More about Empire Avenue…

• When you join Empire Avenue, you can connect your Social Networking accounts, and they score activity and engagement in each account, giving you a virtual “share” price
• The connections you make on Empire Avenue create “value-based” relationships – a deeper relationship than simply “following” someone, in a completely less intrusive context than becoming “friends.”
• Every day, you’re on Twitter, talking to friends on Facebook, uploading videos or photos, and writing blog posts. Just for doing that stuff, you’ll earn Eaves – their virtual currency – and they dish out some more virtual cash to your shareholders
• Along the way you’ll have a bit of fun, make new connections, learn about different people, and learn about social networking and the value of your network!

A success strategy that makes a lot of sense to me is Jim Rohn’s philosophy on wealth. He believes if you make a sale you make a living. If you make an investment of time and good service in a client, you can make a fortune.

It is one thing to understand this concept and quite another to actually implement it. Are you still struggling with how to implement proven referral strategies in your business? If so, it’s not your fault and it’s more common than you might
think! Frankly, once we push through the necessary licensing and paperwork process, most of us are left all by ourselves to muddle along trying to build a successful real estate business. Real estate is a challenging career and I offer tools that can help you maximize your efficiency and profits. Read on to see how my coaching strategies will help you increase your success.

As my gift to your referral generating success, I share five sample success strategies that are key elements of the real estate business and will help you advance in your career. By training hundreds of real estate professionals, providing one on one coaching and giving valuable strategies to create lead generating processes, I realize this information is needed in order to grow your real estate business. Because the demands of Realtors® are so great, you can

probably relate to being so busy that it becomes hard to find time to focus on referral generation.

The good news is, now you can systemize how you effectively reach your target audience and easily incorporate specific strategies that will make all the difference in the world. And don’t worry… you don’t need a business degree or ten years of sweating in the trenches to get there.

You can grab my free ebook, The 5 Key Principles of Inner Circle Lead Generation, along with the other ebooks in my Resource Library, at www.consistentclients.com/resources

Most Realtors® have understood the social aspect of their business long before social media gained popularity. However, I’ve seen a lot of agents struggle with translating the in-person networking that was such a standard in the industry into an effective social media marketing plan.

There’s a great post on how one company, Resmark Systems, is integrating their email, blog and social media into a very effective marketing campaign, complete with a personal touch. You can read the full post at
The 3 Amigos: Email, Blogging, Social Sharing

Their strategy could be fairly easily applied to real estate – buying a home is a highly personal and important event, much like a long-awaited family vacation. The key to social media success is not to try and sell people directly on your services. But many business owners don’t understand how friendly conversations on sites like Facebook and Twitter will translate into business or sales. The key is to find a way to engage with your past and potential clients by giving them an “experience”!

While Resmark Systems is using a software system that might be overwhelming for the average Realtor® to implement for themselves, think about ways that you could create an experience for past clients on your social media sites. You could create a Facebook Fan Page dedicated to new home owners in your city, and encourage them announce their move there, share photos, etc. Or start a signature photo series where you take a special photo of them in their new home, upload it to Flickr and Facebook, create a custom email announcement to send to them, and encourage them to share with family and friends there.

The key here is not to create a ton of new to-do’s for yourself, but to really think through your unique angle for clients, and then implement a few applications or tools in social media and your email database to implement them easily.

What special experience could you offer clients, that they would be proud to share with friends and family?

If you have one of the 80 million accounts that got upgraded to the new look on February 4th, and are struggling to figure it out, today’s Web 2.0 post will be great for you!

It comes from Nik Nik at MyTechOpinion, called 10 Tips for Getting Reacquainted with Facebook’s New Layout.

If you can’t seem to find ANYTHING, or just feel like you’re missing some of the old navigation links, check out her post. She provides screenshots that make it easy to figure out what’s what.

And if we haven’t connected already, look me up at www.Facebook.com/RichRogala.

Here are a few ideas:

• Put together a list of local contractors (carpenters, plumbers, landscapers, interior decorators, etc.) you know and trust, and who are fairly priced. Send to your list (works even better if you can get coupons from your contractors, who will appreciate the business) with a note about wanting to help keep a few extra dollars in their budget.

• Collect a yearly calendar of fun, free events in your community. Your note can mention that having fun and making memories does not always require money to be spent.

• Create a page on your website with a bunch of YouTube videos showing easy, DIY projects they can do around their home to improve home value, and send the link out via email.

• On the business end of things, think about professional contacts you know that would benefit by being introduced. Then pick up the phone or jump on your email and introduce them. They’ll appreciate it, and remember you for it.

A lot of these might be things they could do on their own, but they’ll appreciate that you took the time to put them all together in one easy place. It shows that you’re thinking of them, and care about them beyond just “making the commission”.

One tool that I used, and recommend a lot here on my blog, is sending unexpected gifts to your clients. Rather than spend my marketing budget on newspaper ads and other things that were industry standard, but didn’t seem to consistently generate business, I spent those dollars on treating past, current and potential clients like gold.

Here is another gift idea that can be used  as a gift for clients that have just closed with you, and is really appreciated: People who buy a home (or sold with you and will most likely be moving into a new home) almost always have the desire to turn this house into a home. Whether they ever decorated or remodeled in a previous house, most unconsciously have big plans for their new home. So a 1 or 2 year subscription gift to a high-quality magazine like Architectural Digest gets them excited.

