangelize about prospecting engines. We are spending innumerable hours reading, posting, and interacting online. For me this addresses a need to express myself and a desire to teach. However, I want to post the question, is this new movement toward online social networking really as pervasive as everybody is saying? Are a multitude of myspaces going make up the entire landscape of the internet of the future? Finally, are online social systems really going to affect how we treat real estate transactions; which traditionally require a lot of face to face interaction?

My personal feeling is that much like online commerce, this new trend of social networking will have a period of rapid growth over the next two years as venture capital funds the new wave of Web 2.0. This growth will lead to a small bubble (I am getting tired of the term, but much like America declares war on everything, American economy sees bubbles everywhere) which will result in the platforms and technology stalling out for a few years. Finally online social networks will be adopted as a main component of human interaction and the technologies of Web 2.0 will grow at a calm but steady pace until the next revolution. The reason that I feel that this is what is going to happen is that it mirrors what has happened in the past. The most recent example is the dot com bubble, but farther back you can see this same trend in numerous technological revolutions. I think the rail industry experienced this at the turn of the previous century and provides a good example of the trend.

With that prediction for online social media in mind, I feel that this industry is going to change as a result of these new technologies, but the changes are going to be in some very unexpected ways. The internet has been called the great equalizer because it levels the playing field between big organizations and small businesses. For real estate the internet equalizes the playing field and is continually moving to eliminate inefficiencies in this industry. In addition, social networks are serving to create professional connections between real estate professionals that will serve to grow the overall position and service offering of the industry. Finally, these networks serve to generate close relationships between REALTORS and potential clients.

Personally my view of how the real estate industry will change is that real estate agents will become more of a value-added consultant in the future as many of the tasks that were once under the exclusive purview of REALTORS (CMA’s, MLS Listings) become accessible to everyone. Competitive agents will move their services up the value chain to help clients negotiate transactions and navigate the litigious waters of the real estate industry. Many of the inefficiencies in the transaction will be eliminated and communication technology will streamline the appraisal, financial and documentation process. It is difficult to predict the breadth of the changes that will occur in this industry over the coming years, but I think we all agree that this industry is going to change.

My Frappr

What I digg in real estate blogs

These are a few of my favorite things…. This song echoes in my head this time of year. Specifically because every year my grandmother would play different songs from the Sound of Music on Christmas Eve. Inspired by this song of my youth, I would like to share with you a few of my favorite real estate and marketing blogs. These are the opinion leaders who spend innumerable hours reading, researching, and providing insight into this great industry…. With that in mind, these are a few of my favorite things… um’ blogs….

Real Estate Blogging:

The Real Estate Tomato and Sellsius: If you want to stay up to date on the state of blogging as it relates to this industry, these two gentlemen have it down cold.

BloodhoundRealty: Stay up to date in this industry, follow the bloodhound.


ActiveRain Blogs: This is a collection of a number of different blogs from the
ActiveRain community. It is a great resource and a lot of insight.

Industry insight:

Ardell DellaLoggia: A true leader in our industry, Ardell is great for insight, trends, and a few tips and tricks that every REALTOR should know.

RealBlogging: Stay up to date on the day to day events that surround the real estate industry.

Local insight:

Let’s face it, I live, work, and love Orange County, Calfironia. Often I
turn to our very own Jon Lanser’s OC Register blog to get the latest in what’s happening here.

Marketing tips and techniques:

The Future of Real Estate Marketing: If you are looking for the latest update on web or real estate 2.0, this is the place to turn. I get a lot of inspiration for many
of my marketing recommendations from the Future of Real Estate Marketing

REBlogGirl: Mary McKnight is a great resource for learning the fundamentals of online promotion and how to really grow your blog. She spends a great deal of time reading, learning and sharing the best ways to grow your presence online.

Real Estate BlogSites: Always great guidance on how to use current technology to
promote your business.

