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.

Branding You as a Unique Real Estate Professional
It’s time to say good-bye to ‘same old stuff’ marketing

by Tim Wilcox ~ APOGEE Communications

There’s nothing mono-dimensional about being a Realtor®. It’s a multifaceted occupation. You’re an adviser, a guide, a counselor, a cheerleader. You’re an expert in home design and maintenance, key aspects of finance, transaction documents, property-related legal issues, area information and more. Of course, you’re a sales professional as well. That’s a basic role.

So what’s the most important “commodity” you sell? You may already be in perfect tune with the following observations. Still, they’re worth repeating.

• The primary commodity you have to sell is not a single-family home, condo, townhouse or any other property.
• The primary commodity you have to sell is not your real estate résumé, including those hard-earned designations.
• The primary commodity you have to sell is not your integrity-based, above-and-beyond service, however important that might be.
• The primary commodity you have to sell is YOU!

And that means you as an individual, a unique person—not you as a fully certified Realtor® with all of the appropriate credentials. That’s just too predictable—a marketing message that’s been delivered innumerable times by millions of agents. It’s the same old stuff, and “SOS” won’t get it done.

A real person

What’s honestly intriguing and eminently marketable is the personal you—your life story, your family, your favorite pastimes. Only when you’re a real person with a real history and real interests will people—and, most importantly, potential clients—care about what you have to offer as a real estate professional.

For many if not most people, selling or buying a home is emotional first and rational second. So at the beginning of any prospective transaction, who you are as a person is typically more important than who you are as a professional. Quite candidly, feeling tends to be more important than thinking when individuals, couples and families identify their Realtor® of choice. But you know that already.

The secret to significant success as a real estate professional is to make sure that you’re no secret. That’s what personal branding is all about.

But how do you make it truly effective? As a launch point, it’s essential to have a neatly crafted and carefully focused story. Where are you from? How did growing up there (or in several places) shape who you are today? What about educational highlights (awards, degrees and the like)? Do you have a family? (If so, share some details.) What are your favorite pastimes? Are any of them authentic passions? What led you to become a real estate professional? What do you enjoy most about your career and also find most satisfying?

The answers can be woven together into a friendly, unpretentious narrative. How long should it be? We recommend three or paragraphs at most and, if possible, no more than 300 words. That’s a challenge, but it’s worth tackling.

Your branding story should be immediately accessible on your website, with unambiguous navigation and perhaps a short lead-in paragraph to direct visitors’ eyes there immediately. The story also can be the basis of an attention-grabbing  brochure, with a tightly composed, single-paragraph summary featured on supporting materials such as postcards and fliers. Appealing photos of you in personal and professional settings, eye-catching graphic design, and a custom logo with branding slogan are the primary campaign complements.

The branding engine

Here’s what’s most important. It’s something we call a “Unique Marketing Paradigm,” or UMP. We believe this element is the engine of any successful branding campaign. It supplies the focus, the energy, the punch.

The UMP develops from and is emphatically supported by your story. It can be a personal attribute such as a lifelong desire to help others, a high level of energy leading to success in many areas, an aptitude for getting all the details right, a singular determination to achieve important goals, a priority commitment to family values. These are just a few examples.

The UMP can also evolve out of a favorite pastime—for instance, various sports. Then it reflects high levels of achievement, determination, energy or precision. Perhaps you’re an accomplished marksman (or woman), consistently able to hit the target. Or you’re an adroit sailor with a gift for charting the optimum course. Or you have a passion for gardening and knack for nurturing plants to full growth. Or you excel at golf, skiing, running, swimming or some other pursuit, aiming for ever-higher levels of performance. Simply more examples. . .

Some UMPs spotlight one’s knowledge of and love for a particular city or region. If you’ve lived all, most or much of your life in a certain area, then you know it exceptionally well. You’re an obvious “area expert.” You also can be cast as someone who’s perfectly in tune with an area’s marvelous lifestyle and, because of that affinity, perfectly suited to serving home sellers and buyers in that particular place.

While most UMPs emerge from personal aspects of your story, they’re especially potent because they translate readily and productively to who you are and what you stand for as a real estate professional. That all-important “UMP shift” is the ignition point of a powerful campaign that brands you for weeks, months and even years of results-oriented marketing.

There’s more to be said, of course, about discerning and developing the perfect UMP for a potent branding campaign. Also more to be expressed about how crucial it is to build your brand with consistent and frequent impressions. My hope at this point is that you have an enhanced awareness of the possibilities and a clear sense that it’s completely unnecessary to rely on the “same old stuff.”

Do you know what you really need to know to market your business effectively?  If you’re like most women in business, you started your business because you are in love with an idea or a product, and are firmly convinced that everybody else in the world will be just as enamored of the product or service as you are. 

After all, most of us believe that we are savvy buyers, and if we like something, then we believe that every other rational person in the world would like it, too.

Not so fast, Oprah.  That’s not how it works.

Women desiring more than ‘sales’ status, let’s call them: REALTOR® Entrepreneurs – do have some natural advantages in the real estate business.  First of all, real estate is a WOMAN FRIENDLY business.  More REALTORS® are women and most of the homes buying decisions are made by women.

