The Real Estate Tomato

In preparation for my participation at Inman Connect 2008, I have been thinking a lot about our panel topic, Growing Pains: Take Your Blog to the Next Level. Today’s post is a run-together of the relevant points on this topic, the way I see it. If you are experiencing “Growing Pains” in your blogging, I guess it would entail that you have been at it now for at least the last year, and in some cases much longer. In addition, you probably find the following list familiar. 1. Your blog is at the center of your Online Marketing Strategy. 2. You enjoy the Discipline of blogging regularly. 3. You have integrated your blog into your Offline Marketing. 4. You are Generating Leads and Clients as a result of your blogging. 5. You have earned Prime Position in the Search Engines for desired terms. 6. You are recognized as an Authority...

Just as the dot at the bottom of the exclamation point signals to the reader that there is an emphasis on the statement that it completes, what you choose to complete your blog articles with can drive home a message with more impact than you may realize. Once you have gained interest through a compelling headline, formatting makes all the difference as to whether or not a visitor actually invests the the time to read your blog. One place that has traditionally been a popular landing area for the eyes is the end of any written piece. Take for example: The Sales Letter, it has a Bottom Line. And that's what we're all after anyhow, right? The Love Letter. It's all about the strong finish... Those 3 words make the whole thing so much sweeter. Speaking of letters... PS, anyone? What thoughtful communication could be thoughtful without an extra thought?...

Our Monday Collaborative Posts are back (we were on vacation last week) with a topic that proved as interesting as it was slippery: Why Should Your Clients and Potential Clients Care That You Blog? In the collective discussion that took place on this topic, there was lots of writing on why blogging helps you gain the trust of your audience, and how blogging helps you connect to your potential clients, but pinning down why they should care took some time to uncover. Paula Henry from IndyRealEstateTalk.com broke through with the concept that a well executed real estate blog gives clients a sense of the agent “beyond the slogan.” Many real estate agents use slogans such as: “Knowledge Is Power” “Service You Deserve. People You Trust” “Experience Is The Difference” “Always There For You” “We Care” “Your Local Expert” …and so on. Without the substance to back up these slogans, they...

As promised last week, Monday Real Estate Blogging Advice Posts will now be the result of the collective collaboration from our own Clients, the Tomato Bloggers. This Week’s Collaborative Blogging Advice Topic: What Should Realtors Be Blogging About In Order To Attract Ready To Act Home Buyers? As a disclaimer, I don’t know that there is an objectively correct answer to the question, given that every target market is different, be it urban or rural, or beach front or mountain living. Nonetheless, it made for a fascinating conversation in the Tomato Forum. Here’s what we made of it: The Internet Lead is generally considered to be a lead that is going to take some time to incubate. The length of time thrown around is usually 6–18 months. Can real estate blogging help a lead develop more quickly, or rather can blogging attract leads that are further along in their own...

As I mentioned in Part 1 of this series, there are many unintended, yet beneficial consequences of real estate blogging. The one that continues to reveal itself to our clients is how their blogging efforts continue to improve their skills as a Realtor. It is said that good salespeople use their words, while great salespeople use their ears. While blogging is wordsmithing, great business bloggers use their ears. We train our clients to learn to wear a "bloggers hat" - to recognize that nearly every daily interaction with their clients and the community offers an opportunity for a blog article. How many questions are you typically asked to field during a real estate transaction? From 'A to Close'… is it 20, 40, 80? How many times have you had to answer these same questions? Wearing your blogging hat has you hearing your client's questions more clearly as an opportunity to...

As I attempted to bring clarity to the commonly asked question: How many hits should I expect to my real estate blog? the theme that has percolated to the top of the discussion both here and on ActiveRain was all too clear. "It's business, not hits that I want from my blogging." "What correlation is there between traffic and leads through blogging?" Teresa Boardman is passionate about the subject, knowing too well that it is the business that she garners from her blogging efforts, not the readership, that makes it so worth it. So, after a quick email exchange with her, we aimed to tackle the topic together. My point of view comes from hundreds of hours of blogging, geared to be enjoyed by Realtors, and Teresa’s, from twice as many hours of real estate blogging directed towards the consumer. Jim’s Perspective What we learned from the last article: #1....

