Home Buying PowerPoint Presentation

Home buying seminars can be a great business-building tool for real estate agents. They're educational, versatile, and a good way to get a lot of qualified prospect into one room!

The way I see it, you four basic things to make a home buying seminar successful:

1. Audience
2. Awareness
3. Materials
4. Delivery

Audience & Awareness
You grow your audience by making them aware of your seminar. You promote the seminar by any means possible -- press releases, local news, postcards, email, website, etc. Through these channels, you explain how valuable your seminar will be.

And of course, it will be valuable because you've got the right materials and delivery...

Materials & Delivery
No home buying seminar is complete without visuals. Whether you use a home buying PowerPoint presentation, a white board, or video, you need visuals to reinforce your lesson. Handouts are great too, because they give your audience something to study after they leave ... and something to remember you by!

A final tip -- If you're serious about using seminars to bolster your business, start small but aim big. Your first event might be standing room only, or there might be empty seats. But keep at it. Make your seminar a regular event. Try to get some local news coverage. Find some partners (non-competitive) to help you.

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Labels: Real Estate Marketing

SEO for Real Estate Agents - The Research Portal

Are you serious about learning search engine optimization? Want to build a real estate SEO program based on expert advice?

Then build yourself an SEO research portal.

Here's how to do it:

1. Create a personalized My Yahoo page (or the Google or MSN version, whichever you prefer).

2. Remove all the basic info (news, weather, etc.) to start with a blank slate.

3. If you already have one of these pages, create a new one just for SEO purposes. You'll understand why shortly.

4. Use the "Add Content" feature to add RSS feeds from SEO information websites (list below).

5. When you've added your chosen feeds, you're done. Whenever the originating website publishes new articles through their RSS feed, your research portal will be updated automatically!

Now you simply log into your SEO research portal whenever you want, and you've got the latest search engine optimization news and advice at your fingertips. Nice, huh?

Some SEO feeds to get you started:
Here are some of the feeds I have in my research portal. Remember, look for the RSS subscription button on these pages:

Search Engine Watch

SEOmoz Daily Blog

SEO Book - Official Blog

SEO Roundtable

Jim Boykin's Blog

Until next time...

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Labels: Real Estate SEO

Real Estate Marketing for New Agents

Are you a new agent in search of real estate marketing advice? If so, you've come to the right place.

ArmingYourFarming.com has always had plenty of marketing advice on site. But I've recently completed Phase 1 of a learning center specifically for new agents. It walks you through the process of creating a marketing plan, deciding what forms of marketing to use, and executing the plan.

There's also an "Ask a Question" button under each topic so you can do just that -- ask a question for further information!

Learn More:
Real Estate Marketing for New Agents

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Labels: Real Estate Marketing, Real Estate PR

Behold - The Real Estate SEO Wagon Wheel

Search engine optimization can be a pretty dry topic to try and teach someone. So I recently created a visual learning tool to help reinforce an important SEO lesson.

The Wagon Wheel of Real Estate SEO takes the many different elements of an SEO program (the elements that I recommend, anyway) and puts them into a visual metaphor ... a wagon wheel.

You can click on the wheel's hub and each of its spokes for a pop-up lesson on that topic.

By having many parts (or spokes) in your real estate SEO program, you'll roll right along toward SEO success. Sorry couldn't resist.

** View the Wagon Wheel **

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Labels: Real Estate SEO

Creating a Real Estate Blog

Blogs are a great way to round out your website with fresh content. In fact, if you're a real estate agent with a marketing or educational website, I can't imagine a reason not to start a blog.

First, let's dispel a blog myth:

With regards to search engine visibility, blogs are not magical. They will not pounce on first-page Google rankings in no time flat, they way some people think they will. But they are super easy to publish -- and that's the SEO advantage they have over regular websites.

By default, blog programs (such as WordPress and Blogger) create clean, well-coded web pages. And they do it literally at the click of a button. Just type your blog post -- like I'm doing now -- click your "Publish" button, and you've got a new web page.

Now repeat that three times a week for a year, and you've got well over 150 web pages of quality content. That's the search engine benefit of blogs ... an easy way to publish new web content often.

How to use your blog:

So what do you publish in your blog? Well, this question is only limited by your imagination. How about property listings, current interest rates, or special events ... or all three?

Some blogging programs let you create categories (like sub-sections of a regular website), so you can easily divide your topics and posts. By default, all blogs are chronological in nature, which makes them perfect for a "What's New" approach to publishing.

Like I said, I can't think of a reason not to use a blog. Have questions about getting started? Post a questions at AdviceForAgents.com.

-Brandon

Labels: Real Estate Blogs

Agents Online: 5 Ways to Dominate the Web

I just looked at my website log and noticed there's a "new sheriff" in town among the real estate marketing articles.

The article entitled Agents Online: 5 Ways to Dominate the Web has become the most popular article on the site for the last month, based on page visits / page views.

Does this indicate a trend in real estate marketing? Are more agents shifting their focus to online marketing strategies? Or is it simply a more effective title than other articles?

You can be the judge:

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Read the article here
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Good luck and good marketing!

-Brandon