We updated the 2012 Blogging for Real Estate Planner to help you kick your online marketing plan into top gear.

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Sign up here for SMMCamp 15 – Blogging for Real Estate on Thursday May 3 at 12 Noon EST. Features 5 real estate blogging pros.

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I recommend that you set up each new blog and periodically audit your existing blogs with the blogging planner.

In particular you need to make sure your blog is hyper-local and engages on a personal level with your target community.

Download the 2012 Blogging for Real Estate Planner right here! (all we ask is that you hit the share button above)

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Here are the 4 best ways to find new clients and customers on Google Plus. Each video is just a few minutes long and includes a live demonstration.

Don’t forget to sign up right here for SMMCamp 12 – Google Plus for Real Estate on Thursday December 8 at 12 Noon Eastern.

1 – Use Google Plus Search

2 – Use Google Search

3 – Mimic and Follow Local Influencers and Personalities

4 – Use Local Search Tools

Right now it is easier to find and connect with local prospects on Google Plus than Facebook, LinkedIn or Twitter – but it won’t be long before the window of opportunity closes. So what are you waiting for?

About Ross Hair

Connect with Ross on Google Plus by clicking here.

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To help you get in front of the real estate video curve I’ve created the Video Marketing for Real Estate Guide.

And it’s free!

It’s packed full of information about the best video tools, technology and tactics you need to effective use video to market and sell homes.

And you can download it for free by clicking on this link to the Video Marketing for Real Estate Guide.

About Ross Hair

Ross Hair is bald and has a face for radio. That didn’t stop him taking the best ideas from all the top real estate video marketers and condensing them into the industry leading Video Marketing for Real Estate Guide.

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One of the simplest tasks that you can perform on Facebook is to post a status update on your wall or your page and post a comment on another person’s wall or page.

It sounds simple but what happens to your post is anything but simple because you post or comment may never be seen by your friends.

The complicated part is all the rules and policies that Facebook uses to determine who can see the post and how it is distributed and published.

Facebook calls this EdgeRank. It’s their secret algorithm to determine how people see (or don’t see) your posts. A high EdgeRank makes your posts visible while a low EdgeRank can make your posts disappear. This means you may post something that Facebook decides is not interesting to your friends and hides it from their view.

Ouch! Facebook deciding what’s interesting!

The three main factors that Facebook considers are Relationship, Relevance and Time Elapsed. So make sure you consistently post interesting and relevant content that your friends like and add comments.

(Now that was a really simple explanation of EdgeRank).

Unfortunately this is something you absolutely need to know because you want to make sure people actually see and read your posts. It’s no good writing a post that no one will ever read. But if you know how the system works you can spend your time doing the things that get the best return on your time.

You need to think about optimizing your wall posts (Wall Post Optimization – give me a break).

Now before you over think the issue you need to know that posting and commenting is good and you should do it on a consistent and ongoing basis.

If you stick to the basics and post consistently you will attract new friends and clients and people will see your posts.

Important Note – One of the reasons that I focus on “getting an email address” is because if you get a person’s contact details you can email that person whenever you want outside of Facebook – and you don’t need to understand or play by Facebook’s secret rules. That’s good for you and Facebook.

About Ross Hair

Ross Hair is completely bald, a fan of real estate social media and founder of Social Media Marketing Camp.

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Facebook offers an instant real estate video marketing platform for every real estate professional.

Just think about!

You can instantly upload a video to your Facebook account and share it with your friends and fans. Then you can leverage Facebook’s great SEO benefits to attract new prospects by making your video searchable by the general public.

And you can do it absolutely for free on the world’s most popular website.

That’s a pretty good deal!

Register for SMMCamp 7 Video Marketing for Real Estate on Thursday January 20 at 12 Noon Eastern – online and free!

I use video extensively on the community page that I set up for my hometown of Niwot, Colorado.

The best part is that most of the video is shot and uploaded by people in our town. I no longer need to do any work to grow the fan base as most of the content is user generated and new fans invite their friends to join the fan page.

I created the page so now I have the ability to send an instant message to around 50% of my town’s adult population. That’s a very powerful (and free) marketing channel.

To upload a video you need to click on the video tab on your home page. Then click on the upload tab to upload your video.

The next step is to browse your computer or camera and upload the video. The only limitation is that the video needs to be less than 20 minutes and 1024 MB.

It doesn’t get any easier than Facebook. It takes just a few minutes to upload just about any video, like the one of my local high school during a parade.

You can take your marketing to the next level by creating a fan page (like I did for my town of Niwot, Colorado) and then customizing the page by adding your own design and custom pages.

The key tool is an application called Static FBML that you can find it in Facebook’s Application Directory.

You can then customize your fan page to create a video squeeze page that captures your visitor’s contact details. This turns your fan page into a very powerful marketing tool as it helps you build your contact list and create an email list for your long term marketing plan. Email marketing is the holy-grail for internet marketers and something you must add to your marketing plan.

You can add video to your fan page so it looks like an internet marketing page (see below).

You can customize your page to add real estate specific content (see below).

Another tactic that you can use is to create a Single Property Fan Page.

A single property fan page is just like a single property website. The main difference is that the fan page sits on Facebook. Set up the fan page, add the property details, photos and videos and then invite all the neighbors to become a fan of the site and post a comment about the neighborhood. You will be amazed by how much positive feedback you get from the local homeowners.

