How Real Estate Agents and Mortgage Brokers are Getting Results with Social Media

With the rise in social media technology, real estate agents, mortgage brokers, financial planners and insurance agents are discovering how social media can help them generate new business. These professionals have found success in lead generation and sales through the use of social media platforms such as Twitter and Facebook. With the drop the home sales, agents are heading online and finding new ways to communicate with their customers. Additionally, social media provides a way for businesses to connect with their customers and prospects in ways that are faster and wider spread than traditional forms of marketing

 Social media is growing at an enormous rate and there does not seem to be an end in sight. This growth is resulting in a shift in client communications which must be covered in order to stay relevant in the current marketplace. However, staying connected with clients and keeping abreast of the ever growing social media market is time consuming. Many real estate agents and business owners do not use social media and Internet marketing to its full potential because it is too time consuming. Thus, they are missing out on a large percentage of their prospects.

 Social media has a number of factors that make it different than traditional media such as newspapers, television, books, and radio.  Social media allows the user the ability to interact and communicate by leaving comments and participating in discussions. Additionally, if real estate agents can influence a group of followers, they can actually create a market position based on social acceptance.  Social media provides a complementary extension to traditional marketing efforts.  The one important difference between social media and traditional marketing is that with social media you can listen to it, measure it and track it over time.  All in all, social media can attract new customers, strengthen existing customer relationships, reinforce brands and enhance loyalty.  Social media has changed the way goods and services are taken to market.

 In this rapidly changing world, it seems like technology is taking over the marketplace, and real estate agents and mortgage brokers who don’t communicate with their clients effectively will get snatched up by someone else who will. Social media and Internet marketing allows communication between clients and their customers in order to maintain their positive and professional image while building trust and credibility. To be successful in today’s economy, it is absolutely essential that you have a strong online presence that paints you as the true professional you are.

Save Time and Make Money with Social Media Automation

Save Time and Make Money with Social Media Automation

Many real estate professionals don’t know how consistently marketing done through a high quality online social media presence can bring clients to their business. Unfortunately, this also means that there are many home sales and mortgage professionals out there who don’t really know how to build and maintain an effective online social media marketing campaign. With the right marketing plan and automated help, you don’t have to be one of them.

Do You Have The Time To Promote Your Real Estate Business?

It’s no secret that becoming an online authority on buying and selling homes can go a long way toward bringing in new Social Media Marketing in Real Estate and Mortgage Lendingclients. However, it can be easy to underestimate how long it takes to write and maintain high quality content to share with potential clients. You need technical knowledge to know where to put your information to get it seen by potential clients, writing knowledge to produce content that holds interest and promotes your business, and a whole lot of time for self promotion through social media that you may not even know how to use effectively. For most people who run offline businesses, successful online marketing is far beyond what they have the time and technical knowledge to achieve.

Market Your Business Through Automated Social Media

Social media websites are one of the best ways on the internet to get your content and expertise in front of as many potential customers as possible. While it can be almost impossible for one person to promote themselves effectively through the many valuable social media outlets that are available, it is quite possible to use a good automated service to get your content and expertise promoted effectively with just a little bit of simple setup. The right social media automation can save you time and money when promoting your real estate expertise.

Produce Quality Mortgage Blog Content Without Lifting A Finger

One problem automating social media promotion does not address is the production of interesting content. A good automated service for Realtors always needs to be paired with quality mortgage blog content that will help you establish your online authority in the topic. With the right syndication service, you can get quality content written and posted to all the write places without any hard work. Using an automated solution to pair social media and quality blog content to establish your online reputation can get you clients and make you money.

Click Here to learn how you can automate your Social Media Marketing Strategy!

Who Stole the Cheese? Mortgage Securitization Fiasco Revealed!

Even after spending almost 15 years in the mortgage industry, and considering myself somewhat of an expert, this visual example of mortgage securitization baffles me.  I don’t know how people could have come up with this crazy system in the first place.

There’s a lot of sortin’ out to do!

Original Post Link

Click on the image to see the full screen version!

Six Inches Makes All the Difference in Your Success!

Click Here To See John Assaraf’s
Groundbreaking Success Video!

Success Through Positive Affirmations

The longest distance between where you are now and the success you want in life is six inches.  Six inches is all you have to conquer in order to have every dream, goal and aspiration that you can imagine in your mind.   Half the distance of that little wooden ruler that you used all the way through grade school, while you weren’t slapping your friends on the hand with it, is the total distance that must be covered on your journey to success and the fortunes of your dreams.

