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What is Social Networking?
June 23, 2009 by George Dean · Leave a Comment
You’ve heard the term but what is social networking? Popular sites like MySpace, Facebook and LinkedIn are examples of social networking - people meeting online. But don’t think you have to be a teen or technically astute to reap the benefits of social networking. Quite frankly, I stretch the definition of what is social networking. It’s not about the Internet and websites; it only serves as a connector where people meet.
For real estate agents and mortgage brokers, social networking is about increasing your number of friends. Whether online or offline, social networking means sharing your expertise, growing your reputation and building a vast network. There’s a strong correlation between the size of your network and the depth of your bank account.
Social Networking Sparks Sales and Cuts Expenses
When you’re in a service industry, such as real estate and finance, using a sales approach shortens your professional life span. Too many real estate agents spend their resources hunting for the next sale when longevity comes from nurturing relationships; you get constant referrals and repeat business while advertising expenses are deferred. It’s the epitome of working less to earn more.
You can achieve it by way of changing your approach. Unlike hunting where agents spend exorbitant amounts of money to get leads, like direct advertising, radio spots and even TV commercials, you let prospects find you.
Think about your most valuable clients. Did they come from advertising or from word-of-mouth? Did they come from something you did or did they find you through someone? Chances are your best clients discovered you.
How to Get Discovered
How do prospects find you? From networking. Even if they didn’t know there was a particular name for it; they found you through people. What does social networking have to do with it? It’s a fundamental change in your business for getting more clients. Stop advertising and start networking. People are more comfortable meeting you if they discover you first.
Joining a social networking website can be a place to start. You can experience first hand what is social networking by joining Zillow and Trulia; excellent real estate networking sites. Broker Outpost is a good mortgage broker networking site and Active Rain and Wanna Network are good peer-to-peer networking sites.
Once you’re networking with peers and prospect, it’s how you connect with members of a community and nurture relationships to produce a constant flow of referrals - the best outcome for what is social networking.
Being Visible Isn’t Good Enough
June 18, 2009 by George Dean · Leave a Comment
Are you constantly visible with clients, but you’re still not getting all the referrals you deserve? Are your efforts not producing results? Although there could be several reasons, it’s possible your content strategy isn’t paying dividends.
Content is King
Being visible isn’t enough to generate a steady flow of referrals. Heck, even delivering exceptional service isn’t good enough for today’s customer. Your content strategy has to be at the top of it’s game. But wait, what is a content strategy? It’s not a coined phrase thrown around in real estate circles.
Your content strategy has everything to do with how you keep visible with clients, produce referrals, improve word-of-mouth and position yourself ahead of competition. In today’s competitive marketplace, you’re judged beyond what you say in an advertisement. With the help of the Internet, people can express their opinions to the world about you.
Many real estate agents confuse content with advertising. They believe the message in their advertisement is content. It’s not – it’s solicitation – something consumers have grown tired of. Content is information that educates, even inspires someone to action. And unless you were born to be a persuasive writer, it’s a skill Realtors are missing.
Magnetic Articles
Fortunately, persuasive writing isn’t a skill you need if you know where to find the right content. Voila! Right here in the marketing center is where you can get content. Now you can send great email newsletters filled with eye-popping information.
The table below includes main articles accompanied with their supplemental articles.
How to Follow Up
June 18, 2009 by George Dean · Leave a Comment
Next is the most important step, the one that brings you the next sale – Follow Up. Too often an agent puts all of his or her energy into planning the open house and leaves little in the gas tank for when it really matters. Your next sale is waiting for you when you follow up and build relationships with the visitors from the open house.
In most likelihood, the majority of your visitors aren’t ready to buy or sell a home today. But when they are ready, if you haven’t stayed in touch and built trust and rapport, you’ll miss the easy sale. Are you making that same mistake? If you are, that’s about to change.
A healthy relationship between a loan officer and real estate agent means the agent is never alone. Are there times when you feel you are alone in business? It shouldn’t be that way. My goal is simple…to help you build loyal clients. Imagine how your business would prosper if we worked together and focused on that single goal? In a short period of time you could be earning more income and enjoying a better lifestyle.
This next file you can download is an email campaign comprised of 9 messages so you can stay in touch and reap the benefits of future sales & referrals. Just take each message and modify to fit your preference, and then you email each one in sequence to your open house leads. Of course, if you have a Magnetic Email account, you can use it to give yourself X-Ray vision and see who’s paying attention to your marketing.
Download Email Follow Up Campaign
(right click link and select “save target as”)
