Real Estate Marketing SEO Blog

See a Life Sized Malibu Barbie Dream House

Designer Jonathon Adler takes us through a tour of a real Malibu "Dream House" created by none other than the designer himself. Check out his fab Barbie designs:
And for my contemporaries who are products of the 80's you will appreciate this life size Barbie song:

Blog Blazing: Modeling The Bloggers

Today's interview is with Stephane Grenier the author of Blog Blazers.
He researched the top 40 blog marketers online and then interviewed them. He asked them the following questions:
1. What makes a blog successful?
2.How long does it take to be a successful blogger?
3.What blogs do you recommend for others to read?
4.Whats your best advice as far as content and writing for bloggers?
5.What are you main methods as far as marketing your blog?

There are more but you get the idea. This is a most have and a treasure trove of actionable information.

I interviewed Steph and he helped to mark out several concepts that may be useful for you.

Some of the tips he gives:

• Own your own domain.
• Headlines are important.
• Value your community, offer something of value, give them a reason to come back to the site.
• Focus on a topic, not everything.
• Revenues are not necessarily directly from the blog, the blog is an attractor to the service.
• Blogs create authority, and reputation. So they find you.
• Is commenting a necessity?
• How are the Pros using social media?
• His take on Twitter and Social Media.

A list of his interviewees and their blogs:
http://www.blogblazers.com/bloggers

Stephane Grenier FollowSteph.com
Stephane founded LandlordMax Software Inc in 2003, a company specialized in selling property management software to real estate investors, property management companies, banks, and cities. Since its beginnings LandlordMax has continued to grow, with sales in almost every continent of the world.

How Real Estate & Mortgage Marketing Has Evolved Online

Facebook Value: $10 billion
Youtube Sold To Google:$1.65 Billion in Stock
MySpace Sale: $580 Million

Social Media Company Planning their Sale:

And we dream just a little bit about internet riches.

What we are not told is that for every YouTube there are 100's of other wanna be's hoping and praying for some schmuck to buy them.

What do the above companies all have in common? Zero Revenue.

Google thought that they could slap Adsense onto videos and they would enjoy their next success. They are no doubt working on a new plan. What does 1.6 Billion just doesn't go as far as used to I guess.

You and I. We are not those kids making a new widget in our parents Garage with our college drop out buddies building a website for the sole purpose of IPO riches. This is the modern day geek version of  kids playing hoops on the city yards of Chicago dreaming of the NBA.

You and I have chosen our profession and we are looking for a lead. A sale. In real estate since you cannot buy a home online, you are looking for a lead. Even a mortgage ap online is really just a lead. Nothing has transacted.

The real estate industry could afford to be early adopters through a historical wealth infusion of the last several years.

The real estate online evolution has gone from:

• Websites

• IDX Websites

• Drip Campaigns

• SEO/SEM

• Blogging

• Micro Blogging/Social Media/2.0

I have been there since the beginning and every single part of this evolutionary process has been met with an enamored audience.

Vendors have been more than happy to sell the Koolaid that this thirsty market of Realtors wanted. And the packages have come in many shapes and sizes and a budget for everyone.

And like the pharmaceutical industry that to a large degree educates the medical community on drugs. The real estate vendors have educated the Realtor and Mortgage community on marketing themselves online.

Many never having run more than their own company website marketing. If that. Many selling concepts that have yet to work or make money. Some selling business models that are more useful for those garage geeks building the next Facebook.

Instead of a real estate or mortgage producer looking for a lead that will turn into a side.

This single concept is what has led an industry down a slippery path of majoring in minors and not focusing on what matters. A strategy that will propel them into more deals and sale.

Why Are You Online?

So as the evolution of website to 2.0 moved forward the industry has forgotten why they came to the web.

In the name of delegation the industry embraced plug n play. IDX and pre-written email sequences that were never customized.

Blogging came along. It was sold easy as a bypass to SEO. "Well that would get rid of that expense". Or more than likely, allow those who up until then could not play, to play. While the busy agents doing sides would react like a client of mine did. "Who the hell has the time?".

These bloggers would/will spend all day blogging and no time emailing. Email is still the backbone of any online marketing you do. The money is in the list as they say.

Now I notice many of the resistors to blogging have embraced Facebook and post all the time. What the!!??

Seriously, if you put in that kind of effort into your blogging and your website you might get somewhere.

 But the larger picture never has been considered. Everything is a singular event, not related to the other. And for this reason is more often than not a business, and barely a promotion.

The secret is that the community must embrace publishing and not get myopic into one tool or activity. To say "I specialize in social marketing, or blogging" is a sign of a handicapped marketer. One easily replaced by the bigger thinker.

The truth is that blogging is not a real word. A blog is only software and social media is just a new name for an old game. We used to call social media BBS, and forums.

To succeed online you must embrace the fact that you are a publisher. And then re-purpose your content across the channels or tools that best serve you.

Find out how to use Guerilla Online Marketing Strategies to propel your business: Real Estate Guerilla

->related blog posts:
Real Facebook&Blog Marketing Strategies
Web 2.0: What is it?
Frittering Away on Twitter
Profiting From Social Media: Advice I Gave to a Recruiter
Social Distortion

Real Facebook&Blog Marketing Strategies

In 1992 the average consumer received 3,000 commercial messages per day. Today, we receive 30,000 commercial messages per day.

Sony used to spend $5 million to get 30% market recognition. Now they have to spend $30 million for the same market recognition.

The cost to get out front of your prospects has tripled.

Actually, that's wrong as these figures are pre Twitter and Facebook and the social media, 2.0 explosion. Let's face it, we get hammered by messages daily.

So it is more important than ever to start with a strategy. TO jump onto Twitter or Facebook without a "big picture" first is a doomed plan.

To blog without a foundational strategy is doomed. TO just get on and write is not marketing.  Sure one might trip over a deal or two for being a early adopter. But seriously can you scale it? Can you measure it? How can you manage your business without measuring the results?

As online marketers we must start with the end in mind.

• Why are we doing this Twitter or Facebook thing?
• Why are we blogging or running an IDX website?
• And then how will you build it?
• What is your voice?
• What is your content plan?
• How will you scale it?
• And finally how will you measure the activities for improvement?

Considering that Email, Blogging, Website IDX, Social Media (Facebook, Twitter), Forums, Article Syndication, Press Releases area all intertwined and are all marketing activities that through publishing can be a nightmare to manage without an overriding strategy and purpose.None of these tactics are a business all by them self. They are just busy work and singular events that will sputter within minutes of their activity.  But working together these tools cut through the daily barrage of noise that each of us receive.

And make your message and you a trusted voice in the war for relevancy.