Cultivating Crops in 2009

Over the last 16 years in the real estate business, I have really enjoyed meeting new people and keeping in contact with many of the friends I have made. Early on in my real estate career, I learned that “farming” was a term often used by successful agents, denoting an area, sphere of influence, or specific demographic that fits ones needs personally or professionally. In the “old days” farming mainly referred to door knocking, direct mail and making sure your farm heard from you a certain number of times per year.

Today, new farms have cropped up all over the internet. Terms like niche marketing and hyper-local blogging have become quite effective. Over the past couple of years, I have studied many different types of web -based and social networking options to better serve myself and my clients. This has allowed me to grow some great new relationships as well.

While I enjoy keeping in contact with past clients and feel that they are the back-bone of my career, it is fun to cultivate new crops via niche markets. For me, one such niche market has been homes near the light rail line in Phoenix, Tempe and Mesa. I have found this to be fun, interesting and mutually beneficial to myself and

to many people. So far, the seeds for this niche have been planted strictly on-line, but the response has been quite positive. In the near future, we plan to further attack these areas using a combination of new technologies and some “old school” cultivation. In fact, I have been actively seeking out real estate and mortgage professionals that will be a good fit in helping with this harvest. It is a new year, rates and prices appear to be bringing people back into the game. This truly is a great time to be in real estate, I just don’t care what the media wants to say… Our crops are planted, the growing season is upon us!

AZ Real Estate Blogging Network Meetup - November 19, 2008

Come join us for our monthly meet up for all real estate professionals eager to learn and share about blogging for business! AZ Real Estate Blogging Network is excited about November’s meetup and our featured speakers!

Jay Thompson, Broker, Avid Phoenix Blogger with Thompson’s Realty will be organizing a FAQ session for bloggers on blogging and marketing for your online presences! Jay has been blogging for almost five years now and comes with great experience and so willing to share his knowledge!

Also joining this month is Dave Smith a fellow Realtor from Tucson, Dave will be sharing his experience with building several WordPress blogs such as Real Estate Blog Lab that offers basically a laboratory for blogging. Dave offers great advice, tips and how to’s on blogging. Dave will be sharing his experience, successes with his blogging and online presences!

Justin McHood with Arizona Mortgage Team will be speaking about Social Media Networking and how it became a permanent fixture to his business plan! How he got started and how it has helped his online presence.

Please mark your calendars for our AZ Real Estate Blogging Network for November 19, 2008 meet up from 10:00 a.m to 12:30 pm. Lunch will be served!

The Wednesday mid morning workshop will be RSVP only with limited space. Be sure to sign up with our group within the MeetUp.com platform. You can reserve your seat with AZREBN MeetUp group here.

SPONSORS:

Fidelity National Title - 60 E Rio Salado Pkwy - Tempe, AZ 85281

Map to Fidelity National Title

Justin & Tammy McHood - Arizona Mortgage Team

Please be sure to RSVP as soon as possible and spread the word! We encourage inviting others to join our Meetup group and also find us on your favorite social networking group.

See you in a few weeks!

Candace

AZ Real Estate Blogging Network MeetUp - Sept 26th

Come join us for our monthly meet up for all real estate professionals eager to learn and share about blogging for business!

Jay Thompson, Broker, Avid Phoenix Blogger with Thompson’s Realty will be the keynote speaker for the September 26, 2008 meet up from 10:30 a.m to 12:30 pm.

Click here to check out
The AZ Real Estate Blogging Network!

Jay will cover Link Building: The Basics & Beyond for your blog. If you haven’t had the pleasure of sitting in with one of Jay’s workshops then you won’t want to miss this event live!

The Friday mid morning workshop will be RSVP only with limited space. Be sure to sign up with our group within the MeetUp.com platform. You can reserve your seat with AZREBN MeetUp group here.

Location will be at our local sponsor On Q Financial, located at 1820 W Ray Rd, Chandler, AZ 85224, building ‘J’.  The On Q Financial building is located on the NORTH WEST corner of Cooper and Ray roads look for the AZREBN banner and the LandAmerica Title ‘A’ frame sign with balloons!

Google Chrome Browser Debuts

So the geniuses at Google have now officially taken on Microsoft head on with the launch today of the Google Chrome Browser, a direct IE7 competitor.  Here is Google’s official statement from their blog yesterday.

They indicated that they would be releasing it today in over 100 countries for Windows users, with Mac and Linux to come closely on it’s heels.  Although I can’t yet find where to download it.  More to come as I test FlexMLS, TopProducer 8i and others in the new, more powerful browser.

Oh, lest I forget, in a truly unique manner, Google launched Chrome in a Comic Book that was circulated like wildfire around the Internet.

Enjoy…

Rob the Tech Guy

Related articles by Zemanta

• Google Launches New Browser
• Google Web Browser “Chrome” Debuts Tuesday

Blogger Spotlight of the Month!

AZ Real Estate Blogging Network has had a total makeover this month and with it’s NEW LOOK including you will find some great new features!

One being this SPOTLIGHT section that will feature a Blogger and their blog! This area will be used as a place where we can get to know an existing blogger or perhaps celebrate a newly designed or new bloggers blog!

We are excited here at AZREBN with this added feature and look forward to sharing other bloggers with you! If you or someone you know has an exceptional blog and want to shout out about it, please contact AZREBN at info@azrealestateblogs.com and nominate them for the “BloggerSpotlight” of the month!

If you would like to join our group please be sure to fill in the email form up on the upper right hand corner of the homepage and click on the RSS button for the feed. Also, email AZREBN at join at azrealestateblogs.com to be included in the announcements for our local monthly meetings.

Announcing Candace Robinson’s new Phoenix Arizona Real Estate Home’s blog.

Candace is using a Wordpress theme for both this site and her personal www.PhoenixArizonaRealEstateHomes.com site.

By Way of Introduction…

Hello,

Thank you to Candace et. al. for inviting me to join the fun on AZREBN! My name is Rob Gibbs, and I have a blogging problem. There, I said it. I have 4 of my own blogs and now am authoring on this one as well. From what I can tell, I have a different favorite blogging platform than the rest of the authors. I am a TypePad user for 2 of my Blogs, blogger for a 3rd and wordpress for the 4th (and now 5th). My favorite is TypePad. Why? Well, you’ll just have to keep reading my posts to find out!

For reference my 4 other blogs are:

www.PhoenixBestAgents.com - Customer Facing Real Estate Site
www.BleedingEdgeTech.com - Agent Facing Tech Stuff site
www.ArizonaSailingFoundation.org - Public Facing site about Sailing Education in Arizona
http://Mesa.ArizonaBlogPage.com - CityBlogUSA Website geared towards (Yep) Mesa.

I look forward to blogging with all of you!

Rob Gibbs
Keller Williams Arizona Realty
602-757-2012