Broker Agent News: Not really a blog, but I look to them for inspiration… and
hey, they publish my articles once in a while as well.

Web 2.0 and General Marketing

Mashables: Keeping up to date on the latest new development on the web. This one is well

Marketing Profs: General marketing discussion, guidelines and some pretty cool tools.

There are many more sights that I visit during the day. However, these are the blogs and feeds that I have in my Live and NetVibes pages. These are the voices that I look to in the real estate industry for my own inspiration. I guess these are a few of my favorite things…..

Still working on my long tail….

I had mentioned in an earlier blog about the HitTail site that evaluates your incoming search traffic and makes recommendations on what topics you should specifically blog about to increase the width of your tail and corresponding search engine rank. Well, this little tool has become a mainstay in my bookmarks and receives one to two visits by me per day. Typically when I have nothing else to blog about…

Anyway, here are my current stats and the recommendations from HitTail. According to google.com I have 25,200 links to 4MySales from across the web. This is up from around 13,800 which is where I am if you just search Barrett Niehus…. Looks like I need to write more articles under my own name…..

Okay, so back on topic. My HitTail results are posted below, but it looks like few people are finding my blog and 4MySales.com when they search for free real estate flyers, realtor marketing (I would like term to rank much higher, but you have to start somewhere.,) real estate, realtor marketing tools, realtor blog, realty leads, and even realtor radio. Some of these terms warrant additional commentary and investigation, however I don’t think insurance agent leads are really part of my target audience…. Either way hittail is a great tracking tool to evaluate your online success.

Time to evaluate what worked

This time of year is a great time to take a look at your real estate marketing investment and determine what has worked, what has not, and what needs to change to make your 2007 financial goals. My specific approach to evaluating whether or not my investment in marketing, advertising, mail, email, etc what successful is to list out and determine the ROI from each marketing activity. I believe an economist once observed that if an investment does not provide an associated return, it is an unnecessary expenditure. I take this approach when looking at all of the money that I have spent last year and when evaluating my budget for next year.

My specific approach to budgeting and evaluating my marketing ROI for 4MySales.com REALTOR Success Tools is as follows. First I list in a spreadsheet all of the expenditures that I have made in promoting my real estate related business over the past year. This includes real estate flyers, business cards, email marketing, real estate letters, direct mail, printing, advertising, classified ads, websites, pay per click, CPM advertising, web directories, and anything else that may have been used to promote my business.

Next to each of the items I list my overall cost or investment for each marketing item. Next to that I list the reach or number of people that the tool is expected to reach. For direct mail and email programs this is pretty easy. For the newspaper ads, billboards and other public advertisements, I estimate based upon the data that I have. On the fourth column I add the number of direct clients that the marketing tool has generated. There are a few campaigns that you will be able to identify a specific number, and if you are running a successful prospecting engine that exposes your prospective clients to your message often, you may have duplication in many of the activities. For those activities that may be counted as duplication, I assign weighted fractional values to each of the contributing tools. In the final column I print the total revenue that was generated by the clients that are listed in the previous column. For fractional numbers as described above I divide the revenue number among the contributing activities.

Now that I have this data, the value of each marketing investment can be assessed based upon the number of clients it brought to my door, the amount of money my clients spent, as well as the overall cost of the advertising investment. If I wish to calculate the specific return on investment of the different expenditures it is as simple as subtracting the revenue generated from each activity by its cost and dividing that number by the cost of the marketing tool.

Just by looking at these numbers I can determine exactly what marketing programs, advertisements and investments are worth keeping, and which programs were wastes of money. I can also rank them based upon their effectiveness and get a good snapshot of where my marketing worked and where it needs a lot of help. Finally, I can unilaterally cut any of the expenditures that did not provide any type of return from my plans for next year.

This approach to evaluating the effectiveness of your real estate marketing programs allows you to easily identify and plan the activities and expenditures for next year. This, in conjunction with your annual budget and goals provides a great foundation to start the year off right.

