Archives – March, 2010
The trick is picking the right RSS feeds that have content relevant to people living in or interested in your farm area. One stellar source of content is Outside.In. According to their About Us page: “Outside.in is the leading hyperlocal content and advertising platform used by millions of consumers and thousands of local bloggers and publishers each month. Outside.in monitors all the news, blogs, and discussions on the web and dynamically maps them to more than 50,000 neighborhoods in the US. You can find “What’s Happening. Where You Are. Right Now.” on Outside.in’s main site … Publishers can use Outside.in for Publishers to create customized and curated hyperlocal news sections, and bloggers can submit their sites for distribution in the Outside.in Network.”
(more…)
March 31, 2010
Bargain Zones – one online neighborhood resource I found identified a particular section of a Toronto neighborhood (the Junction) as a zone where prices in this hot neighborhood are lower than normal. They identified this area as “away from the subway and closer to a traffic-laden area” which is probably true of a lot of less expensive parts of hot neighborhoods. Some people are dead set on living in certain neighborhoods, but can’t afford the average home in the area. Are there particular streets or blocks in your farm neighborhood that have something about them which makes them slightly less desirable than others but also considerably less expensive than the average home? If so, be sure to point these areas out. This can be a great way of enticing people to sign up for your mailing list: your ability to track underpriced gems.
(more…)
March 30, 2010
Market Evaluation – obviously any real estate professional gladly offers appraisals to anyone at no charge, but you can use your website to allow people to get this evaluation relatively anonymously and therefore encourage more appraisals. Many people are not yet at the home buying or selling stage and so aren’t really interested in talking to any sales people yet (much less listening to your listing presentation). But these people are still definitely interested in what their home is currently worth. I saw one site whose home evaluation form asked all the usual questions, but none of the fields (including telephone number) were mandatory. Someone could fill out all the info necessary to appraise the house yet ask the sales rep to only email them a market analysis. At the very least it gives you an opportunity to add another person to your mailing list.
(more…)
March 29, 2010
For instance, in some Toronto neighborhoods you can find homes that were built with separate accommodations for horses (coach houses). Some wealthier homes have separate quarters once designated for butlers that are now rented out. People living in older homes will often be interested in knowing the pedigree of their home, and your site can provide that.
(more…)
March 26, 2010
Now you may think a neighborhood business directory might not be all that useful to people, but all it takes for someone to want to reference this directory is the wanting the phone number of a local movie store or book store to find out if they have a specific title or to find out what the shop’s hours. Even if they only reference your directory a few times per year, they’ll still remember you as a real estate professional when the time comes to move.
(more…)
March 25, 2010
School Information – many people want to know if there are schools in the neighborhoods they’re interested in. One Toronto rep has the names, addresses, principal’s name and website links for all the Junior and Senior Public Schools, Separate Schools (IE French Immersion), and French Schools in the area. For those unsure what school to enroll their children in the site provides a link to a tool where you can enter your street name and the site tells you what schools are designated for children living on that street.
(more…)
March 24, 2010
With real estate websites content is king. Having lots of great content goes a long way to demonstrating your expertise and professionalism to prospective buyers and seller. The more information your site has, and the more focused it is on your farm neighborhood, the more capable you look. The more capable you look, the more sign ups you’ll get for your mailing list, and that’s really the whole purpose of your website. But if you just have generic, widely found content like most real estate websites have, not only will your website not get high search engine ranking for your area but people will be unlikely to sign up for your mailing list.
The sky’s the limit with what you can put on your site, so I thought I’d take a look around on the web and see what today’s top real estate professionals are putting on their site content-wise. Some of what I found is conventional but more in-depth (and therefore useful) than what most real estate sites contain. Some content I found was very creative and sure to be useful in getting more sign ups for mailing lists. So this article series explores what I found today’s top achieving real estate professionals are putting on their websites.
(more…)
March 23, 2010
Personal Digital Assistants, commonly known as PDAs, are great for keeping your business and personal matters organized and on track. But many real estate professionals are in the dark about how to do this without spending a fortune. Some, being technology averse, don’t understand how to use PDAs well. Others haven’t gone beyond cell phones and perhaps text messaging, not seeing the value in having anything beyond that. So this article will help you get on track with more effectively using your PDA and making more money with it. (more…)
March 20, 2010
The idea of sacrifice or living lean for a time doesn’t even occur to them until they’ve gone months without a sale and they’re forced to tighten their purse strings by an erratic income and waning savings. Above all, their focus is on helping themselves, not on helping others. So it’s no wonder most of these types of people are destined to fail in real estate.
Who we’re essentially focused on is really the acid test of any successful entrepreneur. Those who are focused on learning about and helping others are usually successful. Those who are always focused on helping themselves and their own interests usually live shallow, mediocre lives. (more…)
March 19, 2010
Kubrick was well known for his perfectionism in directing his movies. He read 500 books on Napoleon for a movie on the French Emperor he never actually got to make. Most famously, Kubrick often demanded dozens of retakes of scenes from his actors. In particular, Kubrick’s movie The Shining gave rise to the legend of Kubrick as a megalomaniac perfectionist. Reportedly, he demanded hundreds of re-takes of scenes. In The Shining Kubrick had Jack Nicholson do 100 retakes of one scene. Another scene from the movie took nearly a year to complete. In Eyes Wide Shut Kubrick had Tom Cruise do so many scene re-takes and made the experience so stressful for the actor that Cruise developed an ulcer.
(more…)
March 18, 2010
Previous page