This does several things:

• You’re surprising them with a gift, so you’re front of mind again
• The gift is related to their home, and offers value by giving them ideas, tips and information they can use for their home
• Most people will put this magazine on their coffee table, where they’ll see and be reminded of you. In fact, if you’re able to get the publisher to put a gift label on the magazines – something like “Compliments of Rich Rogala, Realtor®”, they’re likely to tell their friends and family about you as well.
• Finally, this gift will land in their mailbox every month, and they’ll continuously be reminded of you. If you’re keeping in touch in other ways too, you’re very likely to generate a lot of referrals from this one client, and will be the Realtor® they think of the next time they’re ready to move.

If so, this means that there’s a large group that would probably like to change homes, but have held back because they’re concerned about not getting a price for their home that is high enough to pay off their mortgage, or because they dread the idea of their home languishing on the market for months and months.

But with the new $6500 repeat buyers credit, you have a great reason to contact past clients and see how things have been for them. Since the law requires that they’ve been in their home for at least 5 years, this will be a group that you might not have spoken with much. (Hopefully you have been keeping in touch with them – you’re trying to build a referral based business!) But even if you haven’t, but have been wanting to catch back up with past clients, this is a great “in”.

Be creative, and come up with a catchy brochure or simple letter asking if they’ve been waiting for good news before they start their next home search, then give info on the new tax credit, and have them contact you to receive a Current market analysis of their home, and to learn more about the very affordable homes in their area.

If you don’t have past clients that fit the criteria of 5 years in their home, then talk to current and recent past clients. They can tell their friends about the new tax credit, and mention that you as their Realtor are keeping up to date, and can tell them all about it. Great way to generate referrals!

Technorati Tags: Rich Rogala, real estate marketing coach, 00 repeat buyer credit, real estate referral marketing tips

Local search is a competitive and increasingly critical space of the web that local businesses need to take seriously.

So today’s Web 2.0 Wrap-Up post is from Bill Gassett, Free SEO Through Google Local Business Pages. It’s a great post that offers lots of handy info on using Google Local business pages to improve how often and where you show up in Google’s local listings.

Check it out, and then take advantage of the free tools that Google offers. After all, if you want to be found online, a great place to start is through local listings. And Google gives you lots of tools to help you do just that!

Technorati Tags: Rich Rogala, online real estate marketing coach, local search for real estate agents, SEO for Realtors

My challenge to you is to find a way to use these stories in your marketing that fits your personality.

**********************************

This is our house. 24 Maple Drive…I love this house. I love that I taught my kids to ride their bikes in the driveway. I love that I slept with them in tents in the backyard. I love that we carved our initials in the tree out front. This house is warm in the winter, cool in the summer, and looks spectacular with Christmas lights. It’s a great house. I never want to move. But the thing I think I like best about this house are the voices I hear when I walk through the door.

This is my favorite quote from the classic movie, Father of the Bride.  This is the kind of thing that new homeowners imagine when they buy any home.  They may not say it out loud, for fear of sounding corny or unrealistic.  But don’t most of us want the fantasy life that George Banks so lovingly describes in this monologue? 

A home is more than just bricks, hardwood flooring and wall to wall carpeting, a patio and a backyard.  It’s the building blocks of people beginning their lives together and making memories.

The home plays a large part of this movie.  It’s where George Banks played basketball with his daughter in the driveway every night, where his little girl stood in her nightgown and socks at the top of the banister right before she slid down it to fall into her father’s arms, and, eventually, it ends up serving as the setting of his no-longer-little-girl’s wedding reception.

People love to hear about sentimental memories being made in the home.  It makes them believe that good old family values are still alive and well.

With that said, are you staying in contact with your home buyers after that monumental closing?  Do you know about the memories that they are making in their new homes?  Are they hosting family game nights, book club meetings, garage band practices, block parties and/or weddings?

Make it a point to stay in contact with them and find out. It would be the perfect feature to post on your website.  You could call it Home-Made Memories.  Have them send you a picture and tell a story. Or if you want to go all out, you can dedicate a whole blog to your happy clients.

To get an idea, take a look at this blog.  It’s about a young couple starting their life in their new home.  You can follow them as they go through the trials and tribulations of fixing up their 53 year-old home and throwing the cutest DIY backyard wedding you’ve ever seen.  There are a ton of other blogs out there like this one.  New homeowners love to talk about their home.  Why not let them use you as their outlet to do it?

People will love to see concrete evidence of happy homeowners that were made possible by you, their trusted advisor, friend and real estate agent.

After all, who doesn’t like to see that sappy home memories can happen in real life too?  Have your Real Estate Virtual Assistant setup a page on your website to dedicate to your Home-Made Memories or have them put together a special blog post for each client’s special memory. 

Your clients will appreciate your extra efforts and they’ll be sure to give out your name and give you their repeat business!

Best wishes!

Technorati Tags: Rich Rogala, real estate marketing coach, Real Support, real estate marketing tips

However, e-signatures are growing in popularity. Today’s weekend web 2.0 wrap-up is a blog post from a company called DocuSign, eSignatures: Your most asked questions – Answered!

If you’re tired of faxing or mailing forms, only to have your client miss a spot for their signature, check it out. This post gives you lots of good information on how e-signatures work, as well as integrating this system into the way you currently work with clients. Another good post from more, more on integration, is 3 Common Questions About electronic signatures.

If you’re already using a service like this, how are your clients responding to it? Do they notice? Do they like it and find it easy to use? Please share!

Technorati Tags: Rich Rogala, online real estate marketing coach, how to use e-signatures in real estate