Twitter already has millions of users all around the world that makes it much easier for you to find prospective buyers. The best thing about this is that it’s absolutely free. By using it you are not only given a chance to promote your real estate business for free but you can also build relationships and make friends with other users. Introduce yourself to them and you’ll start to make new friends. This is a great way to win their trust and begin selling your houses to them.

To make friends in Twitter and to able to gain more followers, you need to interact with them by replying to the comments of other user’s tweets. As much as possible you have to make them feel important so for you to get a better response to your tweets. It is also essential for you to update and send interesting and informative tweets on a regular basis.

The key in Twitter advertising is to connect and communicate with your followers more often and do less marketing. This way you’ll be making more friends thus you have a bigger chance of promoting your real estate business. Once you begin gaining followers, you will also begin to build leads with Twitter.

Learning the proper use of advertising in Twitter will help you get incredible results. With Twitter being one of the highest ranked websites in the internet today, it is really obvious that when it comes to marketing your business, it is the right place to be.

There are literally hundreds of “tools” in social media to help you grow your online reputation and business and most of them don’t have practical business applications (yet!).

The world of social media and social networking can be overwhelming, when viewed as a whole but there are certain threads that run through each social platform. One of those threads is that social networking is about meeting and engaging people, not trying to sell them.

You’ve heard the “cocktail party” metaphor. Social networking is like a cocktail party, you meet people and engage them looking for commonalities and a potential basis for developing a conversation (relationship). You’re not trying to marry the people you meet online, but rather to see if there is enough interest for a follow up “cup of coffee” so you can talk some more.

If you give the “Are you or anyone you know interested in buying or selling real estate?” at the on-line cocktail party, people will shut you out and ignore you very quickly. Why? Because they can and it’s their cocktail party!

Social media and networking are not designed to replace your offline marketing strategies either. In fact they are the perfect complement to them. The more prospects you can engage online and work them through your “marketing funnel” until you get the opportunity to meet them face-to-face, the more prosperous your business will be.

To start you only need to focus on three platforms:

1. The search engines – Google, Yahoo and Bing, you have to make yourself visible to the search engines or you’ll never get found by the people that don’t already know you and even they might not have the patience to look too hard. Think page 1 “above the fold”.

2. Facebook – You have to be where your customers are and 450 MILLION people can’t be wrong.

3. LinkedIn – This is the social networking site of choice for professionals. According to a recent study the average income of LinkedIn users is $109,000/year. Don’t know about you, but I need to know more of those kind of prospects. You can learn more about using LinkedIn for social networking by reading this article.

If you’re interested in referrals from other agents, they are most likely to come from here. This is your online resume and networking here is likely to provide quicker results. If being an REO agent is in your future it’s very likely the asset managers will start their search on LinkedIn to select qualified agents.

Step 2: It’s not about you!

This is the most difficult step for most veteran Realtors®.

Think of the internet and social media/networking as part of the largest real estate shopping mall in the history of mankind. Everyday millions of shoppers head to this mall to search for some sort of information about real estate. Unfortunately there are millions of choices for them, fortunately they have a directory to help them find the store they are looking for. That directory is the search engines, Google, Yahoo, Bing and now even Facebook.

So, how do you get to be the one these shoppers find?

Since day one in the business you’ve been told about growing your brand. Traditional marketing channels like newspapers, homes magazines, marketing flyers were always about YOU!

The evolution of online marketing has changed that.

Since the day the first Realtor gave internet access to the MLS, the consumer had the “keys to the kingdom”. The consumer is control and they like it that way. They can get the information with or without you.

It’s how you add value that will determine your success.

I’ve posed this dilemma to a number of local Realtors® and have gotten the same response most of the time: “They don’t need us anymore”

Absolutely incorrect!

They still need you, but not to search for houses. They can do that while watching “Dancing with the Stars” or on their wireless devices while driving through neighborhoods actually looking at their future dream home.

They need you to be the “resident genius.” They need you to tell them what’s going on in the market. They need you to tell them what’s going on in the community. They need you to tell them why particular subdivisions or neighborhoods are great places to live. They need you to share with them the “insider secrets” to a successful real estate transaction. In short, they need your expertise!

The consumer has the keys to the MLS kingdom and they’re not giving them up, so you have to find a way to bring value to this budding relationship that is not entirely real estate related.

If you were having a conversation with someone you hadn’t previously known, and they asked “Why should I do business with you?” How would you respond?

You might say because “I’m a market expert”, or “I’m the top producer in my office”, or “Because I provide outstanding service and I put my client’s interest first.”

Those are all very good reasons, but that’s what every Realtor® says. (It’s called me-too marketing)

If everyone is saying the same thing how is the consumer going to hear YOU above all the noise? You have to have a “WHY ME?” that will separate elevate you above the competition. Your WHY ME? has to bring value to this relationship.

