I have been investigating this with my clients more and more. This economy really calls for clarity and niche focus to survive, as my previous post points out.  How can you focus your real estate business and become more of an expert in that field? I encourage my clients to find out what areas tend to bring in the most revenue. Is it Short Sales? First Time Buyers? Golf Homes?

And in terms of online and web marketing, focusing your niche makes a HUGE difference. It allows you to target specific keywords and develop a strong search engine marketing strategy. It also allows you to become an expert in that area — a clear voice amongst the many.

As the RISMEdia article points out, getting your listings out there is fundamental. But what about getting your site in the search engines, and not just by using pay-per-click ads for instance.

Organic search engine optimization is an art, and takes time: 1) creating unique content on your website or blog, 2) building your relationships on Facebook, Twitter, Google+ and more, or creating backlinks to your website via articles, comments on other folks blogs or Active Rain.

You must be involved in your marketing. If not hands on, at least set the focus and quality of your real estate marketing and then pay someone to do what you can’t always do.

1) Determine an area or niche of your real estate business that makes the most money

2) Focus your marketing and search engine optimization around this

3) Participate in that marketing or hire someone to supplement or implement that marketing

For more information on clarifying your market niche and organic search engine optimization to boost your real estate marketing, please contact me using this form below.

I’ve got lot’s of lists of things from over the years to suggest, but the folks over at Retechulous.com made a list I just love. I’m sharing it here with you:

Weekly Market Update – Take a 5 Minute Video (or Screencast) Interpreting Data From Your MLS and the general mood amongst buyers and agents in order to deliver a public update on the state of the local real estate marketplace
Daily/Weekly Transaction Report – Cut and Paste the Reported Transactions from Your MLS. (Trust us, this will garner lots of organic traffic especially long tail stuff related to property addresses in your area.) Be sure to include “Real Estate Sales Transactions” in the title of each post, wherever you are, people are searching those keywords.
Restaurant Of The Week – Want to charm the pants off of a local restaurant owner and provide a valuable resource for folks relocating to your area? Do a restaurant review once a week… and be sure to include a picture of your dish and why you loved it so much. Chances are good that especially for smaller restaurants and markets, your post will rank organically for people doing a direct search of the restaurant name.
Business Of The Week – Same of the restaurant idea, recommend doing actual video tours of each biz, highlighting the coolest service/product to buy from the place. (Can you see this helping you gain Top Of Mind status with the local business owner, then a bunch of referrals as he talks you up to other patrons?)
Local Dog Parks – Psst… People moving to your area with pets are going to do a search engine search for dog parks in the area. Talk about a non-competitive keyword! (York Pa Dog Parks) WOOF!
“Where In (Insert Your Area Here)?” – Take a random photo of a person, place, or thing in your area and post it to your site. Offer a prize to the first reader who guesses what the picture is. (Be sure to offer an email signup for folks to receive your latest pics so they can be one of the first to take a guess.)
Weekly Neighborhood News Update – Give each agent in your office an assigned neighborhood, require a piece of hyper local content. Run with this for a month and see what happens to your recruiting/retention efforts.
Resident Interviews – Interview someone in your area. Ask them what they like about their town. What they like to do. Where the best places to get fitshaced are. Stuff like that. (What an easy way to generated spiderable content that’s interesting to inlookers!)
“Contract Chronicles” – Grab a clause from one of your real estate forms and tear it to pieces. A nice way to demonstrate competence while creating content that’s sure to be indexed and searched. (If you don’t already have an article and a downloadable copy of the standard “Residential Lease” for your state on your website, do this now!

Do you focus on marketing using Social Media, overhaul your website, pay for lead generation applications?

It can be so overwhelming!

The priority is actually getting clear about who your market is, your personal and professional strengths and the core money making niche of your market.

You can spend all the money you want on the various and abundant applications and marketing tools, but if you are not clear about your core offering and who you are selling it to, you won’t gain any traction in your real estate business.

For example, many of my real estate clients choose to remain generalized and broad in their market focus and wonder why they are not gaining any increase in leads, clients and sales.

The tendency to stay broad in the face of the depressed market seems to make intuitive sense but it may be the exactly wrong approach.

So, 1) Get clear about the niche in real estate that is your strength or most lucrative and 2) get really clear about who that target market is and what makes them tick!

Contact me to find out ways in which you can determine the above and ways to find out what makes them tick!

Now, about the changes…
We felt it was time to get an easier, shorter domain name (www.VA-Pros.com) and also update our website to the latest, super search engine friendly WordPress platform!

We’ve added a few new services, like offering WordPress real estate websites, maintaining your social media, dipping our toes in mobile marketing, as well as magnifying our consulting and strategy services.

Take a look around. We’re still updating and refining the site but we hope you enjoy!

And don’t forget to take advantage of our 10% discount for the next two weeks!

This listing search engine takes a visual and right brained approach to helping home buyers to find the right home.

Take a moment to check out this new search – BlueScape

Just to give you an idea about this area of technology, it is projected that over the next two years, sales of smart phones will greatly outpace the sale of computers. This says something about the direction and future of technology and communications!

For real estate agents, there are a few ways you can make use of the mobile platform to advertise your listings and work with you clients. I will focus on using QR Codes in this post.

QR Codes
What?: These are funny looking squares of squigglies that ‘talk’ to your smart phone. Someone swipes their phone over the code (using a free app downloaded to their phone) and are immediately directed to a linked webpage (that is formatted to be viewed on a phone).

How?: These codes can be used on web pages but more effectively, they can be placed on hard copy ads or signs. Someone drives by your listing, swipes his phone over your code on the sign, and instantly receives a view of the listings. You are also alerted to the request.

Where?: There are a few different ways to implement QR Codes for your business. There are companies that offer the full system, or you can piece together applications free on the web that will cover your QR Code needs.

Systems:
If you own a Success Website system, they have integrated the codes and ads for you already. You just need to get them printed on your signs and hard copy ads.

Free Versions:
You can use Vyoo.it to create a mobile friendly landing page with your property listing info on it.
Use Goo.gl to turn a link into a QR Code.
Video Version: A really easy way to hook up a QR Code to listing info is to grab the link to a listing’s video if you are using video, and generate the QR Code at Goo.gl. Voila!