Fortunately, following the Google Analytics example, Twitter will not be charging for its analytics feature, which was a concern as the company’s execs had alluded to the feature’s potential revenue as a possible business model in the past. Ross Hoffman of Twitter’s development team commented that Twitter would also incorporate the technology it’s using to measure tweet “Resonance” for search results and other similar features.

When the idea was first broached in December, the announcement of the Website Analytics feature was in reference to use of commercial Twitter accounts, which you would have to pay for, that contain premium features like multiple Twitter authors and an Analytics Dashboard – similar to LinkedIn’s premium accounts. However, this notion was also born out of the idea that Twitter would one day be a paid service, and as of yet there doesn’t seem to be any indication that there will be a Twitter business model.

Since that late 2009, Twitter has also matured significantly. It has been steadily competing with third party developers, and the company has consistently grown by purchasing and launching new software, such as mobile products. As for the Analytics offering, the Twitter App lists 151 applications to better understand the Twitter component of your real estate internet marketing campaign. This is great news for those of us in real estate marketing to help manage and understand Twitter presences.

Source Article: Twitter Analytics

We’ve all been there. We get a new website, new blog, and get inspired with new business growth and possibilities that we cannot contain our blogging excitement.

Then a month goes by. Then six. And we can get disenchanted with the idea of consistent blogging.

It’s okay.

To get back on track, here are some blogging ideas to get re-inspired and to keep blogging on a regular basis again – which will lead to fresh content, optimized pages, search-engine friendly pages and ultimately more leads to your website. Which is exciting.

1. Talk about the future of real estate by commenting on current developments within the industry.
2. Explain why it’s important for everyone to care about real estate.
3. List online resources for fellow real estate agents.
4. Make a list of the top myths about buying or renting a home through an agency and debunk them.
5. Attend real estate conventions or networking events and report on them.
6. Do real estate market comparisons for your area, the national market, and abroad.
7. Occasionally go off topic and link an issue from your life back to your business, i.e.“10 Reasons Real Estate is like A Box of Chocolates”.
8. Pose this question to your followers: “What would you like to change in [insert your product or service here]?”
9. Speak with other leaders in real estate and guest blog for each other.
10. Write a book review dealing with your topic that depicts thinking about real estate in an outside-of-the-box way.
11. Create short video to change things up – this can be fun, or you speaking about your business.
12. Take a common issue many people care about and explain how it relates to your business.
13. See which blog post received a lot of hits or attention and write a follow-up.
14. Look into social media sites (if you haven’t already) like Digg, StumbleUpon or Technorati and find out what’s trending right now and put a property-spin to it.
15. Tweet a question and blog about your favorite answers.

Blog away!

Source article and more ideas here.

Please join us for our next LogicClassroom session 2/9/10 on Search Engine Optimization 101. Please email Katrina to attend.

Please name for me 1 thing that you do in the same way that you did back in 1980. Just one thing that’s done in the same way. Something that hasn’t been affected by technology, made faster, or eliminated altogether? Is there anything at all that’s the same?

Do you communicate the same way you did back in 1989? The same phone? The same typewriter? Has your job been changed by technology? Of course it has. If it has not, you’re probably a painter. Even if you’re a painter, I’m sure the way you sell your painting has probably changed. Unless you’re that guy on the street corner selling your art, and I suspect, if you’re reading this post, that’s not you.

What about your marketing campaign, are you marketing the same way you were in 1989? If you said yes, then you need to wake up!

Best practices in real estate marketing have changed a lot. The unfortunate fact is that lots of real estate agents are marketing themselves and their services in the same way they always have. If the only significant affect of technology to your marketing has been the way you generate listing sheets, it’s time to get with it.

The really shocking thing is that there are lots of BIG real estate firms that still haven’t embraced the internet. They’re not leveraging SEO or PPC or social media. If they are, it’s a small percentage of their marketing budget.

