Many real estate companies are using social-networking and blogging sites in order to increase their visibility and reach a wider market. Social-networking websites, such as Facebook and Twitter have never been more popular. And today, most people get their news from blogs instead of daily newspapers. Commenting on blog posts on different websites can help you advertise your services and company without actually having to pay out a single cent. It’s essentially a form a free advertising, if you know how to do it right. The following guide will help you learn how to conquer the blogosphere, so that you can increase your customer base and expand your business.

Avoid the obvious — Bloggers are smart, crafty and creative individuals. They have to be, because a blog post is a short, attention-grabbing blurb that is used to attract readers to a particular website. Therefore, they know when someone is trying to “advertise” on their blog by leaving obvious comment such as, “For the best in real estate, visit www.mywebsite.com.” When you are leaving a comment on a popular blog, always avoid the obvious. First, make a comment that is relevant to the post, but will give you the opportunity to follow up with a link to your website at the same time. For example, if the blog post is about the economy, you could leave a comment such as, “I agree. Today’s economy is tough. My company is always looking for new ways to increase income. Continue the discussion at www.mywebsite.com.” This way, the blogger won’t be apt to delete your comment, because you actually sound interested in the post itself.

Don’t comment more than once — Some companies try to blast a blog with comments and links, hoping that if they do it enough they will get noticed. This is ridiculous. When visitors see the same comment and link over and over again on a blog, they know that the person is seeking free advertising and they will simply ignore it. Overused comments and links are annoying and they will only make you look desperate.

Use correct grammar and spelling — When commenting on a blog, be precise and grammatically correct. A simple misspelling or a misuse of grammar could lessen your credibility, especially if you are trying to attract high-end clients. Readers will take one look at your comment and laugh, rather than click on your link. Like it or not, any comment that includes a link to your website or your business name will directly impact how people perceive you and your company.

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In today’s fast-paced world of technology, everyone wants immediate access to knowledge. That is why more and more companies are adding downloadable eBooks to their websites. An eBook is essentially an electronic “book” that can be downloaded from a website either for free or for a small fee. Normally short and concise, these are often used as an informative tool that coincides with the product or service of the business. For example, a fitness consultant can offer an eBook how on how to lose weight in 30 days, along with its everyday services. You can basically create an eBook on just about anything, and it can be used an excellent marketing tool.

If you are involved in real estate and you are looking to attract investors, it might be useful for you to create an eBook for your website. In the eBook, you can detail all of the benefits that investors would receive by investing in your company. You can also layout your real estate strategy, so that they will know where you plan on investing their money and how you plan on getting them a return on their investment. It’s important to make the eBook short and concise, because most real estate investors don’t have a lot of free time to spend reading through pages and pages of anything.

A good eBook is one that offers quick information about your company, and your product or service. You want to be able to attract real estate investors to your company by providing them with enough information to get them interested. If you have never written an eBook before, you can hire a freelance writer to help you accomplish your goal. A freelance writer will be able to help you create the perfect eBook to coincide with your company. He or she can take your ideas and notes, and transform them into a well-written and educational eBook that prospective investors will enjoy. In today’s business world, you have to do everything you can in order to set yourself apart from the competition. An eBook can give you that extra edge, so that you are one step ahead of everyone else. A real estate investor will be more likely to invest with your company if they know what your investment plans are ahead of time, and will choose you over someone else based on the information you provide in an eBook.

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Rebranding is an extensive marketing strategy in which a company or service changes its entire identity, from the logo and website all the way to the image and name, in order to reach a whole new group of customers as well as maintain the ones it already has. With the proper brand image, companies have the opportunity to set themselves apart from the competition. If you are looking to rebrand your real estate company, these three rebranding strategies will help you achieve your goal effectively and attract new clients.

