My Projects
Coaching M agents – Marshall Wells Landing page
I will get back to the featured neighborhood pages on Alicia’s site. We have produced close to 50 Neighborhood landing pages on the site but managing the process turned out to be way more complicated than we anticipated. The difficulties include organizing taking the photos, processing the photos & video, writing, and producing the supporting content with multiple people responsible. We have a revised system in place and will be back in operation next week. A big part of why we are trying to create a system for good content production is that we work directly with the agents at M to transfer best practice. Which leads me to Jewel one of our star agents that has taken on a farming project from scratch in the Pearl district adjacent to Downtown Portland.
Pearl District Real Estate
Jewel has produced landing pages for the Condos buildings she is passionate about. She is from New York and loves the converted loft style condos. The Marshall-Wells lofts condo building is a great example. In only 8 weeks Jewel has gone from not knowing what WordPress was to managing a beautiful site with very good content that has a place withing a marketing plan.
45 Portland Neighborhoods in 45 days
Focus focus focus…conversion conversion conversion! As some of you may have picked up from my recent posts and talks, I am becoming militant about conversion! There is so much talk in our RE tech crowd about SM, WordPress, blogging dead or not etc. and I contend that unless there is a direct connection than can be documented and repeated it is not all that useful to our industry.
What does this have to do with 45 Portland neighborhoods? …well an analysis of new how out team produces new clients revealed that a significant portion of our web registrations originate through a Google search that combines a neighborhood name with either “real estate” or “homes for sale”. We built and tested several neighborhood landing pages and a strategy to promote the pages with a series of posts. Now that the prototyping is done and tested it is time to switch to operation mode and get some shit done that makes us money. BAM!
I will be describing the process over the next 45 days showing the example neighborhood page and hopefully some insight on the keys to converting neighborhood content into new appointments and closed transaction.
Portland Neighborhood #1 of 45 – Portland Heights
Portland Heights Real Estate is on the high end for our area. I drive through it every day on the way to work and when our little brokerage really takes off I would love to buy one of the spectacular moderns. The page took about 4 hours to build, I walked the neighborhood for 20 min taking pictures and a video with my iPhone, I used next gen gallery, and embed video served from you tube. The listing are pulled in using our Homequest IDX plug in short code.
Conversion on this page happen when the 3rd listing view is attempted and from request showings.
There are numerous on page details and conversion strategies to discuss, but this is only day one so….see you tomorrow;)
10 things I think I learned this year
1. The future of real estate will be shaped by the brokerages that create an environment to assist agents in gaining market share. Not trying to gain market/mind share with the brokerage brand.
2. Above a certain competency level we as agents are the same in our ability to facilitate a transaction. However “how great” we are is a function of how well we “fit” with our clients communication style and temperament.
3. All other things being equal, people will chose to work with people they like.
4. Social networks are nothing more than a way to “talk” to people. My Iphone now gives me 5 main ways to communicate with people. Phone call, Email, text, twitter, Facebook. As I go through the day I use all of them. All have appropriate uses and understanding them unlocks leverage previously not available.
5. Placing information on what you think, know, believe, and do, in a publicly accessible site is good. Using the information to facilitate conversations and connections is better.
6. Do stuff everyday that builds your knowledge and connects you with others like you.
7. Instead of extensive planning of what you are going to do. Do then build a plan to match what you actually do.
8. The value proposition you are convinced is “it” might just be marketing BS. Focus on identifying when real value occurs, study the moment, understand it, then build your business from there.
9. Understand who you are and especially what you are naturally driven towards..build you business around your drive.
10 If you don’t have strong interests, drive and ability to connect with others you are already screwed..but you are SUPER screwed in the future. Becuase you are competeing with those who do and everything is becoming visable at the individual level.
11. bonus item. bad grammar, spelling, and run on sentences shouldn’t stop you from putting your ideas out into the world
Be in love
If we can find this we win!!
Blogs that work – Information, Search and Passion
Our agents blog. or more accurately they utilize WordPress sites effectively in their practice. We are very connected with our agents activity because we develop & provide the WP sites, design and SEO. There are three primary configurations that are working for our agents, each site configuration has associated “marketing” techniques that work best. All of these can be very productive for the agent if implemented correctly.
Passion Blogs
passion blogs are the most compelling in my opinion, but not necessarily the most productive in terms of transactions. These blogs are extensions of an individuals love and passion and in a real estate context would be niche site such as modernhomes. These are very good at creating a connections with people who are passionate about the same topics. Long term organic search and return visits from subscriber build effectiveness over time.
Information Blogs-
A little less opinion and a little more information. these blogs tend to have a general topic such as Portland Relocation, Portland home auctions or Portland Market news and trends. The basic strategy is to cover the topic in a comprehensive manner with strong emphasis on SEO. These are designed as a resource and to present the agent as an authority. They require systematic content production and attention paid to analytics.
Property Search blogs
Very search centric sites with some neighborhood/condo building and possibly property niches. These sites tend to rely heavily on SEO and possibly PPC marketing campaigns. a good example would be Portland real estate. These are very good for consistent lead generation on high volume sites and staff to follow up. This requires relatively high budget for PPC and/or resources to win top organic placement for most competitive search terms. Only effective with agents that are skilled at following up with information and showing requests.
The keys to success:
1. Assessment of agents - past success, area of genuine interests, personality type, writing ability and desire.
2. Site design – style, look and feel, design elements, color pallets etc.
3. SEO – key word research, on page SEO, agent SEO training.
4. Content production – content plan/road map, blog training, accountability.
5. Traffic generation – social media, sphere marketing, organic SERP, PPC, traditional marketing.
6. Move forward – Consistent effort, keeping in the areas of strength.
The sites are providing a growing number of contacts and leads and something tangible to focus on in growing their business.
The M environment
Just have to brag about the environment we have created at M Realty. I received this email today for a training program that was put together by Simon, our SEO/site director. He is passionate about all thing web and SEO and decided to build the ultimate education program for our agents. What struck me was how “normal” this feels here. We have an environment where these discussions happen every day.
Hi Folks,
Next Thursdays training will begin my in-depth 8 week SEO course covering everything from keywords, back links, page rank and everything in between! The class will be every Thursday starting at 1:30pm for the next 8 weeks.
Spots are limited to agents who have the following:
- Their IDX Site up and running
- Have at least 20 blog posts with weekly updates
- Have already attended my previous SEO classes that covered the very basics, or at least have an understanding of what is SEO, why we use it etc.
This will be a small class limited to 7 agents. There are currently 5 spots remaining. If you want to completely dominate the search engines in a relatively short amount of time, this class is for you!
Note: another class will be held as usual after my 1:30 class either hosted by Garron, myself or a special guest TBD at 2:30 every Thursday.
Please RSVP early to ensure your spot as they are on a first come first serve basis!! Thanks guys and I’ll look forward to seeing you all on Thursday!
Simon
*Please let myself and Simon know if you would like to sign up for the classes
-Haley
M Realty is here WOOT!
It official M Realty is open to new agents. We have spent more than two years working on M Realty and the technology, systems and environment.We are ready to expand the next generation brokerage.
The big advantage with M is that we live and breath real estate and technology everyday. We are actively and successfully using Homequest, blogsites, twitter, facebook, SEO, etc. to create and support relationships. It takes a team of people to create the environment and skill set needed to learn and use what available. We have built the team and would like you to be a part.
Check out our M Realty site and “for Agents” page.
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