Using the Web and social media to sell real estate

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

I have been running my blog now for three months and I find it extremely satisfying that I have about two comments to every post that I make. This is an average, some posts have no comments, otehrs have maybe four or more. This gives me the idea that people are actually reading them and also points me somewhat in the direction of what people want to hear the most.

Looking at the most commented articles, I see that they carry some element in common: they are very personal and they tell some kind of story. From a pure traffic viewpoint, I seem to attract more attention with how-to essays, that is explanations on how you do things with a specif tool or site. But people on the other hand respond to something that is more familiar to them. Some aspect of life that they resonate with, inside.

Emotion is much more interesting than “logic” and when it gets to spending some minutes in front of a computer screen, I understand that people want to either be entertained or emotionally engaged. Only the “techies” that make a living out of technology care for the little details, the rest of us don’t.

So the tip I can give you today is to inject emotion into everything you write and say, into every video you shoot. Be personal, be real, be alive. The comments you get from your readers will guide you in the right direction

Roberto Mazzoni

Twitter is a microblogging platform: it allows you to publish short messages called tweets. The tweets are 140 characters long at the outside, only text. They can contain information, a call to action and possibly a link (URL). The tweeples, which is the name by which you designate the people who are on Twitter, are used to click on the link when they find an interesting tweet. Here are 3 rules you can follow in using this powerful tool to direct people to your blog.

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1. Take short meaningful sentences from your blog post and format them into tweets that people can digest and understand immediately and add a link to that specific post.

2. Use an URL shortener to keep the link size to a minimum so that you leave as many of 140 characters available for your message. I personally use budurl because it is free, it does an excellent job at shortening any kind og URL and, if you register on the site, you can keep track of any link, looking at how many people clicked on it.
   

3. Avoid putting more than one link in a single tweet. You could do it, but it is somewhat confusing and you might look like a spammer.
   

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Twitter is a very powerful environment and it can bring lots of traffic to your blog throughout the day if you manage to engage the people who are online and who are following you.

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I suggest to make at least 5 tweets during the day pointing to your blog post, using different words and concepts, although some repetition is allowed. Scatter the tweets evenly during the working hours and you’ll get the best results.

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Roberto Mazzoni

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P.S. Go to www.budurl.com and create an account, you can use it to shorten any type of link and it is very convenient also for e-mails and newsletters.