I have been amazed at the notion of using old ideas of marketing and then imposing this notion on to the networking sites.

There is much better ways to use these tools and I invite you to contact me or check out my web site as I will have a post there soon!

It boils down to this… these people have zero results because they don’t use it effectively. The same way one could waste away cash if they don’t spend it effectively. I have sold houses using facebook, MySpace and active rain. I’ve gotten listings from Activerain and MySpace. For example…

When I stopped “telling people to call me for answers” rather, “referring people, who just happen to be on my team who I describe as experts”, my traffic doubled and leads came in like never before. There is a system for success on the internet and you can’t be creepy when you use it. CREEPY is just what it sounds… I try to be funny and say to my students that when they say things like “call me” or “I can help”, the end user sees that as desperate and you end up looking like a loser. Rather go in, give good direct, honest advice and then refer someone who is an expert in the subject. The fastest referral to phone call I got was to Janae Oliver when a home buyer called about buying in dripping springs 20 minutes after I wrote the referral. I have about 5 or 6 major points about the importance of not being creepy online. It’s that important.

Organic results are always king! Many realtors do not use blogging effectively to get it or stimulate the result they are looking for. I spend a lot of time trying to tie up organic results so that they end user sees information that is not branded and yield another search to either our website or the customer web site.

Pay per click: they’re right and I’ll add that the few people who click on them are actually realtors who are looking for a developer website that doesn’t show up in the list of organic results or a realtor looking to see what the competition is saying on the website (they call that a courtesy click)

Facebook question:
Wrong demographic for this team as they nothing about how to use social networking. They don’t know how to use it nor do they develop relationships with the people on them. I just bought a book to learn more of the secrets to facebook. I’ve personally made $20-$25K off my MySpace page but that’s because I “kept up” people I know in a way that was personal. As you can guess, its all about the personal relationship. The idea of blasting lots of people automatically about “day to day” stuff is only good if you have a personal connection plan to follow it up. If you are on facebook, let me know. I’ll send a friend request.

You should attend one of my lead development classes. I hear this stuff all the time and people see dramatic improvements in the way they use the tools after the class.

Michael @ The Stage Coach

Steve

You hint it at it briefly but I think that the key as to why this blog works for you is because you have a talent for it. I’ve been reading your blog for nearly 2 years because you have insights into the business of selling/buying a home in Austin and you translate them well into the written word. I keep coming back because its usually interesting to read. That’s somewhat rare. I think this blog serves as a very effective lead generation tool for you because of this talent. That and your willingness/ability to keep at it on a regular basis. When you say this this isn’t for every realtor, I think you understate. There is probably only a very small universe of other realtors who can follow your lead here because they don’t have that talent/commitment combination.

I look at some users like Jason Crouch in Activerain / Twitter, and he seems to “rise above the noise”. 99% of the internet in general is noise. Look at the 1.3m google results for “austin real estate” for example. Blogging is a tried and tested way to allow you to build relationships with readers. Heck, I’m a Realtor too and I regularly read your blog. I feel I know a little about your approach from reading what you write.

For some, like Jason, perhaps the social networking sites are their lead generation activity – getting to know people. For others perhaps it’s cocktail parties. For others blogging.

Ultimately when you hire an agent to sell your home, you want someone who will get the job done, by generating leads (buyers) for the home. That seems to be the heart of the real estate business to me. If your agent’s specialty is Facebook lead generation then that’s awesome.

Social Networking is going to be good for business at some point. But probably not until the walled gardens come down. Facebook is such a stalled project specifically because it’s so hard to actually DO anything with your friends. Facebook wants to control all your interactions (to hopefully one day make money), and as a result you can’t really do anything particularly innovative. It’s just a big address book right now.

Now once we get to the next phase of social networking where I can essentially query my friend’s networks for REALTOR friends, or ask questions of my social network (Do any of you guys know a good REALTOR?), or one of a thousand other ideas that no one has come up with yet. Then social networks will be useful. Until then they’re just experimental.