It seems like just about every day there are new updates to Facebook pages!

Just yesterday there were 3 new changes that were announced that I am super excited about:

1. You can navigate and interact with other areas of Facebook as your Page. This means you can choose to receive notifications about fan activity, Like and comment on other Pages as your Page, and get your own News Feed where you can engage with the latest and most important news from other Pages you like.
2. There are new opportunities for Pages to share. You can feature photos of your Page’s most recent experiences at the top of your Page. You can highlight other Pages you are connected with as well as the people who are managing your Page.
3. Make your Page even more engaging for users. The “Everyone” filter on the Wall provides a new way for people to see the most interesting posts first. There is also a place for people to discover the friends and interests they have common with your Page.

You can read about the announcement here and view the new Page Manual here!

I upgraded all of our our pages yesterday and was very pleased with how easy it was. I really like the new features – especially the option to interact with other pages as YOUR page. I love this new feature – because I use Social Mention to monitor when people are mentioning our brand name or sharing our content (excellent tool – it’s similar to Google Alerts, but for social media.)

Previously, if I wanted to communicate with them or thank them – I would have to do so on their page with my personal profile – now I can do it as a page admin (i.e. I can leave a comment as “Inman News” or as “The Future of Real Estate Marketing Blog.”)

ALSO… and this is HUGE – you can NOW change the category of your page – WHOOO HOO!!! So if you prefer to not have a real estate page but more of a community page you can now do this with your page.

Last thoughts…

Every time Facebook has a change there is always the “scary” factor – the simple fact that they can change or edit anything at any given time. My advice has and always will be – don’t let ALL your content live on Facebook – if Facebook were to go away tomorrow where would your content live? This is why I highly recommend posting most or all of your content on your blog – preferably a WordPress blog.

Would love your thoughts on these new changes – leave me your feedback below!

Written by: Katie Lance, Senior Marketing Manager, Inman News @katielance

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Neil Schwartz has been in the real estate industry for over 30 years. He is the broker of Century 21 Masters, the #2 Century 21 office in the Nation. He blogs on neilschwartz.net, providing valuable information to agents regarding sales training, real estate marketing, social media, and technology.

We  create and maintain real estate blogs to attract and retain clients, however I’ve  noticed that many people’s blogs aren’t as effective as they could be. That is because many blogs aren’t motivating people to stick or remain on your website.

When considering if people are sticking to your website, you want to focus on the length of time someone visits your website and the number of pages they circulate through. In order to figure out your level of stickiness right now, take a look at your Google Analytics account or sign up for one (it’s free).

You want to focus on two things here, pages visited and Avg. time on site. If the pages visited are 1 or less, you need to make some changes because this means that people are only viewing one page and then leaving without clicking any other links.  The same thing goes if the average time on the site is less than 1 minute.

4 Ways to Increase the “Stickiness” of Your Blog

1. Fresh Blog Design

Using a fresh blog design goes a long way.. The more visually appealing your blog is, the more convincing it will be for someone to stay on your site and click around.

2.  Create A Lot of Inner Links

If you’re an experienced blogger, you’ve probably posted a ton of content throughout your site.  Unfortunately, most people can’t see it because it’s buried away. A great way to increase pages visited and average time on the site is to add links in your new article that are applicable to topics you discussed in the past. For instance, if you’re writing about interest rates being at an all time low, you can link a word or phrase in the article to an article you previously wrote about now being a great time to buy.

3. Encourage Comments

Sometimes the comments of a blog are more interesting and engaging than the articles themselves. End each blog post with an open-ended question that gets your visitors to think and comment. You should also reply to every single comment you get. When visitors see this, they know writing a comment isn’t a waste of time because you’ll actually respond. This creates a discussion, which again encourages even more comments.

4. Law of Reciprocity

Give some valuable and useful content away for free in exchange for their name and email address. “How to stage your home to sell within 30 days.” “How to chose the best Realtor for you and family” “A guide to moving” “Check list – things you need do before and after you sell your home”. If you provide your readers with something valuable, they’ll view you differently from other realtors. You’ll also capture their email address/phone numbers for lead follow up.

Implementing these techniques will increase the stickiness of your blog, which should produce more leads. What are some things you have done or are going to do to make your website “sticky”? Let me know if any of my suggestions work for you!

