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Qualified Leads for CRE (Finally!)

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For over a decade, online lead generation for real estate has revolved around the listing aggregation site model. Prospects search and you get a flood of prospects requesting more information. But the problem with those prospects is that they’re not qualified. They could be just “looking.” Or they’re interested but by the time you find out, the lead is cold. You’d think technology could be better used to enhance the lead generation process instead of leaving it to the agent to spend (waste) … [Read more...]

CRE Online Marketing Takes a Turn

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During a presentation on how to choose blog topics the speaker, a social media expert, asked a group of CRE agents and marketing staff to define the target user.  The COO spoke first – “everyone and everybody!". Flummoxed, the expert said you can’t market to everyone the same way. Then the marketing people chimed in, explaining that commercial real estate users vary widely and each segment has their own requirements. No…nothing like males over 40 or those of certain income levels.  But by … [Read more...]

Why No One Wants Your LoopNet Alternative (And What They Do Want)

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It’s not like people haven’t been working on an alternative to LoopNet.  Some have crashed and burned, others are built out waiting for "them" to come and more are in the works. But nobody is using them much less showing any interest. Why? I’ll tell you a few of the major reasons why. Nobody Knows Your Name This is a chicken/egg game.   If you're a new site and you have no name recognition, no one wants to waste their time providing listings because no listings means no visitors so you go … [Read more...]

Where to Start with Social Networking

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Agents always ask whether social networking is worth it.  By worth it, they’re usually referring to leads.  I give them the bad news – don’t expect a rush of new clients.  And then I point out the other benefits to social networking.  Like bolstering your online presence so when prospects check you out, they find something useful (and positive) or building relationships with other CRE professionals.  But even those who acknowledge and want those benefits don’t know where to start. It doesn’t … [Read more...]

Testing LinkedIn’s Long Form Posts

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Last week I decided to give LinkedIn’s long form posts a try.  The process was simple.  Click on the pencil in my status update box then start writing (or copy/paste), review and publish. One thing you can't do is select in which channel you want the post to appear.  LinkedIn will use an algorithm to determine that. My post ended up in the Real Estate channel, one with a relatively low subscriber base (62K compared to millions in channels like Technology or Social Media – but not as low as … [Read more...]

Facebook – The Party is Over

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Brokerages and agents using Facebook Business Pages may have noticed a big drop in post reach and user engagement over the past months.  Where did everybody go?  Your followers are still around, but you can thank a decision by Facebook to dramatically limit the number of brand posts that they can see.  Even before the change, Facebook’s relevance algorithms allowed only about 16% of brand posts in user feeds.  Now it’s more like 6% - unless you're a big brand where it stands at around 2%. This … [Read more...]