1. Research
Before you do any kind of rebranding at all, conduct research to find out if you even need to go through the rebranding process. Find out what past clients liked or disliked about your business. Find out exactly what future clients are looking for in a real estate company so that you can develop an appropriate marketing campaign. Every brand needs a new look now and then, but it’s important to know how to correctly develop that new look. After all, you don’t want to turn away clients. You want to attract them. That is why you should properly evaluate the needs and mindset of your consumer base before any rebranding takes place.

2. Hire a rebranding consultant.
No one can give you better rebranding advice than a rebranding consultant. They have the experience and drive to help you create a brand new identity. A consultant will help you develop everything from a new website to a new advertising slogan and everything else in between. They also know how to effectively reach your target audience, so that the rebranding is successful. While rebranding consultants may be expensive, they can be extremely effective. You may have to spend some money upfront, but with a talented rebranding consultant you will make it back in the long run.

3. Make sure everyone in the company is on board.
A rebranding will only be successful if your entire company believes in it. Discuss the possibilities of a rebranding campaign with all of your employees. They can also give you feedback on certain strategies and ideas. When the entire company is on board, the rebranding is credible. If they do not believe in the rebranding itself, no one else will believe it either. This will have an adverse affect on your company as well as your product, as consumers won’t have faith in either one.

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Real estate professionals are becoming more web savvy every day.  Competition for the best listings is fierce and strong Internet marketing can give a realtor a substantial edge.  Using every available on-line resource is especially important because so many buyers shopping from home.  In addition to keeping up with photos some realtors are opting to include videos.

Giving a potential buyer a video is like giving them the house keys.  It lets them see the features in all dimensions, as if they were touring the home.  Video presentation gives the buyer a better sense of the space in a home than a still photograph.  While video can’t replace photos, it can be an excellent addition to a marketing plan.

The problem with adding video to a site is the amount of web resources it demands.  Video can put a strain on your server if you host it yourself.  For this reason, many sites use video hosting services like YouTube.  It’s not all funny cats and skateboard crashes.  Companies are using YouTube for hosting training videos, nonprofits are using it to spotlight fundraising efforts and real estate agents can use it to show houses.  There are a few tips to keep in mind if you chose to incorporate video.

Always professional

As a real estate agent, anything on your site should be exceptionally professional.  This includes video footage and voiceovers.  Using your Blackberry to take some quick shots isn’t acceptable for your still photographs and it won’t work for video.  Use a quality camera and record when there is plenty of light in the home.  You may even want to consider hiring out filming and voice over work to an expert.

Consider the resources

Not every house warrants video footage.  Some houses are better seen in person for a number of reasons from low lighting to a color palette that just doesn’t film well.  In addition, it may not be a listing that will give you a return on your investment.  Some realtors set a limit on which listings get video.  For instance a listing exceeding certain square footage or a certain price point is entitled to the added service.  If you are hiring out your video work or paying for video hosting, think about the amount of resources a video will take.

Clean, clean, clean

If the home will be filmed, be sure it is immaculately clean and staged to perfection.  Any flaws will quite literally be in the spotlight.

Video marketing could be the feature that gets that luxury listing.

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We’ve talked before about what Search Engine Optimization is and why it is important to your real estate business.  Now it’s time to delve a little deeper into the subject.  Let’s think of some ways to improve SEO and drive more traffic to your site.

Just by way of reminder, SEO is the way we get our website to appear at the top of the search engine results pages without buying the space.  Top ranking is important because most web surfers are going to take the time to examine all 4700 pages of results.  They’ll most like choose one of the top 10 ranked sites appearing on the first page of results.  You want them to come to your site first, be very impressed and become your newest client.

This process used by the search engines is complex and they are very tight-lipped about their ranking processes.  There are professionals available to manage this aspect of your site and hiring one would not be ill-advised.  After all, you still want to leave enough hours in the day to show and sell homes.  As an agent you can only spend so much time up to your elbows in your website.  There are some steps you can take yourself to get your site noticed by clients and engines alike.