The Value of Free

Jason Leister posted an interesting article this week in Broker Agent News about an experiment that he did where one night he gave away a free report and another night he charged a nominal fee for the same report. The outcome was that he sold far more reports than he gave away when they were free.

To some this result may be surprising, but it simply goes back to the expression and perception of value to target clients. If you hear the words free report, what level of value do you place on the statement? The word report is completely generic and we have been conditioned to believe that if it’s free it either has very little value, or has costly caveats associated with it.

To avoid these responses, find ways to differentiate and place explicit or implicit value on the promotion. Leister chose to place an explicit value on his promotion by charging for it. You can take this approach or find descriptors that imply value. As a secondary example, what level of value would you place on the statement: Exclusive report: Five Million Dollar Secrets? What value would you place on it even if it were free?

The point is simply that whenever you offer a deal sweetener to attract real estate clients; be sure that you communicate the value of that tool, report, or CMA to your prospects. Either charge a small amount for the resource which places an explicit value, or take an approach of using descriptors that imply a high level of uniqueness and value.

Unique closing gift and REALTOR Marketing Tool

Have a little free time and want to create a unique closing gift? How about using ScrapBlog to create a scrapbook page of your client and their new home? I came across this tool while tooling around (redundant, but I am taking artistic license) this evening. Instead of a blog, it lets you upload pictures, orient them however you wish, and add borders, backgrounds, stickers, text bubbles, and any of the other doodads that you would normally find on a scrapbook page…okay, virtual scrapbook page.

So how would you use something like this to help your clients remember you? How about when they are in escrow, move, or after they close, take a number of relatively candid photos of them in and around their new home. Upload the photos to your ScrapBlog, add backgrounds, comments, text, and anything else that would be appropriate (don’t forget your contact info, picture and logo.) Finally, publish the scrap blog and send your clients the link. In addition, invite them to send their virtual scrap book to any and all of their friends so that they can see the new home.

Hopefully your scrap blog will be appreciated by your clients and well viewed by their entire circle of friends and family.

As a final step, ask your clients to personalize their online scrapbook with some kind words of thanks. How powerful would if be if you could show prospective clients multiple scrap books filled with appreciative and happy clients who have thanked you in their own words? A picture is worth a thousand words, but testimonials with pictures are worth more than gold.

Value-added area reports for young parents

With more and more pressure on parents to ensure that their children have the greatest opportunities in life, additional focus is being placed on making sure that children grow and develop in the best neighborhoods possible. This emphasis used to be geared toward finding the best area high-schools and colleges, but the competition is quickly moving up the food chain. In fact, in some areas (my paradigm is Orange County, California where my neighbors eleven year old is completely stressed about whether he will be able to get into the college of his choice) parents are focusing on moving to areas with the best pre-schools and elementary educations.

To serve this emerging market, I have located a new website SavvySource.com which runs reports to help parents decide which pre-schools will best prepare their children for the future. Now my personal belief is that kids should be kids at least for a little while. However, if you serve a client base of young families and competitive newlyweds, the SavvySource area reports may be a value-add that can give you an edge over your competition.

Interesting value-added differentiator for out of town clients

An idea was presented to me this morning that I feel may be a great value-added service for real estate agents and possibly a great real estate marketing tool for those that are looking to serve out of town clients. For those REALTORS that serve the vacation communities, or those that serve the relocation market, why not offer video tapes of prospective listings as a value added service? This would be in addition to any virtual tours or virtual audio tours that you may currently have on your site.

As a value-added service to your VIP clients that cannot visit the area to search for a specific home, offer to create a specific video tour for one or two of the listings that they are interested in. Charge a small recording fee to cover your time and expenses, and word your agency contract so that if your client buys a home through you, you will waive the fees. You would probably want to limit the number of recordings to one or two per client and make sure that they are marketed as external and much more comprehensive than your virtual tour. This way your client can get a really good idea about the home that they are going to buy before trekking across the country to see it.

