Sage Real Estate Thoughts

Each of your social media channels should reference and promote the others. If you are not already doing this you are missing out on a great opportunity to deepen your relationship with your network. For instance, when you post a new blog entry you should tweet about it. There is a great widget in WordPress that allows you to display your latest tweets on your blog. The goal here is to crosspollinate your different media channels to engage both past and potential clients in as many different places as possible. As long as you have a consistent brand and deliver good quality content across all of your different assets, there is no reason why your network should not be interacting with you on each one if they are actively involved with the different channels. This allows you to stay top of mind in an unobtrusive way.

It is also important to integrate your Continue Reading…

As overwhelming as this process may seem, there are some tricks that you can use to make ita little more manageable. Start by going back and working through Monetizing Social Media – Part 2 of 9: Taking a Step Back and Monetizing Social Media Part 3 of 9 – Branding and the Importance of Content. Once that is complete you are ready to dive in and set up your first social media profile.

I would highly recommend starting with one social media site, select the site based on your answers to the questions in Post 2. Once you have the site selected I would recommend that you take the time to develop a daily/weekly/monthly action plan. It is easy to get caught up chasing squirrels on these sites, good way to avoid that is to log on with a defined purpose and focus on getting that task done, don’t let yourself get distracted. The following elements are good tactics to include in your action plan as these will help you stay Continue Reading…

YouTube.com is an online video sharing network.  YouTube is a powerful channel to disseminate videos, it accounts for 42% of the online video viewing market. YouTube is also the second largest search engine in the world. There are more searches done on Youtube than Yahoo.  Each day more than 5 Billion videos are watched.

In order to leverage YouTube as a marketing medium Toronto real estate agents have to start developing video content. This video content could be related to promoting individual listings or your personal brand.

Video tours of listings is a great way to get content onto YouTube and can be a very Continue Reading…

Twitter is a social network that integrates text messaging and blogging. The premise is to answer the question “What are you doing?” in 140 characters or less. However, for real estate agents i think it is much more engaging for your followers if you focus on answering the question “What has your attention?” In order to grow your twitter followers (network) and engage them you need to tweet regularly and strategically, always focus on adding value through the content in your Tweets. Where possible include links in your Tweets to content that you have created and posted on your website or blog. This is how you can drive traffic to your site with the goal of converting that traffic into a lead.

Tweets are entirely text-based but often include a link to either a site or to some sort of media: video, blog post, podcast, music, pictures, etc. If you include a link in your Tweet be sure to use a link shortening service such as Continue Reading…

LinkedIn is a social networking website geared towards companies and business professionals looking to make new business contacts or keep in touch with previous co‐workers, affiliates, and clients. If you currently work with a lot of professionals or your target market is business professionals than LinkedIn would be a great social network for you to get involved in.

The average LinkedIn user is 39 and makes $139,000 a year.

With LinkedIn, members can create customizable profiles that detail employment history, business accomplishments, and other professional accolades. LinkedIn also gives you the ability to see who your contacts know (second‐degree connections) and who they, in turn, know (third‐degree connections). A great trick is to use Continue Reading…

Facebook is a social networking site that allows you to share as much or as little information as you want with others, but especially with your “friends” and those who “like” your Business Page. Facebook accounted for 39% of all social networking traffic in 2009 so you cannot ignore it as you develop your social media campaign.

Facebook is a great tool to use to establish yourself as an expert in your community, deepen relationships with people you already know, and connect with potential new clients. It is a less formal atmosphere than some of the other social networks such as LinkedIn but that does not mean it is totally inappropriate for business discussions.

The nature of the real estate purchase process is very social and sometime very informal. Often people who are in the market will look to their personal social network to get Continue Reading…

Your website and blog need to be the central Hub of your social media activity. Your different social networks should act as Spokes that drive traffic to your blog or website. Your website and blog need to be geared to generate leads. Social media should help prime those leads but mainly should be geared to drive traffic to your website or blog.

It is on your website and blog that you can convey the most detailed information about yourself and the services you provide. You should position yourself as an expert through the content you post.  This content will also allow you to start to develop trust with the visitor. Only after you have reached a certain threshold of trust will the visitor Continue Reading…

How would you define your brand? When your clients thinks about you what thoughts and emotions do they associate with you and the service you provide? These are very important questions to answer.

Branding 101

Your brand helps you differentiate yourself from your competition.  Your differentiation must be based on more than just a list of the functions that you provide. You want to focus on differentiating yourself based on the benefits you provide to the client not just the features or functions. The strongest benefit that will help you truly distinguish your brand is if you can evoke emotional benefits.

Developing an Elevator Pitch

A great way to start to define your brand is by developing Continue Reading…

Social media can offer a number of benefits for real estate agents. It can help you expand your network through positive word of mouth, promote your position in the market, and stay in touch with your past clients. Even though the benefits are many and the monetary cost to using these tools is low you still need to be cautious. You need to be careful because to use these tactics effectively you have to invest a lot of time.  Before making this investment there are a couple of things that I suggest that you consider carefully:

1. Ask yourself why you want to get involved in social media. This will allow you to develop some goals that you can evaluate your efforts against. I would suggest you schedule a monthly review to evaluate what it is that you accomplished with social media over the last month and whether you are on track to achieving the goals that you set out.
2. Identify your target market: who are you targeting, which Continue Reading…

Social media is a powerful marketing channel that can be leveraged by Toronto real estate agents to increase their exposure to their existing network, demonstrate their expertise, attract clients, and do more deals. Toronto agents who embrace social media will be deemed early adopters, this is a great market position to be in from the perspective of both your existing network and prospects.

This nine part blog series is going to take a look at strategies that Toronto real estate agents could implement to utilize social media tools to move their business to the next level. Each post will cover off a different strategy aspect. Outlined below are the different posts in this series:

Post 1. Strategy overview
Post 2. Taking a step back before moving forward
Post 3. Content/Branding
Post 4. Website/blog
Post 5. Facebook
Post 6. LinkedIn
Post 7. Twitter
Post 8. YouTube
Post 9. Where to go from here

What is Social Media?

Social media are Internet-based tools for Continue Reading…