agents of change: real estate marketing and branding

As I mentioned at a recent sales meeting, Trulia.com now offers the capability for agents to personally brand themselves. Many of the nation’s leading brokerages are feeding listings to Trulia. As you scour to the bottom of the listing page you notice an empty agent headshot and a place for your contact information… that’s right YOUR contact info.

Don’t discount the potential that Trulia has to offer. According to an newsletter released by Trulia, your listing is available to be viewed by over five million visitors each month. Trulia’s new feature, “Brand Your Listings!” gives you the opportunity to maximize on that exposure - plus did I mention that it’s free!

Go to Trulia.com, setup an account and attach your personal branding to all of your hard earned listings. With this new feature, you can add your personal head shot, contact information and take control of your listings. Inquiries are routed directly to you, stats about your listing are available for you to keep track of, and you also have the opportunity to promote your Open Houses on the site.

With over 70% of Trulia users wanting to buy or sell within the year, and of those users, 70% are not yet working with a Realtor… there is no bettet time to generate some fresh, FREE leads from one of the leading real estate search portals.

Listingbook is a great new feature that has recently been made available to members of the Greater Fairfield County Multiple Listing Service (CMLS). This new tool is an excellent platform to communicate with clients, manage productivity and maintain agent brand identity.

Listingbook works in conjunction with CMLS, and it creates a forum between agents and clients, allowing you to schedule, track and analyze client’s activities. Buyers are able to conduct instant property searches, and keep an open line of communication with their agent.

Clients are continuously demanding more easily accessible information. How many times have your clients asked, “How much did that sell for?” With this new feature, you’re able to allow your clients to stay more informed about market conditions. By leveraging these web 2.0 tools, agents are able to harness the power of the internet and direct it in a fashion to better serve their clients. With Listingbook you are able to keep a more comprehensive log of your buyer or sellers activities and are able to keep in communication more frequently, effectively creating “clients for life”.

Listingbook is the perfect virtual assistant, and a complete marketing solution. Don’t miss the opportunity to use this free service to better serve your clients’ needs. The Greater Fairfield County Multiple Listing Service has upcoming informational sessions in June, visit the website at www.CT-MLS.com for more information.

Today’s Realtor® is being required to embrace change and must readily identify the needs of their client-base. Web 2.0 is all about interaction. Clients are no longer helpless at the hands of the broker, but are rather empowered by the web, actively engaging and sharing information. Instead of being the talkers, we’ve actually become the listeners. Venues like trulia voices, active rain, yahoo! answers and a multitude of networking sites allow consumers to become better informed of not only the market, but also of the level of service they should expect from their agent.

In January, RisMedia reported that a recent survey found that 88% of consumers use the Internet as their primary source of real estate information, compared to a meager 12% from newspapers. We all know that the Internet is the future of real estate, and the key to succeeding in even a down market is how you make use of the potential made available to you. More agents are actively engaging prospective clients by establishing themselves as professionals through personal websites, blogs, social networking, and other e-strategies.

When a consumer searches for Realtors, they want instant access to information about you and your services. If you don’t have a web presence, your competition will succeed in converting the lead… not you. Signing up on LinkedIn or creating a website will not guarantee immediate results, but it does give you more of a chance to be found online than you previously had before.

Consumers know they need you, but it’s up to you to tell them why you’re the more qualified professional. When someone Google’s you, are you there to be found?

A new website has been recently released allowing visitors to rate their agent’s performance, summarize their experience and recommend them to future clients. AgentRank.com was developed by Marc Dugger, creator and developer of RealtyBaron.com, a similar site allowing agents to search for business and negotiate commission rates.

In a web 2.0 world, consumers are demanding that their voices be heard and AgentRank.com now gives them that outlet. Think about how many times you are asked to rate something — order something at an online retailer and you’re asked to rank those products, rent movies from netflix and rate them for other members online… the desire for today’s consumers to be educated and aware is strong. What better way to establish yourself in your marketplace than to have prospects view rankings and testimonials via AgentRank.com.

The site also features API, application programming interface, which allows agents to embed their rankings onto external websites.

Presently, there are four agents that have been ranked in the Stamford, Connecticut market. Will it last? Is it worthwhile? AgentRank.com has all the potential to become a valuable resource for consumers and agents alike who value consumer awareness and for those who aren’t afraid of being criticized for all to see.

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.