Back from vacation

Wow, if you ever have the chance to take a cruise down to Mexico over a long holiday, I would highly recommend it. It has been about eight days since I have even thought about the real estate industry… okay so maybe that is not exactly true. However, my venture out has given a little perspective… and maybe a view into some future investment opportunities.

On this trip I went to Acapulco, Ixtapa and Cabo San Lucas. The disparity between the two tourist towns and the smaller resort community of Ixtapa is amazing. Home prices and real estate in Acapulco and Cabo San Lucas are similar to what you would find in San Diego County. By contrast, Ixtapa home prices were nearly free….. with the exception of the multi-million dollar homes that a few celebrities and billionaires own.

With that in mind, I am looking for vacation and resort investment property in Ixapa. In about fifteen years I think it will be a world-class vacation spot, and now is a good time to jump in.

Attracting clients and buyers in a down market

It’s a buyer’s market; you just need to know where to look for the good values. If you are a real estate agent, you may be able to use this information to attract quite a few clients. In addition, if you can communicate this information effectively and organize a seminar to educate your prospects about the current opportunities, you may be able to garner a lot of attention within your community.

Now for the challenge; how do you educate your prospects on where to look for opportunities when they are few and far between, and how do you drive them to a seminar where you can share that data? We’ll start with the latter challenge because without people to listen to you, what’s the point in creating the lesson?

Driving people to your seminars takes a lot of local marketing. Many of the techniques will be described in later blogs or have been discussed previously, but for this type of seminar print and flyers tend to be most effective. An approach that I find very effective is papering local community centers with your flyers in addition to placing an add in the local PennySaver. Paper your flyers on community bulletin boards at Starbucks and local juice stands as well as at the grocery store and library.

In looking at the message in the flyer be as non-commercial as possible and have a clear call to action. In addition, remove some of the resistance initial resistance that people will have by communicating that this seminar is not necessarily a sale pitch. Use a call to action that creates interest and does not sound trite with sub-headers that describe why the seminar is important. A possible example would be:

Capitalize on the Changing Real Estate Market.
Free to Oceanside residents
that feel that they have missed the opportunity to make money in real estate.

For descriptors in the text of the advertisement, include topics that appeal to home buyers and investors. These may include how to choose a property that will maintain its value, the added value of mortgage interest deductions, or possibly the average buy and hold timeline that is expected to yield a positive return. In the text for investors include descriptors about how to find and value properties as well as how to value a property based upon its cash flows.

The text in the advertisement is up to you. Just be sure that your ad generates interest and covers points that you will deliver on. Do not over-promise and do not include information that you will not be addressing in your presentation. Finally, remove some of the objections by stating that due to seating limitations you would ask that No Real Estate Agents attend the seminar.

Moving on to capitalizing on the down market with your seminars… People are still looking for value in the market and if they become educated about how to locate and buy the right properties they can still enjoy a nice return on their investment. The days of double digit appreciation may be gone, but those that can buy investment property based upon cash flows an acceptable cap rates can still substantially increase their wealth over time. It is time to teach people to go back to investing basics and teach those that were never aware of the basics how they can capitalize.

My personal thoughts for the lessons in this type of seminar:

-Home Buyers: Choosing a home that will maintain its value over time; location,
features, upgrades, current pricing.
- Home Buyers: Tax advantages of home ownership; going through the numbers.
- Home Buyers: Negotiating a purchase in a buyer’s market.
- Investors: Buying on value and cash flow, calculating your rate of return.
- Investors: Fundamentals of pricing an investment property. Cap Rates 101
- Investors: Finding motivated sellers.
- Investors: Basics of buying a HUD home.

That’s all I have for today. I’m going on vacation so I will not be posting for a while. In the mean time my blatant promotional plug is as follows: Visit 4MySales.com for a complete system to attract more clients and close more sales.

