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I have several screencasts and blogs planned around some topics in mastering Internet marketing for real estate agents, and lately have been considering offering some of this material initially on the blog, but with the eventual goal of organizing and expanding it into a course of study in real estate Internet marketing.

The course would be for those who want hands-on experience building a very low cost web site. It would be for people who want to not only save lots of money by free (or low cost), tools and vendors, and who want to understand Internet marketing in enough depth to know what to do and what to avoid. The goal will be to equip you with enough information to make Internet marketing a major or a primary source of your real estate income.

Here’s a preliminary course outline.

1. Understanding where we’re going. A roadmap for success.
2. Internet Business Planning, including two or more complete business plans for successful Internet marketing.
3. Researching key words. Find the right major and minor key words. Striking the right balance between search volume and competitiveness.
4. Search Engine Optimization basics. White hat all the way. What to do and what to avoid.
5. Registering your domain name and setting up hosting. (Should also include material on how to use the course with an existing domain name.)
6. Building your webmaster toolbox. Find and install free tools to help you make money without spending much.
7. Installing your Wordpress blog, Part I. Up and Running.
8. Installing your Wordpress blog, Part II. Using Wordpress to manage your entire web site.
9. Customizing Wordpress. Plug-ins and themes.
10. Promoting your blog I: First steps.
11. Blogging made easy I: Free blogging tools. Working with text.
12. Blogging made easy II: Photos and advanced topics.
13. Blogging made easy III: What to write, when to write, and what to expect.
14. Promoting your blog II: Using social networks effectively.
15. Your real estate “killer offer”: understanding IDX.
16. Let your users search, Integrating IDX.
17. Time or money? Using pay-per-click advertising effectively.
18. Measuring results: use free tools to analyze your visitor behavior.
19. New visitors are good. Repeat visitors are great. Get them to keep coming back.
20. Improving conversion rates. Turning visitors into customers. Working with Internet buyers.
21. Dominating your market. From knowledge to mastery.

Now all I need is a few hundred hours with no interruptions and getting it done will be easy.

I’ve been meaning to write another article about how the enthusiastic tail of real estate blogging frequently wags the dog of analyzing and understanding how our web sites attract and convert business.

The Real Estate Tomato finally provided the impetus when they ran a post yesterday with the title:

The 7 Reasons Why Your (Future) Clients Should Care That You Are Real Estate Blogger

I don’t want to appear like I’m picking on the Tomato or the co-authors of this article, most of whom I don’t know.  However, I do think that focusing on what future clients should care about begs a more interesting and potentially profitable question about what past and present clients actually do care about.  To be sure, as they say in the stock market, “past history does not guarantee future results”.  On the other hand, if you’re about to embark on an activity that’s going to consume at least an hour or two per day for years on end, it helps to go into that activity with the attitude that you’ll investigate what actually does happen, as opposed to what should.

My What-Clients-Should-Care-About Wish List

From my perspective, I’d love it if my clients cared that I’m a real estate blogger. In fact, it’d be great if they cared that I was a Honda owner and over six feet tall, because that would further narrow the field down to me. If they all wanted guys with brown hair who originally come from Rhode Island and now live in Cameron Park, then hey presto: I’d be a shoe-in.

What They Should Want versus What They DO Want

It turns out, however, that clients have their own ideas about what they care about.

There, are, moreover, a few reasonably good ways to get at what those things are that your client cares about:

• Ask them, and they may tell you.
• Listen to them when they volunteer information.
• Use web analytics to find out.

I could stand some improvement when it comes to asking my clients what they care about. When I started Elite Properties, I had all sorts of forms and systems in place before I got around to writing my Customer Satisfaction Survey, for example.

By listening to clients, however, I’ve learned that they usually liked a few things about my web sites and my agents:

1. We don’t make them register before letting them search the MLS.
2. The web site is easy to use.
3. We return phone calls and emails quickly.

Adding web analytics gives us more information.  To be sure, web analytics is a little bit of a dull-edged tool in some respects. For example, it tells me that about 35% of the people who reach the home page will click right on through to the basic search page, versus only about 11% for the blog. It also tells me that more than 80% of the people who reach me for the term “Sacramento Real Estate” stay on the site, while only one third of the people searching for “Sacramento Real Estate Blog” make a journey further in.

