Emerging Technologies with Chris Smith of Inman Next and Tech Savvy Agent

It’s an all too-familiar tale. The minute you think you’ve got a hold of the latest, greatest, ground-breaking technology another one comes out! Or the minute you have your Business Page just right, Zuckerberg decides it’s time for a change. Keeping up with the Facebook’s, Twitter’s and Google’s of the world in an effort to reach more clients online often becomes all-encompassing and sometimes overwhelming. Where are my current and prospective clients?  how much time should I spend getting to know the new technologies, and what will my return on investment (ROI) be?

Thankfully Chris Smith, chief evangelist for Inman News, co-creator of Inman NEXT and author of the popular blog Tech Savvy Agent, took the stage at Mega Technology Camp to present his vision for the future of technology and its impact on the day-to-day business of real estate professionals. Here he is giving his two-cents (worth so much more!) on what’s to come and how smart agents can tap in and effectively leverage technology in their business.

There are two types of real estate agents. Those who love Craigslist. And those who aren’t sure it’ll work for them. What separates the two, says Keith Riddle, associate with the Spokane, Wash. market center is that those who don’t love it probably aren’t doing it correctly or don’t want to play by the rules.

The Craigslist strategy hasn’t changed much since last year (see The Rise of Craigslist and How You Can Use it to Generate Leads) yet Riddle made sure to cover all the best strategies for successful lead generation and lead conversion through the online classified site.  (1) Capture the audience’s attention with out-of-the-box headlines, (2) make your posts simple with a few lines of text and one image, (3) always embed links back to the specific property and other opportunities to search on your Website and (4) Play by the rules and make sure you don’t get flagged.

What really stood out was Riddle’s rules on “Not Getting Flagged” Here are 4 ways to make sure you’re ads get posted, found, clicked and converted:

1. Don’t post the same post in the same day.

2. Don’t post the same ad over and over. Riddle made it very clear that Craigslist doesn’t like the same exact ad posted over and over again for the same listing. There is a loop hole: Craigslist won’t flag your ad if you post the same listing using the same photos in a different format and with different text.

3. Don’t over-post from one email address or one IP address.

4. Don’t use plurals like “homes” or “properties.”

What an enormous leap forward into the future you have challenged us with, and what an extraordinary opportunity it’s been for all of us. With any new challenge, new leaders emerge, and that has certainly been the case during this transition phase. To those of you who have dug in, downloaded eEdge 101, attended classes, taught classes or even stepped up as your market center’s eEdge ambassadors, thank you! We appreciate your leadership, your energy and your example more than you can imagine.

A technological undertaking of this magnitude requires patience – as well as perspective. As he’s done so many times before, Shaun Rawls has risen to the occasion with his characteristic clarity and perspective. Here’s an excerpt of what Shaun wrote a few weeks to members of the Rawls Group in Atlanta, Ga.:

Continue reading ‘Lessons in eLeadership’

One of the fastest ways to improve your search engine rankings is to build high-quality inbound links—links from other websites to your website. In fact, successful search engine optimization (SEO) demands a focus on inbound link building, also called backlinking.

Here’s why: Although Google (and other search engines) evaluate scores of factors as they rank your site against the thousands of other agent sites on the Internet, inbound links are among the most powerful determinants of where your site will show up in the list of results.

Continue reading ‘How to Get High-Quality Inbound Links’