Posts Tagged ‘Marketing’
Written on January 6th, 2010 by adminno shouts
Recently while attending an all day webinar I learned even more ways to utilize Twitter for lead generation in real estate. One recommendation was to find tweeples (or people that use twitter) who are searching for homes in your area. There are endless possibilities for what groups of people you may want to follow, but chances are you want to stay in your geographic area. Now there is a simple way to find those twitter users.
A new Twitter application called GeoChirp uses Google maps to pinpoint the most recent tweets from a zipcode. You can set it to search within a 1 to 50 mile radius.
The example given on GeoChirp’s website states:
if you want to search for people Tweeting about ‘Golf’ in Richmond, Virginia, you can just select the area in the map, set the radius within 1-50 miles of that area, enter the keyword “Golf” or any other related keyword and BOOM you have all the people Twittering about ‘Golf’ in Richmond, Virginia.
So you just set the location, set the filter and see the results. This is a powerful tool and can connect you to hundreds, even thousands, of potential home buyers in your area.
REVATS is a team of independent virtual assistants working together to bring comprehensive virtual services to real estate agents around the USA. Contact us today for more information!
This poem is from VANetworking’s site, written by YvonneW. Its adorable and I wanted to share it with our clients and future clients.
On the first day after the holiday my VA prepared for me:
an SEO ready website
On the second day after the holiday my VA prepared for me:
two ghostwritten articles
and an SEO ready website
On the third day after the holiday my VA prepared for me:
three personalized databases
two ghostwritten articles
and an SEO ready website
On the fourth day after the holiday my VA prepared for me:
four booked speaking gigs
three personalized databases
two ghostwritten articles
and an SEO ready website
On the fifth day after the holiday my VA prepared for me:
five social media campaigns
four booked speaking gigs
three personalized databases
two ghostwritten articles
and an SEO ready website
On the sixth day after the holiday my VA prepared for me:
six months of blog posts
five social media campaigns
four booked speaking gigs
three personalized databases
two ghostwritten articles
and an SEO ready website
On the seventh day after the holiday my VA prepared for me:
seven research projects
six months of blog posts
five social media campaigns
four booked speaking gigs
three personalized databases
two ghostwritten articles
and an SEO ready website
On the eighth day after the holiday my VA prepared for me:
eight formatted reports
seven research projects
six months of blog posts
five social media campaigns
four booked speaking gigs
three personalized databases
two ghostwritten articles
and an SEO ready website
On the ninth day after the holiday my VA prepared for me:
nine transcribed audios
eight formatted reports
seven research projects
six months of blog posts
five social media campaigns
four booked speaking gigs
three personalized databases
two ghostwritten articles
and an SEO ready website
On the tenth day after the holiday my VA prepared for me:
ten new client info packs
nine transcribed audios
eight formatted reports
seven research projects
six months of blog posts
five social media campaigns
four booked speaking gigs
three personalized databases
two ghostwritten articles
and an SEO ready website
On the eleventh day after the holiday my VA prepared for me:
eleven article submissions
ten new client info packs
nine transcribed audios
eight formatted reports
seven research projects
six months of blog posts
five social media campaigns
four booked speaking gigs
three personalized databases
two ghostwritten articles
and an SEO ready website
On the twelfth day after the holiday my VA prepared for me:
twelve months of bookkeeping
eleven article submissions
ten new client info packs
nine transcribed audios
eight formatted reports
seven research projects
six months of blog posts
five social media campaigns
four booked speaking gigs
three personalized databases
two ghostwritten articles
and an SEO ready website
Remember, the virtual assistants at REVATS can do all this and more for you! Add to it 13 listings, 14 new leads processed, and 15 updates to TopProducer 8i! What a way to get your real estate business rolling!!
Full Story »
Filed under Christmas, Just For Fun
Tags:Blogging, database management, ghost writing, Lead Management, Listings, Marketing, SEO, Social Media, TopProducer 8i, VA, Virtual Assistance, virtual assistant
Written on September 21st, 2009 by adminno shouts
image courtesy JadeGordon stock.xchng
Today I was doing some maintenance on our REVATS Twitter account and stumbled upon a site called Twibes.
I joined several groups on there and, of course, haven’t seen the value of any of them yet, but I wanted to share the info with everyone!
There are no less than 195 Real Estate groups, although most of them have only a few members and are location-specific. Joining these groups provides yet another opportunity to network via Twitter.
