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What Are You Doing to Stay Relevant?
By Ryan Ward | May 20, 2008
When I was about one year into my real estate career, one of my mentors, Frank Wynne asked me this simple question. We no longer work together as he is now with Atlanta Fine Homes and I am with Keller Williams, but, we still talk about real estate from time to time. Not a day goes by when I am at work, or for that matter the rest of my life, that I don’t ask myself that question. What am I doing to stay relevant? If you aren’t asking yourself that question you are missing out on a lot of great ideas to help your career by selling listings and finding buyers.
When it comes to real estate, I would say I am doing ALOT to stay relevant! Especially in today’s market. The real estate industry is highly competitive with the number of agents compared with the number of available transactions so if you don’t do something to stay relevant, someone else will and they will be eating your dinner tonight instead of you. I’m always doing something and it usually involves trying to improve marketing for listings. I have found that improving marketing for listings also serves to improve marketing for buyers, but not vice verse.
The latest attempt at staying relevant for me involved finding a way to utilize video. Effectively. Video really isn’t new anymore and there are lots of services to upload videos to. Just about every real estate blogger that is trying to stay up with technology has made at least an attempt to make video work. There are even some very good online complanies that specialize in real estate video. WelcomeMat offers a very nice service for you to upload videos, but, I really think that it is important that we as agents maintain control of our listing materials so I set out to find a video player that I could create, customize, use and abuse that would slip right in to any WordPress blog in posts or in sidebars like my video player does to the right. The biggest problem with services like youtube is the video quality and not all are created equal here.
So over the last week, I have been working on and creating the custom video player you see here. I realize that the video itself is not terrific, but, I do think it is sufficient for my first real attempt to market listings with video. the lighting is a little off and my camera skills need a bit of improvement, but, I think it does the job. This is a video of a Roswell real estate listing that I have that goes along with another highly targeted and effective tool that I use to market listings; this home’s completely custom single property website which markets not simply to the home, but for broader reach available by targeting the neighborhood and other search terms to drive buyers directly to the home from the internet.
So check out the video. I know. It’s cheesy. That’s o.k. though for this. The technolgy is really still improving and I plan on making sure that I stay on top of it. For mhyself and for my sellers.
So tell me. what are you doing to stay relvant, TODAY?
Category: Marketing |
Hello and welcome to my Atlanta real estate blog. My name is Ryan Ward and I run The Ryan Ward Group at Keller Williams Realty Consultants. Stay informed with information on neighborhoods, market statistics, homes and editorials on local, regional and national news that affects all of us here in Atlanta and elsewhere. I enjoy life and writing so don't be surprised if you read something thsat isn't directly related to real estate. We all need a break sometimes. If you have any questions about what you read or would like additional information, please fill in the form below or give me a call at 404.630.3187.
May 21st, 2008 at 5:54 pm
Ryan,
Thanks for sharing this.
I do need to keep asking myself the same question. I realized it’s not even just about ‘keeping up’ with the trend. It’s when we ask these questions we push our minds to think of better ways to adapt and ultimately find ways that would best benefit our clients.
One of the things I did this year is also connected to what you mentioned about utilizing video :http://renomarketblog.typepad.com//reno/2008/03/reno-real-estat.html
If you have a minute I’d appreciate your feedback.
Thanks Ryan
-Ian Mariano
May 21st, 2008 at 6:31 pm
I agree staying involved on top of the market is very important. I also like to be involved with the realtor association too. Building websites up to generate leads I would have to say is my biggest goal. Good luck to you.
May 21st, 2008 at 6:51 pm
Being involved with the associations and with what is going on in your office helps to keep you accountable and up to date with information. You can’t have too much of that.
Keep building your websites…they take time just like all other marketing…
Ian it looks good to me, but, I’m in the biz…I always try to get outside the industry viewpoints when possible. For my video most responses said it was cheesy and they also said real estate marketing is almost always cheesy.
I think the point is to set it apart from others and make it memorable somehow…and I’ll keep trying to make them look better
May 21st, 2008 at 9:38 pm
[...] What Are You Doing to Stay Relevant? | [...]
