Go Beyond MLS » Online Marketing

The Basics Again: USP

Matt — Tue, 18 May 2010 15:23:22 +0000

I’d like to kick off what I hope will be a short series on the basics of selling anything at all. Of course this applies to selling real estate but it equally applies to selling cakes, CDs or cars.

I am going to start with USP – Unique Selling Point. Now if you know even 1% of what you need to succeed online this should be like teaching grandmother how to suck eggs. However, we all, even me, need to be reminded of the basics.

What is it about the real estate (or necklaces, watches, computer cases or greeting cards) that you are promoting that no one else offers? Why would Mr Joe Public choose you over the other six or seven thousand people in the country offering the same or similar services?

If you don’t know the answer to this question then your business in in trouble.

Let me illustrate this with a story of real estate in the UK. In a small corner of the UK there are three towns. The area they are in has about 120,000 people in it. One real estate agency that has been doing very well opened a branch less than five miles away in a second of the towns. It did not do very well.

Why?

Well, for starters they did not advertise the business but also they offered the same commission rate as everyone else. They did offer a slightly more comprehensive service than many competitors but without something exciting to cause word of this service to be spread the slightly better service was a well kept secret.

So what did they do?

They dropped the commission rate to make it the lowest in the town, they started to offer not just a better set of reports but a guarantee of specific actions at no cost if the property fails to sell within a time period,. They did not tie people into an exclusive contract and they offered free professional photo shoots. All that in a down turn economy.

What they did was change the USP so no the question is not why would Joe Public use this agency but why would Joe Public want to use any other agency.

When the economy is grey then a USP that is a shade of grey different tot he next guys does not stand out.

What will you offer to make your services stand out?

It does not need to be the lowest price (although if you can afford to compete like that good luck to you). Offer the customer more bang for his or her buck and suddenly you have a reason to be chosen.

Stand out. Go further. Be seen.Similar Posts:

Free Press Releases at PRLog: Benefits and Drawbacks

Vlad Zablotskyy — Sat, 15 May 2010 18:07:22 +0000

I have learned about PRLog years years ago, maybe two. If my memory serves me well, I received some marketing materials from them regarding the launch of PRLog and their sister site Article Library at http://artilib.org/. While the idea was interesting, did not look further into using PRLog because I did not believe they will be able to compete with the websites like PRWeb – another leading press release distribution website. PRLog has improved since, and I have been using their services for the last two months.

The PRLog review by Janet Meiners Thaeler inspired me to take another look at their services. But today I would like to list a few benefits along with drawbacks of my own about using PRLog.

The Benefits:

It’s Free
To submit a press release to PRLog does not cost you a penny. In today’s economy it’s a plus I suppose.

Your Press Releases at PRLog go live with a click of the button.
I have used the PRLog for 5 press releases so far- all of them went live right after I clicked the “publish” button. This can be useful if you need to get your news out fast and do not have time to wait through the approval process other website have in place.

PRLog is ranking well in Google and their traffic is on the rise.
I have noticed that all of my press release were crawled by Google within minutes of them going live. One of the press releases has a Google Page rank of 3 while four other press releases have page rank of 2. According to Alexa PRLog’s traffic has been rising steadily over the last several months and according to Compete they are averaging about 1 million visitors each month.

The Drawbacks

Poor click through to your website.
Press releases at PRLog seem to get more views as the “age” – considering that one of the goals of a press release is to “announce” news, it is somewhat backward. Even as the views of your press releases increase I also find that click through to your websites do not.

No control over the anchor text in your links.
When publishing a press release at PRLog, your links are just converted to a clickable URLs. Considering the possible SEO value you maybe able to get from using PRLog, the ability to have control anchor text should be considered by PRLog developers.

PRLog press releases do not get republished on other sites as much as one would wish…
In comparison to other similar websites, press releases from PRLog do not appear to draw much attention from publishers and webmasters. EzineArticles.com will get you better results as far as this goes.

