This Week’s Real Estate Marketing and Tech News

The qualities of a great agent haven’t changed
In last week’s real roundup we brought up a Motley Fool interview with Spencer Rascoff, CEO of Zillow. He made the case that real estate agents will always be necessary because of the cost, complexity, and infrequent nature of real estate deals. But, he said some other stuff that wasn’t so on the mark. This week, Jeff Turner ( @jeffturner) published a great opinion piece on Inman News about the qualities that have always, and will continue to make the great agents stand out from the pack.

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How and where should real estate agents market themselves?
This post is targeted at agents new to the business, but there’s plenty of advice that even tenured pros can put to use. I especially like how she talks about becoming an expert in one or two neighborhoods, and creating marketing content just for those areas. RE:Focus Analytics, our iPad app for real estate agents can definitely help with that.

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If it’s worth doing, it’s worth tracking

I haven’t run into very many agents or brokers who can tell me if social marketing is actually bringing in more business. The social media app Hootsuite gives you some good ideas for tracking ROI on your social media activities. Ultimately those social posts should turn into leads, and then closed deals. We’re biased of course, but we think Pipeline ROI is the very best app for tracking your marketing ROI.

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Three magical tips for getting more prospects to choose you
Here’s a quick read from Hubspot giving three simple sales tactics to get more of your prospects to say, “Yes.”

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Five less obvious reasons you should have a Twitter account
Most agents I know signed up for Twitter with intentions to make posts in hopes of getting new followers as leads. But, this article talks about some other great uses of Twitter: Listening, learning, marketing, connecting, and branding. Remember that Twitter isn’t just for publishing, it’s about learning what what people in your area are interested in so you know how to best approach them in the future.

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Running low on apps?
There’s no shortage of real estate focused apps. But the good folks at Eight Eleven have put together a list of some cool new ones that you might be interested in. You should definitely take a look at Key.me and share it with your clients. With Key.me, you can take a picture of your keys and have copies sent to you by mail. Completely cool and really useful for folks who are moving and switching keys, and having copies made.

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News site Realuoso is ready to challenge the industry
The publishers of The American Genius have partnered up with NAR and their various affiliated companies to launch Realuoso. The group promises to set aside corruption, lies, and politics to bring real estate agents the real truth behind what’s happening in the industry. I can’t wait to see what they turn up.

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