AZREBN December 18th - SAAR - Donation Drive

Please join Az Real Estate Blogging Network and SAAR (Scottsdale Area Association of REALTORS(R) and welcome Emily Leach, a SEO expert that is passionate about the success of her audience and has made public speaking a lifestyle; so far in 2008 she has presented at NAWBO New Mexico, UNM Digital Arts Conference, National Video Gaming Conference, Chamber of Commerce and local venues to increase awareness. Outside of Public Speaking she stays on top of SEO skills by teaching SEO certification workshops and Internet Marketing skill workshops throughout New Mexico and Arizona.
With 12 years of experience in the field of Search Engine Optimization, Website Development, Internet Marketing and Information Systems you can rest assured she will deliver new techniques that will entice all real estate professionals that are looking to strengthen their online presences.

Here is the outline for the AZREBN MeetUp:

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Can the Internet Transform Your Real Estate Business?

• Understanding WHY people use the Internet:
• Understanding HOW people use the Internet
  • Both of these concepts apply to every business using the Internet, it isn’t enough to create a website. Whether you have a site or are looking to create one, you NEED to get these two concepts down.
• What is Search Engine Optimization and Internet Marketing?
  • Is there a difference? Or is this a scam to get people to spend money?
  • Find out the answers AND how to put it to use for your business.
• Building a strategy to take you through the next 12 months
  • Find out what almost every company fails to implement when they start using the Internet for marketing
  • How to stay focused in your strategy
  • Should you niche your business?
• Overview of 10 different tactics you can implement in your business
• Open Question and Answers

This is an open and interactive workshop, bring your questions and your creativity!

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With the holiday season upon us we thought that AZREBN would like to join in giving to those less fortunate and help homeless children and families with some daily necessities of life. May you please join us in helping with your donation at the door!

Please help us with your donation at the door for Save The Family with donations of adult toiletries or infant diapers, lotions, toothpaste, etc. Please see other toiletries that are Items needed below:

Toiletries * Adult & Children’s pain reliever Cough drops Deodorant Feminine products Lotion Mouthwash Razors Shampoo & Conditioner Shaving cream Soap Toothbrushes & Paste Thermometers

Baby Items * Baby Pain Reliever Baby Powder Baby Oil Baby Shampoo & Soap Baby Wipes Crib sheets & Blanket Diapers-all sizes Diaper Rash Ointment Instant Formula

Please be sure to reserve your spot and RSVP!!

December 18th, 2008 at 9:45am - 12:00 pm , Thursday!   Click Here for office flyer!

Location:

Scottsdale Area Association of REALTORS®
4221 North Scottsdale Road
Scottsdale, AZ 85251
(480) 945-2651

Find us on your favorite social network groups!
Click on the icon…

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

Who Is Your Blogging Audience?

Who Is Your Blogging Audience?

I get emails often from agents asking me if I could look at their blog and tell them why they are not getting any listings from their blog. Over 90% of the time, it is because they are not speaking to an audience. There is no conversation going on. When you just post listings and market reports, well, for most readers online that is quite boring.

The most important tip I can ever give a new or veteran blogger is to know who your audience is. Who do you want to be having a conversation with? Who do you want to be contacting you?

• Do you want sellers or buyers to be contacting you?

• What age group do you want these people to be?

• What income levels are these people in?

• What do you want these people to do? Call you, email you?

Next, it is vital that you do your keyword research. You will not be getting the calls and inquiries about your services if your are not attracting the people you intend if you do not know and do not use the very keywords that they are typing into the search engine search box.

This is not about guessing or assuming that the keywords you are using are going to be typed into the search box.  Go to the Google Keyword Tool and spend time there figuring out what keywords will be great for you to use because people are actually searching those terms. Many of the agents I coach are shocked to discover that the keywords they have been using which they thought were so popular are actually not even searched for.

Once you have discovered and decided on who your audience is going to be then the next action is to speak to that audience. Write on their level in their voice. Make your blog one of transparency and polarization.  When the calls start coming in, you know you have done your job!

Heather Barr - AZREBN Blogger Spotlight October 2008

AZ Real Estate Blogging Network is proud to announce our very first BLOGGER SPOTLIGHT. Each month we will be featuring a blogger that has shown excellence in growth and passion about blogging! Heather Barr with Thompson’s Realty began blogging in the summer of 2007.  She has developed a Wordpress residential real estate blog for the Phoenix metro area, NorthPhoenixAgent.com.

She has done a wonderful job keeping it alive and well. Heather has a variety of topics she covers from market reports, news and resources for both buyers and sellers!  I had the privilege to interview Heather and wanted to say, “thank you, Heather” for your willingness to allow AZ Real Estate Blogging Network make you our honorary first AZREBN BloggerSpotlight member!

With no further ado, I give you Phoenix’s own, Heather Barr:

Q.  Tell us a little about yourself and your real estate career.

A. Before becoming a Realtor, I was an elementary

education teacher and a paralegal. Those two were a huge help when I made the transition to real estate in 2005. The legal

background meant I could focus on developing the prospecting and salesmanship skills

that were new to me, instead of struggling to get used to the language on the AAR forms.

