Build it and they will come?
12:50 AM Posted by Stephanie Treasure
1) Pay per click advertising Have you noticed those sponsored links on websites or in your Gmail account if you have one. It is usually related to the website you are browsing or the topic of the email you are reading. You can have your company featured in those sponsored listings too. The most popular Pay-per-click program is Google Adwords. These programs are fully customizable for cost and for geographic area, keywords, etc. For instance, you can stipulate how much you want to spend per day or per month or per click. You can also specify which geographic area to display your ads. And you can drill down further to specify they keywords relevant to your Ad and for which you want your Ad to be displayed.
2) Website Optimization You can use keywords in your website content that are most popular for your market. In this case, some of those keywords are: “Jamaica Real Estate”, “Real Estate Jamaica”, “Jamaican Properties” and more. But don’t take my word for it. You can do a quick research for this using a free tool called, Google Adwords Keyword Research Tool. This tool tells you what people are searching for and what keywords or keyword combinations they use most.
3) Submit articles to Article Directories An underutilized tool by the Jamaican Real Estate Industry players. I heard someone in an online Teleseminar say recently that ‘underutilized’ translated means ‘opportunity’ You can take a look at my submissions to EzineArticles.com, the most popular article directory here, Jamaica Real Estate Guide Articles This gives you an opportunity to link back to your website, which helps your site to get found quicker by the search engines, this more web traffic.
4) Submit press releases Send out press releases when you have added a new Real Estate Sales Consultant to your staff, new person on the Board of Directors, changed locations, redesigned your website, received an award, made a significant donation to charity and more. One of the most popular online press release services is PRWeb. But there are also Jamaican and Caribbean specific online press release services. Two of them are Jamaica Press Release and Caribbean Press Releases
5) Exchange website links One of the best ways to increase your website’s popularity is to exchange links with similar websites in your industry. Exchanging website links means to place a web link for another company on your website in exchange for a placement of your company’s web link on their website. Hope I did not lose you. For instance, www.JaRealEstateGuide.com has a Broker Directory page with links to Jamaica Real Estate brokers. Some of those brokers have kindly and smartly reciprocated with a link to the Jamaica Real Estate Guide. Some of those brokers are La Maison Property Services, Declan Real Estate and Howard Johnson Realty. This does two things for companies that actively engage in link exchange: 1) It adds value to the web visitor who sees your links page with helpful resource links to other companies in the industry; 2) It increases the ‘credibility’ of both websites, as Google and other search engines, rank websites high based on the number of links pointing to it. For instructions on linking to our website, click here
6) Offer a Newsletter When you offer a newsletter to your website visitors, it encourages them to come back to your website and refer others as well if your content is good.
Top 4 Facebook Marketing Tips for Jamaican Realtors
4:11 AM Posted by Stephanie Treasure
• Facebook is not just for high school and university students. In fact, the fastest growing demographic of Facebook users is those who are 35 years and older.
• Social networking on Facebook is Free
• There are over 100,000 Jamaicans living in Jamaica on Facebook
• Over 6 billion minutes are spent on Facebook each day
• More than 10 million users become fans of Facebook Pages each day
• An effective Facebook marketing campaign can take less than 5 minutes a day
Here are 4 top tips to get started with giving your company a presence and start marketing on Facebook:
1. Set up a Facebook Fan Page You will need to already have a Facebook personal profile in order to set up a Fan Page. Your Fan Page will essentially be a combination of your blog, website, business card and more. So make sure to give it a nice clean look. The first essential for your Fan Page is your company logo, which will be the Fan Page profile photo. Add your mini-bio (the section underneath your main profile picture) with a few words about your company, a link and a call to action. Update the information section with your company profile, links to your website, blog, twitter account, YouTube account, etc. Click this link to set up your Facebook Fan Page View the Jamaica Real Estate Guide Fan Page here
2. Connect Your Blog If you write a blog, you definitely need to import your blog feed into Facebook. The first thing you will need to do is go to the Facebook notes tab http://www.facebook.com/notes.php and click on the import blog link. Every time you make a blog post, it will receive additional exposure as it spreads virally on Facebook. Your fans can make comments right into Facebook. And the cool thing is that when they do comment, it will update their friends’ news feeds and that will be even more exposure for your company/Facebook Fan Page.
3. Status Updates Every time you update your Facebook Fan Page status, it goes out into your fans’ news feeds. You should be very deliberate about what you put in your status updates. Use links often but not all the time. Mix it up with links about your company, news listings and industry news. Be careful not to be constantly promoting, but rather to add value to your fans. Throw in a few motivational quotes or thought-provoking questions. Shortcut: You can schedule your status update with http://hellotxt.com/ which also allows you to update your status across other social networks like Twitter and LinkedIn.