Blog Visitor Statistics - Don't Drink The Kool-Aid At Bloggers Connect 2007, a woman from the audience during the panel I spoke on (Show Me The Leads) asked a great question. A question that I hear everyday. A question that I know every new and soon to be blogger is asking: “How many hits should I expect to get to my blog?” I was surprised to hear the answer by one of the panelists: “After a couple of months, you should be getting a couple of thousand a day.” As far as I know, based on most statistic metric counters, there are only a handful of blogs in the real estate blogosphere that can boast that they are generating visits in the thousands per day. Statements like these are reckless and misleading. There is a need for a common measure of traffic to a website, and that measure should be...

I am here in San Francisco at the Inman Bloggers Connect Conference, about to go on stage to discuss the topic of lead generation through real estate blogging. The most important question, that I know we are about to be asked is: What makes a real estate blog generated lead different from a website generated lead? This article, which was written weeks ago, was saved specifically for today. How Does Real Estate Blogging Actually Generate Leads? Here on the Tomato, we've already pointed out a few times how ensuring that you have a clearly visible call to action (read: Home Search, Home Value Report) is a necessary element to acquiring leads through your real estate blogsite. 1. How To Generate Leads Through Real Estate Blogging 2. Your Real Estate Blog Is Bait 3. The Starbucks Mistake All this is emarketing 101, and something that I have been helping agents understand...

Jim once wrote a post about how your blog is an Army, which got me thinking. If blogs are comparable to armies, and posts to soldiers, then the time-tested rules of employing an army may have some relevance. To this end, I recently undertook yet another study of “The Art of War,” the Taoist mantra of the genius Sun Tzu. I came up with a few good points of time-tested strategy made applicable to blogging. Enjoy. Master Sun on Strategic Assessments: “Structure your forces accordingly to supplement extraordinary tactics. Forces are to be structured strategically, based upon what is advantageous.” When Sun Tzu says “forces,” read it as “blog posts.” Then it begins to make sense. Bloggers use “extraordinary tactics” every day of the week. Think of how convention says that we should go about winning strategically important key words. For example, if I wanted to win the keywords “Tampa...

The Obvious: The most effective way to overcome objections is to handle them before they become a hurdle in the sales process. The new agent routinely looks for the solution to providing the right answers to their clients' concerns. The questions they ask, the fears they present, the roadblocks they create and the challenge of their misunderstandings, all can get in the way of moving closer to the real estate transaction. In addition, great experience in converting ‘the interested’ into ‘the closed’ still won't make you bullet proof to misinterpreting or mishandling a clients objections, here and again. Listen to every question asked, chances are they're being asked online as well. Each opportunity to overcome these challenges will be as much a learning experience for the agent as they are for the client.Each successfully handled hurdle needs to be documented for the next opportunity, preemptively preparing and incubating your audience....

Teresa Boardman is back! Last week we were in the trenches with her, examining the challenges of embracing the technological side of real estate. Today we gain some perspective on why business blogging needs to be a big part of your marketing strategy for 2007. Enjoy! — It is that time of the year again. Well, actually it was that time of year last month; time to complete my business plan for 2007. I figure out how much money I want to make, and then I figure out how many transactions I need to accomplish my financial goals. The transactions are then broken down into buyers or sellers, and then I figure how many appointments will be needed each month to meet the goals. After I have my numbers I start planning the tasks that I will need to complete during the year that will generate the number of appointments...

Business Blogging for Leads. That's the goal, right? The Soft Barrier is a lead generating, online form that asks for as little personal information as possible. The strategy is to have the visitor exchange their personal info in order to access information worth the exchange. "Name and email required" is the info one needs to effectively include the generated lead into an email marketing program. Other information such as phone number, address and real estate needs, however valuable, are more tricky to ask for. The idea is to pick up leads, not deter response by over-stepping the visitor's comfort zone. The Tools Traditional lead generating soft barriers such as the promise of access to the MLS or a Comparative Market Analysis (CMA) are still effective, to some degree. The stat that I hear thrown around: expect 4% of the audience that visits the soft barrier (accessing the MLS or requesting...

A comment by a left by reader (we'll call her Angie) inspired this article. Angie expressed that her blog, although noteworthy (30+ hits a day) on a daily traffic scale, was failing to produce leads. So much so, that after more than a year of regular blogging, she and her partner were losing their zeal as daily contributors to the real estate blogosphere. It seems that she was at the right fishing hole with pole in hand, but not a bite to speak of. Where were all the leads? How could thousands of hits have produced not even a fish tale? Leads are generated when a visitor feels compelled to contact you requesting either a direct service or access to a service. Blogging is not the service. Blogging is the bait. Blogging is what you use to attract traffic to the platform where you must present your services. Blogging creates...