Positive Real Estate Professionals

Positive Real Estate Professionals adds Google Buzz to it’s list of tools. What does this mean for our members and readers? Well, for the members, it is just one more social outlet that their articles can be shared on. As well, it will create another link on the world wide web, so ultimately, it will provide more Google Juice. For our readers, it will provide an easy and quick way to add things to their Google reader or share them with their friends in their Gmail account. This might be one of the easiest share tools that I have seen in some time. Below is a short video that will help to explain Google Buzz.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yi50KlsCBio[/youtube]

It is the desire of PREP and their admins to stay on top of the social media world. The only way for us to do that is to keep up with the social media marketing tools that these social media networks are putting out there. Ultimately, our job is to provide not only our members, but our readers as well with avenues to share articles on our site with their family, friends, and followers. In other words, their sphere of influence (SOI). We will continue to march forward to bring the best of social media marketing to our members and readers alike.

Positive Real Estate Professionals (PREP) can help you achieve the recognition you and your business deserve through our highly versatile and search engine optimized member websites, lead capture, and visitor friendly layout. If you are a professional who works in the real estate industry or one of the related fields that service the needs of the real estate industry then this real estate network can be just what you need to take your business to the next level. If you have questions or would like to join CLICK HERE.

A few days ago I had a member  of our real estate network, Positive Real Estate Professionals, ask me “What can Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn do for my blog”? I decided the best way to answer this is by writing an article so that anyone else that has this same question lurking can get the answers. Without further adieu, let’s dive into this article.

I guess the first thing that one has to understand is Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn and what they are designed to do. For those of you that are unfamiliar with the term “microblogging”, this is the best way to identify each of these networks. Microblogging is very different from blogging in that the posts are much shorter. In most cases, your posts are limited in the characters that you can use. For Twitter and LinkedIn, it is 140 characters. This includes spaces and punctuation. For , it is 420 and the same rule applies for spaces and punctuations. The biggest difference between microblogging and blogging is the fact that most microbloggers use “status” messages like ” I am brushing my teeth” or “I am heading to a closing”. While these are fine, they do nothing for your blog.

Having a blogsite that is integrated with Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, or even FriendFeed, it is easy to have a notification go out to the systems automatically that states that a new post has been created on your blogsite. In doing this, you can actually alert readers to this fact quickly and automatically. Ultimately, this will drive more readers to your site. A integration simply sends a message to the twitter account supplied and allows for it to state that “What can Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn do for my blog” has just been published on PREP, for example. With Facebook, the best integration to use is an application called NetworkedBlogs. It allows for a short excerpt to automatically post to your profile and/or fan page. With , there is an integration to have your blog feed set up.

In closing, the answer to the question is that these networks can drive more readers to your blogsite. Ultimately, this is what we are all after.

Positive Real Estate Professionals (PREP) can help you achieve the recognition you and your business deserve through our highly versatile and search engine optimized member websites, lead capture, and visitor friendly layout. If you are a professional who works in the real estate industry or one of the related fields that service the needs of the real estate industry then this real estate network can be just what you need to take your business to the next level. If you have questions or would like to join CLICK HERE.

One of the keys to having a successful business website is to actually have visitors to your site. After all, you can’t convert site visitors into clients or referral sources if you don’t have visitors. A properly optimized site will go quite a long way toward attracting traffic thanks to high placement in search engine results. But can’t you do even more? Of course you can…enter social media. From to you probably already participate in at least one social media. In the past the admins of Positive Real Estate Professionals have written posts extolling the benefits of several of these social medias:

Social Media – Do You Digg?

Are you treating LinkedIn like a red headed stepchild?

Using Twitter and Facebook Business Pages as Marketing Tools

As we prepare to enter 2010 with our carefully thought out, and best intentioned business plans in hand, I would encourage you to add ‘join and learn one new social media system to help generate more traffic and grow my business’ to your plan. Social media should not be viewed in the same light as say the old AOL chat rooms or other social ‘rings’. Social media is first and foremost a place for people to interact through sharing the best of the net.

