Kelly Gerards……..The Video, Social Media and Mobile SMS Marketing Blog.

Did you know that a key component of real estate marketing is relationship marketing? A successful real estate professional should focus on customer trust in the same way an internet marketer does.

In both fields, trust and reputation are important. And once both are built, you should have no problem growing your marketing sphere of influence.

Let’s take a look at how you can use AWeber to your advantage in the email marketing and real estate worlds.

Why Build Relationships?

Building a good relationship with your contacts is a must in today’s marketing world. It can take you into the realms of stellar achievement both on the local and global marketplaces.

Also, a home can the biggest investment a family will ever make. It’s very important for people to have a high level of trust in you. This is the place their family is going to come home to; they’ll create many special memories there.

Once you have built this trust, your contacts will always come to you when they need something. In addition to this, your customer’s word-of-mouth business can prove invaluable.
Some Relationship Building Ideas for Realtors

Because of it’s dynamic nature, real estate marketing can lend itself to creative ideas. Building your reputation can be a unique adventure.

Here are a few that you may find helpful for your prospective referrals:
Local Email Newsletter or Blog

Instead of going for a sale every time you send out an email newsletter, why not offer your subscribers interesting information about their area, including:

* Local news and current events
* A historic blog about your local area
* Information about city or township related issues, regulations or laws
* Changes in homeowners association regulations, fees, events and news
* Local school district statistics and events

Broadcast Listings

As a Realtor, there are several events that you can use our email newsletter tool for:

* Getting a new listing
* Putting a listing under contract
* Closing a deal (either on the buyer or seller side)

I highly recommend segmenting your list when sending to these different categories. You can easily notify different types of people, based on which of the above events happened.
Open Houses

AWeber can be used to broadcast open houses as well as broker’s open houses to colleagues. You can have an email list for homeowners, let’s say, and a separate list for agents and brokers in the area.
Periodic CMAs

Why not send a monthly or quarterly Comparative Market Analysis, or CMA, to the people on your list? It will spark their interest and start a dialogue in case they are interested in buying or selling property.
Offer Free and Personal Help

What better way to gain trust as well as a potential client than to offer free information based on their needs? Not only will you learn much more about who they are, but you can develop the type of quality in your relationship that is so important.
Of Realtors and SPAM

It’s very important for Realtors to know which practices are acceptable and which aren’t. There is a bit of a difference between traditional real estate marketing as opposed to what is acceptable in the email marketing world.

Realtors use a technique called farming in order to reach out to people in their area. This can be done in the form of sending unsolicited postal mail to a given area, over long periods of time.

Farming to email addresses is considered SPAM – bottom line. Because SPAM is such a problem worldwide, it is completely unacceptable to send out unsolicited email to those who have never asked you for it. This includes people in your local board of Realtors, NAR, or from any type of directory.

If you have any questions about specific marketing practices, please feel free to contact us. We would be more than happy to answer your questions.
A Realtor Apart

The merger of real estate and email marketing can be a very exciting and lucrative one. If done correctly, it can add a new level to your creative approach and set you apart from the rest.

I invite you to take a look at a couple of previous posts about content for real estate emails, and real estate email tips.

Keeping the points above in mind, how can you use AWeber to establish and strengthen relationships? Share your ideas.

Ron GivensAWeber Affiliate Manager Ron Givens has been practicing real estate for over ten years, and in three different states. He has experience in both residential and commercial sales.

# By John C Abell Email Author wired.com
# April 13, 2010 |
# 7:13 am |

Read More

Twitter announced Tuesday that it will start showing some sponsored Tweets on some search pages, taking a cautious first step into a traditional advertising business model that could provide a steady source of revenue for the four-year-old start-up which doesn’t yet make any serious money yet but is reckoned to be worth a billion dollars.

The so-called Promoted Tweets will put tweets from paying customers at the top of some Twitter search pages, clearly marked as ads, the company said in a blog post. Users would otherwise see these Tweets only if they followed the related accounts, found them by chance in a search or saw them randomly in the Twitter timeline. Including the advertisement Tweets with search results — what might be called the Google model — is less intrusive than putting them, say, on “your” Twitter page when you log onto the site. Promoted Tweets will initially appear on only a small proportion of search pages.

And since they retain the character and length of a Tweet — 140 characters, no in-line images — they have the advantage of not seeming jarringly out of place. The content would be exactly what a Twitter user might expect from a company promoting its message on the service, though this will make ignoring that company and its message more difficult.

“Promoted Tweets will be clearly labeled as ‘promoted’ when an advertiser is paying, but in every other respect, they will first exist as regular Tweets and will be organically sent to the timelines of those who follow a brand. Promoted Tweets will also retain all the functionality of a regular Tweet including replying, Retweeting, and favoriting. Only one Promoted Tweet will be displayed on the search results page.”

Still, Twitter presented this milestone of their young history in cautious terms, possibly anticipating resistance from users who might see any ads an intrusion. In a quick assessment Forrester analyst Josh Bernoff writes in a blog post that “Of all the places Twitter could includes ads, this is the least obtrusive and the most relevant. People will not desert Twitter for this. It’s inevitable — technology services need revenue.”

Also, while Twitter.com is a popular destination, millions of people use desktop and smartphone apps for the service and rarely use the site at all. Some of those apps themselves have ads which Twitter gets no cut from — including Tweetie for the Mac and iPhone, made by a atebits, a company Twitter bought last week. Because Promoted Tweets will appears in search results on Twitter apps too, the company will get a piece of the action on those platforms as well.

The unusually long post, which includes an FAQ, describes Promoted Tweets as “a simple service” and Twitter’s move to this plateau the result of a “stubborn insistence on a slow and thoughtful approach to monetization.”

