I’m sure glad I didn’t forget today!

Seeing that my Active Rain profile was in sad need of updating, I took the time this morning to do it. Then I checked to see what it looked like.

I have no idea why or where it came from, but at the top of each section there were at least 100 lines of “gobbledy-gook.” I went into the HTML editor and got rid of them, but if I hadn’t checked, all a visitor would have seen was – yuck.

After that was repaired I checked all the links and they’re fine.

But earlier this week, one of my links wasn’t fine. When I posted the blog about the Mortgage Forgiveness Debt Relief Act, I included a link for agents to use in requesting a letter I’d written. For whatever reason, the first attempt at creating a link didn’t work – it led to an error page.

So… Check and double check. Sometimes strange things can appear when you upload – and links you thought were fine can be broken.

In this dream, I was thinking about the keywords for the post and writing things about potatoes. Then suddenly I thought “What am I doing?” This post isn’t about potatoes!

No, what it was about was customer satisfaction, customer service, and delivering what you promise. It was about consumers being able to have some faith in the quality of the merchandise they buy. Maybe even about integrity in marketing, since those bags of awful potatoes are labeled “#1.” (I don’t want to think what #2 or #3 look like.)

So, when you write a blog post (or any other content) stop and think about the “core idea” of your message.

For instance: You may be writing about a celebration coming up in your community, but what you’re really writing about is the fact that your community is a good place to live. Here you’ll find good things to do, involved citizens, etc.

Whatever your core idea, be sure to include it in your copy – and in your keywords.

Image courtesy of Dreamstine.

***Does Facebook marketing fail?***

“Like seven-year old soccer players, we insist on chasing the
ball in a pack. The latest ‘ball’ of course is social media,”
says Ian Percy.*

But, according to Ad Age, a six-week study of Facebook’s Fan
pages showed a mere 0.45% of fans engaged in any way beyond
clicking “Like.” This indicates that Facebook fan bases and
actual engagement aren’t the same thing.

The average engagement for the 10 brands with the largest fan
bases (like Harley Davidson, Nike and Porsche) was 0.36%. The
highest engagement was in the alcohol category and the lowest in
laundry detergent, social platforms and apps.

In other Facebook marketing news, my colleague Brian Croner
reports that “world famous Sun Valley Ski Resort here in Idaho,
invested their entire $950,000 ad budget in Facebook advertising
in 2011 and it bombed. It bombed so bad in fact, they fired
their marketing director. Last year they had more snow than they
knew what to do with and still couldn’t pack the hotels after
using FB exclusively.

“Starting last fall and into 2012, I saw ads running in Ski
magazines and on television. And despite it being a weak
snow year, they had good crowds and full hotels. There’s been
a large score of so called marketing/ad agencies trying to push
FB and other Social Media as a primary and not as a
supplemental media. And it’s sad how many companies have
taken the bait.”

*Source: Jeff Davidson.

Again: “This article appears courtesy of Bob Bly
Direct Response Letter.”

Why? She’s brilliant at accounting, and I’m not at all embarrassed to admit I need her help figuring out debits and credits. I’m also not embarrassed to hire a mechanic for my car or a professional to cut my hair. I didn’t study those things and have no talent for them.

So what?

Unfortunately, too many people who think they “should” be able to write go ahead and do it. They write their own sales letters and ad copy – with results that are often detrimental to their success. A poorly written letter can be worse than no letter at all.

Realtors often have a second problem: time.

In addition to thinking they should be able to write, some people suffer from thinking that they should be able to write a good letter on the first draft, or turn out a winning ad in 15 minutes — and they should be able to do it in between other tasks that have their minds spinning seven different directions.

When they’re running from one appointment to the next and trying to take care of client details in between, that might be all the time they have to devote to the task, but it just doesn’t work that way.

The truth is good copywriting takes time, study, and plenty of thought. And after that it takes proofreading. Depending upon the subject matter, one simple sales letter could take all day to write.

One postcard could take several hours. In fact, sometimes the shortest copy can take the most time, because each word is so important. Copywriters spend a lot of time considering words and their impact and trying to choose exactly the right ones to evoke the desired emotions in their readers.

If you’ve been writing your own copy and not getting the results you want, try finding a good copywriter. Do the job you do best — such as selling homes, staying in touch with people, and tending to all the details involved in a closing — and let a professional write the copy that will bring you more customers.

Quit feeling guilty because you’re not a professional copywriter, web designer, auto mechanic, hairdresser, or accountant. Instead, keep on being the best expert you can be in your own field and be thankful that you don’t have to do everyone else’s job in addition to your own.