4. Use Facebook Ads If you are looking to attract more fans or drive traffic to your website, Facebook Advertising is a good way to go. It is relatively inexpensive and allows you to do some general targeting by gender, age, Country, etc. Note however that you will waste your money if your Ad is not set up correctly. Also, this form of advertising is relatively new and so click through rates are low. Click here to get started with Facebook Advertising
If you need help setting up your Facebook profile, updates and/or advertising, feel free to contact me and take a look at the Social Media Marketing services offered by Butterfly Publications for Jamaica Real Estate Professionals here.
3 Simple Tips to Engage Your Website Visitors
12:08 AM Posted by Stephanie Treasure
2) Build Rapport First you need to have a lead-generating system on your website. It can be a sign-up form for a newsletter [recommended] or a simple contact form for property inquiries or general real estate related question. Then you need to keep in touch via a newsletter which can be sent out weekly, bi-weekly or monthly.
Alternatively, blogs are a very effective way to build a rapport without or in addition to having an email list and subsequent newsletter. How do you know what to blog about? In addition to the obvious topics to blog about like industry news or updates, you can make a list of the most frequently asked questions by prospects for one week. Write a blog post about each one.
3) Make your website easy to use Design your website with your prospective web visitors in mind. Simple navigation system so that web visitors can find their way around easily. People browse websites differently than how they read print. They scan very quickly and don’t have time to figure things out. Try to put yourself in your prospect’s shoes and browse your website to make sure you can find things easily and quickly. Are you attracting returning residents? Do you have information on your website that may help a returning resident? Ensure you have information on your website that will help each user type. That means general information for first-time homebuyers, investors, returning residents, sellers, etc.
These are just general tips that are relatively easy to implement. Give them a try and see for yourself. At the very least, take a look at your website’s effectiveness or lack thereof and see how you can improve it. The time you invest on this now can mean increased leads and listings down the road.
Top 5 reasons for Jamaican Realtors to Blog
11:58 PM Posted by Stephanie Treasure
1) Build credibility If you have a blog outside of your corporate website, it helps to build trust and credibility among prospects or leads. Typically, the corporate website contains static information about your company, team, listings, etc. However, a blog allows you to be more conversational and provide valuable information.
2) Makes you seem more real In other words, more approachable. It puts a voice on your business. Blogs have the distinct functionality of inviting visitors to make comments on your blog posts and everybody likes to be heard. This adds tremendous value and creates a community type of environment. It’s also the easiest way for people to start a dialog with you or your business. So when you do speak ‘in real life’, it’s as if you already know each other and the formalities are already out of the way. Then you can get right down to business. [Quick side note: Let me know that you are real too, leave a comment on this or any other blog post that moves you. I would love to hear from you!]
3) Lead generation Getting website traffic to a blog can be easier than a website because the search engines rank blog posts with valid content higher. Once you have a blog set up and post on a consistent basis you will see a surge in traffic to your corporate website as long as they are linked. Of course, the smart thing to do is to capture these leads via a sign-up form for a newsletter because the fortune is in the list. You can send property alerts, updates and a newsletter to an email list and keep them in ‘your space’ as a ready market.
4) Position yourself as an expert Blogs are a platform to express your views, demonstrate your knowledge and provide expertise on Jamaica real estate industry issues. If you are very vocal on the issues and post regularly about them, prospects will view you as an expert in the industry, which means more business.
5) Sets you apart from competitors How is your firm different from the hundreds of others in the industry? Why should prospective clients do business with you? A blog can help to bridge the gap towards differentiating your firm from your competitors. A blog gives your readers insight to who YOU are and what YOUR firm is all about.
So how do you get started? Well you could get started tomorrow if you’d like using a free platform like Blogger or Wordpress If you want a unique domain name, you can get that inexpensively at GoDaddy.com In terms of design, you can go very basic, minimal branding and get decent blog themes for free or you can incorporate branding and premium themes quite inexpensively as well.
I use Wordpress for a personal blog on a unique domain with a free theme (still under construction but I will provide you with the link at a later date). I use Blogger for the Butterfly Publications blog using a free theme called Revolution.
With regards to updating, you will have to decide on a schedule and stick to it. This can be once a week, bi-weekly or Monthly. However, some email newsletter programs like Aweber actually allows you to do what is called, Blog Broadcasts at scheduled intervals with some minor programming. The idea is to write a series of blog posts and input in Aweber to be delivered on the dates and times you set.
If you are interested in consulting services to start your blog and get it up and running, please contact me directly here.
Happy Blogging!