Keywords

Know your keywords.  Even if you hire a company to do your SEO, you will still need to provide keywords and phrases for them to incorporate.  Your current clients are a great source of information for keywords.  Ask them if they looked on-line for agents (chances are they did) and ask what they typed into their Google toolbar that led them to you.  Find ways to incorporate these terms naturally into your website.  Blogs and FAQ pages are a good place to start weaving these important phrases into your text.

Participate in the Community

It’s always good practice to be an involved member of your community.  In this case, we’re talking about the on-line community.  Have you seen the comments section at the end of someone’s blog or article?  Most have a line for your web address and name as well as the body of the comment.  Every time you post your site’s address, you create something called a backlink to your site.  When someone posts a comment to your site, it creates another backlink from your site to theirs.  Search engines take relevant links into consideration when ranking your page.  It pays to be an active, intelligent participant in on-line discussions.

Put some thought toward your keyword and get active on-line.  With time, you’ll reap the rewards with improved rankings.

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Mobile marketing is new buzzword for the New Year.  Google it and you’ll see thousands of entries.  What is mobile marketing and how can it aid realtors in today’s market?

An extremely simplified definition is that mobile marketing leverages the advertising power of hand-held devices like iPhones and Blackberries to bring a message to a group of people.  It encompasses some of the techniques you are already using, like e-newsletters, search engine optimization and social media, and encourages your target audience to respond via their mobile device.

Here’s a recent example.  After January’s disastrous earthquake devastated Haiti, several aid agencies mounted massive mobile campaigns via the social media outlets Facebook and Twitter.  By simply texting a certain word to a certain number, mobile users could make a donation to a charity and have the amount put on their next phone bill.  User after used re-Tweeted or reposted the message, spreading the word like wildfire among networks.  After just two days, one major international aid charity alone had reportedly brought in over $8 million and the text messages kept coming.  As a realtor, your results won’t be quite this dramatic, but learning about mobile marketing now will give you a leg up on your competition.

Getting Started

It’s important to start learning about mobile platforms now.  Major on-line entities like Google and Yahoo are in development with program to improve the appearance of site on smart phones so the market is poised to explode.  As you are working with more clients born in the age of technology, more of your business will rely on how well you function with technology.

You can make your mobile marketing plan as large or as small as you choose.  Some realtors are getting started with baby steps, like asking clients to “opt in” for text messages on new listings.  You can ask you clients to follow you on Twitter for up-to-date information on showings, open houses and other time sensitive information.  Find a comfortable place to begin and grow from there.

Analyzing Costs

There is always a cost of doing business.  In mobile marketing, you will want to analyze these costs carefully.  If text messaging is not included as an unlimited feature in your plan you’ll have to pay per text.  While this isn’t such an issue if you send one client an updated time for a showing, a message blast to your entire client list can end up being costly.  A meeting with your mobile phone service provider will help you move forward.

If you think a cell phone is only for making calls, it’s time to rethink your position.  Mobile marketing is already more than a buzzword; it’s good business.

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AdSense is among the most hyped programs on-line.  It’s one of Google’s many offspring, a way of making money via your website and advertisements.  If you aren’t a web programmer you may not have a clear idea of what this program does.

The Google AdSense program allows a website owner to place a small piece of programming script (or code) on his site.  He can put it anywhere on the site within certain requirements set by Google.  The chosen spot then displays advertisements.  The code determines what ads the visitor sees.

These ads are not randomly generated but targeted to relate to the website and hopefully of interest to visitors.  Google has “robot” programs visit the site regularly and comb over the pages to see what the site is about.  Using a complex system that Google is reluctant to discuss, these engines examine words on the site, the frequency of their use, the formatting and other factors to determine what ads in their collection will be best to display on that particular site.

Ads displayed are also chosen based on the site visitor.  A person located in Moscow arriving on the site may see an ad written in his native Russian while a Parisian sees it in French.  Over time, AdSense becomes more attuned to the site’s content and more relevant to visitors.

