Why do people spend so much time on Facebook?

That is the single most important question a small business owner needs to ask themselves when trying to use Facebook to benefit their bottom line.

In my experience, people have become addicted to Facebook because it is fun. It is fun to rekindle old friendships and create new relationships.

So, if people are on Facebook for the relationship building, why do some business people choose to use the platform as yet another forum for sales pitches?

I get rather turned off when my Facebook Newsfeed is cluttered by pitches for homes for sale or vitamin supplements that I should buy. This is noise in my Facebook world and it isn’t received well.

I want to know more about what my friends are up to. What their kids are doing. What good movies they watched, books they’ve read or restaurants they’ve dined at.

Let people know about what you do professionally. Share your professional accomplishments and success stories. Your professional life is very much a part of you and you should share this with your friends.

My Facebook friends know that I am a web designer. They will see status updates when I complete a site that I am particularly proud of. They won’t ever be bothered by a “Who needs a new website?” sales pitch, though. It just isn’t what they came to Facebook for.

Use Facebook to build relationships. There are plenty of other venues to peddle your listings.

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Not only is the Wordpress Automatic Upgrade no longer needed, keeping it activated on Wordpress 2.7 can keep the new built-in upgrader from working.

The release of Wordpress 2.7.1 gave us the first opportunity to use the built-in auto upgrade utility. This chore proved frustrating as a majority of the Wordpress blogs that Draven Creation maintains returned error messages when upgrading from 2.7 to 2.7.1.

Here are a few steps to completing a successful upgrade:

1. Back up your files and database before starting. Unlike the old upgrade plugin, the new utility doesn’t offer file and database backup functionality. Use an FTP program like Filezilla or FireFTP to download your theme and even plugin files for a quick restore in the event of an emergency. There are several ways to backup the database, but my preference is an export from PHPMyAdmin. This approach requires some technical know-how, but makes content restoration a breeze.
2. Remove the Wordpress Automatic Upgrade plugin. Not only is this plugin no longer necessary, it can cause the new upgrade utility from completing the upgrade.
3. De-activate all plugins. If the upgrade doesn’t go through after removing the Automatic Upgrade plugin, de-activate all plugins and try again. The plugins can be easily de-activated and re-activated using the new “Bulk Actions”.

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Simply go to the edit posts page. Select the posts you want to change by checking the boxes to the left of each post. Then, go to the top dropdown menu and choose “Edit”.

A quick edit area appears where categories, tags, status and a couple of other settings can be modified.

The only limitation, the changes you make affect each selected post. That means that this feature is only valuable when you need to make identical changes to numerous posts.

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When someone is looking for the goods and services that you provide, what keywords are they searching for in Google? This could be the single most important question to your success in using search engines to promote your business.

Google recommends sites that are relevant to the keywords people are searching. Sites that appear in search results include the exact words searched for.

Unfortunately, many business people only guess at the keywords used by their target market. This could lead to their sites appearing on page 1 of Google searches for terms that are not being searched for by their potential clients.

A prime example of this is the use of the word “real estate”. Many real estate agents work hard to appear in the top of search results for their city name plus “real estate”. Sounds like a huge accomplishment until you find out that more people use the words “home” or “house” instead of “real estate”.

Your intimate knowledge of your industry prevents you from thinking like your target audience.

How do you identify the correct keywords to use on your website?

Services

There are services and systems available that will provide search metrics. These services can be helpful, but may not translate to the small business environment.

Small businesses work in niche markets. This may mean a specific geographic location or a unique interest.

For example, a real estate agent may specialize in a particular neighborhood. There may only be a dozen people who search for homes in that neighborhood each month. That is a small number in the grand scheme of the internet, but could lead to 12 home transactions for that Realtor.

Those types of “long tail” searches would barely show as a blip on a search metrics report. They are much better suited for more general terms that are searched thousands of times a month.

Ask

There are many times that success on the internet comes from stepping away from the computer and interacting with people. This is one of those times.

Contact people that you know who are similar to your target audience. This could be past clients, friends, family or Facebook friends.

Ask them, “If you were looking to buy a home in XYZ neighborhood, what words would you search for in Google?”
Write down every response exactly as told to you. Once you have dozens of responses, find the common ones and those are your keywords.

Just like the game show, The Family Feud, 100 people surveyed, top 10 answers on the board.

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Unfortunately, many business owners forget about the value of relationships when it comes to the internet. Maybe this is due to the fact that the internet has been seen purely as a marketing tool by so many.

The advent of social networks is changing how business people should treat the internet.

Social networking is about relationships. Pure and simple. The rules haven’t changed, only the vehicle for building and maintaining those relationships has changed.

Through websites like Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn, we are able to work on our relationships in the most efficient way ever. With less time or effort than writing emails or making phone calls, you can keep in touch with a very large group of people.

Keep the focus of your social networking efforts on relationships. This isn’t yet another channel to direct market your goods and services. Go after your online sphere of influence with a “buy, buy, buy” message and you will quickly alienate your audience.

Use social networks for long term goals. If you cultivate a lot of relationships using this wonderful new technology, you are bound to benefit in both a personal and professional manner.