Social media has spawned the social media marketing phenomena which I profiled in a recent article entitled

Social Media And Your Articles – Marketing Your Business Online

In that article I briefly touched on . Stumble Upon is one of the best tools available for attracting additional traffic to your website. With Stumble Upon you find people with similar interests to you and try to strike up a ‘friendship’ with them. Once you have made friends on Stumble Upon you can then begin sharing articles that interest you and may interest your friends. BE AWARE that the quickest way to get labeled a ‘spammer’ and subsequently have your account suspended is to share any post that overtly tries to sell something; this includes listings. In order to share great posts with your friends you will need to download the Stumble toolbar. If you use you can download it HERE. If you use you can download it HERE. In Stumble Upon an article/post must first be ‘discovered’ to be shared. Discovering an article is as simple as giving it a ‘thumbs up’, placing it in an appropriate category, and writing a sentence or two review of the post. Some people consider it taboo to discover your own articles but I am not of this same opinion. I believe that as long as you are discovering other articles as well as your own that you can find a good balance. Once an article is discovered you can then share it with your friends. Your friends, if they like the article, may share it with their friends; this is how a post can ‘go viral’. All of this is done through the Stumble Upon toolbar. As with any system, the more you use it, the better your results will be. In the beginning sharing your posts on Stumble Upon may only get you 20-30 extra visitors but after awhile it can draw hundreds and even thousands of visitors. These visitors have the potential to be clients or referral sources. With the potential that comes with Stumble Upon, don’t you think that it would be worth your time and effort to add this social media to your 2010 business and/or marketing plan?

Click HERE to take the video tour of Stumble Upon (be warned this is a video demo that is unfortunately set to auto play).

Positive Real Estate Professionals (PREP) can help you achieve the recognition you and your business deserve through our highly versatile and search engine optimized member websites, lead capture, and visitor friendly layout. If you are a professional who works in the real estate industry or one of the related fields that service the needs of the real estate industry then this real estate network can be just what you need to take your business to the next level. If you have questions or would like to join CLICK HERE.

This is part three in the Marketing Your Business Online series of posts. In this installment we will look at the sometimes controversial world of social media marketing (SMM). Social Media is the medium through which social media marketing is conducted. Do these terms seem foreign to you? I would venture to guess that most people who are reading this post are actually participating in some social media already.

Some of the most commonly used and generally most social of the social medias are , , and .These are used for both personal and business. Some people maintain separate accounts on these social media networks to keep the two separated. Be warned, if you do take on the task of maintaining separate accounts on these social media networks you are in for a lot more work. Facebook offers a great way to resolve the dilemma of separating your business life from your personal life through their FREE business pages.

Using Twitter and Facebook Business Pages as Marketing Tools

is more specifically a professional network. It is a great place to network with other professionals in your industry and other industries. On this type of network there is generally less game playing, idle chatter, and other social diversions that seem to populate MySpace, Facebook, and Twitter.

Are you treating LinkedIn like a red headed stepchild?

Another type of social media is characterized by less extensive profiles than those mentioned above. , , and among many others are social media networks that are are centered around the sharing of web pages with their friends who have common interests. These webpages also get indexed in a system whereby the general community has the opportunity to view them. A distinct feature of these social media networks is that members can help to promote or bury particular web pages. This allows for things like Digg’s front page where the most popular articles appear. Stumble Upon and Reddit both have something similar to Digg’s front page. These ‘front page’ type setups are important because they can bring thousands of visitors to a particular article. One thing to keep in mind is that you don’t actually have to make it to the ‘front page’ to attract thousands of visitors to a post using these social media tools. Another important aspect of these types of social medias is the ability to integrate a system specific toolbar with your browser. This type of toolbar allows for quick and easy participation in these social medias.

Social Media – Do You Digg?

And finally there are the social media bookmarking sites like , , , , , and . These social medias generally allow for varying levels of personal profiles. They are useful is because they allow you to bookmark sites you like in either a public or private forum. These bookmarks can then be shared with your friends in an effort to drive traffic.