There are two ways to become involved with AdSense.  One is to be an advertiser and the other is to be the hosting website.  Advertisers pay Google for every click of their ad.  For a host website, AdSense records the number of times visitors see the ads and the number of clicks that are generated from it.  The owner gets paid for every click going out from the site.  It’s a way for the site to make money from its traffic; the program is free to join and use.

While this may sound like easy money, it’s not without a few drawbacks.  Most AdSense ads are smaller and less obnoxious than banners but some still blink, flash and are otherwise annoying.  In addition, the site owner does not have any jurisdiction over what ads are displayed.  Advertisers, in turn, do not get to choose what sites where their ads are displayed but have to trust Google for appropriate placement.  Professional sites should be very aware of this fact.  Both parties should use caution and do some research before buying into the hype.

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Your website should be clean and easy to use; that’s a given. It’s tempting to load it up with apps and gadgets when there are so many useful ones on the market. But that usually just leads to a cluttered mess once your potential client begins to navigate your site. Keeping it simple is a good way to manage your site but as the old saying goes, don’t throw the baby out with the bathwater. There are some really useful applications and additions that don’t translate to clutter and will help you keep the attention of your potential buyers. One example is the virtual tour.

As the National Association of Realtors survey tells us, the vast majority of buyers use the Internet at some point during their home search process. The figure was last reported as being somewhere in the 80% range for last year but it is certainly growing. If your customers are using the Internet, you should have plenty of materials for them available on-line.

A virtual tour is a type of photography used on-line to give the viewer the perspective of standing in the middle of a space. They are able to “look” up and down, left and right and “see” a room as if they were actually inside it. They can even zoom in on a particular feature. A virtual tour allows them to feel the sense of space and the flow of the room much better than static photos do. It lets them see how the different spaces connect to each other. Static photos just can’t provide the feeling of have walked into the room like a virtual tour can.

As a realtor, you know that highlighting a property’s best features is the key to selling it quickly. A virtual tour is one of the best ways to really put the spotlight on a particular feature. Think about how effective it will be to show your buyers that gourmet kitchen from every angle while they’re sitting at home. Indoor and outdoor spaces can utilize virtual tours. You can walk them past the incredible pool and landscaping as it looked last summer, even if it’s now the dead of winter. It works for commercial properties too. If you have an excellent location, close to public transportation and in a bustling area, show it off to its best advantage with a virtual tour.

Using a virtual tour can mean the difference between watching a great property sit unnoticed for months and watching that same property sell quickly. It’s a great way to unearth that hidden gem in every listing. Even if you’re trying to simplify your site, virtual tours are a feature you should keep.

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High tech tools get all the press. Every new gadget, app and program seems to light up blogs with praise or criticism. They are reviewed, picked apart and made the subject of much conjecture. But high tech tools are not the only way to do business. There are plenty of low tech ways to market your business. Many of them have been proven, over long periods of time, to be effective. If you’ve gone high tech in your business plan over the past few years, think about reincorporating some of the more traditional marketing methods back into your approach.

The hand-written note
There is a certain beauty to a hand written note. In this day of text messages and e-mails, a personal note is a rare gift. A friend recently received a hand written thank you note form someone to whom he had given a small token. It was just a CD pertaining to the man’s favorite field of study, not expensive. But the man took the time to sit down with a pen and a blank note card and write a note of gratitude. My friend was quite moved by this simple act. If you are in the habit of texting “THANX!” or e-mailing all of your correspondence, take a few minutes of your day to write notes. You’ll be surprised at how well a thoughtful and detailed note will be received.

Print Ads
Items like flyers and “just listed” cards count as printed ads just like newspaper classifieds. Make sure yours are as professional and well-presented as they can be. A sloppy take-away flyer at an open house will not inspire respect for you or your business. If you are not a decent graphic artist, hire this work out. Your flyers are what the prospective buyer takes home to remind them of you so make sure the quality is top-notch.

Actual Social Networking
We’re not talking about on-line communities here. We’re talking about your actual community, the place where you live and work. Interact with people face-to-face once in a while. Join a civic club or a volunteer organization. Get out from behind your monitor and meet some of your prospective clients.

