Here’s a the two step process that drives my real estate social media strategy:

1. Convert Strangers into Friends

The key to social media marketing is that you need to find an efficient way to meet complete strangers (prospects) online and then convert them into clients.

The critical middle step is that you need to first convert strangers into contacts. I define a contact as someone who gives you their email address.

You need to go through the process of converting strangers into clients. We covered this in module one but you should read it again.

2. Your Social Media Marketing Funnel

I call this process the Marketing Funnel.

I like to learn things visually so I developed the diagram below to help explain how I use my blog as the foundation of my social marketing funnel.

Think of a huge funnel.

At the top of the funnel sits your social networks like Twitter, Facebook, You Tube, Linked In and Active Rain. Their role is to help you find identify prospects and make new online friends.

Twitter sits on top the funnel and acts as a huge billboard where you can broadcast your message to thousands of people.

With Facebook and Linked In you can make friends and use their communication tools to accelerate the process of converting your friends into customers who will buy or sell real estate.

WordPress is your blog. It’s your backyard barbeque where you can entertain people and establish yourself as a real estate expert.

The “Money Bag” is your email database. You know that if you can get your friends’ contact details it’s like putting money on the bank.

That’s the social media marketing funnel. It’s designed to convert your online friends into contacts.

Remember, your immediate challenge is that you don’t have contact details for your new online friends.

To get contact details you need to drive your friends down the marketing funnel and direct them to through your blog into your contact database.

Session 4

Brad Andersohn is Active Brad and here’s his list of real estate social media resources:

www.Feedmingle.com

www.Steprep.com

www.Issuu.com

www.box.net

www.transferbigfiles.com

www.freeconferencecall.com

www.realestatetechnoligies.com/widget – text widget

Breaking News – http://widget.collecta.com – Twitter tool

www.walkscore.com

www.tokbox – video conferencing and video email

www.retaggr.com

www.avg.com

www.mozy.com

www.socialthebook.com

Getting your Blog to Rank # 1 on Google

Session 3 by Bob Stewart at Rain Camp Denver #raincamp

Blog Title Rules

The Title is very important:

Geographically specific – use a geographically specific title. The more specific the better as it opens up long tail opportunities.

Short and concise – try to mimic what people will type in for search

Named after the phrase for which you wish to rank – use similar articles with different keyword phrases. Use Curtis Park Homes for Sale and the change it  “Homes for Sale in Denver’s Curtis Park

Body and Content Rules

Keyword density of 2 – 4% and okepyword per pagenly target one

300 – 500 WORDS

2- 4 OUTGOING LINKS – make sure you link the keyword and not the “click here”. Link from your blog to your main real estate website.

Make your link count – point the links deep into your website and try not to lionk everything to your home page.

Use Pictures

Tags

Table of conetents for your blog

Write multiple articles about the same keyword phrase

Be consistent with tags

What can you blog about?

Green homes, hiking trails, medical marijuana homes

4 Keys to Successful IDX

Sponsored by Market Leader

Unique URL for each Listing

Your IDX must have the ability to create unique URL’s so you can target traffic. Don’t drop them off on your home page. Send them to each listing with a unique URL.

Website and CRM must communicate

Get the crucial data from your IDX

Keep everyone accountable

Make sure everyone is following up and managing leads.

Automate Home Search

Need to manage hundreds of prospects. Use automation tools that keep you in front on the client.

Marianna Wagner

Blogging Tips

Marianna is a very active Active Rain blogger and Realtor from Colorado Springs

1.            Blog about your Local Market

Marianna uses blogging about neighborhood communities to dominate her local market.

Use keywords used by consumers like “Homes for sale”, “neighborhood name” and supplies real estate information about the area.

2 – Position yourself as the expert

Supply local real estate information, news and statistics

Focus on keywords that people are interested in like “Bank Owned Homes” and “foreclosures”.

Go after new home communities – write about the communities – easy to become the lead information source for a community.

Write in the language of the consumer and avoid real estate industry terms.

3 – Market and Advertise your listings

Promote your listings through your blogs

4 – Generate traffic and Create Links

Uses Active Rain and popular sites for links back to her blogs.

5 – Blog for referrals

The more I blog the more business I get. Other Realtors see her blog and trust her with their referrals.

Write about stuff that you like, write often and write in the voice of your customer.

Marianna’s tips for things to blog about:

www.budurl.com/reblogideas1

www.budurl.com/reblogides2

www.budurl.com/reblogideas3

I’ll update the notes after each session.