Social Bookmarking – Today’s Rolodex

All four of these are types of social media. They are all characterized by some level of social interaction, personal profile, circles of friends, and the ability to be able to share what you feel is important on the internet. With that said most users of these networks use them to discover interesting posts on the internet while building friends. It must always be remembered that these are social networks first and foremost.

These social networks are the wellspring of social media marketing. Social media marketing is exactly what you would guess; the use of various social media to market something. This is also where the controversy comes into play. Many users of social media, especially the ‘purists’ feel that social media is being destroyed or loosing its true social value because of this type of marketing. Some people view any type of social media marketing as spam and those who engage in it as spammers. Let me say that the term spam is liberally applied (and mis-applied) to a wide range of individuals. In fact labeling someone as a spammer, or some site as a spam site can be like the kiss of death. Most of the social networks have systems in place to try to identify obvious spammers and remove/ban them from the network.

So what is the difference between social media marketing and spamming? The answer to this is quite subjective and depends on your particular perspective. From my point of view a spammer is someone who bombards you with unwanted advertisements for products. In the past I have received catalog pages and offers for Acai berry products and almost every other product imaginable. Generally these shared web pages or obvious advertising blog posts are quite blatant in their attempt to get you to buy whatever they happen to be selling. They usually offer little in the way of new or innovative information on whatever they are pushing. These are all red flags to me that indicate spam.

On the other hand social media marketing done in a professional manner often presents information in a non-sales pitch way. If you are pitching something you will eventually be classified as a spammer and may be banned from a particular social network. Non-spammy marketing posts often provide a wealth of information. The purpose of these informative posts is generally to raise the interest of readers and get visitors to a particular website. Once at a particular website then the building of a relationship can occur, if it hasn’t already. Remember people are much more likely to become a client or referral source if they feel they know you. In reality we all have our own definition of what constitutes spam; and spam is not social media marketing.

Below are some excellent articles from PREP’s archives that discuss various aspects of social media and social media marketing.

Do you need to use Social Media outlets?

Putting the Cart Before the Horse

Embracing Technology

Is Your Web Presence Staged Forward?

Positive Real Estate Professionals (PREP) can help you achieve the recognition you and your business deserve through our highly versatile and search engine optimized member websites, lead capture, and visitor friendly layout. If you are a professional who works in the real estate industry or one of the related fields that service the needs of the real estate industry then this real estate network can be just what you need to take your business to the next level. If you have questions or would like to join CLICK HERE.

Over the last six months or so, I have refused to join any group on . I get asked at least 25 times a week why I choose not to join groups. So, in an effort to answer this question, I decided to write an article about it. I hope that this clears up the mystery of groups versus Business Pages (a.k.a. Fan Pages) on .

First, we need to take a look at the things that separate the two.

Business Page

• Purpose of a business page is to promote and generate interest and conversation around a business, organization, public figure, celebrity, etc.
• People become “fans” of your page (a.k.a. your business).
• Content posted on a business page shows up in the News Feeds of the fans
• Fan’s can’t necessarily add photos and videos, but they can post on the Wall and in discussions if allowed to. (This can be controlled by the admins in the edit section of the page)
• There are tons of applications that can be added to a Business Page to increase interactions.
• Administrators of the Business Page can send bulk suggestions to their friends to become fans of the page.
• Administrators can review visitor statistics, interactions and member demographics.

Group

• Purpose of a group is to bring people together to create a community around a specific topic, interest, activities, etc.
• There are not any stats on interactions or member demographics.
• Applications cannot be added to groups.
• People become “members” of your group.
• Members can add photos, videos, comments, links and more.
• Content posted within a group stays inside the group.
• Admins of the group can bulk invite people to become members.

Now that the main differences between the two have been defined, let me get into this a bit deeper. For the foremost, business pages are used to network your business around . Group pages are more for a person’s agenda. For this reason alone, I stay away from the groups. In some groups, it seems that people use the power of the group email to spam your inbox on a constant basis about what they think is important to the members. If you are a politically oriented group, it might be relevant that Obama signed a bill into law but you could probably care less what the weather in Pensacola is. In a nut shell, make sure which one you are joining.

