Chances are you have a Twitter account already. But how effectively are you using the resources at your disposal? Here are some tips to make sure you are getting the most out of Twitter:

1. Brand yourself—and don’t stray from it. One of the biggest complaints people lodge against Twitter is that too much of it is pointless ephemera. Make sure your tweets are focused and on-target—don’t clog up your followers’ Twitter feed by sharing photos of your lunch or complaining about traffic. Before you tweet, ask yourself what the value of the tweet is. Valueless tweets will quickly get you unfollowed, so make your tweets count.

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Good news for AgentAdvantage clients: your listings are syndicated on Homes.com, the #2 site in page views and #2 in visit time among top real estate sites! Homes.com visitors stay on the site longer and view more pages than nearly any other major real estate portal, including Trulia, Zillow and Yahoo! Real Estate.

With over 5.5 million visitors each month, your listings on Homes.com are being seen by more local, active home buyers than ever. 2010 as a whole was a banner year for Homes.com. Here are a few more impressive traffic records from the site where your listings are automatically syndicated:

• Over 66 million consumers visited Homes.com in 2010, viewing well over 1 billion pages in 2010, representing a 40 percent increase in page views over the previous year.
• This year, Homes.com also boasted a 151 percent increase in consumer and real estate professional signups from 2009.
• Homes.com’s mobile Web site saw 60 million page views in 2010, nearly six times the amount of mobile traffic in 2009. Homes.com also just this week launched a new app for Windows Phone 7, becoming one of the first real estate search Web sites to reach all mobile consumers. Learn more about Homes.com mobile including its extensive suite of mobile apps here.
• Consumer searches for homes increased by 54 percent from the previous year, with an average of 9 million searches made each month in 2010, along with a 74 percent increase in total listings viewed from the previous year.

Take advantage of Homes.com’s record traffic by purchasing Featured Listings! This gives your listings premium placement to over 5.5 million visitors each month. Learn more about Featured Listings here.

If you have questions about Homes.com or AgentAdvantage services, please contact Member Services at support@agentadvantage.com or call (800) 889-3726.

Now that you’ve updated your website for the new year, its time to think about other aspects of your online presence. What is the #1 most overlooked online marketing area? Your e-mail signature! The email signature, the small file amended to each e-mail you send out, is an excellent place to put your contact information, photo, and a brief description of your services without creating an obnoxious ad. E-mail signatures are a subtle, no-cost way to pass along your contact information to others and a practical way to save time when writing emails every day. To make sure your signature is a success, there are a few rules you should follow.

Signature Rules

- Don’t make a signature that’s too big. Online the size of your text/image is equivalent to the volume of your speaking voice…people shouldn’t have to strain to “hear” your message over your email signature. 5 lines of signature in a traditional (14pt and smaller) font size are more than enough.

- If you have room, use a tagline. Add a tagline explaining your services, service areas, or listing your designations. If your message is forwarded to strangers people will see your contact information and know what you do for a living.

- Shy away from animations and flashy distractions. Again, you want your message to be heard first and foremost. Also, many email clients and browsers will not display this type of information in an email.

- If you’re lacking in space you don’t have to include your email address; it usually goes in the email header anyway.

- If nothing else, include the URL to your website. That’s what your website is for, telling people all about you and what you do! Images: You can certainly add a headshot or photo to your signature, but make sure you keep it small. Also, be aware that some email clients are set to not download images automatically for safety reasons.

As a neat alternative you can always pull all of your contact information (cellular, email, physical work address, social networks, blog address, URL, etc.) onto your  ‘Contact Me’ page and just link to the page in your email signature.

The new year has arrived, and it’s a great time to take a good look at your website pages and fix them up for 2011. Keeping your website fresh and error-free will ensure that your site is generating leads effectively throughout the year! Here are a few tips to get you started:

Main Page Content
Have you read your main page information lately? At the very least you should make sure that your specialties, designations, service areas and contact information are up to date, but you can also write specific content about house hunting during the holidays, community events, and any charity events that you may be participating in this year.

Fix Broken Links
Make sure all of your links are working properly, and are clearly labeled for your website visitors.

