Using the Web and social media to sell real estate

Modern marketing strategies can be extremely complex when you don’t take the time of absorbing the basics and building the whole system from beginning to end at least once. The Internet plays a key role, but to win on the the Web you need to emphasizes differences while the medium dilutes them big time by creating a very level playground. The most common difficulty that any new marketer encounters is overwhelm, no matter what business you are in: can be real estate, network marketing or any other field that requires constant marketing efforts and the continuous recruitment of new prospects.

But if you can overcome the desire to know it all and to do it all from the very beginning, then you can really make some sense out of it and you will eventually master it. I am personally on this route and I have been traveling on it for some time now, but only in recent times I have decided to develop it at a professional level sinche I realize that the majority of my business opportunity and leads come from some form of Web interaction, may I it be social media or more simply browsing sites and other blogs.

I have selected for you four articles that will help you stay oriented and progressing on the path:

21 Management Tips for Bloggers

This is an article by Daivd Risley, a professional blogger from Tampa that I know personally and who is very down to hearth. I am part of his “Blog Masters Club” and I have been getting some very solid advice from him.

Blogging Frustration! 10 Simple Tips to Keep You From RIPPING your Hair Out

This article comes from Problogger network and gives some real life perspective from an author who has been through the same frustrations as you have been.

10 Tricks for Getting Inspired to Write

This is an article of Copyblogger by far the best site for learning how to write something that other people WILL read.

Enjoy!

Roberto Mazzoni

P.S. If you liked this article, pass it along!

Despite all the technical aspects that can be part of your business, the only thing you are really selling is the desire to do or have something and the purpose to get it. This is true of real estate as much as anything else. More and more I see people around me focusing on tools, techniques, marketing funnels and all that goes with it. It is all very fine and you need to be able to use any of these elements in order to keep your business running, but focusing on them is going to defeat any enterprise. You can only focus on people and their desires and on making sure that they can achieve them with your help.

give people motivation and make them win and they will get you money.

This evening I participated to a meetup in the area of Tampa focused on Internet Marketing. The special guest was one of the top professional bloggers in the nation who happens to live in the area and that I know because I have bought some of his materials on blogging. It was the perfect situation where the people present could have picked the brain of somebody who has managed to gain a five figure income online only by himself and through his own efforts and by blogging alone.

But the majority of the people present were asking what platform should they use to publish their blog, which theme (graphic layout) they should chose for their WordPress installation and so on, and the majority were not even asking questions. I could not believe my ears! They had a really successful blogger within their reach and they could have asked for free advice on how to establish their own success online and they were silent.

After the event, very few people exchanged some chat and I was the only one to reach the speaker, whip out my business card and fire many more questions in addition to the ones I had already done, trying to establish how his business was working and, more importantly, how his customers (students who try to become professional bloggers) were succeeding. And he told me that the vast majority of people got bogged down in technical issues and really didn’t believe they could make it, have trouble in staying focused and don’t know whether they are coming or going.

It looks a lot like the type of feedback that I hear from many fledging real estate investors: they have never done a deal and they wonder where to start from looking for the perfect “system”. Exactly the same happens in Internet Marketing training circles or affiliate marketing training circles. The fact is that where people are involved you cannot have a system: people are different, they react differently to things and therefore you need to become an expert in dealing with THEM not in technology.

There are many techniques for selling a house, but then again it boils down to people and how well you can motivate them. For example I have started marketing a house I have just finished rehabbing few days ago. I decided I was going to have a buyer fast and I already have a hot prospect: he lives just next door with his mom. He has seen the house change under his eyes, he knows it inside out and knows the neighborhood perfectly and would like to say close to mom but have his own space. He is VERY motivated. Do you thinks it is going to be an hard sale, if he can qualify for a loan? I don’t think so. Did I have to argue about the price? No. Did I have to explain the intricacies of the contracts? No. Did I have to show the house, pitching all of its amenities? No!

It’s a world made of people. They want to communicate with you and being helped, even if sometimes it looks like the contrary. Do that, and the rest will fall into place.