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Bill Risser is an Assistant Vice President and Branch Manager for Chicago Title in Phoenix Arizona. When he is not conducting workshops or closing escrows, he can be found at the movies with his wife or golfing with his son. Follow Bill on Twitter @billrisser or friend him on Facebook.

Recently, I completed what some of my friends called a foolhardy challenge. Back on June 11th, I posted a video blog entry and proudly proclaimed it was the first in a series of one hundred video posts in one hundred business days. Yep, I would shoot a video on a title/escrow or technology topic and post every business day. The first ten were easy enough, but by video twenty, I really wished I had challenged myself to thirty posts. Without missing a day, video one hundred was finally posted on November 4th.

The purpose of the challenge was to force myself to practice a couple different things. One was content creation. It is definitely the biggest challenge facing agents that decide to start blogging. Second, I wanted to learn more about shooting and editing video. Video is considered by many to be important for content and allowing readers to get a better feel for the blogger as a person.

My entire series was shot on a Flip Mino. I shot from a tripod on my desk, and edited first with Flip Share (the software that comes with the Flip) and later with Windows Movie Maker. I intentionally used free editing software, and a low budget camera to see what could be created at minimum expense.

I like the results. I did two multi-part tutorial series (one on HootSuite and one on Facebook). I created a video I intend to continue producing called 20 RE Professionals, 1 Question. I became comfortable with these video tools and I can now help agents learn and use them. Best of all, I now have a library of over 100 videos at my disposal. If a client sends me an e-mail asking for an explanation about the lenders policy of title insurance, I can reply with a link to the video post in my blog that answers the question.

Video number one hundred is below. It’s a blooper reel from my challenge. If you decide to work with video, don’t just toss those mistakes. I began categorizing and saving them, with the intention of eventually using them. I’d love to hear what you think…

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Matthew Shadbolt is the Director of Internet Marketing for The Corcoran Group, Manhattan’s largest real estate brokerage.

Follow Matthew on Twitter at @corcoran_group

One thing social media comes with a lot of, is advice. And perhaps big numbers. Very, very big numbers. I hear the word ’should’ a lot in conversations about how real estate professionals are shifting their thinking about their online marketing. There’s a lot of conflicting conversations directed at them from ‘gurus’, ‘evangelists’ ‘jedis’ and ‘ninjas’. I was recently presented with a business card that read ‘Sales Assassin’. Really? I asked if it was supposed to read ‘Sales Association’ and if there’d been a mix-up at the printers. I received an eye roll for my curiosity.

I hear that “your blog is the cornerstone of your business” or “you really should get into the foursquare thing”, even “if you’re not on Twitter your business is dead in 3 years”. Very often the agent is left feeling confused, overwhelmed and simply not knowing where to start. Is this you?

A side effect of this conflicting advice is the multiplication of problems that never existed before. Many agents feel like they have to ‘be everywhere’ in order to reach as many people as possible, so they start a blog, set up a fan page, begin a twitter account, upload videos, check-in everywhere, and generally do as many things as they possibly can to distract themselves from the process of helping people find homes. What happens is the multiplication and syndication of bad content. Poorly maintained blogs, fan pages that cry out to be hidden, adding open houses to Foursquare, or video tours that speak more about the agent than the home are unfortunately rampant within online real estate.

What’s missing in this conversation is consideration of the unfortunate recipient. The value of your content is not its value to you as the creator, but its value to those people RECEIVING those messages. It’s an old idea, but one very much brought to light recently through social media. If you’re not solving business problems through doing this, why are you really doing it?

Take status updates in Facebook or Twitter. If you’ve elected to use those platforms to build your business, what is the real, lasting value of what you’re writing? Is there one? How interesting is it REALLY that you have an open house this Sunday? Or that you checked-in at your office and blasted that announcement to all your connected social platforms?

It’s one of the hardest things we struggle with as marketers – the transition from ’selling’ to ‘helping’ as the key metric for your marketing success. It’s not a print vs. web thing, or even a web vs. mobile thing. It’s not how many fans you have, but what they’re doing, especially amongst themselves. It’s ‘how many people did we really help today’. We often hear the discussion of attempting to quantify the ROI of social media. Helping people isn’t the same as a transaction, and this makes people understandably nervous. Helping people doesn’t immediately pay the bills.