Developers are some of the biggest culprits out there, or I should say, it’s the marketing firms that work with developers. These guys are spending a lot of money – I’m talking about hundred of thousands or often millions of dollars – on the same media and sales methods that they used in 1989. I invite you to look at the marketing budget for a development in your area. If you live in NYC or maybe LA, then this might not be as true, but just look at where they’re spending their money. What do you see?

Very often you’ll find large print media budgets in marquis local newspapers, the same papers who are dying because of drastically reduced circulation. You’ll find huge budgets on branding firms to design expensive brochures and folders filled with highly designed collateral. There will be special attention paid to press releases (ok, that’s a little better) and flowers for the model unit. Even with all of this spending, the real estate marketing firm that reps the place is probably still taking a full split.

If you find a website on that budget, you probably won’t find much online marketing to support it. An email marketing plan? A SEO retainer with a good SEO firm? A PPC ad buy? A CRM system? Is any of this on there and does that budget rival the print budget? I doubt it. Have they invested in a good CRM system for the sales center or model unit staff? Is technology going to help them sell the units in inventory any faster? If not then you know as well as I do that an opportunity is being missed.

OK, for you analysts out there, I know what your comment is going to be before I even ask. You want to know why a budget should be allocated. Or, maybe the question is not why there needs to be an online marketing budget, but is it actually a better investment? The answer is unequivocally yes. We’ve done the math for many projects and over many years. SEO, PPC, email marketing, social media, the online marketing 4 some, you might say, are by far more cost effective marketing investments for real estate marketing.

If, by chance, that budget you’re examining does have some online marketing on there and leads are, by chance, being associated with media buys or sources, do the math. Calculate the cost/lead and you’ll find that the online leads generated are costing half if not less than half of the leads from traditional media.

So, please ask yourself again. Am I using the same real estate marketing methods that I was 20 years ago? If you are, it’s time to innovate.

Well, all of those are indeed reasons to celebrate, but not too much. It’s like the old saying goes: That, and a token, will get you a ride on the subway.

At the end of the day, there’s no revenue generated directly from being at the top of the SERPs. No one is paying you to be your Facebook friend and Twitter followers aren’t a revenue stream. These are all means to an end. The end goal, of course, is revenue.

Let’s examine this process. A user is out there on the web, they’re tweeting, let’s say, or they’re searching for a real estate agent on Google. The first goal is for them to find you and click to your site. Great. Step 1 is implete, you’ve generated traffic. users are clicking on your organic listings which rank high because of all that SEO you’ve invested in.

Now, the user arrives at your site. What do they find? Is your site engaging? Can they easily find what they’re looking for? Are they compelled to sign up and become a lead? We’ve written many times on this blog about the fact that SEO is a WASTE if your site isn’t any good. It’s true that we often have clients contact us for SEO services and we tell them that we’ll need to redesign their website before doing any SEO. Otherwise, they simply wouldn’t see any benefit from our SEO services. Some folks out there, some in real estate and some in other industries, think that SEO gets you clients. Well, it doesn’t.

SEO is a means, not an end.

So, let’s be optimistic. The user found you, they arrived at your site. They became engaged. They even signed up and converted from a user into a lead. What now? Does a lead = money in your pocket? No, a real estate buyer or seller lead is only worth cash when the deal closes.

That said, it’s easier to understand the value of a lead. The closer you get to the transaction and the smaller the numbers get, the easier it becomes to assign a dollar value to each unit. If in a 1 month period you generate 100 leads and sell even just 5 of them a home, and your monthly marketing budget is $2000 that means you’re spending $20/lead and your customer acquisition cost is $400/customer.

But we’re getting ahead of ourselves. We have search engine ranking producing website visitors. The visitors are converting into buyer and seller leads. Now we want deals. How do we maximize the conversion of those leads into deals. Here are two ways.

First, email marketing is essential. Lots of your leads will not come back to your site unless they’re prodded to do so. Send them nightly listing updates. Send them your newsletter. Email marketing is the best way to re-engage a lead. It’s also the best way to stay in touch with your past clients, a source of repeat business, referrals, and testimonials (which are great for SEO).