Referrals
This is the best way to get new clients. They are more apt to trust you since a friend or co-worker has already had a positive experience in working with you. Encourage your clients to send referrals your way. One local photographer I know offers a special package if the customer is willing to give three prospective names and their contact information in exchange. Give your clients a reason to give you those referrals.

Don’t forget the old-school techniques just because a new app is available. The two schools can work well together.

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How often have you told your clients to look inside a house before making a judgment? And how many have ignored you? Looks are important, both in houses and websites. Your site’s design is what will catch the eye of a browser or future client, capturing their interest and drawing them in. If you’re going to bring them in, you better give them a reason to stay.

Graphics, flash presentations and apps are great attention getters, just like a red front door or good landscaping is for a house. Content is what will get a potential client to stay on your site and keep them interested and engaged, like a well-appointed kitchen. The content we’re discussing here is the words on your site. This type of content includes articles, lists, blogs and any other type of text. You content can be improved greatly with a few techniques.

Write for the Internet
Writing text for an on-line reader is a little different than writing for traditional printed materials. Web content is more immediate in nature; readers want to know something and they want it fast. They may just skim over your much researched article instead of reading it thoroughly. Make your points quickly. Use subheadings to break down larger blocks of text and make them more readable.

Short and Simple
Web content should be concise. Articles should be short — about half of what would be put into printed form — and easy to read. Write at about an eighth grade level and don’t use a lot of jargon. Stick to one thought or subject in each piece. Break more complex topics into smaller chunks. Use short sentences and short words. Remember, your reader is usually looking for a quick answer or information, not doing research for their thesis.

Don’t Get Fancy
Your content needs to be cleanly presented. Just because your program came preloaded with 200 different fonts does not mean you should use them all. I cannot stress this point enough. Keep the fonts to a minimum and resist the urge to make your articles look fancy with complicated fonts and bright colors. Likewise, using all capital letters looks bad. In Internet etiquette, all caps means shouting. Your text will reading like a carnival hawker if you insist on using all caps.

Don’t Forget the Keys
Include key words and phrases that your potential clients will be using as search criteria. For example, if you are a realtor in Farimont use “Farimont real estate” or “Fairmont homes” in some of your articles. These key phrases will help your get notices by search engines, too. Use them in a thoughtful, meaningful way. Don’t just drop the words into text randomly.

Spend some time improving your content and you will see results.

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Hopefully, after so many blog posts this past year touting the benefits of social media networking, you joined at least one network in 2009. They offer so many cost-effective ways to promote and grow your business. I sincerely hope you haven’t ignored this huge opportunity. Take a look through the archives of this blog if you still need help getting involved in Twitter, Facebook or another community. If you are one of the many users who are recent additions to these on-line communities, let me welcome you and give you a few tips on how to be a good citizen.

To Be’s

Be Yourself
This is a cardinal rule in any social interaction, on-line or in person. Insincerity will be just as obvious on-line as it is in person.

Be Honest
Avoid even the appearance of dishonesty. Nothing will discredit you and your business faster than falsehood and exaggeration.

Be Relevant
Stay abreast of news and trends. Don’t post the same old stuff every day.

Be Clear
It’s hard to decipher the nuances of meaning on-line. All the vocal inflection and facial clues are stripped away. Leave no room for a misinterpretation of your posts.

Be Concise
Social media is a dialog, not a dissertation. Keep your posts short and to the point.

Be Respectful
Even if you disagree, respect you fellow community members.

Be Active
Regular use will keep you involved in a community. Sporadic postings won’t gain you fans or followers.

Be Interactive
Give at least as much as you take. Interact with others; this is social media after all.

Not to Be’s

Don’t be Abrasive
It’s never a good idea to pick a fight when you are trying to build your business. Be professional, even if you disagree with another member.

Don’t be a Saboteur
Don’t bash other posters or make them look foolish.