Yesterday I received a great email from one of the members of this real estate network. In that email the member was looking for actionable steps to take that could help maximize the available benefits of PREP. I am converting my email response into this post that will hopefully benefit all of our members. By the way, all of these suggestions are FREE!

1. As content is definitely king, try posting at least two original articles to you PREP site this week. By doing this we will be able to promote a full article rather than a truncated feed that utilizes a redirect that site visitors must follow to read the entire article.
2. Change your feed on your main site from a limited feed to a full feed. If you do not know how to do this contact your site’s webmaster and request that they do this for you; if you have a login to your main site we may be able to help you with this as well. This will allow visitors to read the entire article. (Refer to the promotion point above).
3. Join one (1) additional social media site, I would recommend , , , , or and integrate that profile into your Social Media Profiles (under settings on your dashboard); Dashboard>Settings>Social Media Page.
4. Consider having us add the events calendar to your PREP site. This will allow you to enter events, a simple and straightforward process done from your dashboard, like upcoming seminars or classes that may be of interest to your site’s visitors and other area professionals. You can also automatically create a post using the events you enter by simply checking a box.
5. Submit the main city you would like us to use on your Local Market Explorer. The Local Market Explorer allows you to put some quality info on your site for visitors to use. The info is updated automatically on a regular basis. You will have to apply for a few API keys (also FREE) to make the LME work properly. Your first LME is FREE. Additional LME locales can be coded into your site for $15 per city. Please call, email (either Danny or me), or submit a support ticket and we can walk you through applying for the API keys and with any other questions you may have. Here is an example of a member’s site with a single LME http://positiverealestateprofessionals.com/judyluna/local/Fayetteville/AR/ and here is an example of a member’s site with multiple LMEs http://positiverealestateprofessionals.com/blelak/ (simply hover over the tab entitled ‘Local Area & Market Information’ to see the multiple LMEs she has selected).

Over the last few months, I have been reading and studying videos and how to get them to show high in the search engines. Most people think that they will leave that to , , , or any of the other video sites that allow you to upload and share your videos. Well, that is just the start of the issues for your videos. While these sites might help you get your videos high up in the rankings with SEO, they are not doing anything for your website. With that said, let me share a few tips that might actually help you.

First, SEO algorithms cannot read lips. To resolve this problem, you need to be able to provide a text form that the spiders can crawl. If you are a member of our real estate network, we make that easy by using a wordpress plugin called “All in One SEO.” This allows you to title your video and add the necessary keywords that the spiders are looking for. Both of these things are very important, but if I had to weigh them out by importance, I would have to say that the title is the most important factor. Put some time in and do a little research before you just regurgitate a title.

Secondly, you need to focus on inbound links. If you are going to have a successful Video SEO campaign, you have to have contextually related links coming from a wide range of sites from the internet. Videos that garner a wealth of attention can do this easily. However, for most of us, there is a lot of work that we need to do to make this part of it happen. This is where my final point comes in.

Lastly, give your readers the ability to share your videos on , , , , and the multitude of other social media outlets. In doing this, you can garner those inbound links that are so important to your video SEO campaign.

In closing, many people lose out with their videos because they do not plan. It is the opinion of both webmasters at PREP that each and every article that you publish should increase your SEO. Add a new dimension to your site with video blogging. So grab those video cameras and film your next listing or home staging complete with narration.

Yesterday, I was blown out of my chair. A REALTOR® asked me a question that I was unprepared for. “Do you need to use Social Media outlets?” he asked. Well, the answer is actually “NO”. You do not HAVE to use social media outlets like , , , or any of the other social media platforms. The real question though, is why would you not want to use any of these services? Now that the real question is out, let’s examine it.

All three of the above mentioned social media outlets have FREE memberships to them; Linked In also has a premium side but the free side is adequate enough. There is something to be said about free, however, free is no good if you do not use them. For someone in the Real Estate business, the FREE marketing that you can get from any of these platforms is exceptional in itself. However, if you are able to combine it with a Real Estate Network such as Positive Real Estate Professionals, it can be even more beneficial. You might be asking yourself, why is that?

