The right tools...

Did you find them?

• Your winning smile
• Your firm handshake
• Your business card

Yep, 20 million tech tools out there, and most of them are free.  Some of them are even viral, but the absolute best ways to promote your blog are probably right there with you, right now.

For most of us, the people we want to read our blogs the most are actually the people we might interact with “in real life” (IRL).  They are local and you might even see them daily or weekly or monthly.

Walking up to a person, flashing your winning smile, shaking their hand with your firm handshake and handing them your business card, with a short explanation of what your site is about is WAY more likely to create a new reader than almost any other marketing you can do.  But there is another benefit, as well.  The cool side benefit is that the person you meet is also more likely to share your site with their friends… if they find compelling content.

I guess it often comes back to that compelling content, doesn’t it?

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Image via CrunchBase

A few days ago I posted that (in my humble opinion) real estate blogs should be about real estate… not movie reviews, restaurant reviews, not recipes…  Real estate.  That is what the audience is tuning in for, give them what they want.  I gave a few examples of what I see from my traffic patterns, and generally tried to support my opinion.

But, real estate agents that are marketing online (should) have a LOT more channels aside from their real estate blog.  And I DO believe that there is a place in some of those other channels for items with less focus.  First, let’s run down a few options:

Image via CrunchBase

• YouTube
• Posterous
• Twitter
• FaceBook (Business) Page
• Delicious (Link sharing)
• Flickr (Photo Sharing)
• FourSquare (Location Sharing)
• Community Websites
• More…

Image via CrunchBase

With the exception of the community websites, EVERY one of those items listed is FREE.  Community websites might be free, might cost a few bucks a year, or might cost as much as $100 (if you have to have someone set it up).  But there is something that they ALL have in common, too.  They can all be support systems for your real estate website.  And they can all send links to your real estate website… they are all outposts, providing information and hopefully send a few people trotting off to visit your cyber-office. A community website is the absolute toughest to get going… and has the most reward if you get it right.

Image via Wikipedia

Video is hot.  You should have video of testimonials, communities, local events, YOU and likely a plethora of other things.  Host them on YouTube, embed them on your site (the ones that belong) and let them pull in a little traffic.  Flickr is much the same… but with pictures instead of video.

Posterous is COOL.  It is a great way to get some of the content to the other sites… and also share news and tidbits about things that are happening in the community.  Grab an RSS feed from your Posterous site and let it run on the sidebar of your blog.  Pull in calendar entries from local events, interviews with local politicians or business-people, news items, reviews or local places, etc.  Don’t make it the focus of your website… let it stand on its own, while contributing a little to your website.  Better yet, make it community specific, and find people in the community that want to load THEIR content onto it.  Be the publisher…

Image via CrunchBase

A great source of news is Twitter.  I have come to see Twitter as “broadcast media” rather than as person to person social networking.  Some will disagree, but I look at Twitter the same way as I look at the “newswire services”.  Filter it down to what is important, and then share that in a news feed on your site.  It isn’t terribly difficult in a geographic specialty… but a bit tougher with a lifestyle specialty.

Image via CrunchBase

Delicious is a link sharing site.  Instead of having a giant blogroll of all of the people you might know, share the links through Delicious… they can be tagged and categorized to make finding resources easier for your reader.  Again, publish a feed to your sidebar.

On FourSquare, do those reviews (in the “Tips” section of the location).  Have a great profile and point it back to your website.  If there is someone out there that will buy a house from you based on your incredible writing about an ice cream cone… they can still find you.

Image via Wikipedia

FaceBook could be 20 posts all by itself.  But, the basic idea is to make a Page about a community and then get the community to give it life.  You should be there to nurture it, cull out the junk (and competitors) and keep it moving along.  Talk about the parks, restaurants, movies, local parades and a zillion other things.  Let it be a virtual Town Square where people can gather at 4am in their underwear without being laughed at (nobody has to know).

The bottom line is that there IS a place for all of that other content we want to use to show everyone how connected we are to the community.  It just might not be the main real estate website.

What do YOU think?

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Of course, some have taken it well beyond blogging on A|R and have included Twitter, FaceBook, LinkedIn, Trulia, Zillow, Flickr, Blip.fm… and a million other sites and communities.

But the same question is always at the bottom of it…

just out of sight of some, and front and center for others…

WHY?

What is the purpose?

• To ‘close’ sales
• To make money
• To grow our business
• To get back in touch with old friends
• To make new friends
• Lookin’ for Love…

These are the answers I usually hear… but they all entail one thing.  To meet people… and to build relationships.  Regardless of what else you might be trying to accomplish on the list, it comes down to meeting people, building relationships and leveraging those relationships to fulfill the goals of each and every person involved.