But which is more powerful for your business in the long-term? Answering someone’s question about a neighborhood, or showing them the same banner ad 50 times? Sharing information about where to buy the groceries they love nearby to an apartment they’re interested in, or a 4 line open house announcement in the newspaper?

Banner programs will drive a large volume of people into your site, especially if you buy them in a smart way. But what happens to those visitors once they arrive? Think about the metrics you look at when dissecting an ad program. A 0.2% click through rate is considered very, very healthy. 0.2%! And the likelihood of those people simply bouncing in and out of your site as they go between brokerage and syndication sites is all too common.

In many ways what we see make strong online presences is what real estate professionals have always done best. Sharing local expertise, personalized customer service, and the notion of genuinely helping someone find a fantastic home. Working online is no different, whatever the platform. So the idea of doing one thing well instead of 20 things poorly becomes something that many have begun to think about. Stretched too thin from a content perspective, many have elected to pick a platform, and build their businesses in a more focused, strategic and problem solving way.

Ask yourself, you’re doing a lot of things that are sucking your time right now. What problems are you really solving by doing this work?

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Written by Nick Lovegrove of limeyboy.com.

limeyboy.com has spent over a decade helping real estate agents get more from the web, whilst trying to insulate them from the really geeky parts. We help agents define their online brand through building real estate websites, integrated blogs and social networking strategies around them. We are dedicated to helping you find the web approachable and fun, and yet have no desire to turn you into a geek.

Website: http://www.limeyboy.com
Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/limeyboy
Twitter: @limeyboyweb

Regardless how wonderful your website is, it is really pretty hard to get people coming to your site and even harder getting them to come back for more. When I say hard I mean really hard.

“Is anybody out there? I have new content…”

Don’t take this the wrong way, but no one, that’s right no one, is going to make your real estate website their homepage, (so please stop asking me to place a link on your homepage to do this

You can get hits from showing up in online search, get a few hits from your offline mailings, but how do you get your website’s new content back in front of your readership when it’s updated? I guess hope for more search results and do another mailing? Hope that people regularly trawl through the browsers bookmarks? (Does anyone still use bookmarks?)

It’s true that your blog (you do have a blog right?) has an RSS feed, which (in theory) allows your content to be subscribable, but other than one’s mother, has anyone ever done that? (She hasn’t by the way). I would admit to being a fully signed up member of the geek fraternity, however, I have never subscribed to a blog by RSS. It just feels like too much commitment.

Subscribe by email is another option, but too many emails of the “Time to clean your gutters” variety and you have lost my interest/subscription. I am well aware of the state of my gutters thank you very much, the last thing I need is your emails clogging my email drainpipes!

So how does facebook fit into all of this? Well Facebook is one of the greatest gifts ever given to the website owner.

Why? Earlier I mentioned that no one, NO ONE, is going to make your site their homepage. So let’s accept that fact. So if we assume that they are not turning on their computer to be greeted by your content, we can pretty much assume that many of your site’s potential eyeballs are at facebook, every day. 500,000,000 users can’t be wrong.

So how do we get our content in front of them now that we know where they are?

Simple. We build a business page, then post tantalizing snippets from our blog and site, each time we update it. If those users have “Liked” our page, they will receive our updates as we post them in their personal walls.

You are able to essentially syndicate your content onto the facebook walls of those who asked for it. What’s great about the facebook wall is that it’s not like receiving an email, which you have to proactively delete or interact with on some level, at facebook you just leave it there and click on it if it’s of interest, if it’s not you just leave it.

Each of your facebook posts will include a link to your latest content on your website or blog and in one click they are back on your site. This is truly amazing for the website owner. It’s what we hoped RSS would be, but wasn’t.

We are seeing that facebook is rapidly moving up the ranks of sources of leads for real estate websites.

Oh and by the way, this will cost you nothing!

In fact, in many ways it makes more sense to market your facebook business page url over your web address. Website hits are great but, how do you keep people coming back for more?

This is one of the oldest conundrums on the internet. Facebook may well be the answer we have been waiting for. Getting a website visit can be fleeting and sporadic. There is much more longevity in someone who ‘liked’ your business page as the connectivity is ongoing.

