YOU are your biggest asset. It’s imperitive that the public knows you, respects you and perceives you as an expert in your field. How do you establish that?

Put up more signs, advertise on bus shelters, run ads in the community newspaper and tell everybody that you’re ‘No.1 in the office…No.1 advertiser in the XYZ newspaper…etc etc”  NO! The buying and selling public don’t give a dam about you. They are not sitting in the wings waiting for the day they can do business with you. They don’t care about you.

They’ve got a problem. To buy a house at a bargain basement price or sell a home for top dollar in the shortest possible time. Simple. That’s it. And they are looking for the agent who can solve this problem.

So the agent who markets themselves as the person who can solve other people’s problems will win the business. How does an agent attract people with problems (buyers and sellers) to him/her. They need to establish YOU.Inc.

YOU.Inc is a hub where leads are feed into. The best way to establish a hub is to start your own blog.

Blogs

Blogs are simple to establish but difficult to sustain. They require real comittment. Free services provided by Blogger and Wordpress are the best but if you are going to be selling products and services from your blog (and I recommend you do adopt a multi income approach), then I’d suggest you get an account at Wordpress.org. It’s also free but you will require your own hosting. Bluehost run my blog and I’ve found them to be very good. There are a ton of templates to choose from when setting up your blog; most of which are free. Check out Wordpress templates or google ‘free wordpress templates for more suggestions.

Your blog needs to be infomative and ideally updated daily with content rich articles or videos. Do not attempt to sell properties on your blog. This is a vehicle where you can build trust worthy relationships with your reading public; some of whom may buy or sell a property through you. In furure posts I also show you how to monetize your blog so you can create additional funds from those who never buy or sell a property with you. It’s part of what I call the funded proposal concept.

Feeding Your Blog

Establishing YOU.Inc as the real estate expert needs regular feeding of targetted, fresh leads. This can be done through both offline and online marketing using free or paid strategies.

Free Online Marketing Strategies

1. Email Signature.

Every email you send out should include a signature. eg

Regards
Greg Reed
For great tips, ideas and articles on real estate marketing, please visit my blog http://www.magneticrealestateleads.com

2. Video Marketing

Youtube is the No.3 most visited traffic site. You MUST have a channel. Grab an inexpensive video recorder  like a Flip video camera or webcam (I like Logitech) and start recording your own videos. Check out my channel.

3. Facebook, Twitter and Myspace

With over 355 million accounts Facebook is the 5th ranked most visited site. Twitter is the fastest growing social media site in the world today virtually doubling every 90 days. By year end, Twitter will have approx 50 million users. Myspace is also another great medium but has a few more restrictions (it’s a Murdoch owned product)

4. Linked In

Grab an account and set up your profile. Many sellers are now scouting this site to discover more about their potential agents as well as prospective recruitment companies are finding LinkedIn as an invaluable source for heading top agents.

5. Article Marketing

Writing content rich articles is a great way to build relationships with buyers and seller. Ezine Articles is the grand daddy of directories to have your articles published on but there are a number of other outlets as well. I use iSnare to upload my articles to 40,000 directories.

6. Forums/Discussion Boards

There are a ton of real estate discussion forums on the internet. Google ‘real estate forums’ to get an extensive list. Join a few, create a signature back to your blog, and post regularly. Jump in for about 15 minutes a day and answer questions to other people’s problems and in no time you’ll be building solid relationships with buyers and sellers.

If you adopt the above strategy with consistency, your funnel of fresh, targetted leads to your blog will flourish and you’r quickly establish YOU.Inc as a leader in the real estate industry.

As a real estate agent, you want to avoid the trap of looking at LinkedIn as merely a market for which you will sell in. People buy from people they like, not companies. And since LinkedIn is all about finding people that could be of value to you as well as being found by others, you need to start by creating a profile that will best represent you to the world.

1. Brand Your Profile

Branding. I’m sure you’ve heard lots about it. Bradley Will defined branding as:

Your brand is something unique that differentiates you from everyone else. It illustrates your unique skills and experiences and describes, or “brands” these attributes in the appropriate fashion. Ideally, your brand will immediately showcase your unique strengths.

Why is this important in LinkedIn? Because your LinkedIn profile is being viewed by people looking for skill sets or experience that you have.

2. You Are Not Your Company

LinkedIn, although it is a social networking platform for professionals, is still all about people. Don’t brand your LinkedIn profile as a company. It should be about YOU. If you already own your own company put it in the Company Directory.

3. Connect! Connect! Connect!

Here comes the fun part: increasing your connections! When you connect with someone on LinkedIn, not only will you be able to mutually see each other’s network updates and send messages without entering their email addresses, but you also now become visible to their connections as a 2^nd degree connection and to their 2^nd degree connections as a 3^rd degree connection. This is how you will start becoming visible. And, if your connections decide to leave their connection browsing open, you can take a look at who they are connected and search for people that you might want to start a conversation with, using your contact’s name as a reference.

4. Join Groups & Participate

Alright, you are starting to really work LinkedIn! You’ve got the greatest profile, and your connections, and thus visibility, is on the up. Now it’s time to start leveraging the social aspects of LinkedIn: joining communities of like-minded LinkedIn users called Groups.

Once you are on Groups, you have the ability to take part in discussions, read or post the latest news, check out job postings…and all of this information is specific to your particular group. Answer some of the discussions, post your own question, start communicating! LinkedIn Groups can be very powerful.

5. How to Network on LinkedIn

LinkedIn is a social networking site like Facebook, Twitter, or any of the others. You can find people to network with and take your communications offline. Once you are connected to someone you will be able to directly send them a message without knowing their email address. From there, your communication with them should be like anyone else you meet at a networking event: “How can I help you?” Obviously there has to be some potential synergy to strike up a conversation, but even just saying why you are contacting them and what it is in it for them will be critical to your networking success.

LinkedIn also gives you this ability through its Events application. Look under the ‘Add application’ bar and check out the events clsest to you or where you can add value if they are some distance away.

Once you get started on LinkedIn there’s no turning back! Embrace it and make it a habit to spend 15 minutes a day looking for new people to contact, discussions to join, or events to check out. And expect to start being contacted by people that will also hopefully help you on your journey. Good luck! Article by Bradley Will. efkgsrnybt