You can create your own group too. So you could potentially create a group for people searching for real estate in your town! Many of the real estate groups are just that.
In addition to the real estate groups, there are many groups for marketing, sales, etc, as well as just about any group your personal interests would fit in.
You join a Twibe by clicking on the group and then clicking the “Tweet to Join” button. Make sure you are already signed in to Twitter itself when you do this. Your Twitter page will open and a tweet will be right there waiting for you to click “update”. The tweet will say something like: “Just joined a twibe. Visit http://twibes.com/RealEstate to join.“
Its kind of annoying if you join several twibes, you will have a long list of tweets like the one above, but they will soon be drowned in your twitter feed.
Simply typing a key word into your tweets will cause them to appear on the twibes page that you joined. So, for example, if I type a tweet that says “We love Real Estate agents!” it would appear on the Real Estate twibe page!
Have you signed up for Twibe already? What do you think about it? Have you gotten any results?
–Kim, virtual assistant with REVATS
Written on September 19th, 2009 by adminone shout
I will shamefully admit that I only recently started using Twitter. Of course I recommended it to clients, attended different webinars on using social media for marketing yourself and your business, but I personally never used Twitter. I did sign up for an account, tweeted once, then thought it was pretty weird. Why would anyone want to follow me anywhere? I imagined my tweets being something like this:
‘I am heading to the kitchen to cook some mac n cheese because I forgot to grocery shop yet again’ or
‘Getting ready to call the doc because I still am not convinced dog food is harmless to an 18 month old’ or
‘Sitting here trying to think of something entertaining, important and informational to blog about’
However twitter is more than just announcing the mundane aspects of your day. I just learned this and am quite possibly addicted. I decided to log in after being told numerous times that I could get late breaking news from other Tweeps before it is ever on the TV news or internet news sites. I read up on how to use twitter (more info to come), and logged in. I started searching for hashtags related to my interests. All of a sudden these tweets start popping up with vast amounts of information, including links to the articles. I was in information overload!
So I started reading, re-tweeting some, posting articles of my own. Then in the blink of an eye (well, one week to be more accurate), I had 100 followers! I did not solicit people, or try to obtain followers, but evidently things I tweeted about were interesting to some people, so they followed me. It was then I realized the power of twitter!
Now I log in a couple times per day to read late breaking news that I mainly get from people I follow. In just a month I’ve built up a huge network of people with related interests as mine. Yet every day, I still get at least five more followers. Who would have thought a 10 second blurb and a link to an article or blog I just read would generate the amount of traffic and new contacts that I now have?
How does this relate to your real estate business? I will answer that tomorrow. Right now, I’m going to go tweet.
–Stephanie, virtual assistant with REVATS
Written on August 27th, 2009 by adminno shouts
Part 3 of TopProducer and Your Virtual Assistant
TopProducer is a good tool for tracking your leads and managing your mailing campaigns and to-do-lists, but did you know you can also use it to track your listings?
Once a seller lead turns into a seller-with-an-active-listing, be sure to add the listing info to TopProducer when you add it to all your listing locations.
The listing will be linked to the seller if set up correctly. It will be available to pull into flyers, post cards and letters. You can track showings and link them to other contacts.
You can also set up unique action plans specifically for current sellers. Tailor these to remind you or your assistant of all of the steps you typically take with a new listing and maintenance.
Be sure to set up emails or letters to send to your active sellers on a regular basis, just as you do with your leads. These emails are specific to individuals selling their home and preparing to move.
As you probably know, a virtual or in-house assistant can handle the posting of your listings to all of your websites, the tracking of your listings in TopProducer, etc.
Why spend your “spare” time uploading your listings when you can hand it off for an affordable fee? Wouldn’t you rather spend that time either pursuing more business or enjoying your life?
We have barely scratched the surface of what you can do with TopProducer. Just about every aspect of it can be customized to fit your needs. What do you do with TopProducer?
—Kim, virtual assistant with REVATS
REVATS is a team of independent virtual assistants working together to bring comprehensive virtual services to real estate agents around the USA. Contact us today for more information!
Written on August 25th, 2009 by adminone shout
Part 2 of TopProducer and Your Virtual Assistant
Managing a mailing campaign can be a full time job. Don’t even bother trying to send a different email or letter to a handful of your leads or contacts every day! That is unless you have TopProducer as your database.
TopProducer is not only a lead management tool, it also is the perfect tool for setting up, maintaining, and implementing mailing campaigns to all of your leads and other contacts.