Don’t be an Attention Hog
Frequent updates are good. Constant updates are spam. Know where the line between the two lies.

On-line etiquette mirrors real-life etiquette. The rules are nearly identical. It’s just much easier to be anonymous when you can hide behind an avatar instead of interacting face to face. Breaking a rule of social convention seems less offensive. Don’t forget that this is part of your overall business plan. You are representing your company and impacting your income with your social media interactions. Be smart about what you say.

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Are you tweeting yet? Tweets are the posts placed by users of a social media networking site called Twitter. Twitter is the smallest of the big three (Facebook and MySpace being the other two) but it is growing rapidly. The point of these posts is to tell friends (“followers” in Twitter lingo) what you are doing in 140 characters or less by text, e-mail or the web. It’s a way of staying connected with people you care about or are merely interested in.

Many different professionals are delving into social media sites as a marketing tool. Facebook has many professional apps including a few for real estate agents to display their listings. Twitter can also share photos as well as text, but it is somewhat more limited by the number of characters allowed. It’s a great way to stay involved with your clients’ day to day lives and keep them interested in you.

Social media marketing is a fairly new endeavor and many agents have not yet gotten the hang of how to behave on these sites. Spamming tweets can give the whole industry a black eye and certainly won’t gain you any new clients. Take a look at these tips to make certain your tweets are sweet to your clients’ eyes and ears.

Be Polite. Be Genuine

This is the first rule of any social interaction, one we learned in preschool or even earlier. Be polite and just be yourself. Don’t flood you followers with meaningless messages. You wouldn’t want any more junk mail and spam so follow the Golden Rule and do unto others as you would have them do unto you. Be genuine in all your tweets. Don’t self-aggrandize or sound like a snake oil salesman. Make your posts relevant, enjoyable and informative.

Tweet Locally

Having a huge following will make you feel very popular indeed. But will it actually gain you any clients? You should be thinking locally when you tweet and when you choose whom to follow and whom to ask to follow you. Most of you clients will be from your immediate area, not across the country. You may gain someone who moves a great distance, but these will be few and far between. Cultivate the relationships you have in your own backyard first, then you can move farther afield.

Be Effective

If you aren’t sure how to make this tool work for you, consult a technology professional. A few lessons can be enough to get you started in a whole new marketing program.

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What is SEO and why do I need it if I don’t even know what it is?

Many realtors never expected to be as technically savvy as they have become in this age of Internet information. But selling in the current era is a totally different animal from what is was even a decade ago. We have to learn the newest technological tricks of the trade to keep up with the competition and stay current and relevant to our clients. Part of staying relevant is educating yourself about the latest innovations in the trade.

One of the most recent trends in website marketing is search engine optimization, SEO for short. This process is part art, part science. SEO is an Internet marketing strategy that attempts to gain top positioning for your site in a search engine’s “natural” results pages. A natural result is one that was not purchased, one that showed up due to the search engine’s research into your website. Top placement on the pages will help you get attention and drive more potential new clients to your site.

When you type in a particular word or phrase into a search engine, it chooses among the sites is has combed over and displays a list of sites it had deemed to be relevant to your search criteria. We won’t go into all the technical details about how this information is derived by the search engine. Just let it suffice to say that it is a very, very thorough process.

In the early days Internet marketing, webmasters and page designed had some dubious tricks to ensure top ranking on the results pages. They would fill entire pages with key phrases they believed their future clients would be using and hide them within the site. The search engine companies responded by seeking out this type of behavior and refusing to allow it to influence the site’s rankings.

Today, we use more above-board techniques to attempt to land at the top of the search results. These so-called “white hat” techniques don’t involve deception and conform to the search engine’s guidelines. SEO practitioners use techniques like adding informational content like articles and blogs containing your key phrases. They can also help you build a network of links out of your site to others and from them back to your site. This is one thing search engines really seek out.

Needless to say, this is a complicated topic. You may want to seriously consider hiring an Internet professional to help you through it. Start with some small steps like adding professionally written content to your site and see what happens to your site traffic. If you let a pro deal with these technical details, you’ll have more time to do the things that you do best – helping clients buy and sell their homes.