Second, your site needs to be a resource to the buyer. They’ll keep coming back, and therefore be more likely to convert into a deal, if they are engaged with the tools on your site. Your property search should be fully featured. A user should create an account and save favorite listings, save favorite searches, take notes, save and edit their listing update criteria, and communicate directly with you, right through the site.

To review:

1. The user finds you on Google or Twitter or where ever
2. They become engaged by your site’s design and functionality.
3. Conversion from a user into a lead
4. User returns to the site as their buying or selling resource.
5. Conversion into a client signaled by a deal closing.

Remember, steps 1 through 4 are all means to an end. It’s like my football coach used to say, “you can celebrate when you cross the goal line.”

1. Blogs are social media. Blogs only get read when there’s new content. New content helps your search engine placement.
2. You can syndicate your content (let’s say from your blog) to social media sites. You could even feed your real estate listings, by RSS to your twitter and Facebook profiles.
3. Many social media site pages are public. These pages are bound to have links back to your site. Linking will improve your SEO.
4. Social bookmarking links on your site will produce back links from those sites (Digg, Reddit, Stumble, etc.) to your site. Again, these links will improve your SEO, your rank, and bring you more traffic and more leads. Remember real estate buyer and seller leads are the goal, not just ranking!
5. Users spend a lot of time on Facebook, Twitter, and many other social media sites. The referral traffic will help you gain more visitors, more clients and sell more real estate.
6. Promotions have more power with social media. Post a promotion on your site, edit your PPC ads accordingly to drive clicks, broadcast the promotion to your Twitter followers, Facebook friends, and LinkedIn connections and watch your traffic spike.
7. Remember that real estate SEO is about leads and customers. What you care about isn’t always ranking but leads and real estate transactions that come from those leads. Use your analytics system, like Google analytics,  to look at the social media sites that are driving traffic and leads to your site. My money says that you’ll see a good conversion rate on this traffic.
8. Chatter on Facebook and Twitter can fuel your blog. Look at what the people are saying about your real estate market, your real estate business, even you as a real estate agent. You’re likely to get inspired and find a topic to blog about. Also, here’s another post about blogging inspiration that could be helpful.
9. Social media is all about linking and showing the world what you’re up to. As a result, your friends and followers are likely to check out the stuff that you’re pointing them to. So, engage your community, send them to your site – full of great resources and information – and they’ll convert into leads.

Ok, that about exhausts my list of how Social Media can improve your Real Estate SEO. I’m sure there are many others that I forgot, but I have to get back to SEOing a couple of sites today. I look forward to your additions to my list. Leave them as comments please. Thanks.

But, without changing the way your entire office works, I want to give you some suggestions on how each member of your team can put in a little work each month to help your office website rank better in the search engines. If you have the right systems setup, then you’ll see more leads for everyone.

1. Make sure there’s at least one link on your real estate agent site to your real estate office’s site.  Inbound linking is very helpful when you’re trying to SEO a site. The best links for your real estate seo will be from other real estate websites to your site.
   1. Make sure the link is HTML text and not an image.
   2. Compose the text of the link carefully. If you practice real estate in Newport, then the text of the link should read “Newport Real Estate” or “Newport Homes.” If you practice in Boston, then the link might read “Boston Real Estate”  or “Boston Condos.” Choose terms for which you’d like your office site to appear higher in the search engine results and make that the text in the link.
2. Start an office blog and divvy up the writing assignments. The average real estate office in the USA has 10 agents working in it. If each agent writes a post every other month, then your blog will be well populated before you know it and you’ll start to see reader traffic, comments, and leads. Here are some tips on how to make that blog engaging. Also, if you didn’t know that blogging was good for real estate SEO, there are plenty of posts on this blog that will explain why and how to do it better.
3. Each agent in your office should use social bookmarking websites to promote your site and each post to your blog. Every real estate agent and even the admins in your office should learn how to use StumbleUpon, Digg, Reddit, del.icio.us, and other social bookmarking sites. When a new post goes up, a few members of your staff should bookmark each post on each of these sites. This should take no more than a couple of minutes. Have a look at the bottom of this post and you’ll see links to lots of social bookmarking sites. Social bookmarking will bring referral traffic to your site and the backlinks will help your search engine ranking.
4. Make sure every agent in your office has accounts on Facebook, Twitter, and Linked In. Make sure the office has a page on these sites too and that you’re all fans of or connected to the office page. If you don’t know how that works or if the last sentence I wrote makes no sense to you, you need to learn more about social media sites. Call Boston Logic immediately. Social networking sites are a great source of referral traffic, don’t miss out on these visitors!
5. Aggregate email lists. Make sure the office is sending out a newsletter at least once a month. The content can be pulled from or at least reused on the blog you’re going to start.