And yet, we speak to so many real estate agents who are almost proud that they don’t facebook. To which we respond, it’s not about you, the point is your buyers and sellers are!

Before you print your next set of business cards, think about adding your facebook business page to it…above your website!

Do you find facebook to be more effective than email?

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Candy Evans is one of the nation’s leading real estate reporters, bloggers and consultants. She writes for AOL’s Housing Watch, Joel Kotkin’s The New Geography, and is now a guest blogger for Future of Real Estate Marketing (FOREM). She’ll soon be writing for Move.com. Candy holds a masters degree in journalism from Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism and has been a published writer for more than 25 years. She was a longtime contributing editor to Dallas’ D Magazine and sister pubs, and in 2007 founded the wildly successful Dallas real estate blog, DallasDirt, where she broke the news on where former president George W. Bush bought his Dallas home in 2008. She is the founder and creator of SecondShelters.com.

What is my absolute favorite part of real estate? Getting inside home after beautiful home to see what’s really behind those walls. I call it House Porn, bringing readers photos and descriptions of beautiful first and second homes I have been privileged to see. When I first started working on a real estate blog, I used to come home and want to completely re-decorate my own home. But I am of the generation raised by a mother who read Good Housekeeping, Family Circle and later, Architectural Digest. Of the three, I think more practical living tips came from GH and FC than AD. But AD was loaded with pages of beautiful homes that looked perfect, almost too perfect. My generation is still buying homes that way, web surfing over page after page of real estate porn, photos of granite counters, Wolf ranges, Kohler sinks and walnut floors. That 90 percent of all real estate search starts on the web surfing House Porn is no shocker. We Boomers have been looking at House Porn in magazines since Eisenhower.

Then comes Generation X, our kids. These are the ones who we empowered and hot housed and told they could be anything in the world because they were/are the most wonderful creatures, ever, gosh darn it. This is the generation that will have no one tell them what to do, not mom, not bosses, not government. It is OK, however, to be told you are a genius and the world is so lucky to have you. These kids have parents who call bosses and yell at them for making Johnny work too hard. So will this generation be into House Porn? After all, the web was coming around as they were growing up.

I think they will be into House Porn, maybe even more than their parents. The difference: they will have to make up their own mind, and not listen to agents or so-called “experts”.  They will have to verify everything ten times. Never mind what that mortgage broker says — if it doesn’t get explained on the internet, it doesn’t exist.

Now Gen Y, totally different story. These kids were not hot housed, they were warehoused and watched and told never to cross the street without a brigade on duty. They never played by themselves but had pre-arranged play-dates with kids who were drug-tested and screened for their IQ.

A rapid consumption generation, but they recycle. And they have a fear of trust because we were always afraid of something bad happening to them. These are the Facebook kids, who carry their friends in their cell phones . Are they going to utilize House Porn? You bet. Not only will they look at photos of homes and select favorite rooms, they will share these rooms with friends on Facebook and Foursquare, and with friends from across the world. Don’t forget these kids have been to Europe and the Middle East and came back oh so glad to be home, but their lives are all about relationships. Not only will Gen Y buy 6 to 12 homes around the world, they’ll be social nomads and re-unite with friends everywhere they go. It will be very, very important for this group to obtain the approval of their peers, get their blessing on Facebook and other platforms. And of course those listings are going to be passed to peers – what else? This House Porn is perfectly safe with this generation, as long as everyone “likes” it.

Are you into House Porn?

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Candy Evans is one of the nation’s leading real estate reporters, bloggers and consultants. She writes for AOL’s Housing Watch, Joel Kotkin’s The New Geography, and is now a guest blogger for Future of Real Estate Marketing (FOREM).  She’ll soon be writing for Move.com.  Candy holds a masters degree in journalism from Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism and has been a published writer for more than 25 years. She was a longtime contributing editor to Dallas’ D Magazine and sister pubs, and in 2007 founded the wildly successful Dallas real estate blog, DallasDirt, where she broke the news on where former president George W. Bush bought his Dallas home in 2008. She is the founder and creator of SecondShelters.com.

Whoa there, bet you read that headline twice.

My point exactly.