To conclude I wish to say that PRLog has come a long way. If your advertising budget does not allow you to purchase press release services, PRLog should be considered as an option- you can’t beat the free price tag. However you should not expect great results on a single press release at PRLog.Similar Posts:

Setting up Facebook Pages for beginners

Matt — Tue, 23 Mar 2010 11:32:29 +0000

Matt Brown

Before we set off on our voyage of discovery today I want to give you a bit of background as to why I am writing this article. I have found myself of late being adviser to a lot of people setting up facebook pages for lots of different reasons. Rather than repeat what I have to say ten times I am going to try and summarize it. Where possible I am going to use the Go Beyond MLS page as an illustration.

Now I should also point out that I am not a guru at this sort of thing but a really enthusiastic geek. With that in mind let us look at setting up pages.

What is a page?

A page is a blog.

Don’t look at me like that a page is basically a cross between twitter and wordpress. For plugins you have applications and instead of tweets you have posts with attachments.

All the basics of blogging apply to your page. We will talk about this in a moment. First some basics to make sure we have not missed anything.

Making the page

Most of you that read this article will know how to make a page already but for those that don’t this is the quick version.

1. Go to a page (the Go Beyond MLS Page is good).

2. At the bottom of the left hand column you will see a link that says “Create a Page for My Business” (this link leads tot he same page).

3. Click it, fill out the details and there you are a page. It has no fans (not even you) and is ready for customisation.

Getting the basics in place

There are some things that a page needs before you even make yourself a fan of it. These are simple that it is easy to overlook them.

1. Upload a picture. In fact if you got as far as making the page and did not have the perfect logo then you need to stop whatever you are doing and get one. Now.

Your picture is your only branding that you get. Everything else looks exactly as facebook wants it to look.

A good image can be as tall as you like but is limited in width. Take a look at the Lord Matt fan page (and become a fan perhaps). You will see that it has a customised image that fills down the page and adds my character to the page. I also get to make the public speaker and blogger points boldly while getting two pictures of me on the one space.

If you do not have the skills to make such an image then a photograph might do. Just remember whatever you use had better be yours to use.

2. Put something short and snappy in the about box.

Treat this like the most important tweet you will ever send. I like to end with a call to action (suggest to friends).

3. Find something worthwhile to say for all the fields under the info tab.

If the fields on the info tab are very much not what you need and do not fit in the slightest then you are not to late to delete the page and try picking a better category. Make up your mind now because it’s the work of ten minutes to change things with no loss if you change them now.

Okay assuming that you stick with your current settings write that “about” section and make sure you make it good.

You have around 100 to 300 words before people have to click to see more so just like blogging you must capture people’s interest within as few lines as possible and then keep it. If it takes days to get the “about” perfect then that is what it takes.

4. Consider making the about tab the default landing page because your wall is not going to be very interesting to start with.

There are more advanced things you can do like adding new tabs that people land on but for now let us just stick with the info tab.

To make it the default landing page you are going to have to click “Edit Page” which is found just under the image you set a while back. Get in there and make some changes.

5. Consider making the default for the wall both fan and page so that it is as much like a basic facebook profile as possible.

You can do this when looking at the page proper.

Still not ready, whatever you might think

It is still not time to be a fan of your own page. The basics are done (more or less) but now you need to do something so fundamentally simple that you could actually miss it entirely.

You need, and I do mean need, to make one of the best status updates you have ever written. You need this because as soon as you are a fan it is possible people you know might come and visit the page. Becoming the first fan is the first motion that starts the door opening and you do not want to invite people to the party before the catering is planned.

Only then are you free to fan the page.

How to get notifications when someone comments on your page

There are only two ways to get a notification of something getting a comment (that I know of) on a page.

1. You have to like the something in question – press that like button and move on.
2. You have to comment on the something and (I think) not be an admin.

A word of warning to page owners with many posts. If you go “like” made you will spam the hell out of your own wall and devalue it. Also if you are the only one carrying out actions on the page it will look spammy if you went and liked everything. No one likes everything. Don’t do it.

If you can get a friend or two that you trust to co-admin the page with you then you can carve the likes up between you but remember that none of you can comment as you on the page once you are an admin. So you might like to get your closest friends to poke you when there is something to look at.

Honestly though you should be going to your own page most days anyway…

Your page is a blog so write on it

Your facebook page is a blog. So like a blog you need to write on it. Daily.

You want to see regular updates. Links, videos, comments, forum posts (that’s a whole other topic), pictures and all the other stuff that walls can have and it needs to happen organically – a little at a time.

