self-promotion » Technology Tools for Real Estate

As a real estate professional, one of your on-going tasks is self-promotion. You always want to make sure people know what you do and how to contact you if they ever want to buy or sell real estate. On the one hand, you’re always looking for ways to circulate your business cards and keep your name and contact information in front of lots of people. On the other hand, you—like all of us—want to discourage junk e-mail. These two goals, it seems, are mutually exclusive.

Most Internet security experts will tell you that the best way to minimize spam is to avoid the wide distribution of your e-mail address. They say things like don’t post your business card in public places and don’t drop it in that fishbowl when you’re visiting a restaurant. To avoid getting unsolicited e-mail, they say, you’ve got to keep your e-mail address as private as possible and only share it with your closest friends and associates. But people who are in business for themselves can’t really survive that way.

It’s a delicate balance, but there are things you can do:

Have a separate e-mail address for business. Never use your business e-mail to make Internet purchases or to participate in online forums or discussions.
Consider having some business cards printed that don’t include your e-mail address. These will be the ones you post in public places and distribute widely. If someone in possession of one of these cards needs to reach you, he or she can always call you.
If you have control over your website, make sure your e-mail address does not appear there for web bots to harvest. Instead have your webmaster create a form that prospects can complete and send if they need to contact you.
Also, find out from your webmaster what kind of spam filter you have and how to configure it so doesn’t inadvertently block e-mails you want to receive.
Never reply to suspicious e-mails. Instead, mark them as spam or delete them.

Whether it’s on your own website or on a web page created by your broker, what you say about yourself in your online profile matters. Or more specifically, the words you use to describe yourself really matter.

In general, nouns and verbs are better to use than adjectives and adverbs.

Verbs are the action words in your profile. Select words that hone in on your skill as a real estate professional and indicate your ability to add value and get the job done even in a tough economy. Consult a thesaurus or visit a website like this one to get good ideas for verbs:

Closed more than $2 million in volume in 2010.
Enabled more than a dozen families to avoid foreclose by helping them find buyers despite the financial downturn.

Adverbs describe how you do what you do. Words like skillfully and effectively are adverbs, and though we often see them on résumés, they weaken the overall profile. It’s much better to choose a strong, accurate verb than to overload your profile with adverbs. In other words, it’s better to say “I enabled a dozen families to avoid foreclosure…,” than to say, “I helped a dozen families sell their homes quickly….” The phrase with the strong verbs sounds more powerful.

Also be wary of including overused words and cliché phrases: motivated, results-oriented, and problem-solver are among the overused words LinkedIn finds in the profiles on its website. Instead of these, choose instead words that are fresh and unique, words that help you stand out from the pack.

Everyone loves a success story; write about successful people in your community and your readership will grow. People will be encouraged by your stories and at the same time, you will help make your community appealing to prospective buyers.

Write about people in your neighborhood who’ve overcome tremendous odds.
Share stories about local companies that have donated to outstanding causes.
Describe heroes in your community who’ve lent their time and talent to help people in need.
Write about nearby churches or community organizations whose soup kitchens or homeless shelters have bridged the gap for people in these tough times.
Feature a senior citizen who’s gone back to school or who is doing great things in retirement.
Tell about teenagers who are making a difference.
Highlight local teachers, police officers, nurses, or fire fighters whose efforts go above and beyond what’s required of them.

Scour community newspapers and websites for people to write about. Include photos and testimonials on your blog. Encourage people in the community to contact you if they know of others you could feature. Focus on the positive in your area and let it become the centerpiece of your blog.

The more you do this, the more people will see you as an asset to the community. Market yourself without directly marketing yourself.

In a recent article, we reminded you that in the Internet age, there’s no excuse for prospects not being able to find you. Start a blog, establish a Facebook page, create a profile on LinkedIn: these are the minimum requirements for creating an Internet presence so a colleague or potential client can use Google to find you.

But “starting” isn’t enough. It’s just as important to stay active. The more active you are on the Internet, the easier it becomes for someone to find you; your name pops up more times when searched, prospects can see and learn more about you, your credibility grows. So, the real key to Internet visibility is to stay active online.

An important part of staying active is posting regularly to your blog. But there’s more you can do. Here are three additional activities you can undertake on a regular basis to increase your visibility on the Internet:

Comment on other people’s blogs. Add thoughtful ideas or follow-up suggestions to the comment sections of the blogs you read (You do read other people’s blogs, don’t you?) The keyword here is thoughtful. Be positive and respectful; make sure your comments add value. Comments on Active Rain are great, but for maximum visibility step outside the box and comment on blogs beyond real estate.
Write articles for online magazines. These can be rewrites of your best blog posts that you think will have universal appeal. (Don’t just copy and paste, but actually reword your magazine article to get it recognized properly by search engines. The best known online magazines are www.ezinearticles.com and www.goarticles.com. Both give you a space at the end of the article to tell more about yourself and to include a link back to your blog or website.
Submit press releases. When newspapers, magazines, and online publications need material or someone to interview, they read press releases to get ideas. Often journalists copy press releases word for word into their own publications. That puts information about you in front of more people. Anyone can submit a press release about themselves and the Internet makes it easy to do. Visit www.prlog.org to get started.

These activities have the added benefit of helping move your website closer to the top of the search result when someone googles your name. So stay active and do a little bit each day.

Recently, Chicago real estate professional Andrea Geller wrote about her frustration at trying to find the contact information of an agent in another state to whom she was referring one of her clients. She wanted to learn something about that agent and maybe even talk to them before passing her client along. But that out-of-state agent couldn’t be found on Google. In fact, it took Andrea a good bit of work to find a direct link to that agent on the Internet.

What if a consumer or another agent were trying to find you? What would they get if they googled your name? How much searching would they have to do on the Internet before they found your contact information? And if someone did contact you based on an Internet search, how long would it take you to answer?

Here are the five minimum things you should do to make sure prospects and colleagues can find you with ease:

Have a LinkedIn profile. Your LinkedIn profile serves as an online résumé that will come up whenever anybody googles you name.
Have a Google profile. Google also lets you create a profile, in which you can write a description of yourself, upload photos, and provide links to other applications you use on the Web.
Be on Facebook. A Facebook Fan Page is ideal because it lets you keep your friends and family separate from your professional image, and because the person looking for you wouldn’t have to have a Facebook account to find you.
Check Your Broker’s Site. Make sure your contact information is easy to find and up to date on your broker’s website. If you can’t control what’s on your broker’s site, get your own website.
Have Your Own Website. Even if you do have input regarding what appears on your broker’s site, you should have your own website. On your own website, you can express our individuality, show your professionalism, and demonstrate how you differ from your colleagues. A blog is even better than a static website because it allows you to easily update the site’s content.