Teaching 5 and 6 year olds was helpful too, because high-stakes negotiations involving

hundreds of thousands of dollars tends to bring out the immature in some people!

Q.  How did you get started into blogging and why?

A. I started blogging in the late summer of 2007 because I’d heard this was the wave of the

future. At the time I was looking for a long term plan for cultivating leads. I spent about 2

or 3 months in early 2007 checking out leading blogs, and generally figuring out how the

whole thing worked. I made a practice blog and kept at it for about 2 weeks just to make

sure I could find something to talk about every day. That was a major concern in the

beginning!

I understood right away that your blog is your public face, and your online reputation is

everything, so I didn’t want to wade right in and get it wrong somehow. I wanted to make

sure I had a handle on the etiquette of link love, blogrolls and commenting. Also, I’d

been active on the forums at TelevisionWithoutPity.com, so I had to make a mental jump

from pop-culture message boards to business-oriented serious content that would

represent me as one of many online authorities in Phoenix real estate.

I’d probably still be a voice in the wilderness if Jay Thompson hadn’t found me in my

first week out, and published a link to me in one of his posts. Jay wields a lot of power in

the blogosphere. When he says “she’s new but good” people listen!

Q.  What type of blogging platform do your prefer?

A. I use Wordpress mainly because several of the bloggers I admire were there. I signed up

with WP.com a year ago when I started out, not knowing the cool kids in the WP world

were all at WP.org. Now I understand there’s quite a kerfluffle about the benefits of .org

over .com. But I’m happy with any platform that lets me focus on my content and my

“voice” and makes the back-end tech stuff relatively simple.

Q.  If, while running a new blog, you were allowed to promote your blog using just two methods, what would those two methods be and why?

A. Commenting on others’ blogs is really important and one of my ongoing goals is to be

more consistent about doing it. The other promotion method I couldn’t do without is

emailing a monthly eNewsletter sent to my sphere of influence which basically

consolidates the best posts of the month.

Q.  Do you use any social media networking such as Twitter, Linkedin or Facebook? If so; which ones and how does it help your business?

A. The next big task on my To Do list is to utilize either Facebook or Flickr to deepen my

online relationships with clients, friends and prospects. Everyone’s so busy that getting

together in real life is challenging. But sending a quick email to say “I love the new pix

of the baby!” takes only a minute and means a lot to the recipient.

Q.  What are some of the benefits of blogging for your real estate business?

A. Surprisingly, the biggest benefit to date is that I can mine my own blog (and my broker’s

and colleagues’ blogs) to back me up when I talk about pricing and market statistics at

listing appointments. People still have a bias towards believing things they see in print.

Q.  If you could give one sentence of advice to bloggers, what would that be?

A. Blog Frequently.

Q. Do you feel that real estate blogs should be a mixture of content ie; personal — or strictly only real estate related content?

A. A blog is a way for readers to interview you from afar, so there has to be some personal

content to make readers feel comfortable with your style. Ultimately, I want readers to

come back when they need answers, statistics, data or help and then one day like my blog

style enough to call me and use me as their Realtor. But I’ll never forget that one day a

blogger re-posted one of my Day in the Life posts, and then commented to her readers

that my revelation that I’d spent some time that day making lunch and cleaning out the

cat box was too much information! There’s a fine line between having an authentic voice

and revealing too much.

Q.  Please share a link to your favorite post on your blog.

A. Picking a favorite is really hard, but I was happy with the way “Spuds and SPDS”

turned out. I  wrote it to include in my listing packet and then adapted it for use on the blog.

Interestingly, my most viewed post is my second favorite – What Ice Cream Has to Do With Selling Your

Home. It’s pulled in something like 17,000 views since I posted it in October 2007. Blog stats show that

people are finding it because they’re searching for pictures of ice cream. Who knew there were sugar dipping

hoards out there searching for an online buzz?

Obviously Heather has personality, charm and definitely talent to back her blog posts! She comes with much experience in her background and no doubt her clients love her for it! Thank you for sharing with us your blog and we encourage everyone to stop on by Heather Barr’s NorthPhoenixAgent and check her out!

Well done Heather and we here at AZREBN wish you much success and a prosperous blog and career!  Happy Blogging!

** If you know a blogger that would make a great candidate for being AZREBN next Blogging Spotlight, please contact us.

Link Building Presentation

It was wonderful to meet up with everyone again! Thanks for being such an attentive audience, and for all your great questions and interaction.

Here is the presentation. It’s also posted on Phoenix Real Estate Guy. Huh, I just gave myself an inbound link…. ;)

The 25 Basic Styles of Blogging

Blogging can be easy if you like it. However, blogging nowadays is more of a business than a hobby, so besides liking the subject you write about, you must also consider if your posts will interest other people. And, in order to keep that interest, how many hours will you have to dedicate to your blog each week. Spending time on your blog can be a very serious question that you can only answer.

