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)…………….

Continue reading this post

10 Ways to Use Links to Convert Your Blog Readers to Clients:

1. Link to your website at the end of your post. Even though your contact information is at the top of your blog posts, when a reader gets to the end of your post (a good sign), it helps to have a link to your website there because readers may not scroll back to the top of the post.
2. Link to your Bio or About page whenever you talk about yourself or your company.
3. Link to your property search page when you write a buyer post.
4. Include keywords in the link. For example, instead of hyperlinking the words ‘Click here’ to see all the homes for sale in Greenwich Village, hyperlink the entire phrase ‘Click here to see all the homes for sale in Greenwich Village’.
5. Link to related blog posts. Don’t rely on readers clicking to look in the archives.
6. Link to a registration page whenever you make a free offer.
7. Offer property alerts. Offer readers “Sign up for New Property/Price Reduction Alerts Now” and link to a registration page. Serious buyers will register for property alerts.
8. Use call to action trigger words & phrases to encourage clicking.
9. Make sure your link takes the reader to the specific place you say the link is going—DO NOT take them to a general page where they can get lost or confused—they will click away
10. Use links that will motivate buyers and sellers to click to get more information they want. If you do a seller tip post, link to “ read more seller tips here” on your website.

Blogging Tip courtesy of the HomeGain Blogging School Professor, Joseph Ferrara. To receive the weekly real estate blogging newsletters, sign up for AgentView and the HomeGain Blogging School.

Thousands of real estate professionals descended upon the HomeGain booth to learn about HomeGain.

On Saturday and Sunday Mitch Ribak and Joe Ferrara participated in our “Meet the Experts” program.

Joe gave blogging tips to visitors to the HomeGain booth and Mitch talked about how to use HomeGain’s Buyerlink in connection with capturing and converting leads.

From Friday until Monday, Realtors lined up to win their own Max and to pick up a Max button.

We will have a complete report on NAR later this week.

Here is Max hanging around on Friday afternoon waiting for the show to begin!

What were your thoughts about the NAR Convention & Expo this year in Orlando, Florida?

Louis Cammarosano

I annoyed a whole lotta folks on Bloodhound Blog. I told everyone that the parents were a better demographic than the kids and the RE.net cried heresy! Apparently, Web 2.0 agents have adopted the mantra of the very demographic I suggest they target;

Never trust anyone over 30.

That’s good advice for cell phone companies. If you’re in the real estate or lending business, you might focus your marketing efforts on the cash-heavy, real estate lovin’ Baby Boomers. Now I’m not suggesting you ignore the Gen X and Millennial demographics, I’m telling you they may not be worth your hard-earned marketing dollars until 2015. Ironically, Millenials may very well Twitter through their 20s, having conversations with agents, and turn to their parents for advice when it comes time to make the big home purchase. A Boomer-focused marketing strategy then could have double-barreled results.

Those darned Boomers influence EVERYBODY, don’t they?

I say, “if you you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em” and it would appear that most online marketers (including Web 2.0 real estate agents) are doing the exact opposite.

I promised to talk about ways to target the Baby Boomers, in a series, and wanted to invite the HomeGain Nation to join in on the conversation before I return to the series on Bloodhound Blog. In Part Two, I reveal that there are actually TWO demographic groups among the Baby Boomer generation: one is pretty well off and one is filled with angst. You can profit from both of them but you better treat them differently. The cool part is that all Baby Boomers LOVE real estate, regardless of their sub-demographic. Continue reading this post