Roberto Mazzoni

Combining general business activities and Internet promotion is often a very challenging activity. You have to care for your daily production and networking activities and, at the same time, you know that you have to spend some time increasing you Web foot print and can’t keep yourself focused on it.

A simple challenge to get your Web presence to the next level.

There is so little time in a single day and you don’t feel like you have to say something that is important enough for other to read or listen. You wonder how the time you are spending in front on this computer is ever going to pay back and how can you really make money over the Internet.

Maybe you have subscribed to some expensive (or not so expensive) “make money online” system you you still wonder why yous subscriber list doesn’t increase and why you can’t use your computer has not yet become an automatic teller machine that spits out money every time you push the “send” button.

Well you are in good company because the vast majority of entrepreneurs and so called Internet marketers feel the same way, from time to time. I count myself in the crowd and even though I have a huge professional writing experience sometimes I hit a “blank” spot where writing just another single sentence seems pointless.

But it never is and let me share with you a little secret that might change you whole perspective: every time you send something out which is of value, you will get something back in. It can come from a totally different quarter. That is, maybe you sent out a post to a certain list and you are then getting people reaching for you from a totally different angle. It can also happen with some delay, but it always does.

It has happened to me recently: I was promoting some of my houses in the US to international real estate investors and I got in return the request from an European businessman to help him market a very valuable property that he wants to sell world wide. It always comes back.

And here is a resource you want to check out to improve the effectiveness of your Internet efforts. It is called “30 day challenge” and it is a free program that assists you in developing a workable Internet presence in one month. It is easy, you don’t need to be a technology expert. It has been used successfully by many and there is a support forum.

Check it out!

Roberto Mazzoni

I will be gone with my family for a few days of full immersion in the modern Seminole nation. We will travel through South Florida touching all the major reservations and getting in touch with nature and the modern Indian spirit. Most of the time will be dedicated to my family, but I will bring some key content I want to review in the next few days in my iPod.

An American Indian totem.

Audio has become a key element for keeping myself updated on my business and passions. I rarely have time to stop and read something, but I can listen to my recordings when I am riding on my car or when I am waiting in line or also when I am jogging. There is so much to know and so much to implement at the same time, that I prefer use my time in front of the computer for implementation, while the new digital media world allows me to consume the information wherever I am an in any format I want.

As I reported in my “Eight Rules to Avoid Social Media Disaster”, you cannot predict where your customer will use the information and therefore must be prepared in providing it to her in many different formats. So this time I am the consumer and I will take some quality time with my family and I will put to test, at the same time, the effectiveness of having my whole conference library on my iPod. I am copying right now 3,000 audio tracks, spanning from real estate to Internet Marketing, list building and professional blogging. I have just downloaded the last private briefing by problogger Brian Clark to the Third Tribe project members.

The power of having the whole of it at my finger tips in a small portable device is remarkable and the ability to listen to any selected item while I am in a beautiful location, fully immersed in nature and with the people I love most, I am sure will make all the difference in my ability to capture the key information and transform it into action.

Roberto Mazzoni

P.S. If you want to delevop your business around your blog  in a very professional mannel check the Third Tribe project (affiliate link).

In my last post, titled “Eight rules to avoid social media disaster”, I have mentioned that the first rule is to allow your customers to be in control of their time, to let them decide when they want to view or use your services or products. In the heydays of television, the best shows where always being plaid at certain times and in certain days. You had to be in front of you TV set exactly at that time if you wanted to watch it.

Allow your customers to have control of their valuable time.

Our life was actually running at the drum beat of somebody else. I remember for example when I was a kid in Italy, we had a very popular advertising show being run every evening at 9 pm sharp. It was a collection of very spectacular or funny (for the time) advertisements, it featured some of the best actors of the time, each one featuring a “short movie” centered on a specific product. It was very popular.

Almost every kid liked it and they watched it with their families just before going to bed. Therefore this show, named “carousel”, was the signal of the end of the day for a whole generation of kids, not the sun set or some other natural event. That how powerful the television was then.

Today, in the digital media age, we can view our preferred show when we want: we can record it, get it on demand from a subscription service, rent a DVD, download it from the Internet, and so on. Therefore the customer is getting used to control her own time and decide when he wants to consume our services.
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