Agent Photo and Bio
Are you wearing bell bottoms in your profile photo? Is your profile photo in black and white? Time for an update! You can easily refresh your marketing materials by having a new business photo taken and adding it to your website and online profiles.

Social Media
Take the time to review your social media profiles to make sure all of your information is correct. You can start by checking your contact information, making sure people can find your website from your social media profiles, and adding buttons or widgets to your website also.

Revisit Your Blog
Has your blog been lying dormant through the holidays? Make a new list of topics to address on your blog this year to get back on track. Click here for more information on Using the AgentAdvantage blog.

Website Layout
Is your website outdated? Don’t be afraid to change your website template if you’ve had the same layout for years. AgentAdvantage members also have the option of ordering eStrategy packages for a quick facelift or a complete website overhaul from our professional staff. Click here or contact Member Services for more information about our custom website design packages.

In spite of down market, consumer leads increase 57 percent for real estate professionals

NORFOLK, Va., January 5, 2011—Homes.com, a division of Dominion Enterprises, announced major milestones in traffic and leads generated by Homes.com in 2010. Despite the shaky housing market, over 66 million consumers visited Homes.com, viewing well over 1 billion pages in 2010, representing a 66 percent increase in page views over the previous year. This dramatic increase in traffic resulted in a 57 percent increase in consumer leads generated for real estate professionals on Homes.com.

Powering this increase in traffic and leads was the launch of Homes.com’s new Questions and Answers community, where consumers actively searching for their next home or selling their current home can connect with local real estate agents for advice. Since its launch in June 2010, this new feature generated over 10,000 questions, providing real estate professionals a host of opportunities to connect with consumers in their local area at no charge. This year, Homes.com also boasted a 151 percent increase in consumer and real estate professional signups from 2009.

Homes.com also made major improvements to its overall design and listing search process, reducing the average search time and providing home buyers and renters an expedient, yet content-rich, method to find their next home. Consumer searches for homes increased by 54 percent from the previous year, with an average of 9 million searches made each month in 2010, along with a 74 percent increase in total listings viewed from the previous year. In addition to improving its listing search process, Homes.com also expanded its listing inventory to include rentals, powered by ForRent.com.

In 2010, Homes.com took the lead in mobile real estate marketing by becoming the first real estate search Web site to reach all mobile consumers through its suite of mobile apps. Included are iPhone, Android, and Blackberry platforms, along with a Web site optimized for other mobile handsets. Homes.com’s mobile Web site saw 60 million page views in 2010, nearly six times the amount of mobile traffic in 2009.

Jason Doyle, vice-president of Homes.com said, “In a sluggish market, Homes.com has seen record-breaking traffic and consumer inquiries as a result of our efforts to make our site as useful to consumers as possible, with features like the Questions and Answers Community and our suite of mobile offerings.” Doyle adds, “We expect 2011 to bring even better returns to our advertisers as we make significant technological enhancements and continue expanding the Homes.com network.”

About Homes.com
Homes.com, a division of Dominion Enterprises, is a leading provider of real estate marketing and media services, including brand advertising, property listing exposure and syndication, search engine marketing and instant response lead generation. Over 5.5 million homebuyers visit Homes.com each month to search nearly 4 million properties for sale or rent, to locate real estate agents in their area and to find useful home buying tips. Homes.com provides premier advertising solutions for real estate professionals reaching active homebuyers.

About Dominion Enterprises
Dominion Enterprises is a leading marketing services company serving the automotive, enthusiast and commercial vehicle, real estate, apartment rental, and employment industries. The company’s businesses provide a comprehensive suite of technology-based marketing solutions including Internet advertising, lead generation, CRM, Web site design and hosting, and data management services. The company has more than 40 market-leading Web sites reaching more than 17.6 million unique visitors monthly, and more than 280 magazines with a weekly circulation of 2.4 million. Headquartered in Norfolk, Va., the company has 4,900 employees in more than 186 offices nationwide.

