So are you tired of just writing sentence after sentence in your blog? If you are your readers might be as well. After all we are in the new era of the web were bandwith is high and people have high speed access at home and at work so why would we only just write text? The answer is you probably shouldn't be just writing. So we thought we would give you 5 great resons to use multi media in your blog.

1. It adds a visual impact - nothing adds impact like a great picture. After all a picture is worth a 1,000 words right? So why not throw up a picture of what you are talking about. If you are talking about the benefits of improving a kitchen maybe a nice before and after picture.


2. Video says it for you - That's right a little video never hurt anyone. In fact you can upload your video to http://www.youtube.com/ and they will host it for you and give you the html to put in your page. We put up video on our Long Beach Home Blog so you can see a sample of what to do. That clip took about 40 seconds to record, 2 minutes to upload to youtube, and another 60 seconds to copy and paste the HTML they gave me into the blog. So for under 5 minutes I think it is worth it.


3. Sound is a great way to introduce your blog - we put sound on our blog as well using some easy to use software by in InstantAudio.Com. This software is great and is easy to use. By the way we use it to describe our properties on our regular websites as well.


4. Others aren't doing it - Want to be first? That's right many people aren't yet adding pictures, sound, and video to their blog. This makes you stand out among all of the other blogs that are available for a user to select. After all you are competing for readers and what better way to improve your blog by adding something that no one else will do.


5. Your readers want it - so if all of the other reasons don't convince you to do it your readers do want it. People want more out of websites and blogs than just plain text. They want entertainment with their information so give it to them!

In case you also are thinking we don't practice what we are asking you to do we have some video for you as well!

We hope that convinces you to add some multimedia to your blog. You can always check out ours for ideas at http://www.homeofthequeenmary.com/ and another great one we like is http://www.raincityguide.com/.

Labels: BLOG, internet marketing solutions for real estate agents, real estate agent website, real estate blog, real estate internet marketing, real estate internet marketing solution

Now hopefully you have a real estate blog that is either integrated with your website or is separate from your website and marketed differently. One of the things that we find is hardest for agents to do is to come up with new topics to write on and because they don't have new topics they stop writing and their blogs aren't updated on a regular basis. Here are 5 content ideas you can use for your blog and the great part is you can keep reuse them every single month!

1. Monthly Sales Statistics - This is one that you make sure to report every first of the month. Keep it consistent and you will have a regular following that checks to see what the figures were at. Let agents know you will be posting it so they can check it as well.
2. Loan Products - Banks are continually offering new products so that buyers can buy or builders can build. Get your favorite lending partner to post every month on what is new out there.
3. Loan Rates - A great resource to reference is www.bankrate.com. They always post the latest available rates from different lenders. If you had a few lenders send you what the latest rates where one a week or once a month you would have a regular topic that people are always interested in.
4. New Construction - Most areas have some form of new development occurring on an ongoing basis. Blogging on it and reporting it are key to more great content.
5. Fun Events - It doesn't always have to be about real estate. You can mention a carnival or fair that is going on and mention what area of town it is in. Since it has to take place somewhere it is related to real estate and people always like to have a source for information.

Have fun with this 5 Blog Topics for your Real Estate Blog. It is more important to keep posting than to not post at all so good luck with your blog!

Labels: marketing real estate web site, real estate agent website, real estate blog, real estate internet marketing solution, real estate marketing

When we want to improve the results of our real estate seo efforts we have to have something to check their effectiveness. Now there are plenty of tools available that one can pay for. What is more rare is to find a website that offers free tools. In fact we found a site that allows you to check for FREE your real estate seo efforts.

Please remember that Search Engine Optimization(SEO) will not producer instant results. When you focus on seo for your real estate website you will have long term results that will pay off. So this website is a great place to check out your real estate seo process and plan that you are working on.

A great FREE website that we came across is http://www.linkvendor.com/. Now this website is completely free and gives you some great things to monitor your website with. You can check the following with their tools:

1. Value of a link - Wonder if you should pay a directory for a link from their site? This free tool calculates the value of a link from a website. While I would recommend using it as your only guide it is a nice guideline to keep in mind.
   
2. Page Rank Check - This tool allows you to see if what Google is reporting by them is truly the value of your website. Not bad to get a second opinion and sometimes when the Google Page Rank system has issues you will have a nice place to go.
   
3. Outbound Links - Tells you how many outbound links that you have. There are other tools for this but this one does a decent job.
   
4. Keyword Density - Tells you what percentage a word appears throughout your site and allows you to check the search engines as well. This is nice if you are working on integrating new words into your SEO work.

There are other tools on this site. It is FREE and the guy does a tremendous amount of work on it. Check it out and we hope that it helps you improve the performance on your website. Once again the address is http://www.linkvendor.com/.