Host your own community online with these systems

You too can have your own online social network. For many of us this seems like an odd aspiration, but online social networks like ActiveRain and WannaNetwork are beginning to populate the virtual landscape. My personal interest is in participating in these groups and learning from my peers about how to best help them market themselves online. My goal being to incorporate some of these tools into the 4MySales.com service offering.

However for those brave souls that want to create a virtual social network to attract others with similar hobbies, let me tell you about a few that can help you with that endeavor. The first is community is Me.com. This simple society allows you to create your own online network to support any topic of your choosing. The photo upload feature is great, as is the profile home page. The only drawback is that access to the blogs is fully password protected.

If you are looking to get a professional community up and running fast, Community Server is the way to go. The have a hosted version that is currently in beta and a full API version that can be uploaded to your own servers for full customization. They appear to have a pretty robust system and although they are more pricey, they seem to have a lot to offer.

If you are looking for a premier API, i.e. really expensive, you can take a look at the Pluck SiteLife system. Pluck has a great product and serves an A list of clients and fortune 500 companies. However, their pricing may be well out the range of most individuals and small businesses.

That’s all I have for tonight. Everybody have a great holiday and I will be back late next week to continue this great exploration of real estate and online marketing materials for REALTORS.

Now for something you will really like…

Those are the words that Mr. Peabody’s trusted sidekick Sherman would utter when introducing a commercial break or another segment in the popular Saturday Morning Cartoon. Obviously this has nothing to do with real estate, but I found a very fun mashup this evening that I think you will get a kick out of. The tool can be found on MyHeritage.com and uses facial recognition software to compare your face to that of celebrities. Turns out that I look a little like John Cusack…. Okay so the program’s not perfect…. It did however provide an ego boost.

Your Brand, Your Success, Market Your Money

Arguably, the most effective logo or brand name ever created is that of the Harley Davidson eagle and logo. If you don't believe me, just name another corporate logo that is routinely tattooed on a willing participant's body. How many people across the planet have voluntarily become a walking billboard for the Harley Davidson Motorcycle Corporation? How was this brand recognition and dedication created? Effective brand marketing, proper positioning within a market, and selling to the markets most fundamental wants. What lessons can be learned from Harley Davidson's marketing strategy? The answer is all of them.

Your corporate brand and associated logo present the fundamental essence of your company. It is your name and logo that people recognize. Your logo is a symbol of your company, and it is the constant promotion of this symbol that creates recognition in your customer's mind. Therefore, always make sure your logo adequately represents your company, and always include your logo on your correspondence, and marketing material.

Branding you logo is an essential step in securing your market. Branding requires that you continually present your target market with your logo while associating the image with the services and products that you offer. The intention is to help your customer create a mental relationship with the image so that they know exactly what the logo represents whenever they see it. The mental relationship can be a product such as 4MySales REALTOR Tools or an image and lifestyle such as Nike and Harley Davidson. Regardless of the service or product, your brand and logo should create a strong mental relationship with your target market.

You should constantly promote your brand and logo, and should always avoid significantly modifying it. Creating brand recognition is a huge task, and every time you logo is modified, the process must be started over. Promote your logo on all of your products, on all of your correspondence, and most of all, on all of your marketing material. Make yourself know, and use all accessible means to brand yourself to your clients and prospects. The approach is expensive, but when you are branded, your company is the first one to enter a prospects mind when they think of your product.

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10% of REALTORS are Successful...Here's Why

We have all read that 10% of real estate agents make 90% of the money. This may be due to a variety of reasons, but more and more I believe that what differentiates the 10% of REALTORS who succeed beyond the rest is their approach to promoting themselves. Now this is not another blog on Prospecting Engines, but it is a compilation of observations that I believe support my conclusion. With that in mind, there are hundreds of thousands of real estate agents and REALTORS across the United States. The majority of these professionals approach their job as a hobby, or a distraction with no real plan or organized activity. These are the friends, co-workers, and relatives of yours that got their license, but kept their day job. Of those hard-working agents that do work to support themselves, many barely subsist and annually earn sums that are well below the poverty level.

