This past week I not only got the blue screen of death on my laptop but my 7 year old destroyed our 55 inch plasma screen TV playing the Nintedo Wii without the strap.  I’ve personally experienced as well as have met with a lot of real estate professionals who feel like they’re in that moment when the blue screen of death appears.  It’s paralyzing!  You initially freak out a little (or a lot).  For example, have you ever had a week when you closed several transactions or just got back from vacation and feel like you have to start your business from scratch all over again because you don’t have any new pending deals, listings, or active buyers?  It’s in these moments that your plan of action, habits, and systems are so crucial!  Today’s technology including free cloud systems like Google Docs, Microsoft Live Skydrive, Evernote, Dropbox, and iCloud should prevent you from ever losing documents or worrying about the Blue Screen of Death again.

Psychologically however, having business plans, lead generation and business development systems for prospecting, networking, CRM/campaigns, and personal promotion will prevent us from ‘freezing up’ when it comes to our business.  Sometimes it’s not a bad thing to experience the blue screen of death in our business.  It allows us to re-install what’s important and upgrade our best practices.  The Spring market is right around the corner.  Are you ready for a re-boot or will you stay paralyzed in the moment?

My point is that in real estate we always think of several people in our office or marketplace who seem to dominate.  Does that mean you’re a benchwarmer?  Are you waiting for the opportunity to be given playing time?  Well here’s the deal.  Jeremy isn’t the same player today as he was in high school.  He worked hard, worked out, and didn’t quit.  He improved his game to the point where he’s now known as this amazing player.

So here’s the question:  Have you been working hard and working out to improve your game?  Do you market homes better than your competition or is it pretty much the same as it was in high school?  What about marketing yourself to the local community or to your spheres of influence?     Are you doing a better job marketing yourself using the technologies and opportunities that exist like youtube videos, facebook, twitter, email campaigns, efarms, etc?

Jeremy Lin stories don’t happen often, but they happen.  Work hard, work out, improve your game and next quarter you might find yourself getting the trophy.

1 hour later he was posting content to http://CrookedComedy.com .  He even got his real estate agent grandmother to be a sponsor so his investment of $10 was quickly recovered.   I was impressed not only at his technical ability to get this thing going, but the content he was sharing was hilarious!

I didn’t think much more about it until I started to get a bunch of email responses over the next few days (then weeks) which were coming from the website.  (I agreed he could do the website as long as I monitored the communications).  The email responses were from his classmates, friends of friends, teachers, and family members.   Josef had told his teachers and friends about the website that he started and several of the teachers shared the site in their classrooms.  They all seemed to enjoy his video selections as well as the little games posted on the sidebar.  Josef was becoming famous in his little community and was now recognized as a web-savvy ‘funny’ guy.   One of his teachers even asked if Josef would help start a classroom website!  PTA members were bringing up how they enjoyed the site to my wife as their kids were sharing with their parents.  Josef had also emailed family members (aunts, uncles, and cousins) and conversations continue to occur daily because of the funny little videos he shares a couple of times per week.

My point in this story is that an 11 year old is able to share content that creates conversations.  Every real estate professional should be sharing interesting content on a regular basis not to the world at large, but to your small community of friends and family.  Get conversations started about real estate.  It’s what you do.  It’s what you enjoy.  It’s what you’re an expert at.  No more excuses.

If you don’t know how to do it, ask an 11 year old.

We often however blame other things for our lack of business.  Maybe we think our company isn’t doing enough for us, our sellers aren’t being reasonable with their pricing, our buyers are making only low-ball offers, the market and economy is in the tank, our website isn’t doing it’s job, etc.  So here’s a suggestion, FIRE YOUR CAMPAIGN MANAGER!

The vast majority of our business problems can be resolved if we are getting enough listing and buyer appointments, we’re able to convert those appointments, and enough of those listings sell and enough of our buyers buy!  But in order to get those appointments, we have to campaign our business!  (What I mean by ‘campaign‘ is a business development strategy where we market ourselves and our listings to generate more appointments).  But on a scale of 1-10, how good have your campaigns been?  What I typically find is that real estate professionals often start a campaign with great enthusiasm, but then get distracted and never finish or continue.  Our databases are incomplete, our social media accounts are stagnant, we have stacks of holiday cards from last year still to be written, our business plans are in theory only, etc.

So, what do you do?  Fire yourself.  Then, either learn how to campaign and hire yourself back, or find some help who can do it for you.

Why Should I Use Facebook Privacy Settings?

Click on this image to change your Facebook privacy settings , you may need to login to Facebook.

We’ve been discussing the inescapable debate between the Facebook Fan Page and Personal Page in prior posts on the blog.  Subsequently we showed you how to create a Facebook list, but morphing your personal Facebook page into a business savvy communication tool requires one more step.  You guessed it you need to establish Privacy Settings.  When managing relationships online it’s important to target an audience, but it’s also important to be efficient with your time.  Utilizing Facebook privacy settings in conjunction with lists is an optimal way to separate business from personal.  Read on to learn how you can do this for yourself.