Ok, these are all simple SEO tasks that just about any agent in your office should be able to do. If you’re reading this post and thinking how great it would be to get the whole office behind an effort like this, just remember that people love to follow leadership. Be the leader in your real estate office who starts the organic SEO effort. Your colleagues will thank you.

Have a great weekend.

It’s a tough pill to swallow, but most of us are not the top producer in the office. There’s only one of those. In the US, there are 10 agents in the average real estate office. That means that 9 out of 10 agents aren’t the top producing agent. That’s OK. This post is for the 9 of you.

If you’ve been in the business for less than 3 years, if you’re having a slow winter, if you had a slow ’08, then you don’t spend your whole day selling real estate. In fact, in this market, you might spend very little of your time actually selling property or working with home buyers. Your job, for a large part of your day, is to find clients.

If you’re really new to the real estate biz, then your full time job is to find clients, generate leads, learn, and cultivate your own brand. Some day, if you do this diligently and well, you’ll spend very little time looking for your next client.

I want you to know that Real Estate SEO is a fantastic investment of your time and money during this period when you have some time on your hands. If you work at achieving search engine placement now, and you have a quality website, then the leads will come. To quote a classic, if you build it, they will come. It’s true in Real Estate SEO, and you never know, old baseball players may come and visit you.

Anyway, let’s assume you’re one of the 9 real estate agents in the office that is not the top producer and let’s assume that you spend less time with buyers and sellers these days than you used to. You’re looking for a way to spend your time which will ad value to your business and help find you clients. Here are some things you can do:

• Start a real estate blog and post several times a week about your local market
• Create market reports on a monthly basis, post these on your blog and send them to your past and potential clients
• Create pages on twitter, facebook, and Linked-In and link your blog to those pages
• Make a goal of having 500 people following your business on Twitter.
• When you get to 500, set a new goal at 2000.
• Set a goal of having 500 fans for your Facebook page about your business
• Make sure you write a monthly newsletter.
• Set a goal of having 1000 subscribers.
• Make sure there’s a link to subscribe to your your email newsletter on your Twitter page, Facebook page, website, Link-In profile, and everywhere else you can put one.
• Add social bookmarking links to the pages of your site and the pages of your blog.

These are just a start. There’s a lot more you can do, but let’s talk about the effects you will see:

Many of these tasks will boost your search engine placement. This will, of course, help you generate leads, grow your email list, and engage perspective buyers and sellers. As you grow your email list, each blog post, market report, and newsletter will require the same work, but be more effective since it will be received by more people. The folks who follow you on twitter will be notified when you post on your blog. This will generate traffic for your site.

The more folks who are your fans, follow you on twitter, or on other social sites, the more traffic your site will see. Many of these are link building tasks. They will help boost your referral traffic and your search engine placement. I could go on. Suffices to say that your real estate seo campaign and your overall online marketing campaign will improve. These are not hard tasks, they just take time.

But let’s be honest, right now, you might have some time on your hands.

If you need help with any of this, just let us know. We’re happy to provide guidance and assistance.