Using the Web and social media to sell real estate

You have been part at some time in your life of some emotion filled event that made you think you could achieve just anything and that gave you ideas on how to do that. I have just returned from an incredible three day journey with my family that has involved all us with a very direct contact with nature inside of a Seminole reservation in the Everglades, in Florida, the sole unconquered Indian nation in the US.

It has been one of the most revealing journeys I have ever taken, so full of contrast and so rich of events. It has helped me to better separate different moments and different worlds even if they are very closely associated.

I advise you to do something similar: leave the comfort of your home and dive into something very different.

In this tour I have began by visiting Sarasota, which I discovered ﾓby accidentﾔ to be be the preferred destination of many international real estate buyers and the house of some European celebrities that have elected Florida as their escape destination. Here you find real estate professionals, lawyers and CPA’s that are geared to provide full service to international buyers, from legal to taxes, from lending, to currency exchange.

It is an international market ready to compete head on with Miami and, differently from the latter, it has already began recovering nicely from the real estate crisis.

Few hours after visiting the sophisticated and rich shops of Sarasota, I was traveling on I75 listening on my iPod to a conference on how to develop your business online leveraging bloggind and “white hat” internet marketing by the “Third Tribe” staff (powerful). And again few hours later I was immersed in a wide expanse land, with little or no houses, boating amongst alligators and traveling next to the buffalo and the bison.

Every moment was separate and each one gave me unique emotions and ideas, which eventually merged together when I finally reached the turbulent traffic of Miami and fought my way towards our hotel on ocean beach.

We are surrounded by so many different worlds and their opposite necessities. Bringing them together is what makes, I believe, a successful entrepreneur. Therefore I want to better understand your individual world so to serve you and I would like you to reply to this post by telling me what can I do to better contribute to your life and business in the future. Please take the time to drop a few lines, I will make sure that your time will be well spent.

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.

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).

Marketing on the Web today is about providing content and making sure that people find it relevant and easy to reach. It can be about products or about how to do something or achieve some result. Basically it need to solve some problem, or cater to some necessity or desire, but still it must be available and easy to consume.

My field is international real estate and the experts say that in real estate you make money when you solve problems. The same is with any other type of business, but what matters in the first place is finding the people who have these problems so that you can solve them and this bring us to the channels and the format of information that you will have to use to find them. Social media is based on digital media: text, audio, pictures, video in all their various formats. And here are the rules that I have gathered on how to use it:

1. Your customers have very different schedules so you need to allow them to get your information when it is more convenient for them. Direct interaction is valuable and interesting, like in webinars, Q&A calls and social media chatting, but cannot be used on a wide scale. So record your key content and make it available for future reference (click here to read more on this point).

2. You cannot predict where your customer will use the information. She will not necessarily use a computer, therefore prepare to make your content available on portable devices (like the iPod) if possible (click here to read more on this).

3. Create content that can be viewed on as many different devices as possible. Less people have time to spend in front of their computer just for getting information. Production schedules get more and more tight, so produce your content so that it can be consumed in a number of ways.

4. Be concise as much as you can and to the point. This doesn’t mean that you should write little, but avoid padding your content with useless material. Value the time of your people and they will value you. Always give them a short cut to the action items they can perform immediately.

5. Never create an article or video or podcast/MP3 that depends on previous material to be fully understood. Build every single item so that it can be used by itself. You can still create series, but each item in the series should be independent.

6. Keep it simple: it you expect your public to understand what you write because they have read something else before, you will lose. Always define your key terms when you use them and where you use them.

7. If you don’t provide real value in your content then it is pointless. The value is established by what other people think of it. Also the value of a piece of content needs to be evident by its title and presentation. People need to know immediately what’s in it for them.

8. Use as many channels as possible to reach your audience as they will shift in the use of their channels and you will lose them is you use just a few.

By following these simple rules that I have collected from my personal experience and from the writings or presentations of Internet Marketing experts you will be able to grow your public and keep in touch with it in the way it is most convenient to them.

Roberto Mazzoni

P.S. I am sure you have your own opinions about this subject so please leave a comment and invite others to do so. Your viewpoints are important to allow me to improve  my content.

Last week end I have been to a real estate event in Tampa where different real estate “gurus” were promoting their own investment strategy. I was struck by the energy of Nick Sidoti, who runs around shouting at the audience and throwing real money at you to make sure he gets your undivided attention (I did manage to cash 3 bucks in the process). Aside from the unusual but effective presentation style and aside from the fact that Nick self proclaims himself as “crazy”, his strategy seems to make sense also for an international real estate investor.

He has found out a way to secure high rental values by providing special need housing to some types of handicapped people as well as to high end students and retired veterans. The basic concept is to provide fully furnished apartments with full utilities and basic housekeeping provided as part of the rent. You provide a quality of life that is similar to that of an hotel, and at the same time the convenience of an apartment or house. The higher rent comes from the ability to accommodate more than one tenant per unit and get each one paying separately.
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When dealing with special need tenant, like veterans or handicapped people, you get paid directly by the government and the tenant stays in the property for a long time since there are not so many alternatives available on any given market. There are no delays in the payments, most of the maintenance is performed by the government workers taking care of these special people and you can get much more return for your investment with less involvement.

Since it is a very special type of market, you must be thoroughly familiar with the requirements of the government agencies you would be working with and you also need to conduct a very different type of marketing as compared to what is required for regular landlording. I have personally checked with him about the feasibility of this strategy for foreign investors, and he has assured me that these special programs can be performed also by property owners that are not US citizens. You would require naturally a local structure to provide management, but this would be the case also with a local investor.

Nick Sidoti has been involved in real estate investing since 1979 and he has been lecturing for more than 20 years, therefore this is not a new strategy by any means and its longevity adds credibility to it. His conclusions after over two decades of observing other investors is that some people get it and some just don’t (how to make money) So his motto is: “Are you really getting it?” I think I do now.

Roberto Mazzoni

The most complex aspect of real estate is rehabbing a property, here you can make the most profit or the most loss since you have many variables to keep under control and you depend on other people for the correct execution of the project within the time and the budget you have set aside. Although it doesn’t seem so apparent, the highest burden for the investor who is dealing with rehabs is to keep track of all the costs associated with the project and project manage all the resources so to reach the final result as fast as possible and as close to the original cost target as possible.

Unfortunately the majority of problems arise during this phase and therefore you can never predict with absolute accuracy the total cost of the project and you should keep some reserve space so that you can complete the project without having to go back to your financing investor for more money, which is always a bad business practice.

On the other hand, you can try to include in the project some elements that can make the house interesting also to an international buyer so widening you marketing scope and possibly shortening your selling time since many international buyers can pay cash or can arrange their financing pretty fast.
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