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"Too much on presentation, too little with communication."; "Why do most real estate agent’s websites fail, Alex?"

Marc — Sat, 28 Feb 2009 19:13:42 +0000

Look at your current website or your colleagues. If it is like 95% if the real estate websites on the web, it pretty much has a lot of almost canned commodity like presentation of the agent, some standard buying, selling, moving and community pages and an MLS/IDX frame page or link. But very little personal communication from the agent. So there is no opportunity for “connection”.

What sells you? Not presentation. What sells you is communication of your expertise, values and ability. We learned long ago, when Century 21 was beginning that there was much more to being a successful agent than a new presentation. Today Century 21 stresses knowledge of neighborhoods and expertise, but back then it was all about gold coats. We saw that clients do not see their best interest in what you wear, but what you know and will do for them. Communication of that becomes your competitive advantage.

Which is what my websites allow you to do, COMMUNICATE and CONNECT with your clients and prospective clients, easily and effectively. You can use my website to share your expertise through communicating current market observations, advice, new information about your farm area, your neighborhood, prices, selling, etc. My father once told me that in the 1950′s when he needed to generate new real estate business, he would sometime get 2-3 haircuts a week and stop for coffee twice a day … all just so he could communicate and connect with new people about real estate. In your own office you probably see people who get so wrapped up in having everything right for presenting that they don’t get an opportunity to communicate. That is what you can do with my website, communicate what you know and can do with a huge interested online audience. Use your website to create a dialogue between you and your market. Quickly, effectively, and for low cost. That is what Web2.0 is about.

To be fair with my competition, until recently it was not very easy for you to use a website for this purpose. You needed website skills or a “webmaster” (expensive and slow) but that was then … now you can and with little more effort than you send an email you can post new observations and even showcase listings. And through the ability and advantages of a WordPress based web/blogsite and Google new prospective buyers and sellers will find you regularly. Increasingly.

Don’t waste time, change your approach emphasize COMMUNICATION, expand your business influence (and probably save money).

To have your website start connecting with potential buyers and sellers, just contact me:

Getting the most out of your Bridal Show investment.

Marc — Mon, 22 Dec 2008 18:26:07 +0000

For many of us, it is that time of year again. In a few weeks we will be stting up our displays in wedding and bridal shows, hoping to schedule weddings for 2009 and 2010 or at least get solid contacts that will soon convert to contracts.

So I though it might be helpful to mention that Christine Boulton of The Agency at Think, has done a series of 5 excellent blog posts for wedding professionals on how to maximize your wedding show investment.

Here they are, (even old hands may find some useful info) -

Ten Tips for Bridal Shows: Part 1

Ten Tips For Bridal Shows: Part 2

How To Pick the Right Bridal Show For You

More Tidbits on Bridal Shows

Bridal Show Wrap-up

May you have a great ’09!

“Google kicked off my Bludomain site”

Marc — Fri, 10 Oct 2008 14:24:34 +0000

Recently while exploring some discussion boards I came across a few threads like this one on Photo.net having to do with Google dropping Bludomain websites from their search results index. I came across similar threads on Flickr and the FM forum. Unfortunately the problem is not Bludomain’s, it can be any other similarly developed Flash site regardless of provider. The problem is based in the usage of Flash for an entire website.

A picture may be worth a 1,000 words, but not to a search engine. Google and other search engines only work with words. A Flash based site, like Bludomain, is basically just animated pictures. Take a look at the splash page “page source” of most Flash sites, even the most visually appealing. What you will commonly see, besides the page parameters, image calls and scripts, are the Meta tags related to title, description and keywords (a particularly useless tag) and a little text like “Skip intro”, “Website”, “Blog” (terms that very few brides-to-be will use in the wedding planning) and a note that Flash is needed to view the site. This lack of meaningful text content combined with scripts to launch your main site, which Google will not follow, is what leads to poor search ranking and being “kicked off Google”. I have written more in depth previously regarding the weakness of Flash sites’ search engine optimization.

Many photographers and other wedding professionals have discovered the internet marketing power of a blog, and added a blog to gain some internet recognition. A few, like Jessica Claire, have maximized that “blog power” for use as their entire website by creating a blogsite. And this is why I have spent the last few months developing a low priced blogsite for photographers and other wedding professionals (www.ProPhotoBlogsite.com) that can be easily managed by the site owner.

The important take away here is don’t be upset with Google or Bludomain or Flash, they are what they are are, don’t expect them to be different. By recognizing their nature and strengths it becomes easy to see how to use them combined with other options to dramatically improve internet results. As a New England sailor once told me, “don’t argue with the wind, just adjust your sail”.