What does your "About Me" page say about You?

Many agent websites have an "About Me" link on it. I think it's a good idea to have one especially because you sell a very personal service. You probably don't need it to be very elaborate if you have an up to date blog on Active Rain, a Facebook or a Twitter profile that gives users a really good idea about your personal motivations. Just be sure to link to those other services where people can read more about you.

From experience I know that most agents leave the About Me page filled with 'canned' text that came preloaded with their website builder software. No one likes to read that boring, monotonous pre-made text that's duplicated on thousands of other websites. Is it really about you if 50,000 other agent sites say the exact same thing? Are you just a drone in an army of robots? Of course not.

If you're guilty of this (and you know who you are!) jump straight into your website right now and re-do your About Me page. A well-written About Me page is a great sales pitch. It's your chance to relate to your website visitor using a very personal tone & point of view. 

There are two kinds of people likely to read your About Me page, a prospective customer or an employer. You need to give them what they're looking for:

• Who am I? (use your name, highlight credentials, education experience)
• Why am I an agent? (personal motivation)
• What do I do? (service types)
• When did I start?
• How do I do it? (your method of delivering great service & marketing)

Before people do business with you they want to know who you are and what motivates you. They also want to know why they should choose you. If you're a listing agent with an MBA and solid marketing background, make sure those facts are screaming off the page. If you are a professionally ranked tennis player and represent professional athletes looking to buy homes - make it known! Your About Me page relates directly to your reputation.

A great About Me page will shorten your sales cycle. Quick, get your new About Me page up and leave everyone else in the dust. Happy selling.

Why real estate agents should love negative feedback

There are at least 2 important values you get from negative feedback.

1. Complaints can help improve your business. How to communicate better, how to set expectations, how to provide better service, etc. You can tailor your service to what people really expect. 
2. Negative feedback is often a hand raised for help. It is an opportunity to turn people around, make them happy, or right a wrong. Only if you ask for feedback will you receive it and be able to act on it.

I've met a lot of business owners who turn sour at the thought of receiving negative feedback or complaints. Many real estate agents go to great lengths to ignore complainers or cringe at the thought of asking for feedback. I often hear the excuse that "the best real estate agents are not necessarily the most liked." I have a very tough time accepting that argument. We're living in the world of Yelp. Reviews propagate with amazing speed.

You've gotta think about your customers in either of 2 camps, Promoters or Detractors.

• Promoters = will recommend you to others
• Detractors = will tell others to not use you

There's one important lesson I learned in the last 15 years running businesses. Customers who complain care. If a customer who complains doesn't get an adequate reply and you notice the complaining stops, you can be sure you've lost at least one customer for good.

The problem in the real estate business is that transactions rarely happen with the same person more than once every few years so it's very easy to overlook the value of collecting real honest feedback. What we need to remember is that past customers are likely to be asked by friends whether they'd recommend you. You've gotta make sure the answer is always "YES."

If you're like me and you'd love to get a steady stream of new business at low cost (where new customers come to you) you need to grow your Promoter population. To do this:

1. Always ask for feedback from your clients. You may get really great endorsements too.
2. Make sure the way you ask for feedback is non-threatening and does not bias the answer. If you ask for feedback in person or on the phone - people will tell you what you want to hear, not the truth.
3. If someone complains and would like a response be sure to promptly give them a response. If you're wrong, admit you're wrong and make it right. If you're not wrong, explain why. Be professional and courteous always.

The more Promoters you have the easier it will be to grow your business. Start collecting feedback today!

If you'd like an effortless way to collect feedback and reviews from past clients just email (suresh@reachfactor.com) or leave a comment. I'd be happy to get you access to our survey tool for free.

One tip to get that house sold using Facebook

Lots of real estate agents post a new property listing on Facebook only to watch those posts sit idle. They get nowhere beyond the agent’s own Facebook wall and in no time, poof- they become history! 

It’s estimated (by Facebook) that the average person has 120 friends in their network. Now let’s see if we can make those numbers work for us..

The way to get your property sold is to get the listing known & promoted well beyond your own network. It's not extremely difficult.