In our fast-paced world of technology, social media, and smart phones, the days of delayed gratification are long gone. People everywhere are used to getting instant updates on any and all things that matter to them. When a phone call or email from a prospect goes unnoticed, the following passing seconds (minutes, hours, or even days) are like gold ticking away. This is an important practice to keep in mind at any time, but as the year winds down and business begins to slow for the holidays it is crucial for agents to keep response time at the forefront of their minds.

Here are some easy ways to stay connected to your prospects on the go:

• Link all your social media profiles and email accounts to your smart phone, and make it so that your phone audibly alerts you of incoming messages.
• Respond as soon as you receive a message. Your initial response doesn’t have to be completely thorough (especially if you’re with another client) but simply acknowledging the message is nice.
• If you don’t have a smart phone, ask an assistant at your office to monitor your incoming emails and/or social media messages and respond to each one promptly, even if that message is simply, “I’m out on a showing right now, but I will answer your question as soon as I get back to my office.” Again, any response is better than no response. It’s important to let clients know they matter to you.
• Most regular cell phone carriers provide a service where you can send emails via text message. Each provider works a little differently, but you can click here to find out how yours works. You can use this feature to ensure that clients can send emails straight to your cell phone through text message using your AgentAdvantage site.
• If you are a Premier level customer for AgentAdvantage, you can also use our Click to Call Feature on your website to offer one more way to connect to you. All a prospect has to do to get in touch with an agent is click a button on their website, enter their phone number, and our service calls both the agent and prospect and connects them.

 

These are just a few of the ways to stay connected. The more invested you seem in your clients, the more invested they’ll be in you. If you need help with adding an additional email address to your account or would like more information about upgrading to a Premier level account with Click To Call, please contact Member Services at 800-889-3726.

Many agents understand the importance of connecting with prospects in order to convey information to their target audiences, and yet only a handful of agents are truly taking advantage of all their blog has to offer. Using a blog let’s you share real estate knowledge with your site visitors and prepares them for the journey ahead, but it also has some important secondary benefits as well:

Neighborhood Information
Talking about your neighborhood and area attractions in your area is important! School information is also a tremendous help and annual events are fun to write about as well. These topics are important for relocating professionals, families, and proud residents alike!

Search Engine Optimization
When search engines rank your site they are looking for keyword-rich content that is updated often and is highlighted with photos and videos, so a blog is an excellent addition to your site. As long as you post frequently and use multimedia within your posts you should see measurable results in your search engine ranking as your blog grows and matures. This technique is much better than re-writing your main page text every month!

Feedback and Connections
A blog provides a unique opportunity for visitors to comment on your posts rather than through email. Visitors can also comment on each other’s comments, which can spark conversations about your content. Encourage conversations and also make a note of which topics appear to be the most popular on your site.

Social Media Hub
If you connect your blog to your Facebook page, Twitter account, and other social networks you can easily automate much of your social media efforts. Every time you publish a new post all of your networks will instantly be notified without any additional work, and all of the traffic will be directed right back to your blog.

Many agents see a blog as a huge undertaking, but with our integrated blogging software it only takes a few minutes to write 1-2 paragraphs or upload some photos or video. You don’t have to write a novel, just a few sentences covering a topic that is important to your prospective clients. It is certainly worth the effort!

For complete instructions on setting up your AgentAdvantage blog, please see our Blogging How-To Guide. Pressed for time? Be sure to watch our instructional video.

 Search Engine Optimization continues to be one of our most important tools for being found by home buyers and sellers online.  Google recently published an excellent resource for internet marketers getting started in the world of SEO called The Search Engine Optimization Starter Guide. The guide was originally created for Google employees, but is now available to anyone looking to improve the way the search engine spiders are crawling their web pages.  

• Create unique and accurate page titles. Also, have a unique title for each of your pages.
• Don’t skimp on the “description” meta tags.
• Use words in your URLs. Avoid URLs that are too lengthy for users to remember and avoid using generic page names with no keywords (such as “page3.html”).
• Create content primarily for your users, not for search engines. Make sure visitors to your site can comfortably read and understand your content!
• Write anchor text that explains where users will be taken to if they click on your link.
• Don’t forget to submit your mobile site map to Google if it isn’t appearing in Google’s mobile search results.

