Top 5 reasons for Jamaican Realtors to Blog

Blogging is a tool that helps to broaden or establish an online presence, build a community and start dialog in an open and unfiltered way and provide valuable information. From a business standpoint, it is a low-cost marketing tool that helps to increase your company’s online visibility.


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!

Jumping on the Online Video Bandwagon

With the economic downturn and its effect on the Jamaican Real Estate Market, you need to continue to develop ways to stand out to your prospects. As I have said before it is key to continue marketing efforts, build your brand and the prize will be yours. Money is tight, but those who are on the market for real estate are spending cautiously, buying with more discretion in a competitive business environment.

Going back to online and social media marketing methods, video marketing comes to mind. Search engines tend to index video content higher in the search results. Also, there is no denying that people are watching online videos more than ever. An August 2008 study by eMarketer estimated that 129 million people watched online videos at least once a month.

Here are 7 points to help you develop your own Online Video Marketing Campaign:

1) Ensure the video covers the key points your target audience is looking for. Include the key selling points about your company, vivid images, contact info or website and a call to action. The good thing about online video is that people usually don’t care about whether your video has high production quality like a television show. They will choose content over quality.

2) Post your video on your website and across other video sharing sites. If you have several videos, show one on your website and include a link to your YouTube Channel. Also, in order to help optimize your website for the search engines, it’s good to have the videos on other websites with a link pointing back to your company’s website. Some other video sharing sites include Metacafe, Vidilife, Revver, Yahoo Videos and more.

3) Ensure that people can find your videos by using keywords / tags effectively, plus keyword rich titles. So if you have made a video about a listing in Barbican, your keywords could be “Barbican home in Jamaica for sale, Barbican Jamaica House for Sale, Jamaica Real Estate in Barbican”. You should include your company name in the keywords as well.

4) KISSS Keep it Short, Simple and Sweet. This is key for online videos due to slow connections which make it difficult to watch a long video and short attention spans when it comes to online videos. Two to three minutes is adequate.

5) Refresh your videos Keep updating your YouTube channel with newer videos. Even if you don’t have any new properties to showcase, you can tape customer testimonials from time to time.

6) Network within the online video community. Subscribe to other related YouTube Channels, befriend other users, etc. You can view and subscribe to the Jamaica Real Estate Guide channel here.

7) Tie in your online video marketing campaign with other online or social media efforts. If you have a Facebook Fan Page or Group, corporate blog, MySpace page or Twitter account, then you should promote your videos there too.

Jamaica Real Estate Guide Advertising Benefits

How Jamaican Realtors can use Email Newsletters to their advantage

In a previous post, I mentioned the need for Jamaica Real Estate websites to have a sign-up form to build an email list. Building a list and following up with email newsletters is a key component of the real estate marketing mix that seems to be overlooked in Jamaica.


Email marketing via e-newsletters is an effective, low-cost tool to build brand awareness, loyalty and even bring in new leads. Some of the various benefits of email newsletters are:

• Keeps your brand in front of your prospects


• Helps to build and maintain relationships with your prospects


• Helps to position you and your company as an authority in the real estate industry

The key is to provide value in the form of information and not make it too much like a ‘sales letter’. If executed correctly, your newsletter will bring in leads in the form of referrals from current customers and prospects that enjoy reading it.


Getting Started The first thing that the Jamaican Real Estate Broker should do is to sign up with a newsletter program like iContact or Aweber. Upload your existing contact list to the program – people who have emailed you for property information through your website, classified ad or open house. Upload a sign-up form to your website asking website visitors to sign up for your newsletter, property updates and alerts and local real estate news.
Contents of the email newsletter The email newsletter should contain:

Featured Properties

Latest Rental Properties available

Helpful hints and tips about moving, buying a house for the first time, etc.

Testimonials, recent sales, awards, company sponsorship or charitable involvement

Real Estate Industry news

Leverage your newsletter program features Use autoresponder features to schedule newsletter deliveries ahead of time, send a standard welcome email and even segment your list. Provide an opportunity for the subscriber to forward the newsletter to a friend. Program your newsletter to use each subscriber’s name in the greeting section of the newsletter and at any other appropriate opportunity.


Build your subscription list Put a sign-up form for your newsletter in a prominent place on the home page of your company website or preferably on every web page. Put a sign-up form on your corporate blog if you have one and also on any of the social media platforms you use, like Facebook.


An increasingly popular way to build your subscriber list is to offer a free download to a special report such as ’10 things you should do before buying a house’ or ‘Make a good first impression – preparing your home for sale’. In order for your web visitors to view these reports they would have to submit their name and email address.


In summary, your newsletter, just like other advertising vehicles, reflect on your brand. Email newsletters should be professionally written, marketed and consistent. Check your statistics regularly, like open rate, bounces, etc. Also conduct surveys periodically to get a feel for what kind of information your subscribers would like to see. Statistics reporting and surveys can be done with most email newsletter programs. You may assign a point person, perhaps a sales manager who will handle aspects of email newsletter marketing or outsource to an Ad agency or digital marketing agency . For information on how Butterfly Publications can help, please click here.