New Kids on the Tech – where to start? [Dear Ginny WTH?]

Hi Ginny WTH,

I am a top producer in my market of about 500 Realtors. I am overwhelmed by all the electronic media so I don’t participate, except for email all the time and an occasional look at Facebook. Being a 50s (age) sole practitioner with a younger family at home I just work a lot and try to keep up, but lately I feel I am losing ground because I am not a techie. I don’t really understand the basics all that well of tech and don’t know where to start. I get stressed just thinking about all the info I see every day about what we should be doing with tech and my company promotes a lot of tech which I just turn off to due to the stress of the learning curve. Is there any hope for me at all? What direction should I be going in tech-wize?

My manager says to use Linked In for work contacts and Face Book for personal contacts but I see Realtors putting their new listings on Face Book now. Help! Where do I find time to learn and do all this new technology and does any of it really matter, anyway? Things change so fast in tech that I don’t see how anyone keeps up except the new kids raised on tech.

Sincerely,
Kirk Allen, Coldwell Banker Select, REALTORS, Northwestern Pennsylvania

Dear Kirk,

Hope is putting faith to work when doubting would be easier. Not to sound like Robert Tilton, although I think my lip is quivering, I’m going to say that it starts with you. You’ve got to want to put time and effort into learning. It is like I said in my column last week, time and effort into marketing yourself online is no different than time and effort into marketing yourself offline. In your case it’s a new way to market that all sounds like gibberish. No matter what age you are, if you are in the real estate business it is necessary to have some online strategy.

So to answer your questions, no it’s not too late and you should start your march down technology boulevard with the most essential items.

Web site – you need a basic web site that you can point your clients to and that you can promote in both offline and online marketing; it should have information about you, access to MLS listed properties for sale, neighborhood and area detail, and how to contact you. That’s the minimum that you would need for a web site. I see by the contact details you left me with this question that you have a web page, but your email address uses a different URL extension. You need to change that. It’s confusing to consumers to have a web site at www.ginnycain.com and an email address of ginny@homesbyginny.com. The two need to be the same. There are a host of other items I could tell you that you needed (like lead capture mechanisms and optimization), but that’s when your headache starts right? Little chunks.

Email marketing system – I assume you have a database of past clients, potential future clients, friends, family other real estate agents that you maintain. If you don’t already have them, get the email addresses for everyone in your database. Send a postcard that says you are trying to save paper and if the recipient will send you their email address, via some registration on your web page or by sharing your email address with the recipient, you can attempt to gather at one time. Offer a $10 coffee card to the first 20 or 30, etc. Once you have the email addresses you should obtain access to some email marketing contact system, like Constant Contact or iContact or maybe your broker has a system that can aggregate the email addresses from your database and help you manage marketing through emails to each of these groups. This gives you a cheap and easy way to contact people in an online manner. You can schedule messages, monitor open and click through rates, they’ve got templates you can use for various occasions in fairly easy formats to understand. I could tell you more about segmenting your groups and refining and scheduling messaging, but you should probably start with a monthly e-news alert something you wouldn’t stress over writing – so it would ensure that you did it!

Social networking – you should go back to last week’s Dear Ginny WTH for a more detailed answer on how I think you should approach social networking, but at minimum you should set up a LinkedIn page which provides you with a detailed business profile searchable by millions. It’s business Yellow Pages meets classifieds online. Think about it. A free profile with unlimited ability to add information (like listings…if done tastefully), that is known and searchable by millions of people throughout the planet. Add to that the ability for you to actually connect and form links to people you know personally and then be exposed to people they know that you don’t. It’s like the old shampoo commercial, you tell two people then they tell two people. You get it. As for blogs and twitter and yelp, oh my? Start with LinkedIn.

Post open houses on Craig’s List – this is one that could seem overwhelming from the long view, but in fact putting an open house on Craig’s List is as easy as typing. Depending on how many listings or open houses you hold, you will need to post the open house a few days before it occurs and again the day of. You should have copy that you can cut and paste directly into Craig’s List then it’s a matter of uploading photos from files on your computer. It doesn’t have to be fancy.

Multi-media property flyers – the last thing that I’ll tell you that you need is some sort of multi-media property flyer that lives online that you can either email or point people to for complete details on the listed property which could include multiple photos, a virtual tour, your photo if you want it, your contact details, an ability to map, print or contact you from. Companies like Tour Factory, Just Snooping and Visual Tour. All you would have to do is provide information that you have already: copy and photos. Not really daunting and super impressive at the kitchen table.

In fact most of what I recommend above can be spun into something super impressive at the kitchen table. Package them up and you look like you are simply using the new media available to you strategically.

“Dear Ginny, WTH?” which is like a “Dear Abby” column for real estate objections. If you have a tough client or a marketing problem, “Dear Ginny, WTH?” is for you. Questions can be funny, they can be serious, it doesn’t matter, just ask!