How do you keep up with all your social networking and blogging? I use Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, digg, Plaxo, Thrive Contact System, Marketing Artfully and Active Rain often. It drives TONS of traffic to my websites, adding more people to my email database which means more people to talk to about my services and speaking gigs!

Here are some of the easy things I do to make all of that a little easier – commonly known as a system!

SOCIAL NETWORKING
It is VERY fun to watch what your friends and business associates are doing and finding new information on social networks like Facebook, LinkedIn, Plaxo and Twitter and I check most of these once or twice a day. BUT if you are using these to lead generate for your business it is also important to be “on purpose” when you are using these sites. Here are some do’s and do not’s that I follow:

• DO – Make sure to post links to your blog posts (see below)
• DO – Update your status with new products and services that you are offering
• DO – Make comments on your friends’ and business partners’ status
• DON’T – Spam them with self-serving updates multiple times a day (putting links to great information is NOT spamming, posting every one of your products or listings over and over is)
• DON’T – Put ANYTHING on there that you would not want your best customer to see – the internet never forgets!

BLOGGING
My goal is to blog on one of each of these everyday. I am not always successful BUT the goal is there and I generally get an email everyday that some kind of lead – either for a marketing consult, a referral to one of my business partners or just someone who wants more information about a service I offer. A lead a day is 365 over the course of the year and helps to feed my pipeline!

• Marketing Artfully – My main site and the one that I spend the most time on. It has all my product offerings, my shopping cart and is where I send the most people. WHAT I DO: When I write a post here I then add it as a link on Facebook, I often write a mini-post over on Active Rain to drive people back here to read the full post, sometimes I digg it and it automatically goes to Twitter and from there to Plaxo.
• Thrive Contact System – This is one of our products and I post info on Database Marketing, Systems and (surprisingly enough) client contacts. I am not as vigilant about this one as I should be BUT it still gets some good organic search traffic and is on the list. WHAT I DO: When I write a post there I then add it as a link on Facebook, sometimes I digg it and it automatically goes to Twitter and from there to Plaxo.
• Taradactyl on Active Rain – This one sends LOTS of people my way. It is full of Realtors, Mortgage Pros and Title people (one of my target markets) and I should be WAY more aggressive about posting there! WHAT I DO: Because it is a feeder for my Marketing Artfully blog I don’t tend to do more than write a post BUT it does automatically feed to Twitter and from there to Plaxo.

Hopefully this will help you get your arms around all this work and you can see that it does not have to be overwhelming AND can help generate more business for your business!

Related posts:

1. Learn how to use Social Networking from Top 10 Internet Tools
2. Building A Community – How it helps your social networking, email list and life!
3. Realtor Marketing – FREE Social Networking Workshop

It is really hard to figure out how to get exposure for your listings. You can put them on one of the hundreds of sites that will send your listing out to any number of other sites BUT it takes forever to load your listing onto all of those sites. Enter www.Postlets.com!. This site will build a great little HTML template that you can cut and paste into many different sites. One entry – multiple sites, what is not to love about that?

The sites that I have found to be the most beneficial for generating interest in my listings are craigslist.com for local traffic and open houses, and activerain.com for getting access to other realtors. Here is a basic tutorial for how to add your listing to postlets (stay tuned for future episodes where I will show you how to add your postlet to craigslist and activerain.com.

Now you know how to make a Postlet – find out how to add it to your active rain blog!

Check back often for other great free tools for realtors!

Related posts:

1. Free Tools For Realtors – How To Add A Postlet to Active Rain
2. How To Add A Postlet To Your WordPress Blog
3. Small Business Marketing – Free Tools

Tech Expo – Presenter Tara Jaconben

Hi All! This is intended as a reference for today’s class on Active Rain. If you have any additional information or reference materials please add them as a comment! I interviewed Cyndee Haydon (a Fantastic Blogger!) and I include her note after each item – they are paraphrased, any mistakes are mine!

Sign Up For Active Rain

Pinellas County Realtors On Active Rain
As you can see we have 435 Realtors In Pinellas
There are 81 in Clearwater
In 5 Days of Posting I have gotten to position 7! Tara Jacobsen On Active Rain
Recommended cities – Clearwater Beach, Dunedin, Largo, Oldsmar, Pinellas Park, Safety Harbor, Tarpon Springs

- Cyndee Haydon – Pick a city you can rank well in. There is nothing to stop you from posting an article about Tampa or Clearwater or St. Petersburg, BUT it is easier to place higher against smaller competition.

How To Get More Points On Active Rain
Jimmy McCall wrote an excellent post on maximizing your points right off the bat by filling out all the areas that Active Rain requires. I cannot agree with him more AND I think that this will help you in all your marketing efforts. For example, I had to contact some of my clients to get additional testimonials – what a great way to get an extra touch in AND they say nice things about you!