“Over the years, we’ve resisted introducing a traditional web advertising model because we wanted to optimize for value before profit,” Twitter said. “The open exchange of information creates opportunities for individuals, organizations, and businesses alike. We recognized value in this exchange and planned to amplify it in a meaningful and relevant manner.”

The program answers a question which Twitter has confronted for years now: How are you going to make any money? While it is a very flat organization with fewer than 200 employees (at last unofficial count; as a private company they are not required to disclose anything) private investments have imputed the company a value of $1 billion — and those investors are not exactly putting money into a charity. It does, however, already make millions from licensing its real-time data streams to Microsoft and Google.

Co-founder Biz Stone telegraphed Tuesday’s move last year in news conference in Tel Aviv at which he declared the company would “start making money” in 2010 using “non-traditional” advertising. Even then he stressed they had the luxury of going slow. “There are no dates when we need to break even. We have plenty of money in the bank,” he said, a month after Venture Partner kicked in $100 million, boosting the company’s valuation to $1 billion.

So Twitter knows it must carefully triangulate between a fickle user base which is the reason for its existence; developers whose innovative work on Twitter clients, aggregation and analysis tools have propelled the company into a household world; and backers who as expect not only great things from the company, but great returns.

Hence the timing: Twitter will speak in greater detail about this at the AdAge conference later on Tuesday, and begins a two-day developer’s conference Wednesday called “Chirp.”

Read More http://www.wired.com/epicenter/2010/04/twitter-unveils-ad-supported-business-model/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+wired%2Findex+%28Wired%3A+Index+3+%28Top+Stories+2%29%29#ixzz0l0Bpnu9c

It has become increasingly quite evident that the convenience of the i-Phone, and now the i-Pad give you the ease of access to run your business and help you automate your social media marketing, but can it really blend it all together?

If you’re not a business owner, don’t let the title keep you from reading this post. Remember, we are all entrepreneurs marketing our services to the market place. This lesson has application to all of us who communicate online.

While I have been involved in the social media world for only a short time, picking up on its culture has not been hard to do. In my opinion, social media has brought transparency to every person and business.

The people and businesses that really care about their friends and customers are standing out like a lighthouse at night. At the same time those who are solely focused on themselves and promote their own agenda are stinking like three-day-old fish.

Here is the biggest take-a-away in today’s lesson: while the social media world is a new one, it actually serves as an age-old model for everything we do and say in our offline relationships. If you want to succeed personally and professionally, here are some simple rules to follow:

1.  You Better Really Care About People—We have gone from a society where consumers valued price, quality and service to a society where consumers first want to know that you care about them. If deep down inside you only care about yourself and your selfish desires, you can be assured your intentions will be obvious in the transparent online world.

2.  Don’t Wear People Out—The people who have agreed to connect with you, whether they are friends, family or acquaintances don’t want your messages to fill up their news feed. The people who are pounding their followers with tweets, direct messages and Facebook posts are losing their influence, even if their messages have nothing to do with their business.

3.  Do Unto To Others As You Would Have Them Do Unto You—While the golden rule has always been a great ethical code, it is even more important today. As a result of the painful collapse of our economy, people are more skeptical and careful about whom they trust. If you want to enjoy long-term success in the business world, both online and offline, treating others how you want to be treated is an absolute must.

4.  Focus on Service—The people and companies who will be the big winners in the new economy will be those who are “sold out” on customer service. Those who simply say they focus on customer service, but really don’t, are standing there with their pants down and the whole world can see they don’t mean what they say.

At the same time the companies who take great pride in their customer service are building a large loyal following.

5.  Show an interest in others—People have always preferred to do business with people they like and trust, but over the last couple years this sentiment has grown stronger. If you don’t FIRST show an interest in others and the things that are important to them, don’t expect them to show an interest in you or the things that are important to you.

6.  Determine your online brand/culture—If you want to be successful in the social media world, you need to determine how you want the world to see you. If you don’t consciously make this decision, then you will be leaving it up to the world to decide your brand.

I love what Zappos is doing through their social media efforts. You won’t find ONE post from them that discusses anything about their products. While most companies are using social media to dump sales content on their followers, Zappos made the decision to focus on building relationships and communicating their culture; and it’s working!

7.  Don’t Post a Sales Message on Someone’s Page—This is the ultimate of sleazy sales tactics. Everyday I have to remove 5 or more of these types of spam messages from the Little Things Matter Facebook fan page and in most cases I report them to Facebook. Let me also encourage to not include a link to your website as part of any comment you post, unless you are absolutely convinced it is appropriate to do so.

8.  Give Value First—If you want people to do business with you, focus on first giving them something of value. I am certainly more inclined to do business with those who have first given value to me. Do you agree with that principle?

In social media, value may mean content or connection opportunities or a sense of community. What can you do to give value to your target market? If you make providing value a priority, then you can bet you’ll be the first one they think of when they need your products or services.

9.  Be Creative in Your Messages—With respect to product marketing, rather than simply dumping your sales content on people, look for creative ways to share your message and engage your audience. Check out the Little Things Matter fan page as an example of how I am trying to be creative and engage the community. While I don’t market a product or service, I am trying to build a large loyal following of people who have a desire for self-improvement.

10.  It takes time—It’s critical to understand that doing business in the social media world is an art and not a task or set of activities. Building relationships on a foundation of authenticity, mutual trust and respect and great service takes time. If you need to make money this week, do it offline, because it won’t happen in the social media world.

If you fully embrace these 10 simple rules, you can be assured of being one of the winners in the new economy.

You can achieve anything that is important to you if you will focus on the little things that matter.

Click here to visit the site and comment on this post

About the Author: Todd Smith is a successful entrepreneur of 29 years and founder of Little Things Matter. To receive Todd’s daily lessons, subscribe here.