The following presentation shows you 25 styles of blogging, what each of it means, how hard will it be to make a successful blog with that style, how much effort will you have to put in and what are the results you can potentially reach.

Don’t be a secret agent

I use Google alerts to alert me to things that might possibly be related to Phoenix Real Estate.  Often, the alert will clue me into any new blog post by nearly everyone in the Phoenix RE.NET, whether I’m subscribed to their blog or not.  Today, a Phoenix area blogger wrote about purchasing foreclosure properties.  I hadn’t seen this blog before, so I clicked on through from the alert to check it out.  Once there, I was flabbergasted that this blogger had a Wordpress powered blog, had been blogging since January 2008, and I had yet to StumbleUpon him in one way or another.

For the rest of this article, I’ll call this previously undiscovered blogger our Hero.  I don’t mean to embarrass anyone, and if you have a blog that this feels eerily similar to, hopefully I can provide a few tips that will help you get discovered.

I looked at our Hero’s Archives more closely, and in early January he had a post with his 2008 New Year’s Resolutions.  Sitting at #6 was “Don’t be a secret agent”.  You probably know that this means if no one knows you’re in the business as a real estate agent, then you are in fact, a secret agent.  We must market ourselves and our properties to the public, if we are to have any hope of being successful.  The same is true of our blog.

Now, just because I hadn’t heard about our Hero’s blog, didn’t mean he was a secret agent.  It could simply mean I’m ignorant to someone that the rest of the world knows about.  Giving him the benefit of the doubt, I looked for comments left by other people.  Since January, our Hero has 37 posts, with a total of 3 comments.  One was by our Hero, leaving 2 comments from the outside world.  There were NO trackback links.  Personally, I don’t know if I would have been able to stick with blogging as long as our Hero, if that was all the feedback I had received in 6 months.  If nothing else, our Hero has demonstrated some very good stick-with-it-ness.

In my opinion, if you want to be a successful blogger, and not a secret agent blogger, you must do 3 things, and do them fairly well.  You must write a quality blog yourself.  You must comment on other blogs.  And you must link to other blogs.  If you don’t do all 3, you will probably end up being a secret agent blogger.

Scanning through our Hero’s blog, I found only a couple of posts that ever linked away from his site, and they were to AZCentral.com articles.  It’s not a bad idea to link to AZCentral, but it’s not going to get you noticed by anyone there.  And although I’m not going to profess to be an authority on every commenter in the blogosphere, I don’t recall ever seeing our Hero comment on anyone else’s blog.

I’m not going to critique the content of our Hero’s blog, but it’s certainly seems good enough.  What our Hero needs to start doing, is to let the world know that he’s there.  To do so, he needs link out.  Link, link, and link again.  My 2nd post on my blog I made the best accidental act of goodness I possibly could have, and linked to Jay Thompson’s blog (among others).  Jay immediately stopped by and commented.  He’s very friendly like that.  I didn’t know at the time just how powerful linking out was, but the positive experience encouraged me to do it more.  If you are starting a new blog, you probably cannot link out too often.

And then of course, you need to comment.  Not everyone uses Wordpress, and thus not everyone is alerted to being linked to, like a Wordpress blogger will be.  Leaving a comment is a sure fire way to let someone else know that you are there, and that you read what they are writing.  Almost assuredly, if you leave a comment on someone’s blog, they are going to track you down to see who you are.  A good percentage of the time, they are going to subscribe or bookmark your blog, and eventually they’ll comment back and/or link back.  At least, they might.  It’s a numbers game, like all prospecting, but if you are persistant, even mildly so, you’ll find the results will indeed follow.  Just be sure to comment on topic, and respectfully, as Jay suggested in his session at June’s Blogging Meet-up.  You will be rewarded for your effort.

Demystifying Real Estate Blogging

About 45 folks gathered on Thursday for a real estate blogging seminar. Thanks to Nick and Candace (and everyone else) for attending. Candace asked me to post my presentation here. For your viewing pleasure…

Presented at The University of Phoenix on June 12, 2008. Sponsored by First American Title.

Agents have a thirst for Blogging

Yesterday, I attended a blogging class at SEVRAR taught by Rob Gibbs. Rob did a great job answering a ton of questions and by providing a nice lay out of relevant information. The class was very well attended and gave a nice over view blogging. Some of the items of discussion were.

Blogging - What is it?

Blogging Platforms - Word Press, Blogger, TypePad, Active Rain and others.

Customization - Explaining a few of the endless ways to customize your blog.

Widgets - resources to find and add to your blog.

Content - Yep, content is king. Who are you speaking to?

Social Networking - Briefly touched on a couple of these.

How to use a blog in your business. The class was asked to think of and discuss ways to use blogs.

I really enjoyed Rob’s style of teaching. He is a nice guy with a real passion for blogging. On a break, I mentioned this blog and invited him to check out OUR group. :-)

I believe most of the people in the class were new to blogging and I could tell the amount of interest was sky high. Blogging is still something very “new” to many of us. Classes like this and groups like ours will certainly help many agents get a grasp on this effective way to reach an audience.