We Network & We Engage - The Key Is To Merge The Two Tech-wise

While we do both well, the new Internet marketing world requires merging them.

It's a fact that real estate professionals have always been very active in both networking for business, and also in engaging their prospects and clients to keep in contact and generate referrals. And, there's no reason to stop doing anything you're doing now, unless it doesn't leave you time to implement these two activities differently in today's Internet marketing world.

The old ways of networking have been joining community groups and business organizations to meet people in businesses that relate to real estate, like mortgage brokers, appraisers, etc. Those methods still work, but they aren't nearly as effective as a merged approach using today's Internet social and business networks. Let's look at the two pieces of this puzzle:

Networking for Real Estate Business - How does this look on the Web? It includes social networking like Facebook, as well as business networking as practiced on LinkedIn. Then there's the huge popularity of Twitter.com, and the large groups with similar interests that connect there.

Engagement Through The Internet for Real Estate - Blogging is the major way to engage your prospects and clients in an ongoing relationship. Drip email is also popular, but not necessarily with those who perceive it as SPAM. Videos on any of the free video sites are also being used by real estate professionals to engage potential and present customers in dialogue.

So, we have some real estate people doing one or the other, and a few doing both. But, the key for future business growth lies in merging them effectively for maximum Internet exposure. Ideally:

• Create a brokerage blog, encourage guest participation by those in related business, such as posts by appraisers, lenders, etc.
• Have your agents posting to this blog, or aggregate posts here that they are placing on personal blogs or individual blogs you've created for them.
• Use plugins (WordPress blog platform) or other methods to integrate buttons to encourage readers to send your posts of interest to Twitter, Digg, and other popular sites that aggregate material people want to tell others about.
• Join Facebook and LinkedIn, placing links and republish your blog posts there, as well as placing those sites' buttons on your site.
• Actively engage in answering questions on these networking sites, whether they be from consumers or business people asking real estate questions.
• Actively comment on and write about other blog posts that are on blog sites of your networking groups. They'll return the favor.

What many real estate professionals have not yet realized is that their great skills in networking and engagement in the old ways will have far greater positive business impact in the new technology world. What you've done all along with personal contact and in print to reach a local base, you can now do on the Web and reach the world.