Converting a “lead” into a “client” is about people and relationships, earning trust, being helpful and providing value. An automated system providing new listings daily provides a service but remember, this service is available on virtually all broker sites and many agent sites. If someone signs up for this service on your site, consider yourself privileged to have obtained that lead and follow up personally to add value and build trust.

It’s really not much different than floor duty. You know how some agents seem to consistently “luck-out” on floor duty? Those agents know how to make appointments… they’re making their own luck.

To add value think about what isn’t available in the automated emails. First thing that comes to my mind is price reductions and days on market. This info is only available when working with a real estate sales professional. Narrowing down a list of properties in a price range to a specific school district or other more personal criteria that isn’t available from a general IDX search. (cul-de sacs, walk to town, beach , train, etc.) Best deals, best values, like that really well priced home on the block with larger more expensive homes.

The agents who boast how many clients they get from their web sites are just like those duty-desk agents. They know how to recognize opportunity, follow through and make their own luck.

Related link: 10 Days of Pain Conversion Method

The message: Everything you need to know to enhance the value of your home.

Target audience: Responsible Proactive Homeowners

NAR had a huge budget to research their market (13 studies, thousands of realtors & consumers) and consulted with the best of the best and so on… This is what they came up with:

Personal, informative information that would make their target audience “want” to engage. Their website strategy: Give the consumers tools and resources they need to actively and easily manage their home investment and to become “Home Smart”.

Watch the presentation if you want to see the step by step process of developing an informational website for a target audience with the goal of making homeowners want to engage in a relationship.

Apply these principles to your own blog.

When it comes to writing engaging content, “you” is the most powerful word in the English language, because people are ultimately interested in fulfilling their own needs.

via The Two Most Important Words in Blogging | Copyblogger.

The Cluetrain Manifesto “We are not seats or eyeballs or end users or consumers. We are human beings – and our reach exceeds your grasp, deal with it.

The WeWe Monitor Customer Focus Calculator Enter your URL and copy name or your name to see your WeWE score. (ha ha I said wewe)

Open your web mail. Click on “settings” “display settings”
Click the “other” tab and put a check where it says “Use full-time ssl mode” (at the bottom)
And that should do it!

Remember to click on your @reply tab to see tweets directed to you.

@Replies To You

If someone @replies you—note, this means they start a tweet with @yourusername—you will see that in your main timeline if you follow the person. But you’ll see it in your replies tab, whether you follow them or not (unless you’ve blocked them)

via Twitter Blog: How @replies work on Twitter (and how they might).

In his Facebook post, Parker kept the focus on the snake, but mentioned in passing that he’d stumbled upon it at a listing he represented: a horse farm in southern Boone County.

“I did not go out and say, ‘I just listed a horse farm, the price is $800,000,’ ” Parker said. Instead, he said, he posted the picture with the expectation that he’d get many comments along the lines of, “Oh, I hate snakes.”

Which he did. He also got two calls from potential clients, asking, “Where is that horse farm?”

That kind of indirect marketing is the key to being perceived as authentic on social networking sites, Parker said.

via ‘Happy birthday’ from your market | Real Estate and Technology News for Agents, Brokers and Investors | Inman News.

The MLS
Turns out, MLSs employ rather lots of people, including executives who are drawing a very nice income from heading up said MLSs. Are we to believe that these people will voluntarily march down to the unemployment line so that RPR can make millions?

Fact is, once RPR is in your market, every Realtor will use it. It’s that good. There isn’t an MLS in the country (yet) that can release a competing product. Over time — and a rather short period of time at that — every member of that MLS will wonder why he is paying those MLS fees.

The Brokerage
After RPR, every single member of NAR will have the best backend agent tool ever created. If you’re a Coldwell Banker agent, there will be little reason to go to CREST or to the CB Extranet site to get tools and data. RPR will have it for you.

The mapping tool on RPR kicks the bejesus out of anything I’ve seen offered by any major franchise or major brokerage. And the local mom-and-pop will have it, just as your agents will, except that the local guy will be paying 90/10 splits since he doesn’t have the overhead you have.

Think your big brokerage office will be attracting or keeping more top agents? Based on what?

via The coming civil war in real estate | Real Estate and Technology News for Agents, Brokers and Investors | Inman News.

via 5 reasons you don’t need Web analytics | Real Estate and Technology News for Agents, Brokers and Investors | Inman News.