Notes from Rain Camp Denver:

Marketing has changed:

In the past the greatest # of billboards won – now it’s the person with greatest content

Some great real estate marketing  tools and resources from Ben Kinney - http://twitter.com/benkinney

www.klout.com – what’s your Social Media Klout?

www.photosynth.com – can create a free walking virtual tool

www.wiggio.com – free and like a project planner re basecamp

www.igetsales.net – blueprint is a db management system $20 – help you keep in contact with your sphere

www.archtelecom.com – contact management system

www.goprosystems.com – contact management system

www.xobni.com – stalking – like an online investigation – can add a person’s email etc and find out everything about that person – Ben saya  67% better increase in sales when we add a Facebook message

Probably the most important statement made all day – Your clients don’t care about you, they  want to know what their house is worth and where are the best deals!

www.Tr.im – URL shortener – I prefer www.bit.ly

www.Mailchimp.com – email manager – I prefer www.aweber.com backed up with www.constantcontact.com

www.Goldmail.com – can insert video into your email email – Ben saw a huge increase in response

www.Awayfind.com – sends an email auto message so you can control your inbox and not have it control you.

www.99designs.com – can get freelancers to bid for business.

www.Google.com/voice – u own the number – can route to multiple phones ie- to your  buyer agents

www.Slydial.com – goes straight to their voicemail – so you can call someone back but not speak to them!

Here’s the single most important thing about my real estate social media strategy …

I think it’s too difficult to sell real estate online. So I don’t even try.

Is that a crazy statement or what?

It’s certainly counter intuitive.

Why spend so much time telling people that social media marketing is perfect for real estate if you think it’s too difficult to sell real estate online?

What I found was that it was difficult to sell real estate online but much easier to sell it offline in the real world.

So I don’t try to sell online. I sell it offline. (Actually, I don’t even sell it offline because I refer 99% of my deals to my nationwide referral network).

I only try to do one thing online.

Do you know what that is?

All I try to do online is get a name and email address and permission to email.

My entire social marketing plan is designed to turn a stranger into a “friend” and then turn my new “friend” into a contact.

I’m marketing just for contact details. That’s it!

You see I found that although it was difficult to sell real estate online, it was really easy to make friends online.

So here’s my entire real estate social media strategy in three sentences:

1. Make as many friends online as possible
2. Don’t try to sell real estate online, only try to get an email address and permission to send an email
3. Take your hot prospects offline and sell real estate to them the old fashioned way.

Social Media gurus hate this approach.

They think it breaks the new golden rule of participation and interaction and don’t see it as being very sociable. I understand what they’re saying but I just couldn’t work out how to chat with thousands of new clients and efficiently manage my time.

So I guess I’ll just keep on doing the things that work for my business.

The art is your content, how you phrase your sentences and pen your words.

The science is the systematic checklist you use to make sure your blog is fully optimized for the search engines so it can be seen by your real estate customers.

I going to leave the wordsmithing (I think I just inventicated this word) and poetic language about your recently rehabbed 3 bed 2 bath to you.

I’m only going to help you with the technical stuff so here’s the “10 Step Scientific Outline and Checklist for Publishing your First Blog Post”:

1. Select a topic for your post. Make sure the topic is relevant, interesting and valuable to your target audience.
2. Select the keywords and category for your post. Your keywords are critical as the search engines will index your post based on keywords and keyword relevance. It’s very important that you use your keywords in the page name, post name, post header and first few sentences of your post.
3. Write each page name to include your keywords and include the same words that will be in the heading of the post. You have the ability to name each page that you publish so make sure you include the keyword and title in the page name.
4. Write your heading to include the name of the page and include your keywords.
5. Write your sub-heading or tag line to reinforce the heading.
6. Write a description of the post. This is a hidden back end feature that you can use to basically stuff keywords into the post. Your reader won’t see the description but it will be indexed by the search engines.
7. Write meta tags that include your keywords. Meta tags are a way to strongly identify the keywords associated with a post. You’re basically tagging certain words and asking the search engines to pay attention to those words.
8. Write a category for the post. The search engines like  nice clearly defined structures. By categorizing the post under a niche group, you’re highlighting what you want the search engines to notice and index.
9. Write your first line to include your heading and create links to your site. An example of this would be a post with the header “Three Ways to use Creative Finance to Purchase Real Estate”. Your primary key word is creative finance because this is a post about using creative finance. The first sentence of your post should read something like ” I’m a big fan of using creative finance to purchase real estate”. You’ve basically regurgitated the post’s header in the first line. You also bolded the words “creative finance” and included a link from the words to the creative finance section of your blog. The search engines will notice the keywords, bold letters and hyperlink.
10. Include a footer with your details as the author and a link to your website. This way, if someone re-publishes your post you’ll have a back link to your site. I also like to publish my name as the author right under the heading as I’ve noticed a trend whereby a number of blog sites use an auto RSS feature to lift hundreds of blogs and aggregate them on a single site. They often cut off the author acknowledgment at the end of the article.

About Ross Hair

Ross Hair is the Real Estate Advocate and a huge fan of real estate social media marketing.