Never forget the first rule of relationships. The person that brings the most value to the relationship will control the relationship! In the internet world consumers want to be educated (explains why there are millions of blogs) and entertained (YouTube!). They want to receive value.

They want you to give it to them!

Your WHY ME? has to be more than words, you have to show the skeptical consumer that you’re different better than your competition. Think of yourself as the Mayor of your City/Neighborhood or the President of the local Chamber of Commerce, who happens to sell real estate. The more time you spend promoting your city, community, or neighborhood. The more trusting consumers will be of you. Then, your real estate job gets a whole lot easier!

Step #3: You need the keys, to get the engine running!

For consumers that don’t already know you, they have to be able to find you through the search engines. How will they do that? They will “Google” what interests them.

Getting found on the internet, whether it be your web page or Facebook business page or even your Google local business listing revolves around keywords, so even if you already have a well established brand using your name, start thinking like your prospects and build your business around your “keywords”.

Google Keyword Tool – you will need a Gmail account to access

Here’s an exercise

Using the Google keyword tool, enter (your city) real estate or homes for sale in (your city), the keyword tool will give you the number of searches over the past month along with variations of those terms. You can also use the tool to measure how much competition you will have.

Now search by your name with Realtor or real estate agent and compare the number of searches.

If you want to fish…fish where the fish are!

The more proficient you are with keywords, the greater the chance that someone searching for real estate in your local market will find you.

You should strive for a first page ranking on all the search engines (Google, Yahoo, Bing) for the target markets you have selected. The chances of being found drop dramatically once you get off the first page.

So, who are your target markets?

If you said, “anyone looking to buy or sell a home”, you have almost NO chance of being found.

Why? Because that’s the playground where the big kids play and it’s very, very expensive to play there, you’re competing with Realtor.com, Homes.com, Zillow, Trulia, Movoto and all the other national listing websites. If you have enough money to compete with them, you probably don’t need this information.

If you said, “first time home buyers looking to buy in (your city)” or “homeowners looking to stop foreclosure in (your farm area)” your chances of being found have increased dramatically.

Why? These are searches in your local market (hyper-local) and you will find a better quality lead. Research has shown that the closer a consumer gets to their buying decision, the more “granular” their searches get. They may start off searching by “homes for sale”, but as they begin to focus on a particular city or neighborhood they’re going to search for “(your city) homes for sale” or “(your city) real estate”. Then as they identify particular neighborhoods, their searches might be “Paseo del Sol homes” or “Greer Ranch homes for sale”.

The interesting part of this search process is that Google has a memory, and as they recognize an individual’s searching patterns with particular keywords, they will try to match those searches with relevant content and those pages will rank higher for that consumer.

You can also try “Wonder Wheel”- Watch Wonder Wheel video – which simplifies the keyword search process by giving you the ability to branch off in a number of directions in your search and perhaps find other niche markets.

Step #4 – Write a killer profile

“A Google Profile is simply how you represent yourself on Google products – it lets you tell others a bit more about who you are and what you’re all about. You control what goes into your Google Profile, sharing as much (or as little) as you’d like.”

Even if you don’t have a website or a Facebook business page, or a LinkedIn account, you can still be found on the internet by consumers who don’t know you, by writing a “killer profile”.

A killer profile is one that sounds more like a press release than a bio. Strategic use of keywords in your profile(s) enables consumers to find you based on their searches (Step 3). When you write your profile try to be as keyword rich as possible.

Back to the Google keyword tool and look for more keyword terms that are easily included in your profile.

As much as possible (don’t make it weird) refer to yourself in the third person because there will be people who know you or are checking up on you and you want to make sure they can find you as well.

A great source of ideas for a “killer profile” is ActiveRain. Search Realtors in your local area and check out their profiles. You will soon see the difference between a “killer profile” and a “me too” profile.

You only have to write one profile. Create a word or Google document, then just copy and paste to your selected sites.

As you search for other niche markets, update your profile with keywords related to that market.

Your profile only has one purpose! Help people find you!

Just like your profile might be for an on-line dating service, your business profile’s purpose is to generate enough interest to have a first date, then you can let the relationship grow from there,

How will you know if it works? Upload your profiles to each of the search engines, to your Facebook business page, and to LinkedIn. Give it a couple days, then Google your name. You should see dramatic improvement.

Maintaining your search engine ranking is not a “set it and forget it” strategy. Too many agents have spent a lot of time building their ranking only to lose it 30 days later because they didn’t keep the contact fresh.

Your online visibility all starts with your keyword rich profile. Take the time to write a “killer profile” and you should see improvement quickly.