May 22nd, 2008 at 7:13 pm
Ryan,
Thanks for the feedback. Appreciate it.
May 22nd, 2008 at 8:05 pm
Ian,
I just got your email out of my spam folder….will email you now.
May 29th, 2008 at 9:55 pm
Hey Ryan ,Yes video is the next big thing and for sure needs to be incorporated into our blogs and websites.
June 3rd, 2008 at 11:02 am
I don’t see a video on the listing… I do see a slide show that looks nice. I use slide shows for all of my listings. They’re all set to music which help keep the customer interested. Sellers love them and they help attract buyers when you can ad sentances to each photo describing the scene.
June 3rd, 2008 at 11:17 am
I don’t have the video on the listing, just at the top right of the blog here…I probably need to go ahead and add the video to the listing website as well.
My only problem with adding music is that it can cause problems for consumers who are searching for homes when they aren’t supposed to be - like at work or something. I had music for my first one and emailed it to my wife. She opened it and just about killed me because she was at her office when the music came on.
June 3rd, 2008 at 1:28 pm
I never thought of the music for those searching at work. Good point… I guess I’ll need to re-think that. I do like adding descriptions to the slide show though. It’s hard to describe a house using the limited characters on MLS. Adding the slide show with more descritpions seems to help, especially if you’re listing is unique.
June 3rd, 2008 at 1:32 pm
This was my first real attempt at a video. I’m going to be adding a playlist to the player itself so people can select from mutiple videos and will probably try to limit the video to 2 minutes with more descriptions than what I used in this one. I think you are right about the descriptions especially since the user is essentially trapped in the video and can’t move around as much as a regular webpage or listing detail.
June 11th, 2008 at 9:02 am
Hi Ryan,
I stumbled upon your website after looking up some keywords that were directing traffic to my site. The one in particular was “keller williams blog”. Well, it doesn’t create much traffic for me so no need for anyone to optimize their website for the phrase, but above me on the first page was Trulia’s blog where I saw your comment about Trulia welcoming the KW agents nationwide. I thought your comment was definitely interesting…
Anyhoo, I haven’t had a lot of time to look around here, but it looks like you’ve done a very good job at climbing the rankings for your main phrase and I liked the fact you welcomed me to welcomemat. I like knowing about all the recent real estate websites popping up just for interest. I even collected a bunch and put them in my post here: http://www.behindrealestate.com/2008/06/06/best-real-estate-websites-roundup-2008
Well, as an x-Keller Williams agent, I just wanted to say “hi” and thank you for introducing me to another good website and just wanted to wish you the best of luck in your business. I’m not in the field at all anymore, but I may come back to help agents better optimize their sites and do a better job with Internet Marketing. It seems like you have a decent grasp of it yourself.
Cheers,
Brandon
June 22nd, 2008 at 6:27 pm
Ryan, you are the definition of staying relevant! I wish I could keep up with you. I am finally getting around to doing a little work on the structure of my Gulf Shores blog. How do you find the time to create so much “relevant” content?
Cal
June 22nd, 2008 at 10:03 pm
Thanks Cal, but, not so much lately! I am barely able to eek out one post a week and I’m a week late in getting out a new post for the homegain blog where I am a guest contributor…
Summer is tough enough, but, I’m also trying to work through some steps to set up a true team and have been researching best practices and policies to get off on the right foot. Not much time left…
Thanks for stopping by Brandon.
June 22nd, 2008 at 11:06 pm
Cal,
If you get time, call me tomorrow - 404.630.3187…
June 23rd, 2008 at 2:18 am
Not a problem Ryan. It’s a pleasure…
I sincerely relate with the “not much time” to post thoughts.
Also, the best practices in “setting up a true team” is very much worth spending time on. I built a team several years back. We had a great assistant, which is a big part of the foundation, but I had some issues with my partner. I think setting the rules very clearly and even placing penalties for potential situations moving forward are very key to a lasting and strong relationship with partners and other agents you work with.
Good luck with building the team!