In stark contrast to those real estate agents that work hard and barely subsist, there are a group of real estate agents that are wildly successful. These are the people that for some reason or another always have referrals walking through the door, a continual flow of hot exclusive listing and a seemingly unlimited supply of buyers and sellers that look to them for guidance. Once again this level of success begs the question, what do they do differently?

My simple answer is they use as many tools as possible to market and promote themselves and they have systems in place to automate the process. These agents take advantage of online and off-line marketing opportunities, and understand the tools that will generate clients. They leverage the internet as well as traditional media to generate a continual stream of interested prospects. These successful agents ask for referrals as a matter of common practice and use different tools to encourage a continual stream or repeat and referral traffic.

That’s my position, now for the data to back it up.
1) Most real estate agents have a single website that acts primarily as a static billboard. The sites generally give no reason to visitors to come back to the site and generally are very limited on the lead collection tools that are embedded in the site. By contrast, many successful agents use their website as a lead generation tool. They offer various calls to action and multiple tools to capture visitor data.

2) If you look at the various online communities that offer tools or links to help REALTORS promote their websites, the number of participants is typically very low. There are hundreds of thousands of real estate agents across the nation, but sites like ActiveRain, Real Estate Webmasters, Real Estate ABC, RELibrary have an extremely limited number of listings from agents. As of today ActiveRain has 9421 agents listed. They are a relatively new site, but in California alone I had read that we have over 70,000 licensed real estate agents.

3) Millions of agents and very few blogs. Blogging, podcasting and other social media tools are quickly becoming the best way for an agent to promote themselves online. Many agents are starting to adopt this form of online promotion, but once again these are the 10%, not the 90.

4) Most agents do not have a system to consistently communicate their message to the same prospect over and over. They take the shotgun approach and hit as many prospects as possible just once. Those that are successful understand that prospects must be exposed to the agent’s “brand” multiple times before they take action.

5) Response, service, and follow up. I read some time ago that up to 80% of the leads generated by real estate agents are not acted upon or receive follow up. I am not sure if this statistic is true, but my feeling is that most leads are in fact not acted upon within the first 24 hours. This may be due to a number of reasons, but there is an old adage in sales. If your client’s wallet is open, ask for the sale. This can be translated into if your prospect wants your service; don’t tell them to wait a couple of days. As I said above, I am not sure if this statistic is true, but if it is, it presents the most glaring argument for why those 10% are really successful.

I am sure there are a number of differentiators that make the top 10% stand out; however I think all of the differentiators point to the agent having a mastery of self promotion and of personal branding and marketing. If you don’t believe me, think about your favorite real estate guru; or more to the point, think about the super-star in your own office. 4MySales.com

Top Ten Rules to Get Your Press Release Picked Up

If you have not been using PR to promote your real estate business, you are missing a great opportunity to enjoy increased awareness in your community and across the web. Press releases and periodic announcements help to increase exposure as well as help position you and your organization as a leader in your area. They serve to increase community awareness about your company, and if picked up by the media, can result in a significant local and national notoriety.

When choosing to create a press release, there are a number of specific rules that you should follow to get your announcement picked up. Your piece should have the release date, your contact information, a brief synopsis about you or your company, word count, dateline, etc. It should also be written in a professional non-promotional (read no hype) manner that would be appropriate if read in the newspaper. Finally, your press release should have a headline that garners interest, and contains terms that would appear under a topic-search.

Aside from those specific rules about how to format your press release, there are a number of ways to break specific rules of journalistic writing to increase the likelihood that your announcement gets picked up. Most of these points are from PublicityHound but I thought I would summarize them below:

1- Write your press release for the people who are going to read it. This may sound like it should be unwritten, but my point is to write your release using text that can be found in search engines as well as in a format that is easy for your target audience to understand.