Many people seem to get overwhelmed with social media and blogging. If you are new to any of this, it can seem like a daunting task. When using our network, there is no need to worry about being intimidated. We have integrated both Facebook and Twitter in the system where you really have to do nothing more that get new followers. All the rest is done for you. The system will tweet all of your articles directly into Twitter and will post excerpts to your Facebook profile and/or business page. Therefore, there is minimal additional work that you have to do.

With all of this taken into consideration,  why would you not be using social media outlets?

Social media is an excellent way to attract visitors to your site. In a post this past June Danny Thornton wrote about Embracing Technology. If you missed that article, I would definitely recommend taking the time to click on the link and read it. In a related article entitled Putting The Cart Before The Horse, Danny goes on to discuss the numerous social media networks or platforms that are available. The biggest point he makes in that article is to not allow yourself to get overwhelmed by all that is available instead recommending that you choose a system or two to learn before moving onto another. In this post I want to highlight  .

is one of the most widely used social media networks around. Like any network it has its devotees and its detractors. I believe that the benefit of Digg as a part of your overall internet presence and marketing strategy can be enormous. On his blog Elliott C. Back: Internet & Technology, Back says the following in an article entitled How many users does Digg have? (post dated February 3, 2008) about Digg:

Digg boasts an official tally of 2.2M users, but at most 20% of them can be considered real, active users. That would bring their user count down to 440,000

Back’s post shows that Digg is not a tool that is used everyday by most members. 15% of users Digg something (a post, a photo, a video) each week. Even with this seemingly low number, Digg still represents a powerful marketing tool with 66,000 members actively Digging something every week. This is the reason you should sign up for a free Digg account.

Some things to keep in mind if you do sign up for a Digg account (source: Digg FAQ):

• Is it OK to have more than one account on Digg?

  Unless you exist in two parallel universes at once, unfortunately no. To protect the integrity of the system, our policy is one person, one account. This is to help prevent users from artificially inflating the Digg count, which is explicitly against our Terms of Use.

• How do I submit something to Digg?

  Easy! Go to digg.com/submit or click on the “Submit New” link that’s shown on every page to logged in users. Paste the direct URL of the news story, image or video you’d like to submit, and then tell us if it’s a news story, video or image. On the next page, add a concise headline and description, choose a thumbnail (if one is available) and be sure to select the topic you feel is best suited to your submission. Hit “Submit Story” and you’re all set. (You may be asked whether your item is a duplicate of something already submitted; if the story doesn’t offer a fresh perspective, please Digg the earlier submission.)

• Why can’t I submit things from certain websites?

  Our active community regularly identifies websites that violate our Terms of Use — after investigating the reports, the Digg Team may place a block on those sites preventing them from being submitted in the future.

• How many Diggs or buries does it take to promote or remove a story?

  It depends. The promotion or burying of stories is managed by an algorithm developed by Digg, and there is no specific threshold of Diggs or buries required to promote or bury a story. Instead, our algorithm takes several factors into consideration, including (but not limited to) the number and diversity of Diggs, buries, the time the story was submitted and the topic.

• How can I see the vote totals on a comment?

  While checking out a submission’s comments, you’ll see the net total of up- or down-votes to the right of the comment. Clicking on the net total will display the break down of comment votes.

