This video features Brian Kinkade of Cherry Creek Professionals Realty who presented at the August 2009 HomeGain Nation Live Real Estate Forum in San Francisco.

Brian focuses on the value proposition of HomeGain’s online marketing system, AgentView — Internet exposure, blogging and home listings — all of which are key marketing components to REALTORS’ success.

Learn why these are important and how to effectively implement them into your business.

Get ready to take some notes because this experienced REALTOR packs in a lot of powerful information about marketing that you may never have heard!

Watch the AgentView session video: “Exposure, Blog, Listings”

Keep checking back as we will be adding more videos!

Watch more session videos

Also see more HomeGain Nation real estate videos on the HomeGain YouTube channel, on the HomeGain Nation Blog. and in the HomeGain Media Center. Continue reading this post

Content Building Blocks

The first month of your real estate blog’s life is the most important.

What you do during the first month can affect the way Google will see your blog for the next year, so it is extremely important to build hyper local, keyword rich content in a structured and cohesive way.

The following are tips to building your first month’s worth of blog content.

Plan to post between 3-5 times a week.

Write “About Me” on Day 1. This includes:

• Your past experiences
• Your Team (if applicable)
• Reviews
• Boast posts: This is my favorite way to let you boast about your talents while couching it in an example and expert advice.  As a Realtor, you have the unique ability to solve problems most people feel are overwhelming.
• Talk about your past experiences. People like to know that not only do you understand their problem, but that you have solved the very same problem for other clients. Example marketing helps you to establish your position as an expert and problem solver while also emotionally connecting with potential clients that share a similar problem.

On day 2, select another topic. Work your way down the list on each of the sections and by the end you will have a full blog of hyper local real estate content that WILL get you found on the search engines.

Think writing real estate blog content is like pulling teeth? Continue reading this post

Here are some Google Search secrets to help you better find what you’re looking for: (wait, since I’m telling you, they’re no longer secret).

1. Use quotation marks to search for the exact phrase “co-op board rejection”

2. Use the pipe (|) (it’s above the backslash \) for an either/or search (or use the word “or”): fsbo|by owner.

3. Use two periods (..) to find information within a number range, including years: worst housing markets 1980..2006.

4. Use a minus sign (-) to exclude search results: worst housing markets 1980..2006 -best. (since the search without the minus sign usually includes best and worst, use the minus sign if you only want the bad news)

5. Find similar keywords with the tilde (~): ~cheap homes. You get auctions, foreclosures, investors, etc. The tilde is an under-appreciated stroke (which makes it good for passwords)

6. Use the wildcard star (*) if you don’t know the missing word: a man’s home is his *.

7. Get a definitions by typing “define:” before the word: define:foreclosure.

8. Math calculations (hey Realtors, it’s good for figuring a commission): 548,000 x6%.

9. To search a term in a particular blog or website use “site:” before the URL. Useful if a website or blog doesn’t have a search box: site:blog.sellsiusrealestate.com zillow.

10. Type in the area code or zip code to find out the city name: 646. Continue reading this post

At the end of March, I was fortunate to be asked to be a guest on a national radio show called The Takeaway. There is an accompanying blog post here and you can listen to the 8 minute radio interview from there. As fun as it might be to be a part of a radio show, I wouldn’t have done this if not for the basic premise that differed from much of what we hear from the media.

The premise here was that the market is shifting — for the better. The interview came because of another blog post I wrote that was picked up in the research of a national reporter showing something different than what we hear from most “media” sources. Basically, some professional insight backed up with statistics that shows something different than the gloom and doom we hear which is partially fueling the perception problems many of us are seeing in the market today.

What I’m really trying to say is that we are our local experts and when we take the time to articulate the information and experience that we have, we can make a difference and with the mindset of many buyers today, we need all the help we can give to each other! We are the professionals in our market and we need to actively participate in the dialogue lest we spend our time complaining rather than helping the cause.

There are lots of ways us Realtors can do this; Continue reading this post

Here’s some quick advice for AgentView real estate agents to manage that new blog you may not know what to do with:

1. Blog articles are great but they do take time to write. Generally, the first ideas new bloggers have for topics – how-to’s, hyperlocal news – have been done before by other bloggers. It’s hard to differentiate yourself starting up a blog.
2. So do something different. Think like a journalist; watch out for real-time housing market news and be the first to report it.
3. Take notes at the tour marketing meetings, subscribe to the feeds of local online news and real estate publications.
4. Think in sound bites. Whenever you hear something interesting, write a sentence or two in the blog. Be efficient, don’t take more than 3 minutes per idea. Use a cellphone to write it if you’re in a tour meeting or open house.
5. When you see an interesting article online, cut and paste the article title and create a link to it.
6. If you write down several ideas per day, you soon accumulate a whole portfolio of ideas and facts that will be displayed on the blog. This content is just as revealing about how you develop business and help clients as blog articles.
7. You become a go-to source for your market. Prospects will come back again and again to see your new “sound bites”. After all, you’re the only one reporting on a daily basis… this is compelling to a committed home buyer or seller. Analogy – if I’m doing a stock purchase, I’d much rather analyze it in real time on Marketwatch.com than pick up the current Business Week magazine.
8. You’ll soon realize you can expand on the sound bites to construct more detailed blog articles. You’ll lose your writer’s block.
9. Finally, it’s easier to automate the whole process of “reporting” using a variety of micro-blogging and bookmarking applications like Twitter , Friendfeed, Tumblr, Delicious and Diigo. This is another story.

To learn more about HomeGain’s AgentView product, click here.