2- If you have news, make a press release…. even if it isn’t all that newsworthy. You don’t need to be announcing the release of construction on a new billion dollar building in order to qualify for a press release. Make an announcement if you make a new hire, launch your website, close a large deal, support a charity, or any other activity that may be of interest in your community.

3- Use online PR services. I am partial to PRWEB.com and ERelease.com However, there are a number of other free and pay for placement press announcement services.

4- Include search engine text in your title. Most press releases end up being submitted to large directories with very simple search algorithms. If there is a specific search phrase that you want your announcement to be associated with, include it in the title.

5- Include subheads or abstracts of the press release. A simple summary of the article posted directly under the title is extremely effective at increasing the adoption of the announcement as well as increasing the likelihood that it will appear when searched.

6- Include a call to action. If you have taken the time to make the announcement, make it clear to those who read it that they should contact your for more information. Always include a call to action in the body of your press release so that readers can call, click or email to get more information about your services.

7- Prompt the media and readers to contact you. Another way of saying this is tell enough of the story to intrigue the reader, but leave enough out that they will need to contact you or your brokerage to learn more. Big advertisers are doing this with television and radio to direct users to their website.

8- Offer your expertise as a local expert, available for comment or consultation on related topics. Journalists are often in search of somebody to corroborate or comment on their stories. Become one of their trusted advisers.

9- Use your headline to describe your announcement. Your headline should be catchy enough that it will create interest, but descriptive enough that the reader will understand by that one line the purpose of your announcement

In an attempt to be different, I am stopping at nine instead of going to ten. Sometimes you need to push back against social norms and expectations in order to create a different experience. As for my blatant call to action today: Click Here For A Simple System to Close More Sales -4MySales.com.

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Mashups for Real Estate Professionals

I came across a couple that I want to share with the ActiveRain community. The first is a mashup that was developed by IIProperty that compares your current rental rates with the median rate in your community. The mashup allows you to enter in the address of your current property and it returns a scale and a googlemap that shows where your property’s lease rates are prices as compared to the other properties for rent in the area. Take a look at the RentOMeter here.

The other mashup that I think will be a great resource to REALTORS that are looking to increase their lead generation activity on their websites is the ClickDensity Heatmap. This cool tool creates a small piece of Java that you place on your home page. The tool records the click traffic on your webpage and returns a heat map that shows you exactly were the bulk of the clicks on your site end up.

Finally, if you are looking to keep up on all of the new technologies that continually get introduced, EmilyChang does a great job of chronicling the up and coming technology.

Top Five Ways to Increase Your Blog Exposure

1) Create a relationship with other bloggers in your blogspace. Comment on their blogs and invite them to comment on yours; without spamming. Your dialog with other opinion leaders will help increase your exposure on the web as well as create a mutually beneficial and educational relationship. Some of my favorite blogs are the Zillow Blog, Sellsius, BloodHound Realty,

2) Syndicate your blogs across as many syndicated feed directories as possible. A great tool to help you streamline this process is Pingoat.com which rapid submits to a number of feed directories. Be sure to also manually submit to both Yahoos Syndic8.com and RealtyVoices.com and Google Ping.

3) Maintain multiple blogs on multiple sites. The goal is to get your voice out there to drive traffic to your website. Ardell DellaLoggia is a master at this that I try to emulate. She generally hosts the HouseValues conference calls…. Hopefully someday we can get her to mention 4MySales.com in one of her blogs…. Someday.

4) Submit your site to Digg so that others can read and vote for your sites.

5) Open the search word funnel to drive a wider range of traffic to your blog and to your site. HitTail.com uses the long tail theory to help identify specific blog topics that may generate additional traffic and substantially increase the number of people that read your blog. The two Long Tail phrases that keep coming up for this blog are “For Sale By Owner” and “Marketing Letters for Realtors.”