Everyone Loved Ester and They Will Love You Too

For nearly 50 years, Esther Pauline Friedman dispensed advice to readers in a daily column that ran in more than 1,200 U.S. newspapers. She started her career with the Chicago Sun-Times with absolutely no journalistic experience by dispensing usable advice in a friendly manner. In a very short time she became popular with her fans and was able to parlay her popularity into a very successful business. You know her as Ann Landers.

You can get the same results by offering your customers (soon to become fans) the same kind of helpful, timely information that they actually look forward to receiving ... and best of all you don't have to do it yourself. Once you get your community blog up and running everyone will want to participate.

The key to creating a successful community website is to provide meaningful information to a targeted market in a timely manner. "The System - Farming With Blogs" will show you how to do just that. f you would like to see an active community blog visit MauiMeadows.info

If you have a question about farming a community on the Internet, please comment below.

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How To Become The Recognized Real Estate Professional In Any Community In 60-Days

Imagine becoming the recognized real estate authority in the community of your choice and building that reputation in less than 60 days. Now imagine doing it without spending a dime on marketing in a neighborhood that is presumably entrenched by your competition. Sound impossible? It's not!

The Problem
Entrenched Competitors with An Unlimited Marketing Budget

You want to farm a community but you don't have the money to spend on expensive postcards and reports. Besides, the bigger real estate companies seem to be entrenched in the neighborhood you want to farm and they have a marketing budget that goes on forever. How can you compete?

The Solution
Don't Compete - Start a New Game
Americans are an interesting people. We're more likely to do business with the people we know, like and trust than we are with a company that spends thousands of dollars advertising their service. We're also 100 times more likely to hire a real estate professional based on our feelings about them than on any other factor. Why do you think it is so much easier to sell a home to a friend than to a stranger?

So the questions you should ask yourself are, "How can I quickly build a strong relationship with the people in the community I want to farm? How can I help them get to know me, like me and trust me ... and want to hire me to help them buy or sell their next home?" How can I create an environment where home buyers and sellers will contact me, rather than me having to contact them?

The best way to accomplish all of these things is to host a community website with information the neighbors can't wait to get their hands on ... including information about your real estate service. Here is an example of a community site where the real estate agent is doing just that. MauiMeadows.info

5 Reasons You Want To Farm With A Blog

Up until a few years ago, the only way to farm a community was to send postcards and real estate reports through the mail. Not only was that method time consuming and expensive, but you had to compete with every other real estate agent who was doing the same thing.

Fortunately, technology has made it possible for any real estate agent to farm a community using the Internet. It's fun, free and once you get started you can do it in less than 15 minutes a day from your home or office.

Branding
When you farm a neighborhood by creating an interactive community website, home owners have an opportunity to know you on an entirely different level. They can hear you speak, watch you on video, read your articles and communicate with you through their comments. A community website allows them to see you as a freind and as the real estate expert in their community.

Interest
At any given time 10% of a community may be interested in selling their home. At the same time 100% of the community is interested in what's happening in the community ... and that includes real estate. If you want to reach 100% of the community 100% of the time, you can do it with a community blog.

Cost
The cost of creating and mailing your blog to 500 homes is $0. The cost of creating and mailing postcards and reports to 500 homes is more expensive. Now multiply that number by one mailing per month or one mailing per week. How many communities could you afford to farm at the cost of $0 per mailing?

Effectiveness
The only thing that really matters is your ability to persuade homeowners to hire you when the time comes to sell their home. Who do you think a homeowner is more likely to hire: an agent who sends them one real estate postcard a month, or an agent who they see, respect and communicate with on a regular basis through the community blog?

Relationship
Conversations create customers and nothing creates conversation like an interesting community blog. One of the greatest features of a community blog is the capability for homeowners to contact you immediately through the comments section. You can't do that with a postcard or report.

Comments
If you have something to add to this blog post or if you want to make a comment, please do so below.

4 Reasons You Do Not Want A Community Blog On Your Real Estate Website

1. The most important reason for hosting your community blog off of your website is for search engine optimization reasons. Since your community blog will likely consist of topics that are unrelated to real estate it will dilute the real estate theme of your main website. That's not good for either your blog or your website.

Google and other search engines strive to bring users to the most useful information based on their search query. If, for example, someone does a search for Maui Real Estate the search engines will take into account the theme of the sites about Maui real estate. If one site is only about Maui real estate and another is about Maui real estate and non-real estate related topics (speed bumps, street lights, etc.) the site about Maui real estate is more likely to be shown first. You do not want to dilute your primary real estate website with a community site for just that reason.

2. A link from your homepage to any other page on your real estate website adds little value to your page rank. On the other hand a link from another website to your website can be of great SEO value. If you have a link from your community blog to your real estate website it is more valuable than a link from the blog on your website to your website.

Blogging on your real estate website can be a very good SEO practice if you write about real estate. If you write about anything else, community issues for example, it is doing you more harm than good.

3. Here at VisOnTheNet we advocate online interaction with customers and potential customers alike; but alas, isn't there always an exception to the rule? A effective community blog needs to allow neighbors to comment, but do you really want those comments on your professional website? Probably not.

Not only will comments posted by visitors dilute your content, but they could make you look like a fool. Imagine having another real estate agent critiquing your advice on your website for all of your business prospects to see!

4. If you want your community blog to succeed, (and by that I mean successfully promote you as the real estate agent of choice) you must stay fresh in the eyes, minds, and hearts of the potential home buyers and sellers in that community. You want people to like you, respect you and stay in contact with you..... especially when it comes time for them to buy or sell their next home! You also want them to see you as the real estate expert in their community ... and you can do that on the community blog.

On the other hand, if you try to create a community blog on your real estate website, neighbors are going to see right through your game. More importantly they are not going to take your site seriously because it will reek of self-promotion. The answer is to do your self-promotion on a real community blog where it will not only be tolerated but appreciated.

For more information on how to farm a community visit us at VisOnTheNet.com