As a journalist and real estate editor, I created a blog for our local city magazine’s web site with ZERO MARKETING DOLLARS.  No ads, no billboards, just an occasional link from one of the other blogs, IF I was lucky. Thus I had to learn how to write salaciously, weave in the real estate information with zippy headlines and topics, even some scandal, if possible.

In other words, I had to sell a blog like a newspaper or magazine: great content, catchy heads.

And yet, we have to pay homage to the Search Engine Gods and load SEO into as many graphs as possible, which can sometimes make for boring writing.

That’s where being an old-fashioned wordsmith comes in handy, handier, perhaps, than all the high tech gadgets in the world.

How do you do it?

1. Don’t pontificate. Your readers want facts and information, not what happened to you at the last NAR convention when you almost lost your cell phone.  Give them information – rich facts – in an earnest, honest form.
2. Think of unique ways to say what it is you are going to say. For example, a recent post on how Plano, Texas, was recently listed as one of the safest cities in the nation is worthy of a post. It’s also big news because many of us in North Texas remember all too well a different perspective on Plano, from about fifteen years ago when Plano teens  were dying from overdosing on heroin. Would you write: “Plano, Texas Makes Safest City List”? Here’s what I said: “Plano is So Boring. No One Ever Gets Killed Up There.”
3. Good blogging has an element of drama to it. A tease.  One of my most successful guest posts was from an agent we called “Secret Agent” complete with logo. Up next: Real Estate’s Witness Protection Program.
4. If you have a lot to say, don’t hesitate to keep the convo going, much like a “to be continued…” series in several different posts. This will keep your readers coming back.
5. Good writing is like music, it has a flow. Look at your sentences carefully when you proof and feel the music of the words. Don’t repeat words; use a thesaurus. Alternate longer and shorter sentences. Use more verbs for action.
6. Be human. Admit your errors even as you engage your readers. Maybe your first thoughts were not entirely clear on that topic, maybe you’ve changed your mind as a result of the interactive communication you’ve just had! Go and grow with it, and treat readers like they are having coffee with you at Starbucks. Laugh, tease, inform, exchange. That’s what successful blogging is all about.

How do you keep your blog posts exciting?

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Guest Blogger, Geordie Romer is a real estate broker in the mountain town of Leavenworth Washington where he specializes in selling vacation homes to folks in the Seattle tech scene. Geordie has been blogging about Leavenworth Real Estate since 2005.

As tech savvy real estate pros we all spend an inordinate amount of time and energy making sure we get found in the search engines. Of course, there are a few places you probably don’t care to make an appearance:

Photo By Bark

1. KeepinitRealtor – It’s a little sad that this snarky blog hasn’t posted since 2009. They describe themselves as “a non-profit organization devoted to championing and promoting excellence in all forms of real estate advertising and design.” In reality, they are championing the use of bad puns in real estate ads. Getting mentioned here is probably not a good thing.
2. Lovelylisting.com- There are some real doozies here. I think this is the best (worst?) collection of bad listing photos on the web these days.
3. Seattle Bubble’s “Real Actual Listing Photos” – Yet another ongoing collection of bad listing photos.
4. Your State’s List of Infractions (California for example) – It’s one thing to be made fun of by a bubble blogger, but being on this list is probably the worst press you can get.
5. Craigslist Rant and Rave A few years ago, I saw a competitor’s name show up here and it wasn’t pretty. Though I’d love to show you some examples, “Craigslist postings may be explicitly sexual, scatalogical, offensive, graphic, tasteless, and/or not funny. “

What are some websites that you hope to never appear on?

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Marty Boardman is a Realtor and real estate investor in Gilbert, Arizona.  He’s the Chief Financial Officer for Rising Sun Capital Group, LLC, a real estate investment firm that buys and sells distressed real estate in the Phoenix metro area.  He’s also an accredited instructor for the Arizona Academy of Real Estate.  You can read about his successes and failures on his blog, www.freerealestateeducation.com or contact him directly at marty@risingsuncapitalgroup.com.

I see dead people.  That’s what Haley Joel Osment’s character said in M. Night Shyamalan’s first box office hit called ‘The Sixth Sense’.  It’s been 11 years since I saw the movie and I still remember that line.  Why is that?  If you’ve never seen the movie I don’t want to spoil it for you but this cinematic masterpiece had one of the most memorable endings of all time.