Here's how:

• Take any one of your new listings.
• Create a new Facebook post of that listing - include a brief description and include pictures if you can. (If you don’t know how to post listings into Facebook, we will help you do this.. contact us info @reachfactor.com for free assistance).
• Now, inside of Facebook “Like” your own post. This will promote the listing to your network.
• Next, contact the homeowner and let them know you’ve posted their listing on Facebook. Ask them to “Like” that listing. When they “Like” the listing, they are promoting the listing to their network of friends inside Facebook. So you’ve got another 120 people potentially viewing your listing information.
• Ask them to ask their friends and family to “Like” the listing too. Each time someone “Likes” the listing they are promoting the property to their own network. Suppose they have 10 family members on Facebook and each “Likes” the listing. You’re pushing the listing information now to over 1,000 people’s news feeds, most of them are probably people you don’t know.
• Finally, you should post news about this listing on Facebook. Be sure this is information that people will find newsworthy or interesting such as a price change, an open house, a virtual tour, or maybe a special event in town. Keeping your Facebook listing up-to-date with important information increases the awareness for that listing. Please don’t overdo it and don’t repeat the same things over and over - we all hate spam. The best commercial uses of Facebook promote personal, interesting, and timely events or things.

So give it a shot and see what happens. It’s easy, it’s free. 

Let us know how it goes.

8 Web page tips to increase leads

Here are some handy guidelines to make sure that all the traffic you receive at your website does not go to waste.

Think about these items as they relate to each of your Web pages. In my last business we thought through each of these items, modified, and then kept testing. We boosted our inbound lead rate from 3% to over 15% of website visitor traffic. Trust me, you can boost your rate too.

1. Is there a visible call to action, such as "For more information, call me now!" Seems silly, but most people don't actually ask a user to take any action from a Web page.

• Think through what specific action you ultimately want the visitor to take. Do you want them to call you, or email you, or fill out a form?
• Are there any barriers to them taking this action? Maybe your contact information is not present on the page. Do they need to fish around to find your contact form? Or maybe you have a second call to action, like "Click here to view more" which prevents them from taking the main call to action?

2. Is contact information readily available (and functional) such as phone, email, chat or a form? If not, can it be moved to a more prominent position or emphasized with more active colors or animation?

3. Is the layout and design consistent from one page to the next? Should a user navigate deeper into your site, are key elements such as contact points, primary navigation, etc, presented in identical areas?

4. Is your information presented clearly? Is it clear why YOU are the expert?

5. Are the images you use appealing?

6. Does your content emphasize quality and trust? People will not give you their email address if they think you're going to spam them or sell their email address to someone else. Contact info (email) is personal and valuable. Make sure they know you can be trusted with this information, and make sure they get something valuable in return for giving you their personal information.

7. Do you feature past customer reviews or testimonials? Can the information be presented in a more prominent position? Can your page be shared on social networks and RSS feeds?

8. On the whole, is your page free of clutter? Are there elements that can be (tested) and potentially removed?

Give it a whirl and let us know how it goes. Please comment and let us know what's worked for you.

3 SEO tips for mattreeser.com you can implement too

I sent this note to a top producing client of ours in Los Angeles. I’ll reproduce the email ‘as is’ - hope you can apply some tips to your own site. - Suresh

——————
Hi Matt,

Was just looking at your site. I had some suggestions to help you improve your search engine rank.

On your home page you have several cities with underlines.

1) Create one page devoted to each city within your site. when you’ve created those pages of content, link to them from your home page. This will help you boost your site’s relevance for the different cities you serve. Check out the screen shot I attached to give you a better idea what I mean.

2) Make sure to embed a Title Tag for each one of those cities that’s very specific to that city and the content you’re writing. For example, for the Granada Hills page, write about the market conditions in Granada Hills, maybe there are some streets there that are particularly good values, or hot spots, etc. For the title tag write something like “15 Secrets to Granada Hills Real Estate No One Will Tell You | Mattreeser.com.” If this is your title, be sure that the page delivers on this promise. This will help you drive visitors to each city page directly.

3) Be sure to drop some call-to-action on that page too. Like, let’s say that on the page you give 10 tips instead of 15. Your call to action might say: “Ok, the last 5 tips I’ll share with you in person. Send me an email or call me right now and I’ll fill you in.” The kinds of people that will find this page are not likely to go through your site. They will email you and move on to Google search again.

So be sure you link to your contact form, email address or give your phone # right there so it’s easy for them to reach out to you (so they don’t have to scroll up or down to find the contact info).

I hope this helps. If you implement this tip, please keep me posted on how this works out.

C21 Website builder new release

Today we released a new feature and some clarification for our C21 WebBuilder.

If you use one of themes that has subpages you’ll notice that you can now order these subpages.  Phew, no more need to create pages in the right order!

We also took out references to IDX in the WebBuilder because they were misleading.  And clarified some of the text during the initial signup process.

Thanks for your support and please let us know how we can continue to improve the product for you on our forums.