Have you ever really looked to see how others see you?  Take a look at your image.  By image I mean your photo and marketing look.  Would you want to purchase a home from the person in your picture?  Do they look trustworthy?  Does your photo look professional?  Does your listing have good pictures and do you have a polished look?

As I surf through Active Rain and my local MLS, I can’t help but wonder what some people were thinking when they posted their photos.  I see blurry photos, unprofessional locations and overall unappealing photos.  Now let’s be clear, I am not Mr. GQ but I did take the time and effort to have a professional photo taken.  Why?  Because I know that is the first impression my marketing will make.  I also know that in my listings, I need to present my properties in the best possible light.  Do you see magazine ads with blurry and dark photos?  As for image, do you think being on the phone makes you look “cool”.  I wish you could see what people are saying behind your back.  How many times have you skipped a listing because the home photos were dark or blurry or in some cases non existent?

Image means in lot in our business.  We are hired to market homes and sell them.  If you want to attract better buyers and sellers, you might want to start with your image and marketing look.  Ask yourself, does my marketing and image attract the right buyer?  Would I hire myself to make my property look attractive to buyers?  What IS my image to others?  May I make a suggestion?  Ask others around you to look at one of your listings online and evaluate it. Compare it to others around you.  Do you stand up to your competition?  If you don’t, take the time to make it right and watch your business change.

On a side note, I hesitated to post photos of other agents from Activerain to make my point, but I stopped.  Did you know you can go to just about any department store and get a professional photo for about 20 bucks?  What message do you send when you put out low quality marketing?  I can tell you what the message is.  The message is “I don’t care and I won’t spend money to market your home”.  Result?  Customers and business lost! 

Well, that’s me piece for today.  Hope I did not offend, I just thought I would say what I know a lot of us are thinking as we read posts from our fellow agents!  Now please, take a look at your image and make it great!  You will be glad you did!

So, you have a Profile set-up on Facebook and you’ve become Friends with many of your old classmates, family, closest friends and a few colleagues.  You may have even learned how to leverage your current or recent client’s Friend Lists to tap into their Sphere-of-Influence (SOI) to expand your own.   Now you might be wondering what do you need to say to turn all of these people into clients without boring or offending them?  The long and short answer is to BE YOURSELF, and this is going to naturally vary for each person.

First and foremost you need to keep in mind that Social Media is best served for SOCIAL relationship building.  It IS NOT a business advertising platform, but if you play the game by the ‘rules’, Social Media can be much more effective than the most expensive advertisement.  Since 74% of your business will on average come from your SOI, we at the Professional Realty Council (PRC) specialize in helping our selected member agents build their SOI in cost effective ways that positions them as the GO TO person for real estate related services in their market area.  We feel that Social Media is the most effective means of communicating and networking in real time on a large scale.  Yes, nothing beats person-to-person contact, but your time limits will prevent you from reaching enough people to be highly effective from a MARKETING standpoint.  (To learn more about PRC, please visit www.PRCStandards.net )

With this in mind, let’s get back to what content you will provide.  Through our surveys of top agents participating in Social Media, we have found that the 80%-20% rule applies.  You will want about 80% of your contact to be personal and social, and about 20% to be business related, or roughly 4 out of 5 posts should have nothing to do with the fact that you are a REALTOR.  The 80% should be about you, your family, your hopes, your dreams, your hobbies, and within reason your political and religious views.  BE YOURSELF, and DO NOT be afraid to be POLARIZING.  If you try to be everything to everybody, you are going to come across as being dull and forgettable.  If you want to keep your life private, then Social Media probably isn’t for you.  You may also want to re-think sales as your career choice.  People want to be in your Social Network because you add character, intelligence, humor and value to the collective stream of social consciousness.  If you have strong political or religious views, so long as you do not personally attack someone with differing views, you will gain Friends and Followers who share those views.  Yes, you may lose some of those who do not share the same beliefs, but the net gain of passionate followers will always outweigh the losses.  BE YOURSELF, comment on what is happening in your community, or with your children, or grandchildren, or charities, or on what is in the news.  BE ORIGINAL.  While it’s okay to on occasion copy someone else’s post (with credit being given), don’t make it a habit.  Attach photos to your albums or Flickr account, and/or videos from YouTube.  Use your smart phone to upload status updates and content as you participate:  meetings, sporting events, visits to exciting places, gatherings with friends, etc.  The idea is to let people know who the REAL YOU is.  Trust me, you will attract the like-minded people that you’ll want to become better acquainted with.

