Don't wait! Build your online presence NOW!

The facts:

There is no time like the present to start building your online presence and reputation. It is more expensive than ever for home seekers to drive around looking at properties. If it’s not on their commute, chances are the only way they will find the property is online, especially if they are moving outside the county they live in.

Contrarian thinker and marketer Seth Godin has stated that “The best time to plan for a sale in three years is right now.” For instance:

A hypothetical situation:

If I was a real estate agent and it’s oh say 2005, it would have been really easy to put off blogging and building my online presence because the market was up and maybe I wasn’t having to dig really deep to find buyers for the homes I had listed.

But let’s say I did start or continue my reputation building back then. By 2008 I’d have had about three years of content on my site(s). Even if I did get a disgruntled client. . .you can’t please everyone all the time. . .and they decided to post something nasty about me, there’s a whole lot of good stuff out there that would bury that one little blip in my record. Besides, as I said before, nobody wants to burn $3+ gas to ride around looking at houses. They’re at home on the internet looking for that perfect property. Good thing Google is full of search results pointing at me when buyers are searching my area!

Next steps to success:

As a real estate agent, the best place to start building your online presence is by creating an account on the Active Rain Real Estate Network. If you have doubts about the effectiveness of this strategy check out this post by an Active Rain blogger who got a lead AND closed a sale all due to his presence on Active Rain.

But when would I as a real estate agent have time for blogging and online reputation building you ask? Well, you could free up some time by leaving your property photography to your local full service virtual tour provider 🙂

BrettWeaver

SpotLight Virtual Tours