Seriously, what else on that list can be accomplished without meeting people… probably face to face… and building relationships?

I have had the great fortune to meet a lot of Active|Raindrops.  Some that are no longer active in the rain, others that are very active.  I have been able to hang out with some of the famous and the infamous.  On FaceBook I have been blessed to get re-acquainted with many of my (I thought) long-lost friends, as well as get to know a lot of new friends.

But there should always be a goal…

And raw numbers are not the goal…  I can’t have meaningful relationships with 50,000 people.  And there are a lot of people that I really don’t want or need to know… and a LOT more than really don’t want or need to know me.

Do I really want or need 53,000 followers on Twitter?  If I had 10% of that, could I actually interact with them, or would I filter out all of these “new friends” so that I could concentrate on people I knew?

So, is that the goal?  Should we be trying to build a following of thousands of people just to broadcast messages to them, but not engage in two way conversation? Not that there is anything wrong with that… I have a FaceBook ‘Fan Page’ that I started to put up even before Mike Mueller and Dustin Luther told me to… and I think it is a GREAT idea.  But there is a major difference.

If we are friends on FaceBook or if we are mutual followers on Twitter, we expect that the conversation is two way. If we are fans of a FaceBook ‘Fan Page’ we expect that to be a one way broadcast.

Do I have all of the answers?

Heck No… I don’t even have all of the questions.  I do have a questioning nature, though.  And I like to go against the grain.  And popular notions often strike me as something to question.

And I’m one to talk…  I am following 1000 people or so on Twitter.  I have over 600 ‘friends’ on FaceBook… and I don’t actually know some of them.  I have started getting more picky about who I friend or follow, and on my local Twitter account, I only follow people that are in my immediate area… but the fact remains that I am not the poster boy.

But I am starting to put together the questions…

A few weeks ago I had an epiphany.  I thought about someone that I think about regularly, but with a different direction.  And I was able to do something about it… because of social networking. Curious yet?

When I was growing up, my family hosted a series of exchange students. We had a couple of them from Manta, Ecuador, then one from Popayan, Columbia.  We also had one from Strasburg, France.  We visited the families whose kids we hosted in both Ecuador and Columbia.  Our families became friends.  In fact, the brother of our first exchange student lived with us for a year while we hosted out third student.  And the first two that we hosted were actually best friends.

So, after having them live in our home for a year, and visiting South America a few times, we had a great relationship.  The other wrinkle was that as an only child, these were the closest thing to siblings that I had.  Don’t be sad for me…  I had a wonderful childhood.  But, as a kid in 2nd through 5th grade, they made a tremendous impact on my life.  Fernanda, Gina, Mercedes and Patricio (Fernanda’s brother) were a big part of my childhood. Honesty flash… the French student we hosted always seemed to be a visitor to the family and never a part…

So, I devoted about 15 minutes to seeing if I could find any of them.  In fifteen minutes, I had the email address of Gina. I found her nephew in Ecuador, and he sent me her email address.  How cool is that… I haven’t had contact information for any of them in decades… We’ve moved, they’ve moved.  And now I have reconnected with part of my life that I never thought I would be able to reconnect with.

There is still a long way to go, but this is a good start.  The nephew that I exchanged messages with happens to be best friends with Patricio’s son.  And of course that means I should be able to find Fernanda and Patricio… he is helping get them in touch with me.  (**Update – I have now been in touch with both Frergy and Patricio**)

When I was a kid, in order to call to Ecuador, we had to make prior arrangements.  And then the conversation would be limited to just a few minutes.  Letters were iffy…  And now, I was able to find a lost friend, and communicate IN JUST MINUTES.

I have actually connested with scores of friends from around the country through FaceBook and Classmates.  From Michigan to Virginia to Minnesota and then even here in Georgia, utilizing social networks, I have been able to connect to long lost friends and family.  Sure, business is nice… but what about all of those friends that you have shared your life with?  I have learned that they are A LOT more important. Yes, I tell all of my friends what I do… they know.  In some cases I have gotten calls from friends of friends to help them here in Atlanta.

While at #rebcclt last week, there were a lot of ideas flying around about unique ways to use FaceBook Fan pages.

• You kid’s school
• Your neighborhood
• Clubs
• Events (like charity walks, etc.) in which you participate
• Your business
• Your school (alumni)
• Target Markets

Basically, if there is a group of people that would like to put out news, maintain a calendar or promote discussion… or a combination of the three… then it could be good to build a FaceBook Fan page for the group.  I know that I have several ideas for fan pages to implement as I get time… Of course I hope that they get easier as I put a couple together.

from Lane’s A|R Blog