I’ll talk about how you can automate a few tasks at another time and place but before you can understand what tasks can be trusted to a computer you need to understand the tasks. Most of them can only be done by you.

Now that we are one!

Now that you have your first fan (you) it is time to get more. This is how.

1. Add value. Make it worth while to be a fan.
2. Invite all your friends. Twice if need be.
3. Link tot he page on your blog or website.
4. Do not stop with the valuable updates.

Getting fans is a slow and organic process but by removing reasons not to fan your page you help things move along well.

I’ll be talking about this and other topics soon.Similar Posts:

Go Beyond MLS Facebook Page

Vlad Zablotskyy — Tue, 02 Mar 2010 16:20:45 +0000

After Matt’s fantastic introduction to what I think will be number series of posts about Facebook Marketing- it is finally time to announce the Facebook Page of Go Beyond MLS, even thought Matt did it in some ways. The main reason for not promoting this page before, was my own confusion about pages an apps on Facebook.

A while back I have tried to use a WordPress plugin called Facebook Connect by Sociable. To use this plugin an application was created for this blog on Facebook for the purposes of showing latest Facebook visitors, register new users once they left a comments etc. In the end I gave up on using the plugin since it had some flaws at the time I did not want to deal with.

In short, I confused them (Facebook Apps and Facebook Pages). However, after creating a Facebook page for Chocolate Belles, a business I have been advising about internet marketing over the past two years, I found a new appreciation of Facebook Pages and how useful can it be for any business. But I have to leave it at this, sine Matt plans to share more useful tips about Facebook and all it has to offer to help you with you online marketing efforts.

In the meanwhile if you do not see your picture in the widget bellow, chances are you not yet the fan of Go Beyond MLS on Facebook, please join us and don’t be shy to interact with us on Facebook.

Go Beyond MLS on Facebook

Similar Posts:

Facebook Marketing: Initial Case Study

Matt — Sun, 28 Feb 2010 21:35:48 +0000

Go Beyond Facebook

What I am going to do int his first article is simply look at the Facebook fan page for this website and use it to explore Facebook pages in general and what they can do for your blog (regardless of niche).

Vlad tells me that apart from setting up the page he has not actually done very much with it least of all tell anyone about it.

This, for this article’s purposes, is fantastic! It means that we can actively measure what I am about to have said (keep on reading or you might miss it) and watch what happens as we implement the theory. Over the next few months I’ll revisit the topic of Facebook and representing your blog therein reporting on our efforts to go beyond just having a page and to actually getting traffic from it.

As I write there are 3 fans. In three months let us see if we can get over 100.

The page as it is

Go Beyond Facebook Page

As the page stands there is nothing obviously “wrong” with it. The blog posts are being added to the page and there is a graphic that matches the website theme. However, as you can see, there is a lack of variety and this makes the page visually unappealing and repetitive.

In other words we have settles down to making Facebook a very expensive feed reader. That’s fine but it’s not exciting enough to get the average Facebook user to do much by way of interaction.

According to something I was reading (somewhere) the average Facebook user fans two pages a month. That means to see growth in the page’s fan base some work is going to be needed.

Then the page must add value to the user’s day and if that was not enough it must actually be interactive enough to get enough interaction to show up in the news feed of the fans who have added it.

Facebook promotion is no walk in the park. Keep reading for an insight into using pages.

Go beyond what is missing!

The first thing that most people are going to say is missing is the fans. Look for yourself. (When I wrote this there were three of us)

Go Beyond MLS on Facebook

Yet this is not what is missing but a metric that we are heading in the right direction to attract people.

What is missing is the variety of media that can be found on any page in Facebook.

Pictures

This is a tough one for a blog. Many blogs are of non visual topics and yet people are going to want to see that the blog has something of a gallery. Pictures break the page up and give the senses a change of pace.

So what can a blogger show pictures of?

Well for starters there is the writer or writers of the blog. Assuming that your names are known then some images of you serve to help the fan connect with you on a deeper level.

If images of oneself are not enough then there are diagrams. A well thought out diagram illustrating some key point from you recent blogging allows Facebook users to see that they are getting exclusive content.

