Online Real Estate Forums - How to Create & Promote Your Own Real Estate Forum

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by Brandon Cornett

Most real estate agents these days are familiar with the online forums. In fact, there are a number of online forums specifically for real estate agents, such as AgentsOnline.net.

So let me ask you this. What if you started your own online real estate forum that catered to home buyers and sellers within your city or town? Can you imagine the business-building potential of a high-traffic real estate forum frequented by home buyers and sellers in your area ... a forum that you owned, managed and moderated?

Right now, some of you will be saying, "That sounds great, but I have no I.T. department. How could I possibly pull it off?"

While this approach does require a lot of effort, it's certainly within reach of most real estate agents. In fact, I'm going to show you how to create your own real estate forum in less than 48 hours. I'll also show you how to generate traffic to your real estate forum ... which is the whole point, after all.

But before we get to the technical side of things, let's talk some more about benefits of having an online real estate forum of your very own.

Benefits of a Real Estate Forum

I can sum up the benefits of hosting your own online real estate forum in two words — traffic and leads. In the early stages of your forum, you should put lead generation and marketing into the back seat, and focus instead on building the user base / traffic levels of your real estate forum.

Later, once you have quite a few people using your forum on a regular basis, you can begin to implement some lead generation techniques.

Here's the key to this. Just by hosting a real estate forum specific to your city, and by answering people's questions in a helpful manner, you will generate quite a few leads from the forum. To increase the amount of leads you get, you can implement other techniques as well (such as an "Ask the Agent" feature).

But the thing to remember is that you want your real estate forum to serve people first, and to function as a lead-generation tool second. Trust me — if, over time, you build up a large audience for your online real estate forum and you help people with their real estate questions ... the leads will come!

That's the primary benefit of hosting your own forum. Suddenly, your real estate website is more than just another agent website. It's a useful tool for buyers and sellers, a meeting place for research-minded consumers, and an online dialogue between you and your ideal audience.

You cannot put a price tag on those benefits!

Creating Your Online Forum

The first thing you will need is a forum software program. These are the all-inclusive software programs that you upload onto your web host to have an instant forum for real estate purposes (though you'll obviously have to customize it after uploading).

There are quite a few forum programs out there, and they range in price from free to a couple hundred dollars. As with anything else, you get what you pay for when choosing a forum software program.

Free forum programs include phpBB and miniBB. If you want to evolve your real estate forum over time, and I recommend that you do, I recommend using a more full-featured program such as vBulletin. Here's a comparison of forum software, if you really want to get technical.

Once you've chosen a forum program for your real estate forum, you simply download it to your computer and then upload it onto your web hosting account.

• If your real estate forum is going to have its own domain (such as MyRealtyForum.com), then you'll install the forum program files into the main / root directory of your web host.
• If your real estate forum is going to be an extension of your current website (such as MyRealtySite.com/forum), then you would create a subdirectory / subfolder called "forum" or whatever, and then put all the forum program files in that subdirectory.

Here's where things get mildly technical. If you're using a full-featured program for your real estate forum (such as vBulletin), you will have to create a database in your web hosting account. The first time I read about this, I thought it was way beyond my technical expertise. But then I went into my hosting account (GoDaddy) and saw that I could create a database simply by clicking a few buttons and giving the database a name.

If you're not particularly web savvy, but you really want a real estate forum of your own, don't let this technical jargon scare you. Anyone with basic web development skills can do all of this for you. So if you can't handle it, you could probably pay somebody to do it for less than $300.

Customizing Your Online Real Estate Forum

So now you have your forum program installed onto your web host. What's next? Well, first you'll want to customize your real estate forum to make it unique.

Again, don't let this notion scare you. By "customize" I don't mean you'll have to do a lot of design work. Forum software programs come ready to use, right out of the virtual "box." But you do want to perform some basic customization and setup.

Here are some of the things you'll want to do to make your online real estate forum look nice and function properly.

• Create a name / logo for your forum, as well as an informative tagline. The tagline (when combined with the logo) should tell people what your online real estate forum is all about. Example of a forum name and tagline: "Austin Real Estate Today: An online classroom for Austin home buyers and sellers."
• Spend some time organizing your real estate forum by creating sections and subsections. Once you've logged into your forum admin area, this should be pretty simple. Normally, you will create some kind of "create category" button and then give it a name. Easy.
• Give extra thought to how you create and organize the categories of your real estate forum. It's a lot easier to get it right up front, rather than try to rearrange things down the road. Start with simple, broad categories like "Home Buyers" and "Home Sellers." Then break each broad category down into subcategories.
• Another great thing about forum software programs is that they come with auto-reply emails and everything (for when new users sign up). It's wise to customize the "welcome aboard" message within these emails, so you can tell people what all they can do with your online real estate forum.

Promoting Your New Forum

So now you have your customized real estate forum online and you're all ready for visitors. Now what? Well, you have some work to do. Setting up a real estate forum is actually the easy part (though you may not think so after spending hours tweaking and customizing the forum). Generating traffic and encouraging participation is another thing entirely.

I don't say this to discourage you. If you refer back to the "benefits" part of this tutorial, you'll remember that all of this work is worth the effort. I only say it so you'll realize the need for persistent promotion of your new forum. You've heard the phrase "build it and they will come." Unfortunately, that phrase does not apply to online real estate forums ... or to websites in general, for that matter.

So you've got some work to do in order to generate traffic to your new forum. No worries. I'm going to show you how to go about it.

With that out of the way, here are some tips for promoting your online real estate forum to your target audience.

7 Ways to Market Your New Forum

• Submit an online press release to announce your forum. Focus on the benefits of your forum, the fact that it's the only one in town (if it is), the interactivity and other unique features.
• Send the same press release to your local news channels (print, television, radio, etc.), along with a personal note to the editor / publisher. Try to get the phone number or email address of the person who does the real estate segment, and contact them directly.
• Do a direct mail blast to your target audience. Again, promote the benefits of the real estate forum, the knowledge-sharing aspects, etc. Include an eye-catching thumbnail image of your forum on the direct mail postcard.
• If you have an email list of current, past and potential clients, send out a notice about the new forum.
• Add the forum to the main menu of your website and/or blog. To really draw attention to it, you may want to create an eye-catching graphic / button on the home page of your website.
• If you have colleagues in related industries (mortgage, builders, etc.), ask them if they would mention the forum to their audience. Ask them to link to the forum from their websites.
• Rinse and repeat as needed. The more you promote your forum, the more participation you'll have. The more participation you have, the more business you will eventually generate.

There you have it, a guide to creating, customizing and promoting your very own online real estate forum ... and don't forget those benefits of having your own forum. It takes some effort to get the forum going strong, but you cannot put a price tag on having your own community of real estate shoppers!

Good luck with your real estate forum and your business in general.

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