By the way, that thankfulness is a good trait to practice!

You probably know that the purpose of the headline or subject line is to get readers to read the first sentence. The purpose of the first sentence is to get them to read the second – and on and on.

But sometimes, a brilliant idea for that first sentence just isn’t there.

Here’s good news:

This morning’s email included a Target Marketing message that should help. It offers up a list of 48 “starters” that have been proven effective in marketing over the past many years. Some come from the pre-internet world of direct marketing, but that’s OK – our methods of communicating have changed, but human nature has not.

Readers STILL want an answer to “what’s in it for me” before they read on.

I personally disagree with a couple of the suggestions on this list. A couple would actually make me delete the message immediately. For instance “We’ve missed you.” My mental response is that I don’t care – I left/unsubscribed/quit buying your products because that’s what I wanted to do.

Notice that this irritant begins with the word “we.”

All of these have been proven to work, but to be on the safe side, I believe you should “choose and use” those that are customer-focused and avoid starting any message with “we” or “I.”

Anyway, if you’ve ever been stuck, take a minute to visit Target Marketing and print off their list of 48 “starters.” It just might come in handy one day.

It might be by:

• finally creating their own website
• joining Active Rain and blogging or commenting
• commenting on blogs that allow them to leave their URL
• answering real estate questions on real estate portals
• setting up a business page on Facebook
• joining LinkedIn
• joining Real Estate Marbles
• posting to social sites they already joined but haven’t used

And I issued a challenge: Do 2 new things this week to make yourself more visible, then come here and tell us what you did.

You’re invited to join the challenge, whether or not you read the ezine.

Yes – that means you’ll get a link from here.

When you write your comment, be sure to include your name, your role in the real estate industry, and the city or area you serve.

Thanks to Brian Clark at Copyblogger for sharing…

His words of wisdom apply no matter what goods or services you’re selling.

I see it online. I see in in print ads. And it’s not just real estate people telling it – it’s everyone from our local accountant to garage mechanics to insurance salesmen to building contractors.

It annoys me first because it’s a lie. It annoys me second because it’s a lazy way to advertise your services.

What is this lie?

“I can handle all of your needs.”

I wrote about it in this week’s real estate marketing ezine, but the same principle applies to any business.

Whatever it is that you do, take the time to tell your readers. They know you can’t do it “all,” so don’t make them guess about what you can do.

It used to be a common one – describing people who knew a little bit about a lot of things and could perform a variety of tasks. The down side was that they weren’t expert at any of them.

That’s what can happen to as a real estate sales person. If you’re working with first time buyers on a tight budget one day, searching for unimproved lots for a buyer another day, and trying to list a waterfront mansion the next, your focus is too scattered to let you become “the” authority in any one place.

When you choose the kind of property you love best (Not what has the highest potential commission) and then focus on learning all you can about that niche, you’ll soon become an expert.

Once you become the expert, it will show. People will notice. And before long you’ll be THE person to call in your niche.

Not only that, you’ll save time and energy. If you know all there is to know about a specific niche, you won’t have to stop and do research when someone asks you a question. You’ll know.

And yet, amateur marketers still pay too much attention to the rules their High School English teacher taught. The result is dry as a bone, stiff copy.

And you know, nobody reads dry words until they’re required to do so.

At the same time, being too casual makes you sound a little demented. And I HAVE seen it done. In fact, I’ve received emails with a subject line that went something like: “Like You Gotta Dig This!”

Uh – no, I like don’t gotta.

I thought that “like” habit had fallen out of fashion years ago – but I was wrong. I not only heard it in the grocery store this week, I heard it on a television commercial tonight.

But there are a couple of other common errors that I’m seeing more and more lately.

One is the over-use or mis-use of commas.

Look how difficult it is to read this:

By now, you know, that following instructions, from your high school English teacher, will cause you to write dry, dull, uninspiring copy.

This one is SO easy to avoid. Here’s the trick:

After you write a sentence or a paragraph, read it out loud. Pause at every comma. If it sounds like normal conversation – great. If it sounds choppy or clunky or halting (as if you were really not sure about what you wanted to say) get rid of a few commas.

The other is the over-use of descriptive words and phrases.

Take this sentence from a property description one of my ezine readers found on an agent website: “Well-favored uncommonly modern kitchen equipped with top-of-the line appliances and unpredicted materials.”
(No, that’s not a typo. It said “unpredicted.”)

Sadly, all those words draw attention to themselves and away from the message they were meant to convey.

Keep it simple – and communicate.