Tracy Miller recently asked me to put a post together explaining what the benefits or advantages were of being a member of the Active Rain social network. In the spirit of what Active Rain is all about, here's your "long distance" response my friend...
The benefits and/or advantages of being a member of the Active Rain network are vast. In fact there has been so much written about this that I couldn't possibly name all of the reasons nor will I since an easy search under the "blogs" tab will help you identify most of those posts but I am going to give you a few reasons why blogging is so important to me and my business.
By this time we should all know what the book, "The Secret" is about. For those of you who don't, it's based on the fact that if you're thinking the right way, then good things will happen. Blogging works very much in that way. If you're writing posts about what you specialize in, then people will find you provided you wrote informative and intelligent content. The two keys here are:
- valuable information
- expression of intelligence
I could provide a few links showing someone writing the "right" way and the "wrong" way but that sort of goes against our support network here so let me just say if you will visualize who you want to work with and write towards that person or group of people, they will be attracted to wanting to do business with you. If you try to take the lazy way out and post a couple of odds and end facts and you write it in uninteresting or negative fashion the results will fail your expectation. I try to give the people in my "vision" interesting and timely information they may not be able to get their hands on easily anywhere else.
I don't think it's completely wise to depend on your blog as a sole information resource. Have you ever tried to read several posts on someone's blog? It's great if the blog is just on the subject matter you're interested in but if they bounce around as I do on mine, whatever captured the attention of your reader may diminish if you're not staying on the subject that brought them there to begin with so always have a place they can bounce to regarding the subject matter that got them interested in the first place. That's why if you review my posts about my market you'll see lots of links going to my Naples Florida real estate website that has even more information about particular locations throughout my market.
People are doing more research before they contact us. That's great news for most of us as car time has been drastically reduced. We all know the more time you spend showing properties the less of a chance for a sale right?! Let's think about this for a minute. If more people are spending more time doing their "own" research then who wins? The people providing the content!
I can't tell you how many times I've heard lately that people are "going back to basics" and they're beefing up what they "used to do" when they were so successful. Folks, the name of the game hasn't changed but how you get to the closing table has. That's why you'll see leading Realtors who have always had a lion share of business starting to lose footing to other agents who have caught on to the technology game of real estate. Happy were the days when top companies could hoard their best listings. More and more sellers are catching on and that's just one game that isn't tolerated as much as it was in the past.
How much fun is it to prospect:
- For sale by owners?
- Expired listings?
- Open house attendees?
- Neighbors
- People in social groups where you belong?
I'm not about to say that those ways of getting business are no longer effective but it can be a real negative experience especially when you consider the first two groups.
For sale by owners are not necessarily fans of Realtors and we all know sellers of expired listings are not necessarily super fans of Realtors...especially the last "not good for nothin" person they hired.
But...you contacted them and signed up for the negative barrage of stuff you're about to receive. Isn't that a fun way to spend a day?
Instead of those options, why don't you let the other 50 or so agents in your market do that and you go after the person who's ready to do something in your favorite neighborhood. First, you'll already have something in common...you both like the neighborhood.
Now let's think about all of the unsolicited offers we get right now. I don't know about you but I get anywhere from 5-10 calls a week and probably around 200 emails a week from people trying to sell me something. It DRIVES ME NUTS! Do you think your potential clients feel the same way?
That's why blogging is my FAVORITE form of marketing right now. I talk about only the stuff I'm interested in. Now, don't get me wrong, I'll get calls and emails asking for my assistance in areas I do not handle but blogging has given me the freedom of being able to say, "no thank you". Now, I don't do business in places where I am not the expert AND it gives me the opportunity to direct them to another professional who does specialize in that area. They still get the great help they need and deserve and I still have time to build my business in the direction I want it to go. So if you find yourself in a position where you're not really liking what you do for a living, maybe it's because you haven't told the universe what you want to be doing???!!! Maybe it's because you haven't taken control of what you want and haven't strategically gone after it??? Or, maybe you just haven't told the people you want to work with that you're the person they should hire.
The people I've worked with this year have been absolutely OUTSTANDING! There were no interviews. I think my interview with my customers took place on the Internet. In fact, I know it did on some occasions. Attitudes changed dramatically. There were cases in the past where customers would put really weird and disrespectful demands on me and my time. Today, people are so respectful and courteous. It's unbelievable! When people call me for the first time now, they don't bark orders like they may have in the past. They ask when I'll be available to assist them and in some cases make travel arrangements after we solidify an appointment date. I do everything I can to be accommodating but who knew that a blog would attract such great people.
More importantly, they're contacting me. They're HAPPY to be contacting me. They're excited about buying in the locations they're looking. They have already decided that I'm going to be their agent and I'm going to do a tremendous job for them. They're right.
So far I've only told you about the customer end of this magical tool. I haven't said a peep yet about the other people I've met on the Rain. Do you know that once you develop relationships here on Active Rain, those relationships can follow you almost everywhere you go? Have you ever been to a conference where you didn't know anyone? I have. One example was the Inman conference in San Francisco 2007. That's where I learned about Active Rain. A few short days after that conference I signed up and started blogging. I also went to the same conference August of this year. Do you want to guess how many Active Rain people I knew at that same conference this year....me too. It was a BUNCH. I had such a GREAT time! Active Rain people are EVERYWHERE on the Internet and they're everywhere across the country. Active Rain exposes you to so many people and so much great content it ultimately can change your life. Now that sounds like a tall order doesn't it?
Active Rain changed my life. I have friends in all corners of this beautiful little country and I owe it to Active Rain. It's probably the friendliest social network alive and it's certainly the best place to help you build your intelligence, your business and your real estate network.
Tracy, I hope this was what you were looking for and for the rest of you....you get out of it what you put into it so go get blogging! :)
Best Regards,
Your Naples Smart Girl
Shannon Lefevre, PA
Your Naples Smart Girl!
239-595-6223
www.ShannonLefevre.com
“The opinions expressed herein are those of the author and do not necessarily represent the views of John R. Wood Realtors.”
area. It's hard to believe Naples is experiencing these types of crimes especially considering the fact that we could all once park our cars, leave all our junk in plain site with doors unlocked only to come back hours later to find everything right where we left it.
dealership sold this weekend! Not sure what the total for those 3 cars added up to but I'm pretty sure with prices starting at just under $200,000 there may have been reason to celebrate!
I've heard a fair share of speculation about the 