  

This guide is fantastic because it addresses a variety of SEO topics in a concise document with helpful illustrations. Bonus: there is a glossary with additional links to visit at the bottom of every page! 

The end of the year is fast approaching, but that doesn’t mean that agents should taper off on their marketing efforts. We still have a good two and a half months before we say goodbye to 2010, and that provides ample time for agents to market themselves and, possibly, snag an end-of-the-year sales boost.

One of the best (and easiest) ways to do this is to post your ads on Craigslist. Craigslist is the leading classified service in both print and online media. It lists 30 million new classified ads each month, and is, therefore, a great way for agents to snag more attention for listings! The Post to Craigslist feature in the AgentAdvantage Control Panel makes it that much easier to get ads out to the masses. However, it’s not enough to simply post an ad and wait for the leads to start pouring in. Posting ads on Craigslist requires much more strategy than that.

It’s all in the timing.

Believe it or not, the time you post your ad can have a significant impact on lead generation. This is because when you post your ads, they are placed at the top of search results. Some agents may elect to post their ads first thing in the morning to avoid forgetting about it later. As helpful as that can be, it can actually be harmful for ad visibility if no one is conducting searches when you post. If you post your ad in the wee hours of the morning when hardly anyone is online, more ads will be posted and will push your ads to the bottom of search results.

Even though people have varying schedules and lifestyles, try posting your ads at certain points throughout the day when your target audience theoretically has more downtime. For example, try posting around lunch time (between 11:30 AM and 1:00 PM) and just after dinner time (between 7:30 PM and 8:30 PM.) That will provide you with a pretty decent starting off point to gauge the best time to post. The key is to experiment with different times to see what does and doesn’t work for your audience, and when you find something that works, go for it!

We often get caught up in our online real estate marketing, and forget to take the time to answer this crucial question: What are people really looking for on my site?  Before re-thinking your SEO strategy or choosing a new website template, remember that the content featured on your site is ultimately what will keep users engaged and keep them coming back for more.  Here is a short list of things consumers regularly look for on a real estate site that will keep you ahead of the competition.

Accurate Listing Information

Not surprisingly, both buyers and sellers come to real estate websites to see accurate listing details for properties; buyers want to know that their options are, and sellers want to know who the competition is.  Don’t lie about the location, size, or school zone to improve your results in the search results, and make sure your property descriptions are legit.  You’re only hurting your credibility by not following this rule!

Helpful photos

That’s right, helpful photos!  Not 15 different photos of the backyard taken from exotic angles and one photo of the front door.  Visitors want the grand tour, so they want to see each of the major areas (kitchens, bathrooms, living areas and outdoor spaces).  Don’t forget the spiral staircase and the fireplace!  When it comes to photos, the more the merrier!  Also, the more photos you upload, the  higher your listings will rank on Homes.com!

Hyperlocal Content

Most consumers moving more than a few miles away from their original location need help finding specific information about the neighborhoods they are considering.  Does the neighborhood have sidewalks?  Is the crime rate lower?  Is the HOA flexible?  Luckily, no one has a larger vault of hyperlocal conent than an experienced real estate agent.  Make sure you have links to the most popular HOA’s, entertainment, good places to eat, family activities and other things to do in your area, in addition to the basic links to utilities, cable, telephone, and newspaper providers.  Need help?  Consider one of our  TopSeller Advantage Marketing Packages.

Real Estate 101

Many users choose a real estate agent’s site because it provides basic information about the real estate sales process, how real estate transactions work, and what they can expect working with you.  You can enhance your real estate educational offerings by providing worksheets, an FAQ section, a blog, ebooks, and agent videos filled to the brim with useful information.

Who You Are

Many consumers are curious to know information about you, what you love about your area, and what skills you bring to the table.  Make sure you tell them a little but about yourself (after all, you may be working with them for several months!), and go into great depth about your qualifications, your designations, and your specialties.  Also, be sure to link to other channels where you have an internet presence like Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn.  For more information about driving traffic to your social networking pages, see our  Adding Social Media Badges to Your Website blog post.