Labels: real estate internet marketing solution, real estate marketing, real estate marketing online, real estate search engine optimization, real estate seo

If you are focusing or at least are running pay per click ads for your real estate website you want to make sure that you are focusing on always running the right ad. So how can you do this? Well there is a way to make sure that your real estate pay per click ads are fine tuned and operating at the best of their abilities. We walk about a great website today of http://www.splittester.com/. This website is completely FREE and in fact tells you which ad it recommends that you run.

This post is about running ads on Google Adwords and works with their system. It may also help you with your MSN or Yahoo campaigns but the site has been designed for Google.

The great thing that I always like about the Internet is the ability to test an ad's effectiveness. In fact the greatest part is that you can test the effectiveness immediately. Now especially in pay per click advertising you want to make sure you are only spending on ads that you want to.

Hopefully everyone is always running two ads at a time. With Google Adwords you can run different ad variations for the same set of keywords. I always recommend to friends and co-workers to run two ads as Google will run the ad that it deems is the most relevant. They determine this by judging based on the CTR (Click Through Rate). This is simply (number of times the ad is shows)\(number of times the ad has been clicked). As the ads run the one with the higher click through rate will be shown more often. It is hard to judge just by this number which is the better ad. Now since we always want the best chance at success we want to always be testing new messages. If you can get a CTR rate above 1% you are on your way. It is not uncommon for us to have some of our ads have CTR rates above 15% or 17% it just depends on the words and the ad that is running.

A great site http://www.splittester.com/ helps you judge the effectiveness of your ads. This site was created by Perry Marshall and if you have not had a chance to read any of his books on Google I would highly recommend them. I hope this site helps everyone judge the effectiveness of their ads!

Labels: paid ads, pay per click, PPC Campaigns, real estate internet marketing solution, real estate marketing online, real estate pay per click

The Internet is all about buyers they say. Well it is true that buyers do look quite a bit and the National Association of Realtors® does state that over 75% of buyers now begin their search online. This number is only going to increase until it reaches as close to 100% as humanely possible.

Remember your real estate marketing online is about attracting the kind of client you want to work with. So if you want buyers provide information that buyers want. If you want to attract sellers than you have to give them what they want. So here is a little story we thought we would share with you.

Last night I went on a listing appointment. We received a direct call from one of our websites on Monday booked an appointment for Wednesday and signed the listing contract that night. In fact we beat out 2 other top agents in the area who send postcards, take out ads, and farm in the area. The sellers called us though after the first two agents didn’t deliver a consistent online message. The seller went online and called us! No CMA request, No direct e-mail, just a direct call.

So how did this come about? Well this happened because we give lots of information away for sellers. A free seller section, free tips (hint we wrote our own content not standard content), and lots of other free goodies for sellers including an Instant CMA tool that they don’t need us to compile information for them.

So 3 tips to make sure sellers can contact you easily:

1. Have a complete seller section – make it easy to find and preferably have a very obvious link from the first page.
2. Make your phone number obvious – I know that this is one we keep repeating but many websites don’t make it easy to call.
3. Respond quickly – For live calls preferably you answer them and don’t let it go to a phone system. Have a dedicated line if you can so it doesn’t have to go through the main receptionist at the front desk. We have a direct line for local callers and a toll free line that goes right to our team.

These 3 tips will make sure that you not only get the appointment but will set the stage so you can get the listing! We hope this helps you succeed and get more listings from your website!

Labels: internet marketing solutions for real estate agents, marketing real estate web site, real estate internet marketing solution, real estate marketing online

It always amazes me that people don't have anything new to add to their websites. They wonder what they should do what marketing they should do for their real estate career. Often the easiest thing is right before their eyes or it is already in the mind. Real Estate Marketing online should focus on the content.

Now this may sound obvious but it isn't always the case. We speak literally hundreds of times a year before different groups of Realtors and most can tell us everything that is going on in their particular market but yet none of this is available on their websites. So we just wanted to cover a few tips on real estate marketing that works online that might not work easily in other mediums such as magazine ads, flyer's, or radio.

1. Neighborhood Information - This is one of the easiest things to put on your website because you already probably know a whole bunch of things about the neighborhood you farm in. Post this information to a neighborhood blog. You can get one for FREE at www.blogger.com. We recommend getting your own personal domain from a company like www.TopAgentDomains.com.
2. Statistics - Some MLS systems generate this in easy reports others you have to run reports manually. Customers want to know the average days on market, list to sales ratios, how many homes are available. You mine as well be the source!
3. Event notices or news - This is easiest to do with a blog. Post that there is going to be a work party cleaning up a park, that a street is being worked on, that a church is doing a fundraiser. You can literally become the source for information in your neighborhood.

The three tips above will help keep your website fresh and more importantly keeps your real estate marketing at the front edge of the Internet. If you can even do a post or two a week you will be ahead of 98% of all other real estate professionals who think they are doing real estate marketing better than you are! Good luck and we hope that this helps you succeed online.

