Your content and headlines provide keyword search engine optimization. Google is very good at delivering the best results for a given search. Your content must be among the best results. The challenge is that real estate keywords are very competitive. The good news is that most of your competitors make the mistake of shouting out to everyone (trying to attract a broad audience)

Hyper local content is the secret to ranking high in Google.

Here are some ideas for content: Posts about what’s happening in your neighborhood (real estate) new buildings, new developments, tear downs, proposed construction, shopping centers, businesses etc.

What’s happening in the community: Schools opening, closing, expanding. Playground or skate park proposals, downtown merchant goings on. Budgets, taxes, hearings.

Photos & video: Local parks, beaches, hiking places, famous residents, local landmarks with descriptions etc.

Polls: Do polls on everything from the best pizza place to the best sleigh riding hill.

Guest posts from attorneys, mortgage brokers, interior designers, builders etc.

Guide to: neighborhoods, condominiums, a rental and/or vacation rental guide etc.

Market statistics (not just the numbers. Give an overview of what’s happening in your neighborhood)

Keep in mind also that you’re not creating content for Google, you’re creating content for real people. Keep an actual person, your ideal client, in mind when developing your content. You have an opportunity to develop relationships and build trust through your website.

See also: How real estate agents can use Google Alerts for SEO

It’s not really even appropriate to call it an “email blast”. You might as well say to me, “I want you to to help me be an email spammer!”

Today I received  (synchronicity!) an email newsletter from Mail Chimp that starts like this:

So you’re the IT guy at some company, and the marketing team is bugging you to put together “an email blaster thingy” so they can send email marketing campaigns. First of all, if they actually used the word “blast” you need to immediately revoke all their internet access, and go ahead and punch them in the gut. As head of IT, you’re pretty much obligated to do that.  full article

I’m not an IT GUY and I’m certainly not going to punch anyone, but I am the “go-to gal” when it comes to internet marketing, web hosting, email and anything baffling to do with a computer or the internet.I was relieved to see I’m not being paranoid when I tell people not to send email blasts. I always recommend setting up an opt-in list and using a professional service like Mail Chimp or Constant Contact etc.

The obvious advantage to using a service like MailChimp for your “email communications” is that they are branded and look professional. The not so obvious advantage is that it helps you to be in compliance with the CAN SPAM ACT.

For instance did you know you could be sued for these 2 simple mistakes?

• Forgetting to include physical mailing address in the email footer
• Failure to properly clean unsubscribers from a list

Read up on the rules before you start your mailing campaign:

• Spam Lawsuits PDF
• Federal Trade Commission
• CAN SPAM ACT

Then sign up for a Forever Free plan at Mail Chimp and start a meaningful communication with your clients.

Converting a “lead” into a “client” is about people and relationships, earning trust, being helpful and providing value. An automated system providing new listings daily provides a service but remember, this service is available on virtually all broker sites and many agent sites. If someone signs up for this service on your site, consider yourself privileged to have obtained that lead and follow up personally to add value and build trust.

It’s really not much different than floor duty. You know how some agents seem to consistently “luck-out” on floor duty? Those agents know how to make appointments… they’re making their own luck.

To add value think about what isn’t available in the automated emails. First thing that comes to my mind is price reductions and days on market. This info is only available when working with a real estate sales professional. Narrowing down a list of properties in a price range to a specific school district or other more personal criteria that isn’t available from a general IDX search. (cul-de sacs, walk to town, beach , train, etc.) Best deals, best values, like that really well priced home on the block with larger more expensive homes.

The agents who boast how many clients they get from their web sites are just like those duty-desk agents. They know how to recognize opportunity, follow through and make their own luck.

Related link: 10 Days of Pain Conversion Method

The message: Everything you need to know to enhance the value of your home.

Target audience: Responsible Proactive Homeowners

NAR had a huge budget to research their market (13 studies, thousands of realtors & consumers) and consulted with the best of the best and so on… This is what they came up with:

Personal, informative information that would make their target audience “want” to engage. Their website strategy: Give the consumers tools and resources they need to actively and easily manage their home investment and to become “Home Smart”.

Watch the presentation if you want to see the step by step process of developing an informational website for a target audience with the goal of making homeowners want to engage in a relationship.

Apply these principles to your own blog.

Why does this bother me? I subscribe to Brian Clark’s Copyblogger and Follow Chris Brogan , Seth Godin, Gary Vaynerchuk and other truly talented people who have implemented social media and developed enviable communities around their blogs (blogs packed with need to know, interesting information for people like me want to learn more about… well, everything, but especially marketing, social media and blogging) If there was a certification course, I should surely have known about it.

Curiosity peeked, I immediately googled “social media certification”, huh… interesting. It seems there is a variety of web sites where you can plop down 900.00 – 2995.00 to take an online seminar and get a certification.

None of these certification courses seem to be associated with anyone I would think of as an expert in social media. What gives them the authority to certify anyone?

This reminds me of the old days back in 1998, 99? When I received emails daily from “Certified SEO Experts”. (you know the black hat, keyword stuffing, doorway page making creeps who contact web sites that are already ranked high for their keywords) I knew it was spam and deleted accordingly but many web owners did not & fell for it. Turning over money to “experts” who at best did nothing and at worst got them banned from Google. Not to mention giving the SEO industry a bad overall reputation.

I’m not saying everyone with a certification in social media is a bad person. I’m just suggesting you use some due diligence and don’t take the claim at face value. The web is a wonderfully transparent medium that allows you to do a little digging. So I did.

Using WMTIPS to check out the website of the “Certified Social Media Expert” here is what I found:
(i crossed out the domain name as this is not a personal attack, just an example)

• Zero ranking
• 1 Subscriber
• No links, bookmarks, diggs
• Site created December 7, 2009 (explains the 1st 3 items – the site is brand new)
• The site is registered to “Domains by Proxy” (I always find this weird – hiding your identity when trying to promote yourself)
• Googled the experts name: no go
• Checked twitter page …

OK, so there you go. I did the same inquiry with the web site where this “expert” received “certification”. Would you be surprised if I told you the results were similar?

When it comes to writing engaging content, “you” is the most powerful word in the English language, because people are ultimately interested in fulfilling their own needs.

via The Two Most Important Words in Blogging | Copyblogger.

The Cluetrain Manifesto “We are not seats or eyeballs or end users or consumers. We are human beings – and our reach exceeds your grasp, deal with it.

The WeWe Monitor Customer Focus Calculator Enter your URL and copy name or your name to see your WeWE score. (ha ha I said wewe)

Open your web mail. Click on “settings” “display settings”
Click the “other” tab and put a check where it says “Use full-time ssl mode” (at the bottom)
And that should do it!

Remember to click on your @reply tab to see tweets directed to you.

@Replies To You

If someone @replies you—note, this means they start a tweet with @yourusername—you will see that in your main timeline if you follow the person. But you’ll see it in your replies tab, whether you follow them or not (unless you’ve blocked them)

via Twitter Blog: How @replies work on Twitter (and how they might).

In his Facebook post, Parker kept the focus on the snake, but mentioned in passing that he’d stumbled upon it at a listing he represented: a horse farm in southern Boone County.

“I did not go out and say, ‘I just listed a horse farm, the price is $800,000,’ ” Parker said. Instead, he said, he posted the picture with the expectation that he’d get many comments along the lines of, “Oh, I hate snakes.”

Which he did. He also got two calls from potential clients, asking, “Where is that horse farm?”

That kind of indirect marketing is the key to being perceived as authentic on social networking sites, Parker said.

via ‘Happy birthday’ from your market | Real Estate and Technology News for Agents, Brokers and Investors | Inman News.