Real Estate Marketing is Greek to Me

Earlier this month I spoke at the Social Media Marketing National Conference in Orlando.  The conference itself was over twelve hours of real estate marketing ideas you can implement right now.  Each speaker was a recognized expert in their field and I left with my head spinning.  This post is part of a series in which I will share what I learned.

Greg Swann is famous, if not infamous, throughout the RE.net world.  To give you an idea of his reach: the term RE.net was coined by him.  He is the creator of the BloodhoundBlog, a nationwide industry blog with a host of expert contributors posting multiple articles each day.  Their are tens of thousands of people reading the blog at any one time and the comments are at least as informative as the posts.  Greg’s philosophy is one of absolute free market activity and it is based on the watershed leap in humanity handed down to us by the Greeks.  Greg’s philosophy boils down to one, concise statement of freedom… which, much like dessert, you cannot have until you have finished reading this post.

Greg pointed out that most civilizations will do just what is needed to survive and no more.  When faced with a new problem they will do just enough to overcome it but again, no more.  The Greeks were the first culture to come along and reach for more than just surviving; to become, as Greg wrote: ”a doer for the sake of having done, a thinker for the sake of having thought, a poet for poetry’s own sake.”  We, each and every one of us, has that opportunity.  We are free to succeed and we are free to fail.  We are free to control our business and we are free to believe others control it.  But we are not free from making the choice.  Either you choose to recognize and more importantly acknowledge that you alone are responsible for your thoughts, actions and results or by definition you cede control of them to someone else.  The only true wealth in the world, Greg shared, is intellectual capital.

Here then, are ten things Greg suggested you do - all of them FREE - to increase your intellectual capital immediately (with my notes in italics):

• Start your own weblog.
  • does not have to be perfect
  • does have to be updated frequently
  • does have to be on topic
• Comments are fine if you just do not want to blog. (called comment marketing)
• Blog all of your listings.
• Don’t spin your wheels in the RE.net echo chambers. (other agents are not your audience)
• Good at weblogging?  Build a blogging network.
  • PTA
  • Local handymen
  • any group of interest to you
• Use LinkedIn, Facebook, etc.
• Start a ding-dang Ning group (don’t know what it is? Google baby…)
• Leave your scent trail all over Zillow and Trulia’s trees.
  • post pictures of homes in your farm on Zillow
  • answer questions in the forums
  • make sure all of the above links back to you (linkation, linkation, linkation)
• Post a profile and make it great (marketing opportunity)
  • say what you would say if in person
  • use pictures
  • make it a part of your scent on Zillow, Trulia, etc.
• Don’t sabotage your business plan with internet irresponsibility
  • remember there is no privacy - it does not exist
  • your clients are out there - don’t write it if you wouldn’t want them reading it

Now for dessert.  If you accept ownership of your own production and embrace the exploding information age, you will learn it is not the Geek who inherits the world - it is the Greek who will inherit the world.  Or, as Greg serves it up in his one, concise statement of freedom: “You will never have to take crap from morons again.”