Labels: internet marketing solutions for real estate agents, real estate internet marketing, real estate internet marketing solution, real estate marketing, real estate marketing online

Often times we get people asking us about different Internet Marketing Solutions for Real Estate Agents. There are 100's if not thousands of choices out there. The hard part is determining which one is going to work for you. We can say with near 100% accuracy that every company, firm, or individual that approaches you about their solution will have a testimonial on how their package has worked for one of their clients. They key is will it work for you! So in order to determine what is the best real estate Internet marketing solution we thought we would give you the 5 things we recommend you look for in a solution so you can determine if it is going to be a good fit.

1. Will you use it - This is the biggest reason to reason not to purchase a tool. If you can't see yourself using it the way you are being told to you it is probably not the tool for you. Remember to ask questions about if the marketing solution can be used a different way in a successful manner. If you are told yes ask to speak to those agents who are using it.


2. What is the ROI (Return on Investment) - If this question cannot be answered or you get answers like "It is about branding" or "It all depends" then we would recommend shying away from it. Agents who have read our e-book (which is free) and is available at http://www.onlinerealestatesuccess.com/free_E-book.shtml see returns on investment from 8 to 17 times return. Most agents who take our recommendations in the FREE courses we provide average at least a 10 times return on money they spent.


3. Ability to cancel at any time - Any tool that you buy should allow you to cancel at any time. This means the person is confident in the product that they provide. They should provide you with a Guarantee on how it will work if they don't allow you to cancel.


4. The person selling it should have used it - It is always preferred if the person selling it to you has used it and successfully so that they can show you how to do it right.


5. They support it - If there is no support, either online, phone, or in person we would recommend not signing up for the product. If they just give you a box of software and tell you to go at it be wary. They should at least have a comprehensive online help to make sure you can get started.

While we didn't put it in our list we recommend speaking to other agents about how the real estate Internet marketing solution you are about to choose has worked out for them. Ask them to tell you what they don't like about it, what their problems have been, and if they are still a client and why. Remember it's your money and spend it wisely. You can often find many free sources of help or very inexpensive help. Also know that there are some great tools out there and if you use them as instructed, believe they will work, and do how you are recommend you can make it work if it fits your personality! Good luck and if you have questions don't hesitate to write them and we will see what we can do!

Labels: internet marketing solutions for real estate agents, marketing real estate web site, real estate internet marketing, real estate internet marketing solution, real estate marketing online

Often times we have people who get 30, 40, or 50 leads a month but they aren't getting any new appointments out of these leads. These agents are doing the necessary components of real estate Internet marketing to get the leads but failing to convert to appointments so they can producer more commission income.

Now first ignore anything you have heard about Internet buyers not being ready for 6 months, 9 months, or more. The reason we say that is there is today business in the leads that you are receiving. In fact the whole concept of your website and marketing your real estate business is to find clients who need help today, tomorrow, and 6 months from now. What some agents who respond to real estate Internet leads don't realize is that those people may be requesting on other agents websites as well. We hope that isn't a surprise to anyone. After all buyers or sellers just want information and they want it quickly. So how do you make sure you get to them before they leave and go to another agents website?

We have found there are 3 big tips that agents can follow to convert more real estate Internet leads.

1. Respond within 7 minutes - now the quicker the better. The Internet generation likes to get there information quickly and if they can't get it quick enough they will move on. It is all about the information that they want so give it to them.
2. Don't use auto responders - These are e-mails that are generated automatically when people sign up. People know what they look like. You are better off writing templates and then customizing them to people's requests. Our team gets over 250 leads a month and still people get a personal response.
3. Call them if they gave you a phone number - Now this may sound obvious but some agents don't. Call them and ask them about what they need. It's not about you so don't sell them just ask them questions. In fact ask them to come on in and meet with you. Trust us this works and they will come in!

We hope these 3 tips improves your real estate Internet marketing that you are doing and that it will help you convert more of your real estate leads that you get from your websites. Good luck and don't hesitate to visit the scripts section so you can get some ideas of what to ask or say to these prospective clients.

Labels: marketing real estate web site, real estate internet marketing, real estate internet marketing solution, real estate marketing online

Real Estate Internet marketing is much like other forms of marketing in the fact, that the entire goal is to generate leads and generate business! Having a successful online presence requires that you have some key aspects to your website. These 5 tips will help you to maximize your real estate marketing online.

1. Make it east for customers to search your MLS


2. Make it easy to contact you! - Sounds crazy, but your phone and e-mail should be easy to find


3. Powerful calls to action - give people a reason to sign up


4. Unique Content - stand out from the crowd by writing your own information


5. Provide a Home Value tool - you want to get the sellers who are searching online!

Following these 5 tips will help you to get contacts out of your website visitors. Your real estate internet marketing efforts will not get wasted if you practice these tips.

Labels: marketing real estate web site, real estate internet marketing, real estate internet marketing solution, real estate marketing, real estate marketing online