Lansing Woman's Council of Realtors Gets Scoop on Blogging Real Estate and More

I was given the wonderful opportunity today to speak at the Lansing Chapter of Woman's Council of Realtors, luncheon that was held at the Eagle Eye Golf & Banquet Facility. There were about 45 people in attendance, which offered more opportunity to answer questions concerning Internet Blogging, websites, search engine marketing, social networking and key word optimization as it applies to real estate marketing. Some of the companies and websites I promoted to the attendees to investigate were: Active Rain for Blogging, Point2Agent for websites, Internet Crusade for Domain names and the ePRO Designation (email marketing). These three companies can help any agent or service provider with wonderful tools to enhance their business and better service their clients.

I tried to keep things as simple as possible, realizing that it can become overwhelming for real estate agents, mortgage brokers, appraisers and other service providers as they convert to the new ways to conduct business using the tools and sites being offered by companies like Google, Technorati, Digg, Del.icio.us, Trulia, Yahoo, Feed Burner, Squidoo, Postlets, and Craig's List. These are just a small well known number of providers that offer fantastic tools for marketing real estate in today's market.

We spend sometime also discussing the social networking sites that are becoming more and more prevalent in everyday as the Generation X and Y enters the housing market. LinkedInis great for establishing contacts for business and referral relationships while Facebook is more social networking, yet it has many groups that are focused toward professional businesses like real estate, banking and other professions.   

I congratulate the Woman's Council of Lansing for having the foresight to realize that our industry is changing faster than a speeding bullet compared to most real estate brokers who "Just don't get it" when it comes to budgeting for technology marketing vs. the good old print media, that beats us up everyday with their negative news articles, while at the same time taking the brokers money for worthless classified advertising that less than 3% of the people even look at, while over 90% of all buyers shop the Internet prior to even contacting a Realtor. They say the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again, day after day, and expecting different results. What do you think?

If you're interested in learning more about my training, education and consulting, visit my new website called PRETEC Special classes, speaking engagements and consulting will be available on a contract basis as time permits, because my clients and customers selling their homes come first.

"Expect the Best" Mike
Coldwell Banker Hubbell Briarwood

LinkedIn has been a great business media for networking for me over the past six month's.  if you have never had a chance to check it out, I recommend that you do so if you are in the people business and depend on referrals to build your business.

I was connected the other day to an avid blogger and business owner Kathie M. Thomas (nominee for the Australian of the Year Awards 2008). The neat thing is I was her 1000th connection. The other neat thing is the very same day I connected with Pat Gillespie, Gillespie Group as my 500th connection. Granted, nobody won any prizes or bells and whistles did not ring, however the power of networking was moved one more step toward what's called the six degree's. Regardless if I travel to Grand Rapids, Michigan, Orlando, Florida or Sidney, Australia, I have the connections with LinkedIn. Some great ideas flow in the question and answer section of this site and the mastermind concept helps everybody. I always make it a point to include my LinkedIn Profile button on all my emails and websites and also my Blogs for contact reasons in my real estate business in and around the greater Lansing area. "Expect the Best" Mike