Some of the things that I have learned from Digg may help you with your efforts there. As business people there is a huge temptation to submit listings, appeals that are obvious advertisements for the services you offer, and other ‘articles’ that could easily be construed as pitches; doing this is a sure path to getting you labeled as a spammer at the very least to getting your URL banned from Digg altogether. I would recommend only submitting informational articles to Digg. You already get a link back to your site from the article itself so don’t fall prey to the temptation to include all kinds of self promotional links. This will draw the ire of many Digg users and perhaps the ‘Bury Brigades.’ The ‘Bury Brigades’ are collective groups of Digg users who have taken it upon themselves to use the function of the system to send submitted articles into oblivion. There is really no rhyme nor reason for their actions and they are tolerated by Digg admins. Some believe themselves to be the spam police and that what they are doing is good for the system overall. Some feel threatened by those whose articles would dare to grace the front page of Digg where posts are seen by untold numbers so they campaign to bury those articles. By the same token the majority of Digg users are helpful and readily use the function to help increase the popularity of articles they like. Another thing to be careful of is being seen as only Digging your own articles as this can diminish your legitimacy. Be sure that you submit articles that you enjoy and feel others might also enjoy. Digg is a social media network so don’t forget the social aspect. As you develop a network of friends on Digg it is good to occasionally visit their Digg profile to see if there is something they have Dugg that you too might like to Digg.

If you are ready to branch out and try your own hand at social media, Digg is one of the easier social medias to become acquainted with. You don’t have to spend untold hours using the system and many websites already provide an easy way to submit and Digg articles. If you do decide to join Digg, be sure to at your username to your Social Media Page. Not sure how to add your new Digg account to your Social Media Page? Click HERE to read the tutorial! Below is a great primer from the folks at Digg if you need some more direction. As always, please feel free to leave any questions your have in the comment section below or submit a support ticket.

How Digg Works

Since I am associated with the real estate industry, this post is going to be directed right at people that are also in the real estate industry. With that said, I am sure that it can apply to many other industries just as well. Learning how to separate business from personal is not a hard task. It is all part of the art of marketing. Many people either do not care or do not realize that their personal life can actually be detrimental to their business life. It is one thing to be controversial but it is totally something else when you take those controversial feelings and stances to the extreme in a public forum. This is where some people use the cop out of ‘I am entitled to my opinions’ or ‘We are entitled to free speech’. You are entitled to both your opinions and free speech. However, so is the consumer. The question is, when you go EXTREME with a public comment or stance that is already controversial, does it effect your business life? That is the question that we will look at in this post. Hold on because the ride can get a little bumpy.

Yesterday, I was reading some comments that came across on my homepage News Feed on Facebook. I was moving right along until I ran into a comment that hit me like a ton of bricks. Here was a person on Facebook blasting out his personal feelings. Now, I could care less what people say in a public forum on their personal pages. However, when it comes to being tied to your business, what you say can get you in trouble. In some cases, it can alienate you from business partners or from consumers. I realize that there actually might be some people out there that will agree with what you say. But, before you jump on that horse and try to ride it to the finish line, most people do not agree with the EXTREME point of view. And even fewer agree when it comes to name calling.

Personally, I have chosen to leave political and religious views out of my blogs and my Internet life all together. Most of the posts that center around these particular hot button issues have been avoided by me. The biggest reason is that I do not believe that political, religious, or other hot button issues have any place in my business interactions with consumers. As long as it is legal, what they believe and how they conduct their life is not my concern. As much as theirs is not my concern, my views are not what they want to hear either. They want to hear my experienced industry advice. Frankly, if you think that your expertise is in religious or political venues, then maybe you are in the wrong business and you might want to change professions.

Where I think many people go wrong in this is when it comes to marketing. When you use social platforms like MySpace, Facebook, Twitter, ActiveRain, or Positive Real Estate Professionals that are viewed thousands of times a day, separating your business from your personal is an important key to marketing. However, many people use a single account to voice those professional and personal views. While the personal views are not what the consumer is searching for, it is something that they are going to read. While you might be extremely adamant about your message, you have to think before you want to write it. ‘How is this going to affect me?’ is the primary thought that needs to spring to mind. If you can truly answer that it would not be detrimental to your business and potentially loose you a client, then I think that you should say it. However, if you think that it is something that might drive a potential consumer away, then you need to rethink what you are going to say.

Something that a lot of people do not consider is that people are Internet savvy today; they will search you out on the Internet. Consider how easy it was for you to find that childhood friend you haven’t spoke to in twenty years on Facebook. Part of a person’s opinion of you will be based on what they find on the Internet. Do you really want to be viewed as someone other than the professional that can supply them with the knowledge and service that they deserve?