- Cyndee Haydon – While getting points allows you to rank higher in Active Rain, I have seen a number of agents who posted non-professional comments and/or posts just to gain points (you get points for up to 10 comments per day and for each blog  post over 200 words). This is NOT the point of blogging since you are trying to increase your professional appeal to consumers and also to hopefully generate referrals from other agents. Stay on track and on target, providing relevant LOCAL information.

Writing A Blog Post
Dustin Luthur has written a series of excellent articles on how to succeed at Active Rain. These are used with his permission!
Staring at a blank screen wondering what to write can be daunting! I would go back through your emails and see what you have sent to clients. If you get questions about a particular neighborhood, blog about that. If you have learned some useful information (like how to get rid of oil tanks in Dunedin), blog about that. Basically anything can be a blog post!

- Cyndee Haydon – Remember that time is on your side. Write something and then you can go back and revisit it, expanding on what you have talked about. The search engines like to see that you blog (or site) has been in existance for a while to assure that you are not a scammer, so having your posts around for a while will help you. Also, it can be overwhelming to try and generate enough content for an entire site in one day. Set a timer for 15 minutes and only write for that long. It will take the pressure off of you. Also, blogging has made me a better realtor, when I am asked a question from a reader I research the entire answer and then post it. When you have to know enough about a subject to publish it for the world to see, you better know what you are talking about!

Commenting On Blog Posts
On stand alone blogs, as well as Active Rain Blogs, the VERY best way to generate new visitors to YOUR site to comment on THEIR site! I have a number of blogs that I visit including Cyndee Haydon’s Sandbars To Sunsets,   Kris Berg’s San Diego Blog, The Bloodhound Blog (LOT OF READERS – make sure you know what you are talking about!) What you want to do here is add something meaningful to a conversation (which is what a blog post is) – DO NOT just say “great post” or “I agree”. Basically you are auditioning for a new reader – if you say something like “I enjoyed reading about your position on the cost of gas, did you happen to read the article in The Times Today….” or “While I agree with…”

- Cyndee Haydon – Do not say something on your blog or a comment that you would not like to have published in the newspaper. Remember that the internet remembers EVERYTHING and that before you hit POST you make sure that you blog or response is professional and represents you and how you run your business!

Additional Resources
Commenting On Blog Posts
Inserting Widgets Into Your Blog
Engage In An Active Rain Group

Related posts:

1. Nobody Told Me THIS About Active Rain!
2. Free Tools For Realtors – How To Add A Postlet to Active Rain
3. Social Networking, Blogging and Sanity

So I was surfing around this morning and somehow got to the Active Rain website. For those of you who do not know what Active Rain is, it is a real estate site where agents can list their services, set up a blog and connect with other agents, sellers and buyers. I had NOT signed up for this service until today and still have reservations about putting my information and efforts into somewhere that has LOTS of other realtors, but that is a discussion for another day.

PG 13 Warning – Do not read any further gentle readers unless you want to experience the carnage of rampant competitive megalomania!

What no one ever told me is that it is NOT a popularity contest like Facebook or those other networking sites (I am not all that interested in being popular). It is a good old fashioned BRAWL to get the most points! You get points for all kinds of things and can “WIN” if you get the most points! Well I am always up for trying to win contests so I got started right away!

When I started I had 0 Points and was ranked 81 for Clearwater, FL (as there are only 81 realtors listed on Active Rain for Clearwater, I was NOT in a good position!). Then I added my picture to my profile, did some other fun things like adding Testimonials, an About Us overview, etc. and I was off to the races! I currently have 986 points and am ranked 22 – yahoo!!!! I also added a link to Active Rain from my website which will push me up to 1486 after they review my link over the next 4-6 days. I calculate that this will push me up to 1498 points and number 14 (just above Jack Johnson – a GREAT Keller Williams agent).

AND I haven’t even written a blog post yet! I am on fire here!!!!

Now to add some sense of reality here -My new pal Cyndee Hayden is the top dog Realtor for Clearwater, FL and has had great success using the service (and other online means) for lead generating. She has 226735 points – that’s right over TWO HUNDRED THOUSAND! Dang.

Anyways – if you are a realtor and are not at least considering adding this to your arsenal of online spots, consider it now! It took about 20 minutes and could add to your book of business (at the very least it can’t hurt!)

PS – if you sign up using this link http://activerain.com/action/referrals/taradactyl I can get even more points! (I just need another 200 points to beat the next guys on the list and slip into lucky number 13! – Being aware that you have a problem is supposed to be the first step in fixing it, right?)

Related posts:

1. Tech Expo – Blogging On Active Rain
2. Free Tools For Realtors – How To Add A Postlet to Active Rain
3. Social Networking, Blogging and Sanity