You can use the standard action plans that come with TopProducer, personalize these in minor or major ways, or even develop your own 100% unique plans. Within the action plans are not only to-do lists and reminders for you, but also emails tailored to specific types of campaigns.
Let’s say you have three new leads that come in to you today.
The first one is a seller lead that looks pretty promising. After contacting her and doing everything you typically do, you can set her up in TopProducer with an action plan specifically for your “best” seller leads.
The second lead is a buyer that gives an email address, but no phone, not even a last name. Chances are this lead is just window shopping, but hey, window shoppers are dreamers who do eventually end up buying…and you want them to call on you when they are ready! So you set this lead up with a drip email campaign that will last for a few years, sending them an email every month or two.
Your third lead is a buyer that claims to be pre-approved, has a decent down payment, knows what they are looking for, and has even sent you the links to some houses they like. So you jump on this lead, and in the meantime you get them set up with your best action plan for buyer leads. And while TopProducer works behind the scenes…you do your thing on the front line!
These email campaigns aren’t your typical long list of call me, call me, call me emails. Most of them are a series of educational notes about various topics of interest to home owners or home buyers. Sporadically throughout them are emails emphasizing why they should use you as their real estate agent. The idea is to build their trust in your expertise and knowledge.
I would recommend that you go through the campaigns you use the most and update them for the current market situations, your local market’s quirks, and even your own personality. They are standard emails and while written well and in a personal tone, they might seem very out of place or totally “not like you.”
When its time to send out holiday greetings or open house notices, you can do that from within TopProducer as well. Simply create your email or letter, choose the individuals or groups you want to send it to, and voila!
If you do choose to do actual snail mail campaigns on some of your action plans, TopProducer has another service, LivePost, you can subscribe to which will automate the actual mailing of these letters for you. The cost isn’t much more than your actual cost would be, including postage, paper, and time.
Best of all…no matter what action plan or type of mailing you choose, every completed task, email, and marketing piece is attached to the lead you sent it to. So later on you can look back and see just what you have sent to this person. And you can keep detailed notes of all your interactions as well.
For all of your TopProducer needs, a virtual assistant is the perfect choice to “manage your management software.” A virtual assistant can enter your leads, keep your database clean, personalize your action plans, perform many of your daily tasks, and mail any physical letters that you don’t submit to LivePost.
If you are looking for someone to help you get started with or maintain TopProducer, give us a call. REVATS specializes in TopProducer related tasks and can get your leads in tip-top shape.
—Kim, virtual assistant with REVATS
REVATS is a team of independent virtual assistants working together to bring comprehensive virtual services to real estate agents around the USA. Contact us today for more information!
Written on July 9th, 2009 by adminno shouts
There has been some talk about whether or not some real estate agents, or any bloggers for that matter, should or do use ghost writers.
Well, to answer the last question, yes, some do use them. (Some of these “ghost-written” posts have even been featured on ActiveRain!)
Should they? Well, that just depends on their purpose in blogging.
If they are blogging simply to bring in and retain clients with community and real estate information or to increase the SEO of their website, then there is really nothing wrong with it. Everyone needs at least a little of this anyway, and let’s face it, some people just have no ability to write or no desire or time while still seeing the value in it.
If a blogger blogs because they love it, because they see their blogs as a tool to be themselves and to touch their readers in a unique way (isn’t that the real purpose of a blog?), and if the blogger is good at maintaining their blog on a regular (daily or even more often) basis, then there is little need for a ghost writer. In that case, a virtual assistant might come in handy to edit for grammar, to research supplementary information, or to take the finished piece and push the necessary buttons to post it on the site.
Should a ghost writer, usually a virtual assistant, pretend to be the person they are writing for and create a false relationship with others on the site? Hmmm…that’s where it gets sticky, huh? I would personally not choose to do that, although I know some who do. I might post a comment now and then in order to increase a client’s network (or to earn them some coveted points on a site like ActiveRain), but it would be rather generic sounding…something like “in MyTown, USA there are x number of houses on the market and the average selling price is…” in response to a blog post about nationwide numbers perhaps. But would I say “Hey Sally, I sure hope to see you around at such-and-such conference. We could hook up for lunch!”? No, to me that would be deceptive in every way. But, at what point is the line between those two crossed?
At REVATS we do offer a blogging package and a social media package for our clients. But we encourage them to do the “personal stuff” themselves. We see our role in ghost-writing as simply a supplement to a real estate professional’s interaction with their online network.