Step #5 – Do it!

The only bad online strategy is the one you don’t do!

Remember, you have competition out there and it’s not limited to just your MLS board. Think about how many Realtors in Southern California have access to your MLS listings. That is how much competition you have.

To beat your competition you will have to be:

1) Creative- Take a look at what your competition is doing and do something different. Just because they’re doing it doesn’t mean it’s working. Think like your prospects, how can you educate, entertain, or enrich?

2) Patient – Like all relationships, on-line relationships take a while to develop. Don’t expect immediate results. Treat your on-line platforms with the same diligence you use for your off-line marketing. Be consistent. If you feel a relationship is getting stale, get creative and try something new, if that doesn’t work try something else.

The only thing constant in internet marketing is change. The technology is changing at a dramatic pace and in a year even these suggestions may be out of date.

You have to be committed to invest the time and effort to develop your on-line reputation.

Perhaps the worst thing that can happen to you is you find a qualified prospect and when they go on-line to “check you out” (and they will!) they can’t find you, but instead find another agent who has taken the time to build an “on-line brand”.

As you can choose from which products or areas your leads are coming from, you can be assured that your leads are targeted and that all the information you are providing is right for your market and service. These leads usually come with details such as contact information and buying preferences with all the information vet through for accuracy. Your job is made much easier with the email addresses, phone numbers and their budget for their purchase provided by the service provider. As you are buying when you need the leads, most of the information is current and timely.

There are plenty of such service providers to choose from. Compare their service and price first over the internet before making a decision. It will be helpful if some of them can provide you with a free trial to their service before you decided to sign with them. There are a variety of price options, depending on the number of leads you are getting and the frequent of purchase.

The key factor is that time and energy gathering leads is saved and you will only be getting quality leads. All that you need to do is to register online and receive their service right away, hassle free. If time is important for you, then getting a lead generation service is perfect for you. You save time and energy gathering leads and you will be assured that you do not only get multiple leads but quality ones.

If you don’t already know, Craigslist is one of the most visited websites online today. It gets billions of hits and it is one of the top searched sites for every major city in the US. Not only is this site free, it’s great to boost web traffic and get in front of a targeted audience.

As a wholesaler, Craigslist should be on top of your must do list everyday. Although it may seem as easy as placing an ad on the site and calling it a day, its not as easy. As any marketing campaign you implement, there should be a schedule and an order of doing things. Here are my tips that will help you when posting Craigslist ads for your real estate wholesale deals.

Repetition – Make sure you put up 20 ads or so a week. Craigslist lists the ads based on the date they were posted so the later the day goes, the farther down on the page your ad will show. Make sure you post ads in the morning and in the afternoon. Friday and Saturdays are the best for some odd reason.

Headline – Your headline is high end real estate. When an investor or potential buyer goes onto Craigslist and looks up property in the real estate tab, they might use keywords in the search bar to narrow down the number of ads. By placing the words wholesale and investment on the headline, you will draw more attention from the search tools.

Un-Spam it Yourself – Never have a link back to your email, or an anonymous link. Just put a phone number along with a link to your website. When posting ads for wholesale real estate I get a lot of lame marketing attempts of no-name websites trying to get me to post my deal on their site. By limiting the ways people get a hold of you, you control the flow and filter the spammers.

SEO – Put your websites name inside the city box next to the headline. If someone does a search for wholesale deals in their city and up comes 30 different ads, yet 10 of those say your website, you will get people going to the site just to check it out. Its very important that you make yourself stand out, even this little bit helps go a long way.

Picture This – Having a picture whose root file name is cash buyers or wholesale deals, will help you in many ways. First of all, nobody wants to see an ad for a wholesale deal with out a picture. Its one less thing they can filter out. Also if you name your picture wholesale deals or cash buyers, when someone Google’s images for wholesale deals or cash buyers in your city, your image will come up in the top search.

There you have it. Those were five basic tips and things to know when posting wholesale deals on Craigslist. I know about other sites like Backpage and Kijiji, but who cares for now. Start with the sites that matter and work our way over when you begin branding yourself more.

For those unfamiliar with either YSM or Microsoft Adcenter, each is a pay-per-click (PPC) system for sponsoring ads that appear in sponsored search results. YSM and Adcenter are very similar to Google’s Adwords in this regard, although it was actually Yahoo and its previous YSM incarnation of Overture that really got the PPC ball rolling in the early days of search results ad buying.

Many have never used the Microsoft Adcenter system. While it cannot be used as rigorously and is not as flexible as Google Adwords, the Adcenter system is still very effective. It is fairly elegant and easy to use, an edge I believe it actually has over the current YSM system which is a bit clunky and non-intuitive.