Creating a single property fan page has its pros and cons.

The pros are that your fan page is free, it sits on the world’s most popular site and it is easy to get Facebook traffic to the page.

The cons are that you don’t own the site (Facebook does) and you are limited by the fan page’s functionality and Facebook’s terms of service.

Another tactic is to create a live video stream and publish it on your fan page. You can use an application like UStream or vBroadcaster to add a live video stream to your Facebook fan page or blog.

You could broadcast an open house or do a weekly webinar for new home buyers etc.

Now you have no excuse to not use video as part of your real estate marketing plan. Facebook gives you the platform, the tools and all the traffic you will ever need to close more real estate deals using video marketing.

About Ross Hair

Ross Hair is bald, a huge fan of real estate social media and the founder of Social Media Marketing Camp.

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Here’s the cheap and easy way to add real estate search to your Facebook Fan Page – and you don’t need to hire a developer.

This technique needs zero technical skills. It’s not quite as good as a full blow real estate search box application but it works almost as well and it has the advantage of getting the visitor to your website and not a general listing site.

I created a short report to give you a step-by-step guide - download the report here! (Please post a comment below if you like the report)

First let me tell you that there are a number of good search apps that you can use to show listings on your Facebook Fan page. Realtor.com, Zillow, Trulia, Roost, Altos Research and a number of other large listing sites all have a Facebook app. The problem is that they take your visitor to their site and then poach your business by showing advertising from your competitors.

You could avoid this problem by building your own Facebook App but who has that kind of budget?

Using my cheap and simple guerrilla marketing approach you can create a page with the image of a search box so that when anyone clicks on the search box it will link directly back to your IDX search site.

You can take it a step further by using a free application like PageModo to build a professional looking page, just like the Owlio Fan Page.

Ross Hair

P.S. – Here’s the link to download the Facebook Fan Page Real Estate Search Guide

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I created my own QR code (quick response code) as part of my committment to going 100% mobile in 2011.

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SMMCamp Prize – Congratulations you read my QR code – Post a comment below this article and I’ll send you a link to my free report on how to create a custom fan page on Facebook with a search listings feature.
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A QR code is a fancy 2-Dimensional code that encodes imformation about a URL, text or other data. It can be read by a bar code scanner or most new smartphones, including the iPhone and Android.

To read my QR code you need to download a QR reader to your smartphone, take a picture and the image will render the content.

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Social Media Marketing Camp 6 – Mobile Marketing for Real Estate is set for Thursday December 9 from 10am to 1pm Mountain.

SMMCamp features a number of real estate social media experts who will share their insights and advice on how to market and sell homes using mobile marketing.

The event is online and free and you can sign up at the SMMCamp website.

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Here’s the one common characteristic of most successful businesses – they found a solution to a seemingly insurmountable problem. They ran into an obstacle that stopped every competitor dead in their tracks and found a way to overcome the obstacle.

Put in other words – the opportunity always lies in the obstacle.

Let’s take online real estate marketing as an example.

I’ve taught thousands of real estate professionals how to use social media marketing to generate new business and an unlimited pipeline of motivated buyer and seller leads.

While they all “get it” when it comes to connecting with prospects on social networks, almost every single person got stuck with the technology needed to create an online presence and convert social network friends into clients.

Now the technology I’m talking about isn’t rocket science stuff. I’m talking about publishing effective blogs, squeeze pages and websites that fulfill one main function – converting visitors into contacts and clients. After all what good is a visitor to your website if you have no way to contact them to market your services.

The obstacle is the technology.

The solution is to find a way to get the technology.

There’s two ways to solve the technology obstacle:

1. Build it yourself, or
2. Hire someone to build it for you.

The first option (build it yourself) requires advanced technical knowledge. If you’re a techno geek you have a huge advantage in the modern real estate industry. I haven’t failed to notice that the top producing agents in most offices all use the internet to generate a seemingly endless flow of buyer and seller leads and almost always seem to be at a closing.

The second option (hire someone) is risky and expensive.

It’s risky because you might hire the wrong technical vendor or end up with a product that simply doesn’t do what it’s meant to do. I hate that!

It’s expensive because the technical skill required is in short supply and we all know the cost associated with the law of supply and demand.

Very few people have the technical knowledge to build it, so that leaves option 2.

Option 2 requires that you hire someone to build the technology.

In the next few weeks I’ll add a number of posts that review and recommend real estate software and technology that you can use in your real estate business. If you can’t wait you can start by checking out Tech Savvy Agent.

So here’s my advice. Take a few steps back and work out why most agents fail as online real estate marketers. Then identify the tools you can use to be successful and find a way to incorporate them into your business.

Find the obstacle and apply the solution.

About Ross Hair

Ross Hair is Bald, a real estate social media fan and the founder of Social Media Marketing Camp.

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After going through three developers I finally found a solution that delivers a quick, professional and free real estate blog – (see below).

It’s the perfect solution to the number one problem faced by most real estate professionals – lack of technical expertise.

So if you want a real estate blog, with a professional theme, social media icons and SEO ready with all the right plug-ins, you can get one at Free Realty Blog.

Note that hosting is not included but is available for as little as $5 a month.

Plus you also have the option of adding a Blog and Social Media Graphics package. I’m not sure if the package will be available when you order your blog but grab it if it is still under a hundred dollars.

Here’s the link again.

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