People don’t spend time on Facebook so that their friends can sell to them. They are there for social reasons. Occasionally remind everyone of the business that you are in, just don’t make that your sole purpose for social networking.

Technologies like social networks haven’t changed the basic concepts of a successful business. They have only changed the way we implement those concepts.

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This brings about the question of why so many real estate agents are acting as their own web designers. Wouldn’t the same logic apply to the benefits of using a professional web designer instead of creating a website yourself?

Although there are options for creating a website yourself, none will provide the same finished product as a site custom built for your business. The amount of knowledge and expertise that goes into building a quality website can not be easily replicated be the average business person.

Where a real estate agent should be focusing their efforts with regards to their website is on writing valuable and compelling content. This is an activity that can only be done properly by the agent themselves and is quite a challenge unto itself.

A strong internet presence is too important for a real estate agent’s business to not hire a professional web designer. Much as a homeowner realizing more benefit than the cost of a Realtor’s commission, hiring a professional web design will pay for itself.

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Seems like a simple question with a simple answer. Most people will instinctively say, “to build my business”.

While that is a good objective of any business website, it leads to yet another question, “How will your website build your business?” To get to the answer to this question, we need to go a bit deeper.

As with most website strategies, we must first identify your target audience. Who are these people? What are their needs? How can they help you with your general goal of building your real estate or lending business?

The intriguing part of identifying your audience is that you will most certainly find different groups of people who you are targeting. Each of these groups will have different needs and will benefit your business in different ways. You may find that unique objectives are required for each group.

Let’s take a look at several potential audiences of your website and how they differ.

Potential Clients (Prospects)

These are people with whom have no prior relationship with you. They found your website through a search engine, a referring link from another website or from one of your offline marketing channels.

NEEDS: Potential clients are usually looking for information. They are trying to become as informed as possible as to make the best home purchase or get into the best home loan for their situation.

OBJECTIVE: Convert these web visitors into clients. This means getting them to call or email you.

GETTING TO THE OBJECTIVE: This group is looking for information, so provide it. This is where blogging on the market, community and other relevant is very effective. If you come across as an expert in the field, people will be inclined to conduct business with you.

How many times have you heard someone say, “I sure hope my… (fill in the blank with an profession you choose) …knows what they are doing.” If your site shows that you know what you are doing, it is bound to pay off.

Past Clients

I heard a statistic a couple of years ago that 67 out of 100 people surveyed 60 days after the close of escrow couldn’t give the full name of their real estate agent.

When it comes to home loans, the numbers are even worse for people using the same mortgage broker for subsequent refinances.

How can someone who doesn’t remember you refer you to friends and family or use you for their next transaction?

NEEDS: For those who have recently moved, they are looking to become acclimated to their new neighborhood. Mortgage brokers, your past clients want to stay informed as to when they should refinance to save money.

OBJECTIVE: Continue to provide value to your past clients, so that they will use you for their next transaction and will refer you to other potential clients.

GETTING TO YOUR OBJECTIVE: Once again, information is the key. The difference with this group is that you already have a relationship. Leverage that relationship.

Send your blog content to past clients via email (a service that Draven Creation can provide). Use surveys on your website and via email to find out what your past clients need and then fulfill those needs. Provide a way for your past clients to refer people to you, right from your website.

Referrals

I ask a friend if they know a real estate agent they could refer. I could take that referral on blind faith or, more likely, I will take that recommendation with a grain of salt and will research that agent on my own.

That is where your website comes in. My friend could say, “I recommend XYZ agent, but don’t take my word on it, check out their website at www…”

NEEDS: Determine that the referral of an real estate agent or mortgage broker is a good recommendatio.

OBJECTIVE: Convert the referral into a client.

GETTING TO YOUR OBJECTIVE: Show your knowledge, professionalism and track record on your website. A bit of personality coming through doesn’t hurt, either.

Show your past transactions, your marketing plan or graph out how you have saved past clients on their home loans.

Current Clients

You’ve got them. You are listing their home, finding their new home or are getting them into a home loan.

NEEDS: Find the perfect home or home loan, or insure that they are getting the highest offer in the shortest time on their home.

OBJECTIVE: This is where your website can save you time and effort. Just as a good corporate website can lower the customer support needs of a company, a good agent or broker website can service your clients without additional time and effort on your part.

GETTING TO YOUR OBJECTIVE: Home searches, homes by email updates, mortgage rate updates and market updates articles can provide the information that satisfies your current clients’ needs. Best of all, you won’t have a dozen voicemails to return to answer what homes have recently hit the market or what did rates do today.

Information is the Key

By now, you realize the common thread for each of these groups is value-added information. Be the source of information and people will be compelled to do business with you.

Have you identified your audiences? Do you recognize their needs? How can your website satisfy those needs while advancing toward your objectives?

I say, write all of this on a piece of paper and keep it next to your computer. It will keep you focused on obtaining your objectives.

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These new “neo-blogs“, as Dvorak coined them, utilize the Wordpress software for more than blogging. Through the effective use of template design, plugins, widgets and pages, a website built on the Wordpress software can become a full-fledged website and not merely a blog.