Not to mention that the merge into Adcenter will bring a broader base of eyeballs for ads. Yahoo states that it will give businesses and their ads “access to up to 154 million searchers,” and that is good news to any search marketer.

More times than I can count, I’ve had to tell an unhappy real estate agent that the website company they just hired for thousands of dollars to do a beautiful real estate website produced a site that was virtually invisible to the search engines. I’ve seen tens of thousands of dollars wasted on bad sites that could never rank well on the search engines.

That’s because many graphic designers are not necessarily trained in search engine optimization, sales, and marketing. That said, everyone likes a nice looking site, and the pride of ownership factor should keep us all striving to produce visually compelling websites and blogs.

For the novice real estate agent/blogger, there is no easier way to spice of a real estate site than with some well-placed real state stock photos. To that end, I encourage all of my Real Estate Marketing Tips newsletter subscribers to invest in a small library of real estate stock photography.

In fact, it might surprise some to find out that studies have shown that relevant stock photography can improve the conversion rate of a site. As an author, you can hold the attention of your readership longer with some graphics to break up the text.

As a writer, I prefer more text than rather than less, but that’s not the norm. The right amount of graphics can dramatically increase the professionalism of your site and conversion rate.

You should experiment with what works in your market for your site. You may find that stock photos of homes get better response, or you may find that stock photos of smiling happy couples standing in front of their house work better. There is no single rule. That’s why it’s best to have a variety of stock photos to choose from.

The way I personally manage my stock photo collection is I subscribe to a monthly service that allows me to download 750 photos per month. I subscribe for one month at a time when I want to expand my collection, then I have them on hand for future website, blog posts, flyers, and other marketing materials.

During the past week, Google cemented their effort even further by working out deals with Facebook and MySpace. They made the official announcements on their Google Blog.

We are already seeing tweets and other real-time data popping up all over the SERPS. Expect to see even more with Facebook and MySpace in the mix.

If you know your target market you will be able to figure out what they really want to find on your Realtor website. You should know everything about their likes and dislikes. You should know their “hot buttons.” You should know what they want.

Tip #1:

Do Not Have the Same Type of Website as Other Realtors Have. You want to stand out, don’t you? You can add links to MLS or property databases without putting all that on your website.

Tip #2:

You have to offer information that other Realtors do not have on their websites. To figure this out, you have to know what other Realtors have on their websites. You can research it, or get somebody to help you.

Tip #3:

Look at all the websites of Realtors in your area. Make a note of what they have in the way of information and resources.

Then think: what DON’T my competitors have that my target market would really like?

This could be your key to success.

Tip #4:

Do a Google search for Realtor websites in other parts of the country (or other countries). You may get some great ideas nobody else has in your market area.

For example, I went to an English website where they had actual sales prices of recent closings. That was interesting, because I’d never seen that, and it was information I really wanted.

You could do that within your own zip code or target market, if you don’t already. Be unique. What other ideas can you think of?

This recent Google Webmaster video answers the question of how Google evaluates social media links.

The following points are what I consider to be the highlights from the video:

• Google doesn’t treat social media links any differently than it treats links from any other website
• Website reputation, and here Cutts specifically mentioned Google PageRank, plays a vital role in evaluating the source of the link
• Facebook and Twitter profile information must be public for Google to index any of the information
• Contrary to popular belief, links from social media websites, as well as .gov and .edu domains, do not receive any special weight beyond the normal ranking factors that apply to all pages and links

All in all, some really good information to keep in mind when link building with social media websites.

• trade name: a name given to a product or service
• a recognizable kind; “there’s a new brand of hero in the movies now”; “what make of car is that?”

In the definition above, brand is something external, something you can point to in the world and identify. Corporations have adopted branding to create unique identities for themselves. They have spent millions of dollars to manufacture perception around a logo or name. But the definition is changing…

Seth Godin defines a brand as the set of expectations, memories, stories and relationships that, taken together, account for a consumer’s decision to choose one product or service over another.

In this day and age, a logo and a name is not enough. Successful branding is now about creating an experience, establishing a narrative, and cultivating a relationship of trust with a consumer that creates loyalty. To take your real estate business from the open house to the Internet, branding your real estate business is an essential step.

In regard to website design, this idea resonates with a previous article I wrote which stressed the need to design websites for users. Delivering a satisfactory user experience is not simply a good way to do business, it is also a foundation of branding.

This translates to the industry of real estate rather well. To set yourself apart as an agent or broker, don’t think the job is done because you have created a logo or successfully established a color scheme that is consistent among all of your marketing materials and website.

Successful branding goes deeper. It reaches to the core of the relationships you establish with your clients, the expectations you set for them, and the story you tell. Concentrate your branding effort on the experience you are providing to your clients and the rest will follow.