Archive for July, 2007

This is a huge move for ActiveRain. In the past year, they have created alot of clout for themselves by racking up nearly 40,000 real estate professionals nationally (most of which are real estate agents).

Active Rain has always been a great place to make and receive referrals… this was simply the next natural step. And in keeping with their “free” philosophy, they won’t be charging for the service until 2008.

It has a pretty slick interface, and it looks like a pretty smart idea… If you have a client you want to refer to another Active Rain member, you list the quality, price range, area, and other factors, and then give other members the opportunity to send you proposals. Basically a way to say: “Here I am! Pick Me! I want your referral.

I’ve personally never seen anything like this before. Sort of an open ended referral service that lets you choose from a group of agents. But not only that, as the referring member, you have the option to look at that other member’s profile, and see if you like what that person has posted in the past on their AR blog. It’s a pretty cool idea actually.

Starting in ‘08, according to the press release, a referral membership will cost you $20… which is a steal when you consider how many members are actually active on AR. I’d say that there are probably 500-1,000 users that visit at least once a week, and most of the others set up a profile once, to never return. My point being that there won’t likely be alot of other people competing with you in your area for referrals that are posts. If you present a good proposal, you’ll probably get the lead.

Very well done Active Rain. You continue to impress me, and the entire real estate community.

It was a pleasure to be able to attend the Rembex Blog Fiesta earlier today! There is something special about being able to see people face to face after building purely online relationships. It was a fantastic turnout with around 30 people attending, and according to Joe from Sellsius, it was probably the largest turn out for any stop they’ve had on the Blog Tour.

We were able to hear a few people speak including Todd, Kristal, and the Sellsius guys.

Thanks again to Todd of Rembex for organizing the whole thing.

Here were a few that attended: Todd Carpenter, Kristal Kraft, Vali Wimberly, Jennifer Steck, James Eberhard, Jim Urban, Stephen Joos, Jessica Hughes, Dena L. Stevens, Mariana Wagner, Joanne Hanson, Crissy Harrison, Jason Adams, Christian Sterner, Adam Ciboch, Lonetta Parsons, Phil Leto, Meredith Hanson, Ken Schroeppel, Steve & Laura Scheer, Jay Hicks, Veronica Harbert, Beth Skinner, Greg Polashock, Doug Lindstrom

Here are some pics:

The Blog Tour USA RV:

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Here is a pic of Kristal Kraft (on the bottom left), trying to organize everyone for a group picture. Take a look at her blog for the group shot. The brand new Re/Max International Headquarters building is right there in the background…

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Todd Carpenter is the one in the middle with the green shirt.

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Your’s truly with the guys, cheesily sporting my Sellsius t-shirt.

Thanks again to everyone that came out. I hope to hook up with many of you again!

Normally, I’d place an appropriate picture relating to the title here, but decided that this time it wouldn’t be prudent.

This post was spawned off of an article I read by Brian Brady on the new real estate weblogging 101 website. Although I didn’t completely agree with his perspective on SEO, I understand where he is coming from. Basically, his method is… “puke” out your picture and sales pitch to every imaginable website or online space that lets you have a free profile and see what sticks.

Brian does a heck of alot of writing. You can find his work regularly on his blog, the Bloodhound Blog, NELA, ActiveRain, and an occasional guest post on other real estate related blogs.

He claims to have had over 1,000 online inquiries in the past 12 months which is pretty impressive. On my real estate related profile radar, I’d probably place his online presence in the top 20 of all real estate related people.

So how is this done? How does the average real estate agent or loan officer develop that kind of online presence? I thought it would be helpful to make a list of many of the places you can create an online profile, and network with people. Some are obviously more successful than others when it comes to generating business, but for this model, we are using the “puke” method. Place yourself in as many places as possible, write new content like your life depended on it, get your face and message to as many people as possible, and see what happens…

Real Estate Related Websites: (in no particular order)

ActiveRain.com — Quickly becoming the mother of all real estate community websites. Create a profile, start blogging and networking, and create some referral business from other members around the country.

Localism.com — Tie into your Active Rain account, and post articles and pictures about your local community.

Zillow.com — Lots of options here: Contribute articles to Zillow’s Wiki, post your listings, and… uhhh… other people’s listings, chat on Zillow’s Discussion board, or contribute to a neighborhood page

Trulia.com — Answer real estate related questions from the general public.

RealEstateVoices — Digg for real estate. If it is eventually able to create some more traffic for itself, having a high ranked profile may come in handy.

Inman Wiki — Similar to Zillow’s. Contribute articles to the general public about RE.

Yahoo! Answers — Similar to Trulia. Start answering people’s questions on real estate.

WannaNetwork.com — A Myspace clone for real estate agents

There are alot of options for getting your face out into the RE.net… be creative. Blogging is obviously huge. Take a tip from some of the more prolific real estate writers out there: start networking and maybe you could start guest authoring posts on popular RE blogs.

Participate in the conversation! - Start commenting on real estate blogs & on message boards where people are asking real estate related questions. If you can successfully set yourself up as an expert on any given topic, you will get leads. If you don’t know where people are asking real estate questions online, try setting up a Google Alerts account, and tell it to search for instances where people type in questions like: “when should I buy a house?”. When you see someone asking a question like that, go see if you can help that person.

Real Estate Forums & Message Boards: Point2Agent, Yahoo!, RealEstateForum.com, REW, AgentsOnline.net, CREN, RIS Media, Flipping Pad, RealTown

Get Your Content out to the General Public!

There are so many websites and tools that you can use to promote your real estate business. I’ll try to stick to the sites that deal with social networking, article distribution, online communities etc.

Social Networking:

Facebook.com - There are many great tools that can turn facebook into a fantastic networking tool, and they are adding more all the time.

Myspace.com - I personally can’t stand all the slutty ads that are targeted at my demographic, but some agents swear by the value of networking to a younger crowd with this social networking giant

Linkedin.com - A more professional approach to networking. More of a B2B kind of service, but still a helpful tool.

Mybloglog.com, friendster, orkut, biznik, ning, squidoo, Gather, Yahoo! & MSN Groups… the list goes on & on & on.

There are so many great ideas out there for marketing yourself online. Social media, and online discussion are only a couple of the ways real estate agents are finding success.

I could probably add another 5 pages to this post, but I think I’ll just stop with the websites that I have seen real estate agents be successful on. Large lists make my brain hurt anyway.