The other most important thing to do is PARTICIPATE in what others on your Live Feed are saying and doing.  On Facebook it is very easy to add a comment after someone’s Status Update to engage them in conversation.  Be positive and supportive.  Be likable.  Ask lot’s of open-ended questions.  Your comments will not only be seen by the person who wrote the original comment, but by their ENTIRE Friend List.  You can also send private messages to get to know someone better or comment on more sensative postings.  Show that YOU CARE about them.  Respond to comments that Friends add to your posts.  You want to keep the conversations moving forward.  Even if only a few people are involved in the conversation, many others will be reading the back-and-forth.

For the other 20% you want to just mix in enough content about your business to gently remind people that you are a professional and the GO TO resource for real estate information in your area.  Talk about how you helped a recent client, post links to newsworthy articles about the real estate market in your area, share classes, seminars or other educational opportunities that you’ve had or offer.  Talk about why a new listing is special or why you enjoy working with the client.  Remember, the idea is not to sell a house today, but to build long-term relationships where people in your SOI trust you enough to call you WHEN they have a need for your services.  This is no different than how you’ve positioned yourself to your SOI in the past, just with Social Media you are now able to leverage relationships much faster, in greater depth, and for FREE.  My only caution is that you manage your time wisely so that you don’t spend too much time in this one area of marketing.

I’d love to hear what Social Media prospecting techniques have worked for you.  In my next installment I’ll talk about using Twitter and Facebook in conjunction with your personal blog to reach an even wider audience.

Dennis Rosvall is the Broker/Owner or PRC Access Realty in Scottsdale, Arizona and can be reached at www.Facebook.com/DennisRosvall or www.Twitter.com/UberRealtyGuy

If you are one of the 10’s of thousands of REALTORS to already create a Facebook profile, you may be enjoying networking with your old high school friends, family and industry colleagues.  Facebook can be addictingly fun, and can take up an enormous amount of time in your day if you let it, but is it working for you as a prospecting tool?  Are you making money from the time that you invest ‘playing’ on Facebook.

Since NAR studies show that 74% of an agent’s business will on average come from there sphere-of-influence (SOI), we at the Professional Realty Council (PRC) teach our agents ways to increase their personal (SOI) and mine it for more profitable business opportunities.  One of our methods is to maximize Social Media as a prospecting tool.  There are many things that you can do with Social Media, but here is one of the easiest ways to turn Facebook into a zero cost yet highly profitable money machine:

First, ask all of your clients in your initial interview what social media they participate in and how often.  This should become as automatic as getting their cell phone number and email address – it’s that important!  For this example, let’s assume that they are on Facebook.  You need to sell the next line, but sound excited and let them know that you are big on Facebook and ask if it would be okay to send them a Friend Request.  They’ll say sure and now you are on your way.

You might wonder what the big deal is since they are ALREADY your client, right?  Well, here’s the magic.  Think of Facebook as a Rolodex on steroids.  If you use any kind of address book, either on paper, Outlook, or Top Producer, etc., the address book is a static file that you use to look up information.  You also need to update it with changes as they occur (Plaxo members excluded.)  Also, it’s a linear relationship between you and your contact, and is only of value if you reach out and make a connection via phone, snail mail, email, or in person.  Facebook, on the other hand, is an ACTIVE address book.  It automatically updates contact info in real time, you get a constant stream of everything that is being shared as important to your contacts, AND you get exponential access to all of the people that are important in THEIR lives.  All at your fingertips.  All for FREE.

Your second step then becomes once your Friend Request is accepted, you can view their entire Friend list (Depending on individual privacy settings, you may have access to this without even Friending them.)  When you are actively working with a client, or just completed a transaction, your relationship will be at it’s highest point with your client.  Now is the best time to send a Friend Request to all of their friends.  You can do this with or without permission from your client, and with or without a personal message attached to the Friend Request.  It’s important here to NOT sound like a REALTOR or salesperson, but rather just a friend wanting to network.

For each request you send, one of three things will happen: 1) They will see that you have a mutual friend and just accept you, 2) They will ignore you, or 3) They will contact your client to see if you are a good person to Friend with.  Of course, your client LOVES you right about now so they’ll only say good things about you.  Also, the more of their friends that accept your request, the more mutual friends will be displayed – creating a bigger bond of trust as mutual friends are regarded as personal endorsements.

You can see how this can quickly and exponentially build your SOI by leveraging the goodwill that you have with your current clients.  The larger your Friend List, the more opportunities that you will have to receive warm leads.  In another blog post, we’ll talk about content to drip on them via your Status Updates/Live Feed that will build your reputation as the GO TO resource for real estate in your community.