Product shots – fans in your t-shirts. If you produce a physical product then this is an ideal space to allow fans to show themselves off with their newly purchased product. Mum’s, sisters and close friends might also agree to get the ball rolling.

Status updates

The Facebook page is like your personal Facebook wall and has the opportunity for you to speak with the voice of your blog. Give your fans something to ponder or shout out to a fan that has submitted some particularly interesting comments.

Let the Facebook users know that the page has a life that goes beyond publishing the blog feed.

Videos and links

Any article, youtube video or podcast by someone interesting from in or near your niche could be worth sharing on your page. The concept of linking out, adding value and being the resource for others that drives blogging applies here too.

Furthermore a good resource can be sued to connect with your Facebook friends and promote your page to them in a not-at-all aggressive way. Posts of all forms of link have a SHARE button which will post the link to your page and say “from NameOfYourPage” which gives you a little exposure and, so long as it is interesting, enhances your social capital as an interesting person.

Go Beyond what is expected

One thing that you will find about pages is that they have very little opportunity for energy saving automation, branding or free text. However with a little inventiveness you can get quite a lot out of them.

Take as my first example a little shameless self promotion: My very own fan page.

The image below is a screen shot of that page.

Matt's Facebook Page

You might notice that the left hand side is almost all customized. This is because there is no limit on relative height for your profile image. Use this space to get the most out of the branding and impact space of your page.

In my case I made sure there were images of me that I could use to get an attractive thumbnail which you can see is a picture of a poster of me getting some attention from the lovely ladies (yes it is a genuine fake).

A little planning and you can maximize your impact buy controlling the image dimensions.

Additionally you might notice int his screen shot that there is a visual variety in the posts themselves. This happens to be because I posted a largish number of links recently and have yet to write a new blog post.

Talking of blog posts when-ever I write a blog post I know that my Facebook page (and twitter account) will be updated to. To do this I use NetWorkedBlogs which is a valuable application for Facebook using bloggers. To get the most out of it it is vital to make sure that 80% or more of your blog posts have an image in them that the NEtWorkedBlogs app can use. Keep the images varied and the page “wall” will look interesting.

You can also get added feedback onto your page if the NetWorkedBlogs application posts to other locations (like your personal wall or another page). This is because a like or a comment in any location is a like or a comment on all copies of the post. This too makes your page look interesting.

Going beyond the theory: The game plan

This is the game plan for the page over the next few weeks and months in roughly the order they will be carried out.

1. A taller image.

2. NetWorkedBlogs doing it’s thing.

3. Status updates, links and videos.

4. Invite fans.

Once this minor tweak is fully in place I shall revisit the topic and look at what else can be done to use Facebook to engage with potential readers and promote your blog. The results we are looking for as a result of good promotion of the Facebook page are:

1. More fans

2. More fan interaction

3. Traffic to the blog

Final thoughts

So far we have not looked at methods of getting from three fans to one hundred. However it is vital to get the foundations right or the rest will not stand up too well.

Have you made a fan page yet? What was it like and did many people “fan” it?Similar Posts:

If Chris Was A Realtor…

Vlad Zablotskyy — Thu, 24 Dec 2009 15:45:04 +0000

One of the blogs I enjoy reading, and highly recommend it to anyone interested in on line marketing and social media, is that written by Chris Brogan. Not sure if Chris is hunting for a house these days or maybe just helping some one in real estate to marketed their website, the title of his latest his latest post certainly jumped at me- If I Were A Realtor.

If any real estate agent would set up to do only first three things from Chris’ list they, without a doubt, can dominate in their market:

I’d write a blog about the location where I was selling.
I’d take tons of pictures and post them on the blog.
I’d shoot walking tour videos all the time with a Flip camera and post them.

You can read Chris’ entire list at his blog, make sure to subscribe to his latest posts while you there.

I think it is always refreshing to hear a different perspective from someone who is not necessarily in our “niche” or industry. Yeah, I hear you. Any one could write a list like that, right?.. Wrong! While Chris is a marketing genius he also represents the mindset of today’s home buyer or seller. Home buyers and sellers no longer have little choice where to go. Plus, you are no longer the guy or the gall with “the book” in town.

On this note I would like to wish all the readers of this blog Happy Holidays and may the next year be the best year you have ever had!Similar Posts: