This is the follow up blog post to my presentation to Sutton REALTORS®: How To Really Use Social Media. Here is the talk part of my presentation, approximately 8 minutes.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Presentation Materials

• How to Really Use Social Media Keynote Slides (PDF)
• Homework for How to Really Use Social Media (PDF)

Some Commentary…

Since I started my real estate technology training workshops I realize that REALTORS® seem to ask the same questions. I get a lot of questions like this “how do I use technology fad X”?

I use ‘technology fad’ because my top three questions are usually:

1. How do I use Twitter?
2. How do I use Facebook?
3. How do I blog?

However, what I think REALTORS® are really asking is this:

How do I get more leads from the Internet?

The answer is simple.

1. Have conversations with people (twitter, facebook, blogging). This is social networking.
   
2. Provide useful information for free. Blogging is the easiest way, but you can do an old school website too.

Just give me the answer…

I was having a coffee/one on one training with Leilani Fong (web/@leilanihomes) a few days after the presentation. Leilani is a REALTOR®, young, smart and enthusiastic about taking her marketing 100% online.

The enlightening part of the conversation is when she demanded, “just tell me the answer” and in frustration I blurted out “if I answer that you’ll just ask me more questions”. Since Leilani was the second person this week to essentially demand the answer from me I finally realized that explaining how the technology works was an ineffective approach to teaching.

Most people don’t care about how the pizza is made. They want this: order, pay, eat, satisfaction. Skip the process, the history and the culture and just give me the pie.

So what they are really asking is.. what can I buy to get online marketing?

Well that is fairly easy to answer:

1. Online ads. Banner ads, Google AdWords, advertise on yahoo, on other people’s websites.
2. A web site from a real estate website builder. They’re plenty of them.
3. Hire an online marketing company.
4. Hire a web developer, a graphic designer and have them work on your web brand.
5. Hire a content writer to write and blog for you.
6. Hire an SEO company to optimize your web site.

There are lots of company’s that provide those services. I’m know they’re more than happy to have your business. If you’re happy about their results that’s value. Why wouldn’t you do it?

Well, in my first presentation about how the Internet is Changing Real Estate, I said that the net has made communication cheap. It has made it accessible to anybody not just the people with large marketing budgets. So the point of taking your marketing online is to get the same number of leads for less money. You can do it yourself.

However, going online is challenging right now for people with limited knowledge. Training out there is limited and expensive. Getting somebody else to do it for you (just give me the pie) is expensive but it’s better than nothing. The return on marketing online just isn’t there for most people. Even more sad is that the results all still suck, consumers are still unsatisfied and REALTORS® are still confused. There must be a better way.

Maybe I should throw out the disclaimer that the opinions on this blog are mine and not my employers. (heh).

Is there something better?

Yes. I’m working on it. It’s not ready yet but the core values are (alpha version):

1. 100% online only marketing. Save the trees.
2. Training. Lots and lots of training and information. We enable. We’ve embraced technology and learning.
3. Better and more information. Set a new standard for quality and quantity.
4. Open data. Reciprocity and VOWs are user unfriendly. User unfriendly sucks. If you want this listing in XML, in JSON, in ATOM, just add .xml, .json or .atom to a clean URL. If you want all of our listings, here is a RESTful API. Steal from Twitter’s API.
5. More people makes the system richer for everybody. More is more!
6. For people who believe in the same thing. Don’t worry about catering to everybody.
7. Usability. Empower REALTORS® to do their own online marketing.
8. Valuable. Price is what you pay, value is what you get. I want you get lots.

I often get realtors asking me about blogging, what it is and how to get started. I wrote this guide to answer the most frequent questions and provide some direction in getting started with blogging.

Where to get a blog?

I recommend that you go to Wordpress.com and sign up for a free blog. The sign up process is quick and simple. This will give you a chance to play around without much time or capital commitment.

About Wordpress

Since I’m much more familar with Wordpress I’ll give a run down of what to expect from this:

1. Wordpress.com blogs are free to start out. You will get a  web site address like: http://myblogsname.wordpress.com. When you sign up you will be able to choose the name for your blog.
2. You will be sent an email to verify your blogs creation. Then you will be set up and ready to go.
3. For free you will get:
   • A selection of themes (designs) to customize your blogs layout
   • Good SEO (well, alright SEO) already for your blog
   • RSS feeds into your blog
   • Excellent comment spam filtering
   • Pretty much everything you need to start blogging right away.
   • Never have to worry about servers going down, upgrading software, etc.
   • A WYSIWYG (what you see is what you get) blog editor. No need to edit HTML. Similar to MS Word.
   • Ability to upload pictures to your blog posts.
   • Wordpress will add text-ads to your blog (somebody has to pay the bills)
   • Pretty awesome for free!
4. When you are ready to grow your blog or brand it some more there are advanced (paid) services
   • All the information is available here: http://en.wordpress.com/products/
   • The ones that you will most likely want are:
   • Custom web address: $15.00/year for the name, $10.00/year for the hosting. Like: http://mygreenblog.com instead of http://mygreenblog.wordpress.com.
     • Note: You can register the domain name anywhere, it doesn’t have to be with Wordpress.com. They offer it as a convenience. I suggest keeping your domains together in one place.
   • No ads: $30.00USD/year
   • Custom design: $15.00/year. You still have to pay somebody to make the custom design for you. Contact me (benwong@mostlygeek.com) if you need this.

Should you Blog?

Writing content yourself is a lot of work and it takes a lot of time. You can outsource your web hosting and the design of your blog. You can’t outsource your blog’s content, that would defeat the whole point. Before you jump in read 23 questions for prospective bloggers.

Before committing, these are the top 5 questions I think you should ask yourself:

1. Do you enjoy writing?
2. Do you enjoy reading?
3. Are you willing to learn?
4. Do you have time? To get real marketing return from blogging you will need to write a lot. Do you have 3 to 4 hours to dedicate a week to writing?
5. Are you ready to be transparent and honest?

Blogging Tips

To get you started:

1. Blogging Tips for Beginners – this is an excellent series written by Darren Rowse a professional blogger.
2. Writing for the web is different than writing an email. A List Apart (alistapart.com), has excellent articles that I suggest you read. Here’s a direct link: http://www.alistapart.com/topics/content/writing/
3. For your posts, ask a question and then answer it as your blog post.
   1. What is the CMHC fee?
   2. What is the average price of a condo in Vancouver?
   3. How to work with a REALTOR®?
   4. How can I increase the value of my home?

Image Credit: ~C4Chaos of Flickr. (image)