Isn’t it interesting that people travel thousands of miles.  They literally travel all around the world in search of the “one thing” that will lead them to their own highest achievement. Some people risk life and limb to climb the highest mountains in the world to prove to themselves that they can do it.  Some prefer meditation with religious and spiritual thought leaders in the Far East to bring them enlightenment.  Some people just turn away in frustration and lose themselves in the day to day struggle and never become what they were uniquely created to be.Henry Ford Quote

Well, the interesting news of the day is that the six inches that is so important to yours, mine, and everyone’s success is the six inches resting between their ears.  That bundle of gray matter laced with neurons and dendrites and pyramidal cells and synapses is literally the pathway to success.  It’s all tied up in the dopamine and norepinephrine and acetylcholine and endorphins which are continuously batting around and bouncing into each other that determine how high you go and how fast you get there.

How Can I Gain Success Using Positive Self Talk?

So how can you navigate that six inch trek which 95% of all people fail to tame and settle for mediocrity in their lives?  Well it all comes down to brain re-training.  You have the capacity to teach your brain to believe anything you want it to believe.  You can choose to make your brain lead you to your own personal success like an electromagnet can lift tons of metal once the electricity is turned on.  It’s all about what you feed your mind and how you condition is to feed information back to you in your life.

Henry Ford made the point this way:

“If you think you can do a thing or think you can’t do a thing, you’re right.”

So what are a few steps that you can take to get your brain on board with where you want to be?

1.  Determine a very clear picture of the goals that you want to achieve.  You must be specific.  This is one of the most critical elements of getting to what you want.  Studies have shown that the average person puts more time and attention into planning their annual vacation than they put into a concrete plan for the results of their one opportunity at creating a fantastic life.

2.  Write personal affirmations that state the achievement of these goals in the present tense.  In other words, if you want to earn $100,000 per year and you are not there yet, you would not say “I want to earn $100,000 per year.”  You would say “I’m so thankful that I’m earning $100,000 per year and am able to have the time freedom and stress-free life that comes with this income level.”  It’s also important to write affirmations for the different areas of your life.  It’s not all about money, but let’s face it, I’ve had it both ways and it’s easier having money than not.

3. Dedicate yourself to reciting these affirmations on a daily basis every morning and every night.  You may think it gets repetitive and boring, but your brain doesn’t know the difference.  The reason most people fail is that they let outside influences program their brain for failure.  Most of the outside information that you are fed on a daily basis is negative in nature and shows you why other people succeed and why you can’t.  You must overpower those voices that are speaking directly to your one great brain with the positive statements of achievement that will dictate your life’s success.

SEOPressor—Who Can Really Benefit from This WordPress SEO Tool?

SEOPressor—Who Can Really Benefit from This WordPress SEO Tool?

With the large amount of popularity that SEOPressor is gaining of late, it is worthwhile to see who this tool WordPress SEO - SEOPressorcan really help. Internet marketers of today aren’t a uniform lot—they are dabbling with various kinds of businesses —and hence it is very difficult to have something that can work for all of them. However, it can definitely be said that SEOPressor breaks convention. The tool is so designed that it helps Internet marketers get the one thing that all of them hanker for—number 1 position on the search engine ranking pages, especially the Google search engine.

SEOPressor Will Drive Search Engine Traffic to Your WordPress SEO Blog

Now, if you have a WordPress website—rather, blog—which is constantly updated, you will see that SEOPressor can add immensely to its SEO value. Are you constantly worried about how your website is faring? Are you skeptical about what kind of traffic prospects it has? Then you should consider SEOPressor seriously. This is a tool that contains an assortment of features that any WordPress webmaster would find useful.

With things such as keyword analysis and optimization, tags, calculating SEO scores, testing and rating posts, image analysis and other features, SEOPressor keeps constant tabs on the website and checks how it’s going. Also, it provides suggestions on how certain tweaks can be made on the website so that its prospects can be further improved. All these things help in building traffic to the website, which is what every webmaster is eventually looking for.

