agents of change: real estate marketing and branding

Slowly but surely the predominant online classified portal, Craigslist.org, has become an important part of many agent’s marketing plans. According to the site, it is home to local classifieds for over 567 cities and more than 50 countries worldwide. The site produces over 40 million users per month and the number of people joining the Craigslist craze just keeps growing.

Realtors® can particularly benefit from Craigslist because they are able to reach such a broad and diverse audience with just a few clicks of the mouse. Listing homes for sale or even featuring ‘wanted’ ads for your buyers makes Craigslist a must-have resource for any Realtor® who wants to be competitive in today’s marketplace.

Another resource that compliments the many features of Craigslist while adding a more colorful and descriptive posting is vFlyer.com. vFlyer is an online source where people can create wide-ranging flyers selling everything from real estate to services. vFlyer is truly an answer to everyone’s prayers who wanted to jazz up their Craigslist listing. With vFlyer, you are able to post your listing in one of their many attractive templates, brand yourself with full contact information and add up to 15 photos for display instead of the ordinary four as supported by Craigslist.

What’s better is that vFlyer automatically distributes your published flyers to Zillow, Trulia, Google Base, Oodle, Backpage, Lycos, Vast, Hotpads, Olx, Geebo, Yahoo! and DotHome. If your Broker does not already feed to these sites, vFlyer is a must-have for your online marketing strategies.

If you choose to upgrade to the paid package through vFlyer, you can use premium templates that brand the most reputable brokerages in the industry - plus you enjoy added features like the capability of embedding video into your flyer… a bonus for Prudential Connecticut Realty agents who utilize the company’s Home Suite technology.

Powered with the prominence of Craigslist and the great features of vFlyer - Realtors® are able to distribute their listings to a broad range of web sites and in a customized, agent centric display.

Long before the dawn of myspace, facebook, active rain and linkedin the real estate community had limited channels in which they could network. Conferences and networking events where one-on-one encounters took place reigned supreme, while publishers survived on printing all those broker ads in magazines and directories.

With the dawn of web 2.0 a revolutionary thing has occurred. Agents no longer are required to waste unnecessary dollars and hours trying to network with brokers nationwide. Now, I am not by any means downplaying the value of a personal introduction, however, face it… there’s just not enough time in the day.

Well, what now? What do I do? Where do I sign-up you ask? Linkedin.com is a powerful resource agents can use to network with not only other brokers but past and future clients as well. Linkedin.com resembles a more professional version of facebook, and you will find anyone from CEOs to web designers on the site. Now, do not expect to sign up in any social networking platform and think you’re going to become the world’s most connected person overnight. It takes time and dedication to actively seek out connections old and new.

Facebook started out as an exclusive college-only platform and quickly became the greatest thing since the printing press. The thought that you could actively engage your friends, family and clients and keep up with their day to day lives is amazing. An amazing tool that is now available to business professionals is Facebook ads and pages. You can now set up an independent page within Facebook and attract troves of people to your brand. Once established, anyone on Facebook can see your page and become a fan, watch video and read content or leave their own two-cents. If you wanted to go one step further, you can leverage this new page by placing ads directed to your target audience. You are able to set your criteria to find Facebook users and separate by age, gender, location (city, state, national), and even keywords… now that’s target marketing.

Don’t let time pass you by and let your competitor gain the upper hand, take a few minutes and scour the social networking scene… I guarantee you won’t be able to get enough. If you’d like to discuss this issue further or to set up a no obligation consultation and discover how you can become an agent of change, contact me today.