When I first embarked upon my quest to become a blogger (about 17 months ago) I posted this question on a Linked In question forum:  What is the single most important thing I can do to drive traffic to my blog? The answer may surprise you.  It wasn’t search engine optimization or frequent posting.  Almost everyone agreed that the best way to drive traffic to my blog was to write good content; much like M. Night Shyamalan did when he penned the ‘The Sixth Sense’ script in 1999.  So before I enter the blogosphere I remind myself that every post should:

1. Tell a story.
2. Have a beginning, middle and a memorable ending.
3. Contain me, us, my subject, me, us.

Tell a story

The best way to tell a story is to become a voracious reader.  Read everything from newspapers to blogs to books and even People magazine.  It’s amazing how much context you can give your posts when you incorporate funny stories, insightful anecdotes and timely real-world news.  Since I started blogging I’ve written about autopsies, roller coasters, golf, the Loch Ness Monster, Tiger Woods and Santa Claus.  I’ve managed to do this while keeping with a real estate theme.

Have a beginning, middle and a memorable ending

The other night I read my daughters Mary Poppins.  This story is perfectly constructed and engages the reader from page one.  Best of all, it incorporates a nice moral at the end.

I’m not saying you have to write a cliff hanger every time you blog or be the next Mark Twain.  To begin, share a story – it could be funny or sad – just make it engaging.  If you don’t know a good story then find one (that’s what the internet is for.)  The middle is the easy part; it’s your subject, the meat in the sandwich.  Your ending should evoke emotion (laughter, tears or at the very least an “ah-ha” moment.)  Again, if you can’t find the right words for your ending then go find some.  I love to use www.brainyquote.com whenever I’m stuck.

Contain me, us, my subject, me, us.

I discovered the me, us, my subject, me, us formula by accident.

From 2002-2006, I accumulated over $16 million in real estate assets.  Then suddenly in August of 2007 the music stopped and I didn’t have a chair.  It only took me about 6 months to lose my assets (with emphasis on the first three letters of the word.)  I was forced to stop pretending everything was going well when I traded in my Mercedes Benz for a 95’ Honda Accord.  It then occurred to me that few real estate professionals talk about their failures because it’s bad for business.  Rather than hide from my past I decided to share it with others on my blog.  And you want to know something funny?  By outwardly discussing my successes AND failures online I’ve discovered I can connect with people on a much deeper level.

These days whenever possible I begin a new post by talking about a mistake or shortcoming I have that a broader audience can identify with (the me, us part of the formula.)  I then jump into real estate stuff (my subject) and finish up with how the reader and I can apply the information (me, us.)

Does it work?  Yes, most of the time.  Just be memorable because that’s what keeps your readers coming back.  How do you do that?  By helping others learn.  It’s like Andy Rooney once said, “Most of us end up with no more than five or six people who remember us. Teachers have thousands of people who remember them for the rest of their lives.”

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MIKE BOWLER, SR. has been in the real estate business (Lansing, MI) for the past 32 years. During that time he’s educated and consulted hundreds of REALTORS. Mike is a former owner/broker of Coldwell Banker Bowler Real Estate and is currently an Associate Broker for Coldwell Banker Hubbell Briarwood in Lansing Michigan, who bought his company in 2001. He also owns his own company PRETEC (Professional Resources, E-Business, Technology, Education, & Consulting) and is also an avid fan of social media in the workplace. Mike was named in 2009’s Top 25 Most Connected Real Estate Professionals by PROXIOand selected by Inman News as one of the 50 Most Influential Online.

OK, that might sound a little crude for a title, however it’s “Fun Friday” and I was told to make this post fun.  With all the amazing changes, challenges, and innovations coming at us real estate agents in this industry, it’s difficult to find much fun in the fact that we need to be thinking about and doing something about the following everyday:

• Websites
• IDX
• Blogs
• Social media
• Having a profile on various portals
• Syndication of our listings

Let alone…

• Bank foreclosures
• Mitigation
• Short sales
• Price reductions

Most of the items above didn’t even exist a few years back, however that’s what makes this business so much fun and yet challenging.  We have an opportunity every day to learn something new.  So, if you take offense to the list above or the video below and think I’m full of it, you can “Just Go Google Yourself” and see what you find.  Happy Fun Friday!

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