July 9, 2009
So much can be accomplished through online networking. Within a few minutes, you can get answers to questions from people across the globe. You can form alliances and relationships easily, and with a broad range of folks.
But the computer will never replace that person to person handshake. That initial bond that occurs when you meet someone IRL (in real life) for the first time and experience their true identity: the mannerisms, the stature, the true voice.
Online relationships seem to be solidified and authenticated through offline meetings. It makes them genuine and stronger.
I encourage you to slowly and deliberately, strengthen these relationships. Send a personal note in the mail to an online contact you have never met in person. Pick up the phone and wish an online contact a happy birthday. Invite a local online contact to have coffee.
You will set yourself apart and build stronger relationships.
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Tips, Training | Tagged: online, social, networking, offline, relationships | 
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Posted by tinainvirginia
June 30, 2009
The following quiz showed up in my Realtor Magazine email notice today.
“Social networking sites are great tools for real estate professionals to stay connected with clients, reach out to prospects, and build relationships in the business. But as you get into online communities such as Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and the blogosphere, you may find yourself in an entirely new world of communication that seems unfamiliar. Use this quiz to test your social networking smarts and learn more about this rapidly growing trend.”
Take the quiz here and see how well you do!
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Marketing, Training | Tagged: agent, agents, business, estate, networking, quiz, real, realtor, social | 
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Posted by tinainvirginia
June 24, 2009
A wonderful, easy to follow presentation by Lani Rosales of Austin Social Media.
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Training | Tagged: austin, fears, lani, media, overcoming, rosales, social | 
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Posted by tinainvirginia
June 23, 2009
Backpage.com is one of the fastest growing classified websites. As Craigslist continues to fight their battles against spammers and illegal activity, Backpage appears to be a safer haven for real estate agents looking to promote their listings and services. As with most online classified sites, posting real estate listings and services to Backpage is free.
Posting to Backpage is very easy and limited html is accepted. In addition, for a small fee, listings will be re-submitted each day. Also, Backpage offers sponsored listings which show up on the main page of the search category you select for a specified number of weeks. Use the discount code: BAILOUT to save 25% on a paid ad!
Click here to try Backpage.com!
Leave a Comment » | Marketing | Tagged: backpage, backpage.com, classified, craigslist, estate, listings, online, posting, real, services, site | Permalink
Posted by tinainvirginia
June 19, 2009
Facebook offers an affordable and easy way to advertise on their site. While Facebook users are looking to engage with their friends rather than shop online, the opportunity to create brand recognition through a “circle of friends” is endless.
1. Decide what you want to advertise. Are you looking to add members to a “fan” page? Do you have a great new construction site that not many people have heard about yet? Are you offering a limited time special you want to “get out there”?
For the purposes of this example, we are going to advertise our new construction site, “The Lofts at Happyville” in Williamsburg, Virginia, which are for lease.
2. Next, we need to design our ad.
Not much to it – choose a title, a picture and some brief verbage.
3. Now, we need to select our target audience.
Facebook defaults to the entire community over the age of 18. That gives us just about 61,000,000 people.
We need to go ahead and narrow that down. Lets start with the age – our targeted demographic includes college students so we are going to select 18-25 for our age group. We are also going to only target those users in the United States who are in a 50-mile radius of Williamsburg. Lastly, we will select those who indicate they are “in college”. That drops our targeted group down to 3,320 people.
4. Now, we need to name our campaign and insert our budget. How long do we want this campaign to run? What is our total budget and what is our daily budget? Do we want to pay for impressions or clicks?
In our scenario, we are a new community so we are looking for brand recognition. Normally, this would warrant a CPM (pay per impression) campaign; however, since we have a special offer, we want to actually do a CPC (pay per click) campaign. The current suggested “bid” price is $.46 – $.59. The narrower your targeted audience, the higher the price. We are going to bid a price in the middle $.52. It is estimated that at this expenditure, we will receive 20 clicks per day. The actual cost of our per click will most likely be less than our bid price.
5. From here, we click on “create” and pay for our ad. That’s all there is to it. It takes approximately 15 minutes for the ad to be approved and start running. At any time, we can view the analytics for our ad and/or edit the ad.
Leave a Comment » | Marketing | Tagged: advertising, cpc, cpm, facebook, networking, social | Permalink
Posted by tinainvirginia
June 9, 2009
Dwellicious is a great tool to share with your buyers and allows them to share their property findings with others while also allowing you to participate in the search.
Leave a Comment » | Marketing, Tips | Tagged: agent, bookmarking, brokerage, buyer, dwellicious, estate, home, house, Marketing, networking, real, realtor, search, social | Permalink
Posted by tinainvirginia
June 2, 2009
Mark Hyman of Mooving Too, Inc. wrote an interesting post today on Inman:
“More and more Colleges/Universities offer many courses in the Real Estate Industry. The students who are taking these courses, many of which will probably start out as a Real Estate agents especially due to the current job market. I believe everybody who is presently a Real Estate Professional should prepare now for what is coming. These kids are smart, tech savvy and are extremely involved in Social Marketing. It is true that 85% of people searching for a home, start their search online. But how people search and how they are going to choose their Real Estate Agent is going to change. The top search engines are presently working with Computer Science Teams that will take the unstructured web and build it into a more structured web.“
Upon researching this, I found that 237 colleges and universities in the United States offer a degree in real estate. Let me state that again. They offer a DEGREE in real estate. This goes WAY beyond a piddly little licensing class and a few hours of Quick Start training.
A few years ago, I entered the Graduate program in Real Estate and Land Development at Virginia Commonwealth University. I was extremely grateful I paid attention in calculus class many years back as I definitely needed it for the Real Estate Finance class. The forecasting and investment analysis I learned was invaluable. The professors (yes, some of them held a PhD in Real Estate) were the brightest of real world real estate investing, development and economic theory as it relates to the housing market.
Anyway, my experience in graduate school along with Mark’s post got me to thinking….is the real estate agent of the future an actual graduate of a collegiate real estate program? Will managers be those experienced graduates who continue their studies to receive master’s degrees in real estate?
Let’s face it, in some states it is easier to become a real estate agent than it is to become a hair dresser. Most real estate company’s hiring requirements only consist of a pulse and a real estate license. Continuing education requirements, while they mean well, do not provide the real education an agent should have. Electricians, plumbers….they are required to be a student of their trade for years before being permitted to venture out on their own. Where is the accountability in the real estate industry? Where is the education in the trade?
In addition, will this new wave of college educated real estate licensees want the traditional real estate agent experience? I doubt it. They will be expecting college internships. Salary + bonuses. They may even want BENEFITS! Brick and mortar offices? Who needs them?
A hurricane may be blowing through the industry in a few years…..or has it already started????
1 Comment | Opinions | Tagged: college, degree, future, internship, real estate, student | Permalink
Posted by tinainvirginia