Very often, you are excellent at the soft skills such as communication, connection, empathy, and persuasion.  Those skills are why many women are so successful in sales positions.  But those skills often aren’t enough make a business work in the long term (or even to get it off the ground).

As a marketing coach, I’ve worked with hundreds of women entrepreneurs, and I see the same mistakes being made over and over again by smart capable women who were very successful while working in the corporate world. 

So what’s keeping these women from being spectacularly successful as entrepreneurs?  As much as I hate to admit it, one very important thing standing between most women business owners and success is the failure to understand who really wants what we’re selling.

While this may come as a shock to some of you ladies, there is no product, service, or idea that has ever been developed for sale that appeals to everybody.

Not everybody wants to be thinner, richer, smarter, blonder, sexier, taller, better hydrated, fresher-smelling, chemically enhanced, or more physically fit than they already are.  Not everybody wants a six-step all-natural skin-care regimen, a five-piece poly-cotton wardrobe that can be packed in your handbag for those spontaneous weekend trips to Hawaii or funky costume jewelry ensembles to match every mood and outfit.  And not everybody wants to take advantage of once-in-a-lifetime-ground-floor opportunities, make money from their down-lines, or cash in on the latest investment trends.

The question we need to ask ourselves is this:  Who really wants what you’ve got, and who is ready, willing and able to pay for it?  And finally, who will be thrilled with it?

Once we can identify who is most likely to buy from us, and who is seeking our solution to a specific problem, then all we have to do is let that person know that we exist.  This is much easier, much cheaper, and much faster than trying to sell ourselves to someone who just plain isn’t already ready or willing to buy what we’re selling.

Now, that’s actually pretty good news!  Because marketing to everybody is time-consuming and expensive, and I have yet to meet a REALTOR® entrepreneur who is willing to spend much more than 15% of their annual revenues on marketing.

Of all the many reasons to focus on a specific target market as your ideal client, the one I like best is that really happy clients become your unpaid marketing department.  Seriously, though, by focusing on a certain type of problem/solution for a specific type of client, you enhance your problem-solving skills and get really familiar with that category of issues (and therefore more valuable in the eyes of that client).

Once you are crystal clear about who your clients really are, the key elements of your marketing plan such as your niche, “‘Sound Bites’” or self-introduction, and the tactics you need to use to reach your clients, become so much easier to identify, which in turn helps you determine what you need to do to market yourself effectively.  And of course, marketing to a smaller pool of prospects is easier, quicker, and less expensive than marketing to a huge pool. 

So unless you have an unlimited marketing budget and nothing but time, money, and energy to spend, my advice as your marketing coach is that you focus on the easiest, quickest, and least expensive sale – your ideal client.  That is how you leverage all your natural assets, and make a spectacular success of your business.

Carpe diem,

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The magazine, Fast Company, recently declared that Americans are becoming a nation of “free agents”. They described a generation of consultants and professionals, all selling their services for the length of a project or until a problem is solved. That brings tremendous freedom, and new responsibilities to run our careers as businesses! Unfortunately, many “free agents” have never run a profitable business. The following are my list of critical issues in creating a career/business that will remain profitable for years to come.

1. Customer Benefits. You and your customers must clearly understand the benefits that your services provide. What are the 5 benefits of working with you vs. anyone else in your market place? Can you communicate that clearly? Customers buy benefits.
2. Extra Value. Customers must receive more in value than you charge for your services. Most of us don’t want a “fair” exchange; we want a bargain, the sense that we got extra value for our money. Can you communicate the 5 extra your customers get from you?
3. Superb Service. This means attention to detail. Answering the phone on the first ring, providing an 800 number and 24-hour customer service numbers are examples. L.L. Bean has made a fortune with it’s “no questions” guarantee. Do you have a guarantee?
4. Know your Audience. Who are you 5 best customer types.
5. Location. In the old days, this meant the street address of your shop or store. Now it means getting your marketing messages into your customer’s hands when and where they are receptive. Be certain your website is located at the top of the search engines.
6. Convenience. Customers expect to shop at their convenience, to pay by credit card, to call an 800-number, and to have their questions answered correctly the first time. Make it easy to contact you!
7. Innovation. New is good, newer is better. Customers expect the benefits of the most modern technology. At a minimum, they expect the convenience of email, voice mail, and efax. If there is a faster, better, cheaper and more reliable way to do it, adopt cutting edge techniques before your competition does!
8. Reliability. Consumers assume they can rely on your services. If they are purchasing your time and expertise, they rely on your availability, your advice, your attention to detail, and your follow-through. Durability may be less important in a throwaway age, but consumers demand 100% reliability. Be there for them every single time!
9. Planning. Planning takes on strange twists when a computer chip “generation” lasts 6 months and a website may be “old” in 6 weeks. Planning is the ability to monitor, influence, and profit from change. Planning means having a mission statement and the flexibility to respond instantly when new information allows you to fulfill your mission more effectively. Planning means you control your destiny.
10. Communication. This means instant, 2-way communication between every level and every branch of an enterprise. It means communicating with your vendors and competitors, and working with your customers so they become your most important designers, researchers and customer service experts. It means an “open door” policy and flat organizational models. It means listening is more important than speaking. It means ideas rule the world.

Carpe diem,