2 Facebook Tools to Make Your Personal Page Business Ready

1. List Management
2. Wall Privacy Settings

What Are Facebook Privacy Settings For?

Have you ever clicked on a link you got in an email that took you to a website?  Think Groupon and Living Social!  Now, what kind of email campaign system do you have?  Watch the video below and check out our new email campaign services we have at Northpoint!  

4 Questions We’re Hearing from Clients & Prospects

Here at Northpoint we’re talking with a lot of small business owners about their 2012 business plans.  Many of the things we’re hearing in the field are discussed in Michael Stelzner’s 2011 Social Media Marketing Industry Report (SMMIR) which was produced earlier this year in April.  In this report 3300 social media marketers were surveyed on various aspects of social media marketing.  Of this sample set 33% are self-employed and another 30% work for companies of 100 or less (essentially 63% of the 3300 work in small business environments).

Let’s get to the four questions we’re commonly hearing and see how other social media marketers responded.

1)  Should I Outsource Social Media?

Many clients are asking themselves what to outsource.  As always we’re not suggesting you outsource your personality, but outsourcing certain portions of your social media platform are becoming common.  According to the SMMIR, businesses that outsource portions of social media have doubled from 14% to 28% since the 2010 report findings.  Interestingly enough it’s not about outsourcing engagement, but about outsourcing the heavy lifting of platform development, content and analytics.

Development & Content Creation are the top two items being Outsourced (Click the image and go to p. 32 for more info)

2)  Do I Need to Blog?

Blogging can sometimes be an intimidating activity for people.  It requires time and effort, but it can actually be fun if you take a moment to design a plan and stay consistent.  Northpoint will write content for you on a regular basis as a way to get you started and help reduce the pressure of posting; at the end of the day it’s important to write your own content though.  We’ll teach you how to write your own posts by simply sending an email.  According to the report marketer’s focus on blogging is down 6% from the prior year, but it obviously remains a major part of a social media marketer’s arsenal.

75% of Social Media Marketers will increase their Blogging efforts (Click the image and go to p.25 for more info)

3)  Do I Need to use Video?

With the invention of YouTube and the smart phone, recording, posting and sharing video has become commonplace (check out these stats).  If a photo is worth a thousand words then a video is worth a million; well maybe not, but it’s safe to say video isn’t going anywhere.  Here at Northpoint we’re offereing our video services to help get you started.  The coolest thing about video is how versatile it has become.  Print ads now link to video via Microsoft Tags or QR Codes, websites with just photo have become passé and according to Michael Sletzner’s report social media marketers are implementing more video in the future.

Social Media Marketers are focusing on increasing their video production. (Click the image and go to p.24 for more info)

4)  Are Email Campaigns Still Useful?

Email is still a viable way to market to your consumer base.  Especially to stay in contact with clients who have used your services in the past or those interested in learning more about your products/services.  Howard Chung our VP of Business Development here at Northpoint actually explains ways to incorporate email marketing with your blog in his Practical Social Media class.  Many social media marketers are still interested in driving traffic to their blogs with email marketing practices.

Email has not faded away, but is still considered a strong component of social media marketing (Click the image and go to p.34 for more info)

For more statistics and findings from the Social Media Marketing Industry Report 2011 from Michael A. Stelzner check him out on Vimeo.

Dragon – Not Just a Mythical Creature

Here at Northpoint we’ve started to use the Dragon Dictation App on our smart phones.  In fact, portions of this post were written via Dragon Dictation on an iPhone. Dragon utilizes proprietary voice recognition software to take what you’re saying and transcribe it to text.  There’s endless application for voice recognition and transcription in life and business.  No wonder Apple integrated Siri into their new iPhone 4S.

Practical Applications of Dragon Dictation:

• Grocery Lists
• Home Inspections
• Reminders & To-Do’s
• Taking Product Inventory
• Writing Blog Posts
• Text Messages, Facebook or Twitter Updates

Apps like Dragon make life easier and give you the opportunity to be more efficient.  If you would like to learn more about Mobile Apps for your business catch Howard Chung our Vice President of Business Development at his next Mobile Apps class or schedule one for your company by leaving a message here.  In the meantime here’s how easy it is to get started with the Dragon Dictation App on an iPhone.

 Screen Shots:

I’m always talking about ‘technology’ and in any given class, webinar, or meeting, there’s always someone who knows more about technology than me.  But I often find that the vast majority of these people don’t have a strong real estate business!  The real estate agents who are most successful don’t care as much about technology as they do about getting another lead, appointment, or transaction.  So what’s my point?  FORGET TECHNOLOGY!! (for a minute, that is).

Without first having a solid strategy and goal, understanding the newest mobile app, device, or lead generation service is not a good investment of your time or money.  First make a commitment to how you’re going to generate business.

1. Sphere of influence?  (current and past clients, friends, family, acquaintances and all the people they know)
2. Local community?  (efarming, open house leads, buyers driving around, local business partners)
3. Internet leads? (Craigslist, SEM/SEO, paid search engines)
4. FSBO/Expireds?