Basically, the following 5 types of online marketers will find SEOPressor the most useful for WordPress SEO:-

1. People who have niche blogs that they are monetizing. SEOPressor can boost the rankings of these niche blogs, even overcoming a sea of competition, and thus increase the traffic prospects of the blogs.
2. People who outsource their blogging and content needs. It becomes difficult to keep tabs on how the blog does if you are outsourcing content. But SEOPressor has an analytic tool of itself which can instantly tell you how your website is performing. So, you can be in the know about your blog prospects immediately. Also, it gives you suggestions on what you can do to improve any deficiencies.
3. People who are flipping websites. These are people who build websites, make them popular and then sell them for a profit. If you are into this, SEOPressor will tell you exactly how your website is faring and which is a good time to flip your website.
4. People who act as SEO consultants to others. Imagine being in the know, in an instant, about how a particular blog is faring. It can make all the difference to your credibility in the eyes of your clients.
5. People who do SEO for a hobby. Yes, there are these people as well!

It is predicted that SEOPressor will be incorporated as a mandatory plug-in into WordPress . But, until then, the early birds can always visit the website and download this highly beneficial product to improve their WordPress SEO.

How to Increase Sales Conversions Through Strong Guarantees

Sales conversion is everything when creating an income on the internet.

In internet marketing, making a guarantee on your product or service is one very important step in increasing the sales conversions on your offering.   Internet buyers don’t have the benefit of meeting you personally and shaking your hand.  They aren’t able to get the 93% of communication that is not delivered by your words which is normally very important in sales conversion.  They are only able to make decisions on whether they would like to purchase your product or service based on the information on your website or sales page.

Sales Conversion almost always requires a strong customer guarantee!

Internet and direct response marketers call this guarantee “Risk Reversal”.  The idea is that people will be more inclined to take advantage of an offer if they know that they can get their money back in the case that the product or service didn’t live up to the sales copy.  Clear, benefit driven sales copy goes a long way in setting appropriate expectations and will result in happier customers and lower returns.  A strong guarantee of their satisfaction is many times the gentle nudge that the customer needs to go from highly interested to entering in their payment information and becoming the proud new owner of your information product or service.

Land’s End uses an incredible guarantee to get better sales conversion on their website and in their magazine.

Here’s an example of one company’s guarantee philosophy:

“The Lands’ End guarantee has always been an unconditional one. It reads: “If you’re not satisfied with any item, simply return it to us at any time for an exchange or refund of its purchase price.” We mean every word of it. Whatever. Whenever. Always. But to make sure this is perfectly clear, we’ve decided to simplify it further. Guaranteed. Period.®

Land's End Taxi guarantee gets high sales conversion

I'd Like to Return this Taxi!

I’d like to return this taxi, please.

As you’d expect, over the years our guarantee has been put to the test. We’ve been given countless opportunities to demonstrate our commitment to customer satisfaction and our willingness to stand behind the products we sell – though none more demonstrative than the return and refund of an original London taxi.

Featured on the cover of our 1984 holiday catalog, the taxi was purchased for $19,000 by a Kansas native as a gift for her husband (an avid car collector). In 2005, her husband contacted Lands’ End and expressed interest in returning the car for a full refund. Of course, we obliged – because whether your purchase includes a tote or a taxi, your satisfaction is Guaranteed. Period.® (LandsEnd.com)

Spend some time thinking about your offering and how you can offer a strong guarantee to your clients to increase sales conversion.  If you aren’t comfortable with offering a strong risk reversal in your sales materials, then you should re-think the value that you are actually delivering to the marketplace.  The main point of building a successful business is long term profitability, and that only comes from happy customers getting a lot of value and then telling their friends, family and colleagues about the great deal that they got on your product or service.”  Offering a strong guarantee up front is one of the strongest ways that you can improve sales conversion on your website and increase your profits dramatically.

September Existing Home Sales Real Estate Numbers

How To Use A Blog To Communicate With Your Clients

Being proficient in social media skills isn’t just an option anymore. It’s a necessity. Today’s market in real estate and mortgage lending is online and there’s no turning back the clock.

Real estate agents and mortgage lenders can reach many more potential customers today via online media than can be reached through traditional approaches such as radio spots, television advertising, the yellow pages, and classified sections in periodicals. Many clients are increasingly reliant on the internet to connect with goods and services they need and if an agent or broker is online, he or she will gain business. If they don’t have a web presence, many opportunities to make a sale or loan will be lost.

Many agents and brokers don’t possess the timely skills in online media to effectively communicate with younger clientele who spend much of their life surfing the net, banking, and finding desired information online. The most effective way to compensate for thinking a blog is a swamp monster or social media is a disease is to hire a professional to do the job for you.

