Rent or Own? Why are most Realtors renting?

Wordpress and blogging for realtors and real estate

Wordpress and blogging for realtors and real estateThe National Association of Realtors and Realtors in general are famous for posing the question “Is it better to Rent or Own?” then there are tons of reasons showing why buying is better than renting.  But do they practice what they preach?

What about Internet marketing? Are real estate professionals owning their brand or are they “renting space”.

The secret to successful Internet Marketing is to drive clients to your site through inbound marketing.

I was just on LinkedIn and responding to a question that Frank put out:

I am looking to take advantage of Internet Marketing. Looking for advertisement and Lead Generation. Checked out several: Real Estate Animals (Expensive), Trulia (INTERESTED), and Zillow.
Looking for recommendations and feedback. Wanting the most offered for the price. Just started working with clients that were searchin on Zillow. All the properties they had interest in seeing were off the Market. Please advise

Here is my response to Frank:

I did some internet marketing with some of these sites, Google, and Facebook. Frank, I want to tell you that the secret to making all of this work is to have good inbound marketing.

You want to OWN not RENT space for your clients. When you are paying these folks for ads, the leads stop when you stop paying rent. You want to post on your website.

At http://RealSocialPros.com where I blog 2-3 times a week and I can see the traffic and the google rankings coming in.

If you use us, or someone else, get a good SEO optimized website that YOU control. post about your stuff, or what you are doing, real estate in your city or subdivisions, and let Google do the rest. It will take a little time, but within days or weeks, you will see something happen and you will start getting organic traffic and leads from those folks.

It takes longer, and is more work, but it is cheaper and better.

 

I am going to write a post about the secrets to successful blogging for real estate agents, but for now, there are some basic things you need to keep in mind.

  1. You want all of your marketing to point back to your website/blog.  This is what YOU own.
  2. If you use sites like LinkedIn, Facebook, ActiveRain, RealTown, Zillow, Trulia or even Realtor.com, just be sure all of it comes back to YOUR own real estate website or blog.
  3. Pick a niche.  Don’t try to use the keywords “residential real estate” or “Miami real estate”.  Those are TOO huge.  Get something small that you can defend.  Try “Rogers real estate” or “Shadow Valley homes”.  Those are small enough to own.
  4. When you start your site post often and use keywords so you develop some credibility.
  5. Include a photo in each post.
  6. Use an IDX feed like IDXbroker.  This puts all the homes in your MLS on your site and really drives leads to you. (and gives you marketing materials)
  7. Post a video for at least every 10 posts.

We will stop with those 7, but I am going to make a series about how to get more leads to your real estate website or blog.

Be sure to invest time developing your own site or hire someone to do it.  We can do it for you.  The great thing is that as your site moves up the search engine rankings, you will get more and more traffic and spend less and less money.  You will also get better more focused leads.

If you want to have us setup a great Real Estate lead producing website using an IDX feed just click here.

Sign up here to get your Website with IDX and get valuable leads

just click here at idx.realsocialpros.com and signup today!

 

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4 reasons to use WordPress for your real estate website or blog

Agentpress wordpress for brokers

4 reasons to use WordPress for your Real Estate website
Why should a real estate agent use WordPress for a blog or website?  To promote your own real estate brand.

1. Search engine optimization for real estate professionals.

SEO – Search engine optimization. This is what brings traffic to you thorough search engines. We use the words “google juice” around our house to describe it. Read Matt Cutts’ definitive post about the SEO benefits of using WordPress here.

 

2. Content and updating

With WordPress as the foundation for your blog or website, especially if you are in the real estate business, you have the following benefits:
- No webmaster – updating, changing, and adding more content is super simple. You just use the built-in tools. You don’t have to wait a week or pay thousands of dollars each time you want to add a new listing or posting more information for your clients.

- NO HTML – There is no need to take HTML classes or buy Dreamweaver. You just login and post.

3. Tons of WordPress extensions

All of the available extensions make WordPress a natural choice for realtors to build a great website or blog. There are tons of themes, plugins, widgets, polls, and more. All of these extensions allow you to include video, images, podcasts or anything you can imagine to help build your business and bring you great leads.

4. Integration – the last thing we touch on here is all the integration to other websites that you love.

Everyone loves WordPress integration to Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, Digg, YouTube, and all the social networking tools you need.

I love the tie-ins to Mailchimp, Constant Contact, Aweber, and other CRM packages. There is no better way to keep all your info on your clients up to date.

For Realtors there are also tools to tie in to Zillow, Trulia, IDX, and other real estate specific tools.

Check out our plan for hosting your real estate website by clicking here.

We will set your site up and give you your own email on your own domain, install WordPress and install a custom theme with all the social networking bells and whistles for just $98.

If you want to get your site going today, just click here to get to our PayPal information or shoot us an email at info@realsocialpros.com