This is a real turning point for blogging.

For the past 6 months, a slow change has been happening. Blogs were becoming more robust. No longer are all blogs simply linear, chronological posting sites.

Blogs now have supporting pages of content and content organizationed based on topic, age of the content and reader value.

In fact, the best of the new breed don’t feel like blogs at all. They feel more that magazine websites.

I am so in favor of this new trend of what I have termed “blogsites”, that Draven Creation hasn’t built a traditional blog format site all year. It has purely been extending the Wordpress system to create content centric websites, even when the client isn’t going to blog.

Choosing to use Wordpress as a content management system for your website or blog is a strong choice because:

• Website maintenance is easier. Updating content is much more difficult without a content management system.
• Traditional, chronological blogs only showcase recent content. Using advanced techniques, past content can be highlighted. Groups of posts can be combined to create featured content.
• There is no need to have a website and a blog. Search engines love blogs, so why not add your traditional website content as pages to your Wordpress blog? Maintaining and promoting 1 website is much easy and cheaper than doing the same for a website and separate blog.

Draven Creation builds exclusively on the Wordpress platform, using the latest techniques and trends. This strategy provides our clients with custom, value-added websites that are easier and less expensive to build and maintain. Call for more information, 209.679.5801 or send an email.

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When someone visits a local real estate agent or mortgage broker website, they have questions and are looking for answers. The better job you can do in answering those questions, the more valuable you are to that potential client.

When I reference answering questions, I am not talking about the ability for site readers to post questions for you to follow with an answer. While this can work when done properly (a great example is Trulia Voices), I am actually talking about the overall content on your website.

When writing any content for your site, you must first consider the audience. Who are they? What is of value to them? What questions might they be seeking answers to?

By focusing on the audience and their needs, you stand a better chance of converting them into clients.

Each page of your website and every blog post should answer a question.

Blog posts are easy to follow this guideline. Identify a question, make the title of the post that question and go about answering the question in the post. This makes writing posts easier and can have great search engine benefits (many people search by asking questions).

Website pages can be a bit trickier to determine what questions to answer. Let’s look at a few common real estate agent and mortgage broker website pages/sections to identify what questions can be answered.

The About Page

Here is my own personal pet peeve. I rarely read an About page that truly adds value to the audience.

These pages tends to focus too much on the agent or broker and their personal lives, clubs, organizations, on and on and on. While this paints a picture of you to your audience, it doesn’t provide the information that they went to this page for.

When someone goes to your About page, they are looking for you to answer the question, “Why should I trust this person with the largest transaction of my life?”

Does your about page answer this question?

For Sellers / For Buyers

Your site is local, maybe even hyper-local. This means that you focus on transactions in a city or even in select neighborhoods.

This is where you differentiate yourself from the larger, national real estate and mortgage websites. Your focus provides extreme value to a smaller audience, but one who has better revenue potential for your company.

Keep your Seller and Buyer information localized. Answer questions like, “What should I know about buying or selling a home in this city or neighborhood?” and “How does this agent’s expertise in this area make them better qualified to sell my home or find me my dream home?”

Loan Process

Portraying your knowledge of types of loans and the general loan process can be a huge benefit to a mortgage broker. The process can be overwhelming to consumers and they want to rest assured that their mortgage broker knows what he is talking about.

As a mortgage broker, you must also battle the concerns created by bad press of consumers getting sold mortgages that weren’t the best products for them. Information is your weapon in this battle.

Answer questions like, “What types of loans are there and how do they differ?“, “What loans are right for each type of borrower?“, “How does recent economic changes affect borrowers in my city?”

Keep the audience in mind at every step of your website development and you will be rewarded with more visitors, longer visits, and hopefully, more people contacting you directly.

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There are many similarities between a home for sale and a real estate agent website. I think the most important commonality is that of the effective use of negative space, known as whitespace in the web design world.

If you, as a real estate agent, go to list a home, do you not make suggestions to the homeowner on how to make the home look more appealing? If a room is full of clutter, knick-knacks and too much furniture, do you suggest that items be placed in storage while the home is listed? The goal is to make the space to appear larger and more inviting.

It has always puzzled me why so many real estate professionals who understand the concept of layout for a home break all of those same rules on their websites. So many real estate agent websites are crammed full of content, images and widgets that they feel cluttered, cramped and disorganized. Much like a home before it is professionally staged.

Strategic use of empty space is inviting on a website, much as it is in a home. If you walked into a home and every square inch of the floor was covered, what feelings does that invoke? Could you focus on any one thing, or would you be so overwhelmed that you couldn’t focus on anything?

Use your home staging skills to identify is you have enough whitespace on each page of your website. Determine what adds value to the reader and what aids in your goal of converting that reader into a client. Everything else must go.

Think about it, are people coming to your real estate website because they need the weather widget on your homepage to tell them what the temperature is?

To learn about effectively using whitespace on your real estate website, read Website White Space and Give Me My Web Space. Both of these articles will help you to reach the optimal goal of 35% of your website containing absolutely nothing.

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