However, returning again to the listening to clients category, the thing that most makes me a believer in the power of online search tools is the number of people who end up being clients who start a conversation as follows:

“Hi, my name is so and so. I found a listing on your web site…[goes on to give MLS number or address].”

My agents and I have talked to literally hundreds of people who’ve started conversations like that. In that same time, the number of people who’ve mentioned my blog can be counted on one hand.

So What Do Clients Want?

The beauty about my empirical knowledge that clients like to look at houses online is that it fits so well from what I have reasoned about my clients according to Cartesian first principles.

You all remember Descartes: “I think, therefore I am.”

Here’s my crack at the real estate version: “I buy and sell real estate, therefore, my clients are interested in real estate.”

This is not just garden variety true.

It’s true by definition.

So Why Should I Care About What My Clients Care About?

Caring about what I think my clients should care about is another way of saying that I care about me — and they already probably guessed that before they ever happened on my blog.

In contrast, caring about what my clients do care about helps me to design a site with a clearer path to the goals that they have for a real estate web site, and it helps me see my writing in light of the things they care about. 

In the end this is all self-interest, of course, and it’s nothing new.  This is classic Zig Ziglar: “You can get anything you want, if you help enough other people get what they want.”

The hang-up is, you have to get other people what they really want. Getting them what you think they should want doesn’t work.

There’s a lesson in that for this blog as well, but one could argue that I haven’t learned it yet.  Stay tuned!

Real Estate Internet Marketing Week In Review is a new weekly feature where I highlight either the authors and blogs and posts that I found interesting in my reading from the week past or that I thought Realtors® and real estate webmasters should know about.

My series on Comparing Real Estate Blog Platforms was a fairly general overview of real estate blogging options. A more in depth review of specific blogging software is available in Problogger.net’s Choosing a Blog Platform.

Thomas McMahon, writing for Toprank’s Online Marketing Blog, prepared a handy introduction and review of Google’s Webmaster Tools, which is a free set of tools that helps you see your site as Google does.

Whether you’re looking to extend your reach online, get free exposure for a listing, network with your peers, or what have you, an outstanding starting point is Oliver Muoto’s list of Web 2.0 Companies Realtors® Should Care About.

My own marketing philosophy is summed up neatly in the equation SEO + IDX = $$$. For those of you who think you have an online image that needs to be nurtured, however, Bobby Carroll has an interesting article on Digital Brand Management. Again, I offer this position not because I agree with it, but in spite of that. PT Barnum is reported to have said “I don’t care what they say about me as long as they spell my name right.” I might paraphrase: “I don’t care what they say about me as long as my marketing is successful enough that you’re reading what I say about me.”

And now for something that I do agree with, Brad Carroll recently posted this outstanding article on why you should not force your users to register before allowing them access to your IDX web site listings. I’ve agreed with this opinion for years because of the money I’ve made specifically from people who told me not having to register was why they chose me. Brad takes this a step further and explains the psychology and reasoning behind this.

Finally, my friends at Sellsius Real Estate posted this worthwhile blogging tip:

If you are a real estate broker or agent, do a post on closing costs, with a breakdown of real estate transfer taxes, and estimated costs, and put it permanently in the sidebar. Every serious buyer or seller will click it. You betcha. It’s a good way to market your real estate expertise.

Readers, did you happen across a site or blog that should be included in our Real Estate Internet Marketing Week In Review series? If so, please let us know!

IDX stands for “Internet Data Exchange”, and is also called Broker Reciprocity. Simply put, it is a technology that enables individual real estate agents and brokers to host listing data on their web sites, and to receive the leads generated when users inquire about listings.

IDX has been around for several years. The idea is that brokers and agents should enable other MLS participants to display aggregated listing information on their web sites. Indeed, the National Association or Realtors Policy Statement says that brokers must make this information available to other members of their MLS, unless the broker explicitly opts out.

As written in the NAR policy statement (please check with Realtor.org for the latest version), “Associations of REALTORS and their Multiple Listing Services are encouraged to immediately, and must by January 1, 2002, enable MLS Participants to display on Participants’ public website aggregated MLS active listing information through, at Participants’ option, either downloading and placing the data on Participants’ public access web site or by framing such information on the MLS or Association public access web site (if such a site is available) subject to the requirements of state law and regulation.”

In a nutshell, that means that NAR recognizes that the informed consumer wants to see listing data when they go to a Realtor’s web site, and they want to make this information available to all Realtors to publish on their web sites — even those agents who work with buyers exclusively.