RealTown's RealTalk

Katie, you don't ask much, huh?

Seriously, all you have to do is read all the RealTalk & eProTalk postings for
30days, and each one of your questions will get addressed because all of our subjects get recycled every month or so.

I strongly suggest receiving RealTalk as individual emails... not as a digest, and not by hopping around the postings on the web-site. When each one of the postings arrives in your email Inbox, you'll read more of them than you otherwise would. Yes, you'll still delete many without reading, but the ones you do read will take you to new levels of awareness. You'll get answers to questions you didn't know you had.

Lindy in Houston

Online marketing should ALWAYS be part of your overall marketing plan. If used right/well it can reap great benefits. Unfortunately, most agents (and businesses for that matter) still think of a website as nothing more than an online business card.   If the web is the phone book of the current century then most agents who have a website are forgetting to put their phone number on it, then complaining later that no one is calling them.

1. You need a website but it needs to do something.  It needs to be informative and it needs to give a call to action.  Yes, if it's just informative and you give them good contact info you may get a few leads, but you need to build calls to action into your website.  Blogging is part of making your site informative and therefore STICKY. If you can get them to keep coming back, then there are that much more likely to actually contact you at some point (if you have given them the information to do so).

2. you need traffic to your website. If no one sees your call to action, they won't respond.  If you don't have the no how or the time to do your own online marketing, then hire someone who can do it for you.  But, online marketing of your website is only part of it, there are so many ways to market yourself and your website offline as well, make sure that anytime you are marketing yourself that your website is included.  But, keep in mind that if you don't have a good solid website, it doesn't matter how many people you get there.

It really is a catch 22, one won't work without the other.

I use RealProSystems.com for my website. I just switched to them a couple of months ago and I couldn't be happier. I have a background in web design and internet marketing and I could have done all the things they did myself but I didn't have the time or the desire. I knew what it would take and I felt it was well worth what they charged. I got web leads before, the kind that called and wanted to do something right then, but what I wasn't capturing was the ones who weren't quite ready to really talk to me.  The ones I needed to feed and nurture. I am capturing those leads now and I'm definately seeing the difference.

I have about 20 domains, pointing to about 4 different sites that I use for marketing purposes to capture different audience types.  I do have a blog on my site. Blogs serve two purposes really, one is to make your site more sticky ... giving regular updates to your site to give visitors a reason to come back (I email my database when I post a new blog to remind them to come and check it out).  The second reason is to help with search engine placement (again by providing fresh and relevant content).

In addition to that I use listingdomains.com to set up individual websites for each listing that I take. I make sure to link each of these from my main site (and back to my main site as well), and market them on each listing (along with my own website), as well as use postlets.com to list my listings on another bunch of websites.

That's what is currently working for me, I am always checking out new ideas for what is available and what might work. I don't jump on everything I see but try to take time to look at it and see what is offered and evaluate what it can do for me.

Julie Ryan. - Realtor
Century 21 Steele & Associates - Huntsville AL
julie@homesofmadisoncounty.com
http://www.homesofmadisoncounty.com