A Realtor’s story about how he went from being a skeptic to a raving fan of blogging, online marketing and HomeGain’s AgentView program

I recently had the pleasure of interviewing Brian Kinkade of Cherry Creek Professionals Realty in Colorado to get his insight about the AgentView real estate marketing program and how it has increased his ability to connect with new clients and expand his business.

Hear our brief HomeGain Radio Clip:

Highlights:

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Questioning whether a real estate blog is worth your time?

Successful blogger, Andrew Duncan of Keller Williams Realty, explains how to utilize the AgentView Blog feature to generate more traffic to your website, increase efficiency within your business, and more!

Hear the HomeGain Radio Clip:

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HomeGain, the first website to provide instant home prices, launched Google Street View on its instant home valuation tool this evening.

HomeGain’s instant home values tool is a part of our real estate marketing solution, AgentView.

Users can now “walk” the streets as they check home prices, or search comparative or recent home sales.

The street view maps are available in most major cities across the United States.

You can view the street view maps and connect with a local Realtor by clicking here.

I started working with AgentView, formerly known as Source4Sellers, mid November 2006.  Since then much has changed with my business model and with AgentView.

My business grew from a fledgling concept to a full team model.  I had started the month before with HomeGain’s BuyerLink.  The traffic from BuyerLink helped build my faith in Internet marketing and build my lead database.  Even then, I knew that HomeGain was very interested in my success and building a true business partnership.

The AgentView product suite continues to develop and is now a full service ad-free solution which highlights and promotes the participating real estate agent.  When I first started with the product, the Source4Sellers solution contained an agent profile and a full CRM with built-in email campaigns.  Now AgentView is so very much more.  Some of the features include:

• Agent Profile
• Homes For Sale
• Home Values
• Agent Centric Blog
• Local Information
• Home Seller Tools

Agent Profile

The AgentView blog offers so much opportunity to help promote the area real estate agent and my Denver real estate website in an ad-free environment. This page is about the agent and their credentials.  The “Have a Real Estate Question for Brian?” is to the right of your contact information as a call to action.

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The problem with any product sold or given to real estate agents is, what I call THE MISSING MANUAL. Unlike the bikes I had to assemble at Christmas which had instructions – and still were tough to put together—the tools you get from vendors do not come with a manual of how to effectively use them. At best, you get the basics.

Let’s take blogging, for example. You can get a free blog from Wordpress or Blogger and strike out on your own. Or you can pay for a blog at any number of real estate websites. But there are 2 major problems.

1. The blog providers give you virtually no instructions on how to:

• Set up the blog
• Post content
• Add images, video, slideshows, listings widgets, etc. -– Do you know how to use an HTML editor -– Or know what the heck HTML is?
• Tag your posts (and images) -– did you know that images are indexed by Google?
• Categorize your posts -– did you know that choosing too many categories actually hurts you?

You have to learn by trial and error. That’s how I learned. It sucked. It took a long time and I made many mistakes, some of which I did not correct until years later — that’s right, years.

2. It takes time for Google to index new blogs.

You can write for months and months before folks can find your posts on Google, i.e. on the first page of Google. Let’s face it, no matter how great your content is, if no one can find it on Google, no one will read it. So you end of toiling without seeing real success and it’s discouraging. You’re likely to quit.

If only someone showed you how to write blog posts to effectively take advantage of SEO (search engine optimization)…………….

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HomeGain, the first website to offer free instant home valuations, just released instant home values and home sale maximizer widgets for free download.

There are three different versions of each of the Instant Home Valuation and Home Sale Maximizer widgets. (pictured below)

These widgets work best for HomeGain AgentView members. If you have a HomeGain AgentView membership and place one of these widgets on your site, when your visitors request a home valuation or to use the Home Sale Maximizer tool in the zip codes where you are featured, they will be sent to your AgentView module where they can review their home valuation or access the Home Sale Maximizer tool.

These widgets are a great way to attract visitors and to get them to come back. Used in conjunction with AgentView it allows AgentView members to keep their visitors engaged on their sites and on their AgentView sites.

The widgets are also a great addition to any website in need of quality home valuation or home improvement content.

If you are interested in getting these consumer-pleasing widgets for your website, click here.

Try HomeGain’s free instant Home Valuation Tool here