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Real estate agents are mobile by their very nature. They are out frequently, showing homes and conducting open houses, searching out comps and visiting clients. A good mobile office is essential to an agent, because as you know, the real estate market doesn’t take vacations. A few good tools will help you get respond to your clients quickly and things done even if you are stuck at a slow open house, on the road for the day or even just taking a trip with your family.

Lap Top Set Up

A lap top computer is the obvious first choice for this list. Don’t be tempted by inexpensive netbooks, which can retail for as little as $275. These are great for surfing the Internet and sending e-mail, but they don’t have very much computing power and their keyboards are not designed for much typing. Considering the volume of documents and number of programs most agent use regularly, a netbook would be sadly insufficient. Find a laptop with a large memory and spring for the extra or extended-life battery. Think about a few accessories to your lap top set up, too. A small, portable printer can be a life-saver at an open house if you run out of flyers. A thumb drive will make transferring files from one machine to another a breeze.

Phone Fans

Agents are addicted to their phones. A 3G smart phone is a necessary object today. Phone calls, of course, cannot ever be missed but a smart phone like an iPhone or a Blackberry will also keep you connected by voice mail, text, e-mail and even keep you linked into social media sites. Many of the apps available on these phones are designed to make your job easier, like mortgage calculators. Be sure your plan is sufficient to your career. An unlimited data and phone plan is another real estate essential to prevent the sky-high cost of keeping in constant contact.

Connections to Computers

A log-in software like www.gotomypc.com or www.logmein.com can help you reach your work or home computer and its files from any other computer, whether it’s your lap top or a library computer. Signing up for one of these services will ensure that the documents you need are where you need them at any time.

Organizers

If you are working in your car frequently, you’ll need a good organizer to keep all your things from flying into the floor. It will also give you an easy way to sweep away your clutter when you client asks you to drive them to the next showing. Even a milk crate is better that a seat full of crumpled paperwork.

Plan your mobile office with just as much care as your business and home offices. Chances are you may be spending as much time working from one as the other.

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The real estate business is once again making headlines. This time, the news is a lot more positive than it has been in quite a while. The recent economic stimulus package has realtors hopeful for continued improvement and a more stable market on the whole. The only problem is getting accurate information out the buyers eligible for the tax credits. The recent extension contains some major changes as to who qualifies and for how much. You may find that you have lots of buyers who are interested but not very well informed.

Keeping buyers informed about changes in the market is one of the foremost tasks of a good realtor. You are probably already keeping your clients up to date on a variety of subjects like current listings and mortgage rates. Adding this important information to your information library shouldn’t be that hard. If you already have the tools you need, like broadcast e-mails and e-books, then you can integrate this information seamlessly. Try a few of these ideas to make sure your buyers are not only well-schooled in the new extension, but excited about house hunting, too.

Put it on your blog.

Maintaining a blog is a great way to keep your buyers and seller up to date on market changes. If you aren’t blogging on your site, this would be an excellent first topic. A series of blogs detailing the criteria required to qualify for the full tax credit will definitely be of interest to your clients. Even a bullet-pointed list of the major changes will attract attention.

Write an e-book.

A full explanation of the new extension modifications, qualifications and deadlines may be too much information for a simple blog entry. Even a series may have to neglect some salient points in order to stay readable. An e-book that your clients can download, perhaps in exchange for registering with your site, can encompass a great deal more information. Take some time, do some research and put the information out there in a way your clients can easily understand. You may even want to hire a professional writer to break the measure down into manageable segments.

Broadcast it.

Many realtors already use broadcast e-mails and e-mail newsletters to communicate new listings to their client lists. Why not use the same technology to make sure your buyers know about the new incentives the government is offering to encourage them to buy? The new measure offers additional incentives to move up buyers and raises the qualifying income ranges so your clients will surely appreciate the update.

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