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Whose Brand are you Building? Part 3

Establishing Your Prosepcts

Establishing Your Prospects

Branding yourself includes establishing your prospects or following of those that know, like and trust you. Without a following, it will just be you. So, you will need to get people to find you on the internet. Remember, with attraction marketing, they are coming to you. Then how do you get more people to find you online?

Personal Website

There are several ways to accomplish people finding you online. The ultimate first step is to have a useful combination of a web and blog site where you can talk with, work with, and interact with your visitors. You will need to ensure it is information based rather than based on a sales gimmick. Online sales gimmicks are less likely to work than other methods of marketing, especially in attraction marketing. Make sure your website tells visitors that you are providing valuable information to them and not a sales ad to convince them to contract with you as a client.

Your website should have your name that bears your name exclusively as the domain. For example, if your name is Jane Smith, then you would want to purchase the domain name janesmith.com. Or something as close to your name as possible.

What you do not want is to be part of a general website where your name is in the sub domain, such as janesmith.realestate.com or www.realestate.com/janesmith. Of course, these general domains and websites serve a purpose, but they do not set you apart as the authority or build your brand. They build someone else’s brand.

Social Media

From this point, there are many other ways to build your brand. One of the most attractive, enjoyable ways to get your name out is to promote it through social media networking, which is a method of communicating with others about anything you wish.

Most social media websites were not started to help entrepreneurs and real estate professionals to grow businesses, but most are now used this way. Many successful real estate agents use social media to establish their prospects.

This is what you are aiming for, also. You are looking for a way to give people valuable information. Once they have that information, they can then come to you to get what they need. This works in virtually all social media sites, which include:

Facebook: Great for meeting, socializing and talking about yourself, your business or anything else. Connect with thousands of people here. You will want to build a business page. The business page is important because, Facebook only allows adverting or boasting a post via your business page and can be done even on a limited budget of a few dollars per day. The Facebook Ad Manager is the most sophisticated advertising engine on the internet today. It provides an easy to use user interface and provides a means of targeting potential prospects in segmented markets. Facebook knows more about you and your internet habits than any other social media site. Building your audience through the Facebook Ad Manager is an essential skill to acquire.

YouTube: Great for informational videos and socializing. Who doesn’t want to watch a few YouTube videos every now and then? Use them to help market your real estate business indirectly.

Twitter: Type in short messages or to let others know what you are doing throughout the day. Network and build up the number of Tweets you are following. Addictive, but highly beneficial once you have built a successful following on Twitter.

LinkedIn: Great for connecting with professionals. LinkedIn is like Facebook in terms of its feature offerings. However, it does not have a fan page as Facebook does. The LinkedIn features are more specialized because they cater to professionals. If you know how to use Facebook, then LinkedIn is similar.

There are many, many more social media websites that can be used like this. The key is to really use those where you think the best results can be found, and where you find it to be enjoyable. There is no way that you can interact on every social media site. The key is not to invest all your time in them, either. You should find one, two, or three to master.

While it is essential for you to build a network of people to get traffic to your website, it is often something that is not clearly understood. For example, let us say you join Facebook, build a business page, put up a few pictures, Friend your email contacts and then do not do much else. No one is going to find you and you will not build your real estate business.

You need to network and build a sizable following or allow others to find you on any of these social media sites by providing concise yet useful information. The fact is, you must get out there and really make your presence known. Here are some tips to make this possible:

Use your profile: This is one of the key tools you must get people back to your website. Be sure to use keywords you would associate with your real estate business in your profile but make it informal. There is no room for a sales pitch here.

Socialize with others: Find groups in the social media site that share something in common with you and build a network with them. When you join the group, connect with others that share your interests.

Build a network from your friend’s networks: Let us say you use your email contacts and locate them on your social media sites. That is great; however, do not stop there. Befriend not just these individuals but also their friends, too. Keep going, building a network for yourself the whole time.

Promote Your Facebook Posts: This was mentioned in the previous section. It is however one of the most effective ways of building your Page Likes on your business page. Learning the specifics on how to do this is actually a course in itself and is beyond the scope of this post.

Promote Your Web/Blog Site: In all your marketing materials and on your social media sites, always include your personal website’s URL, such as www.janesmith.com.

There are many ways to establish your prospects using social media. The key is to continue working at it and enjoy the process. Over time, people will come to your website to find out what you have to offer. This gets them interested, and they contract with you. The process works many times over and at the end of the day, you have drawn people to your real estate business.

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