What exactly do we recommend? Well, if budget is no issue, we would recommend that a virtual assistant write and post 2 to 4 blog posts a week on general topics that would be of interest to the online community in one respect or another. At the same time the agent would be encouraged to write their own blog posts and to comment and network. This would be a win-win for the agent. The posts we would write might require a great deal of research, which the agent probably doesn’t have time to do, but it is research that we are doing on a regular basis. So by simply carrying on with the networking and expertise type of items in their blog network, the agent would be enjoying their time, creating connections that would (hopefully) build their business and freeing up a few hours a week to pursue that business!
This can also carry over into the rest of the social media world. A virtual assistant is a good source for regularly scheduled informative Twitter or Facebook posts, which would free up the agent to post their daily happenings while still knowing that their network was getting a regular feed going, even if they happen to have a day where they are just not in the Tweeting mood.
Afterall, your business is selling real estate. Our business is doing the things that increase or support your business, especially when those are things you don’t want to or can’t do.
REVATS is a team of independent virtual assistants working together to bring comprehensive virtual services to real estate agents around the USA. Contact us today for more information!
Written on July 3rd, 2009 by adminno shouts
You have mastered the art of selling homes. You use all types of mutli-media, including several web sites, virtual tours, social media marketing, etc. But have you tried selling your town?
Ask yourself why would anyone want to live here? Look around from the perspective of a new resident, what do you see? What are the best features of your town. The best small things that only locals see?
Drive around, take pictures of places that are of interest (not listings), show off your community. Ask your local friends what they think is the best selling feature of your area.
What would you do if your community was a listing? It essentially is. When locals are house-hunting they typically know the community already and are truly looking for a house, and perhaps would want to know about the surrounding neighborhood. But what about those who are relocating for work, family, or retirement? They may have a new job in a location within easy commuting distance to your town. But there are so many communities for them to choose from. Create a website that will say “You WANT to live here in Mytown, USA!”
Keep in mind the seasonal differences…when are the best features of your town the most attractive? Do you have maple trees that turn glorious colors in the fall? A massive tulip garden in a local park? A golf course with bright green grass that may be brighter in the spring than any other time? A community pool that is full of happy children in mid-summer? An ice-skating rink on a busy December evening with twinkling holiday lights surrounding it? It may take you an entire year to catch the best aspects of your town in their seasonal glory, but just think of how you can build out your community pieces in that time frame.
Don’t forget the things that you see as everyday, just-the-way-things-are, places and events in your town. Even something as mundane as a children’s playground at a fast food restaurant could be a selling point. (You would be surprised at the number of towns that don’t have that!) The stuff of everyday life is the stuff that will make a home shopper feel like this could be a great place to call home.
You could also consider featuring a guest blog by the mayor or chamber of commerce president. Or invite a local school to submit entries for blog posts and reward the best ones with a $5 gift card to McDonald’s or some other kid-preferred place, then feature these blog posts for a truly unique perspective of your community!
For another media twist…add video to your community info! You can do this yourself if you are video savvy, or you can have someone assist you in it. (Do you have a teenager? This might be a good bonding activity to do with them!) Just be sure that it is YOU who appears in the video.
You can also get your community involved in this. Does your town have a festival or other community event? Set up a video camera and invite your fellow town folk to talk about what they love about your town, and invite home searchers to join them as a citizen.
Are you interested in hiring a virtual assistant to help you with this? We currently have virtual assistants who are “local” to the following areas: North Carolina, Georgia, & Missouri. We also have connections around the country and we may be able to locate a blogger that is local to your area. We can also help you with posting your own content, editing and polishing your video, etc. Contact us today for more information!
REVATS is a team of independent virtual assistants working together to bring comprehensive virtual services to real estate agents around the USA.
Written on June 3rd, 2009 by adminno shouts
Are you ready to delegate those tasks that keep you from focusing on what you do best? Is management of TopProducer one of the tasks you need help with?
Each year real estate agents use more and more technology to market themselves and to help them stay organized. TopProducer is the industry’s top sales productivity system, and qualified virtual assistants are in demand. Allow our team to help you.
Members of our team are TopProducer certified, which means they have industry recognition of their practical TopProducer 8i know-how in relation to REALTOR objectives like contact and task management, prospecting and marketing, and listing/closing coordination.
We offer a comprehensive service to Realtors needing to delegate so they can focus on what they do best. Contact Kim, Stephanie, or Michelle with REVATS to get started!
