Did You Know 4.0

Are you Scared?

You should be. Where once you were able to manage all of the activities being a REALTOR® required, today, you'll find yourself wearing more hats and changing them more frequently than every before. Can't afford to do it all yourself?

Foothills Publishing has hired a web designer to help REALTORS® build websites. We can get as extreme as you want to. This may be a particularly good option for small firms who don't have a Web Tech on site. Our designer can do as much or as little as you require. Call me for more information.

REALTORS® Must Market

And at The Real Estate Book we're constantly looking for ways to help you in your business.

Websites are more important than ever. Marketing studies show that the vast majority of home shoppers begin their search on the Internet. That's why it's so important to get your listings online. Print advertising and web advertising work together. This is so important we have made arrangements with Western North Carolina's MLS and with the Rutherford County MLS to pull our advertisers listings into our system. Once our clients listing is online it will be syndicated to more than 30 online partners. To drive click-through web traffic your website and contact information needs to be in the AMS system to drive web leads generated by your listing back to you.

Your listed clients deserve maximum advertising exposure. Each of these online partners as well as The Real Estate Book is vying for the best search engine results. When I started this website and entered a search for real estate in Rutherford County, NC Google returned 94,600 results. That same search today: "real estate in Rutherford County NC" returned 103,000 results. How will buyers find your listings? How will they find your website? How will they find you?

I use a scatter-gun approach - I want to fling as much online as I can, as quickly as I can. I want all of my advertising to drive web traffic to my site, and to have enough content on the site to keep them coming back. My work is "mashable" meaning it's pulled from several sources.

To expand my reach and for practice I run a community site. GoldenValleyNC.com and I've set up a facebook fan page and built a squidoo lens to drive web traffic. Imagine my surprise when I got an email from facebook letting me know I had 27 fans. Fans? I hadn't even put the site out! That number doubled the next day and the next, finally slowing down but continuing to grow.

When I drafted my homepage I chose words to help search engines locate my site, and to pick mine from the many available real estate sites. This was in addition to meta tags, and key words. Besides our online partners, our corporate offices in Lawrenceville, GA are constantly processing data to determine the best ways to drive Internet traffic to our sites. (This technology is changing so fast, If you're doing it for yourself you should run a search on: Search Engine Optimization regularly).

At The Real Estate Book We Market For You

Look at the front cover of The Real Estate Book - see where it says RealEstateBook.com ? That banner appears on every single one of our books, and we distribute 9 million a month nationwide. That's right, I said 9 million. Using old fashioned print, we are driving Internet visitors directly to our site and we get more than 1.5 million visitors each month. So when you get a lead that says so-and-so inquired about your listing, that's a serious inquiry. That potential buyer had to sift through the nation, to your state, to your town, to your listing. Then they had to fill out a contact form on our site to get through to you. Most people online are just looking. When they go to the trouble to fill out one of our "Contact Agent" forms they're getting serious. And have you heard? Most Internet clients have been looking on average 4 months BEFORE they contact an agent and most buyers work with the first agent they contact.

Our partner sites generate an additional 45 million unique viewers each month.

I'll soon be out visiting our real estate offices, helping to set up the new AMS and teaching LMS. LMS is our leads management system - it's the back side of AMS only available to our Advertisers, and will only give you the leads that have been generated by your listings.

Look at my front cover. You see that telephone number on the bottom left corner? That number is on every single one of the books too, and our call center sends out 50,000 books every month, and guess what? North Carolina is in the top three of all the books requested - and that's why it's important that you contact those book order leads, those people called and ordered a book for your area. And you need to know that a limited number of our advertisers receive those leads on a rotating basis - so when it's your turn to get "Book Order" leads, know that not everyone is getting those, it's your turn. Follow up. The fortune's in the follow up.

Cast Your Net Wide

Back to the website. Note the hyperlinks. See up there in blue? Golden Valley, when clicked will take you straight to my community site. You don't have to have a community site. But the site provides information about the area and it links to my blog: http://goldenvalleync.blogspot.com/ which is easier to update than the website. (FYI I used Lisa Brown of Graphically Speaking to design, set up, and host my Golden Valley Community Website). Websites, blogs, and social networks work together today to generate ranking with the search engines. I host another blog in conjunction with my work at The Real Estate Book, Karen's Corner . If you don't like music on a blog, press pause on the player and turn it off.

There are many ways to set up and host a website. I highly recommend when you are setting up a website make sure your domain name is registered in your name at your address and that the annual bill comes to you. I also recommend that you register your name as a domain name before someone else does. You can always buy a cheap domain name and use it to point wherever you want it to, but your name is a limited commodity.  Did you know we can use your domain to point to your free webpage, online at The Real Estate Book?

Are you familiar with our product line?

We offer a wide range of services in print and online. We deliver more quality leads at the lowest cost per lead than any other advertising media. #1 Leader in the Industry

At the bottom of the home page, I reiterated the areas I was working in for the search engines. I have removed the text so the search engines will not find me in a search for real estate agents and have added some other words geared toward advertising real estate.

There are some excellent real estate specific websites. If you scroll to the very bottom of this page you'll see Systems Engineering. This is a templated site designed for Rutherford County real estate agents and firms and works readily with an IDX feed. If you are launching your own website, I highly recommend you contact them - and it wouldn't hurt my feelings if you tell them I sent you. Their tech support is great and the site is super user friendly. Still, invest in a headset for long phone calls.

For help or information, please Contact Me!

And now for a sales blurb: If you're considering advertising real estate in Western Carolina, look no further. Our Southern Foothills & Mountains Real Estate Book is distributed in more than 500 locations in 4 counties: Transylvania, Polk, Henderson and Rutherford. You'll get five times the distribution spots - but NOT at five times the cost. And let's try it like this: For marketing real estate in Rutherford County, for marketing real estate in Polk County, for marketing real estate in Henderson County, for marketing property in Transylvania County, but particularly for marketing property in The Southern Foothills of NC, if you want to advertise property, or advertise homes and land, or advertise homes or land, or market homes and land, or market homes or land, or advertise in Transylvania County, or advertise in Polk County or advertise in Henderson County, or advertise in, whew, Rutherford County, NC why you've come to the right place. I'll help you from start to finish, your ad will look great in our Real Estate Book, also known as The Real Estate Book. We'll help you look great in print and online. And we do real estate custom publishing.