Professional web communicators create the consistency and focus needed to create a positive and professional presence for your business. The technical skills and specialized knowledge needed are provided for hard-hitting results in the foreign world of the blog as your message reaches thousands of people who no longer thumb their way through phone books or read the local newspaper. Reaching these clients is important for success and the key to reaching them is social media.

Cost concerns are legitimate business considerations all agents and brokers need to keep in mind. As the world of internet business explodes and more people learn to use it, developing and maintaining a professional online presence is becoming a business necessity. Marketing resources used to launch your business online is advertising money well spent.

An even better way to present a professional online presence while not taking away from your high value daily activities is using an automated social media marketing system.  You can find an excellent example of this high class, low cost system by visiting http://www.getasmartblog.com .

Now is the time to let the online professionals do what they do best: make you competitive and successful.

Top 5 Tips For Real Estate and Mortgage Sales Success – Tip 1

Real Estate sales and mortgage loan origination is a unique business which requires trust and confidence by the Real Estate Mortgage Client Trustpotential client early on in the relationship.  In fact, the first two minutes of the initial meeting are critical to establishing the tone of the entire mortgage transaction and future client relationship. These same principles apply to Real Estate customers as well.  I’ve put together five tips to help you manage that initial introduction successfully and turn your customers into commission producing raving fans.

Tip One –  Be Yourself.

The key to a positive first impression is the feeling of trust between you and your potential customer.  Too many times we try to make our professional persona something different than our true self.  This can be dangerous when dealing with clients.  If  the customer feels that we are hiding something or being “fake” they may, even subconsciously doubt our trustworthiness.

Interestingly, we are trained from childhood on in ways that help us instantaneously develop trust with people we come into contact with or to avoid interaction with them.  In Malcolm Gladwell’s book, Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking , he illustrates the point well using the term “thin slicing”.  Gladwell explains that we instantly judge new people and situations “because we have to, and we come to rely on that ability because there are lots of hidden fists out there, lots of situations where careful attention to the details of a very thin slice, even for no more than a second or two, can tell us an awful lot.”

Here’s a question.  Have you ever been in a situation where the hair stood up on the back of your neck? When that happened were you in an uncomfortable or nervous state?

That reaction is caused by the sympathetic nervous system and is part of every person’s natural “fight or flight” response.  It is an example of your bodies’ unconscious response to the feeling of distress.  The snap judgments that you make about a new person or situation is automatically interpreted by your brain and sends messages throughout your body in order to protect you from your environment.  Clearly this is a response that we do not want to trigger in our prospective customer within that crucial two minute introduction.

By being comfortable with yourself and willing to expose your true self to your prospects, they will be more at ease and feel like they can trust you right away.  In fact, in the best of cases, your customer will feel privileged to have made a new friend and will want to tell others about you.

One of the most consistent pieces of feedback that I have received from my clients over the last 15 years of successful referral based marketing in the mortgage industry has been “Mikel, I don’t know why but I just feel like I can trust you.  I’m going to go ahead and do what you suggest.”  My response, developed over the initial years as I started to see this pattern became; “Well thank you for that compliment.  I have to tell you that your trust is well placed.  I really do care about getting you the best deal for your situation and I’d do the same for anyone who you might refer to me in the future.”

Feel free to use that script.  It works.

This is just the first of five tips that I’ll be posting.

The most exhausting thing in life is being insincere.  ~Anne Morrow Lindbergh

By the way, you can subscribe to all 5 tips delivered right to your email including step-by-step worksheets that are guaranteed to boost your sales pipeline immediately at http://www.ultimatehomejournal.com .

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Real Estate Leads from DemandSpot.com

I attended the ActiveRain Rain Camp in Portland, OR today.  I learned a lot of great marketing tips that I’ll be sharingGenerate Online Home Buyer Leads Instantly over the next couple of weeks.  I’d highly recommend attending one of these workshop events as they are well worth the very low cost to attend.  You will learn all sorts of great real estate and mortgage referral marketing strategies focused using social media.

One of the tools that was introduced at the event made it easy to generate buyer leads from people posting to Twitter.  This tool is free to use, but also has a subscription option which gets you fresher leads right when people post to their account.

Here is a video that is a basic introduction to DemandSpot.com .

I played around on the site after I finished this video and was pleasantly surprised at the depth of information that you can get on a real estate purchase prospect. There are also many apartment hunters that this service provides, so anyone in property management might use this tool to generate renter leads for their investment properties.

What do you think about this service? Have you used it with any success?

I’m providing a prize to the best comment within 7 days!