Blogging

Position yourself NOW with hyper-connections. Learn the 5 immediate steps you can take today in your lead generation to pen a real estate blog that prospects actually care about

Featured Download: I created a template for you. It’ll get you solidly on the right track on creating your avatar. Download it. Print it. Work on It. Use it to change your blogging results.

If you read Entrepreneur Magazine or Forbes, Inc, you are going to see this phrase repeated incessantly by the most successful business owners…

“If you sell to everyone you sell to no one”

I’m going to show you how providing valuable content for your readers and customers, to the point where you become valued, trusted, and synonymous with being useful… so that when the time comes to make a purchase, you are the ob

Today I’m going to show you how to never have to sell again because…

Sell something and you make a customer today. Help someone and you create a customer for life. Jay Baer, President, Convince & Convert

Here’s the reality...

We tend to throw blogging under the “things-I-hate-to-do-and-avoid-but-I-keep-hearing-about-it-and-I-don’t-have-time-to-sit-down-and-mess-with-it” category of our business.

But why do we do that?

I submit that it’s because we have no idea how blogging can actually help us.

How it can shape our business.

How can it change our real estate business?

How it can move us from constantly fretting about the next deal to having a continuous pipeline of prospects who are not only ready, willing, and able… but they know, like, and trust us… before we’ve even had the first appointment with them.

So… how do we “blog for prospects?”

Well… it all starts with….

Step 1 Knowing your avatar

Wait. What? What’s an “avatar?” Well, an avatar is a single representation of your ideal client. In essence, you “paint a picture” of your ideal client and you give it a persona… otherwise known as an avatar.

What we tend to do, is think in terms of our “target market,” which means we are thinking in general terms, not specific terms. Your avatar is not “home buyers” or “home sellers.” That’s way to general.

Think about it this way, let’s just look at home buyers. There is a wide variety of home buyers… first time home buyers, single buyers, family buyers, condo buyers, move-up buyers, empty nester buyers, vacation home buyers…. are you getting the idea that “home buyers” is not specific enough?

Like I said earlier, you need to paint a picture of your ideal client. Who are they? What is their life like? What are their hobbies? In truth, you can’t go too deep with this. Without knowing the individual, you can’t have a conversation with them and truly help them.

If you can’t have a conversation with them, your blog posts will be shallow and useless.

They’ll be posts that someone can get just about anywhere. Monotone, no authority, and no way to begin to build a know, like, and trust relationship.

Knowing your avatar is 99% of the battle… it makes everything else a breeze. From prospecting, to blogging, to ad writing, to close. Everything is affected when you intimately know your avatar.

Knowing your avatar, will change your business. This is probably the single most powerful “business planning activity” anyone can do, and it’s the one thing no one in our industry does.

Oh yes, I know some are teaching “avatars and buyer personas” but I’m telling you, they are teaching a superficial, 35,000 foot view of the concept. It’s not deep enough to make a difference and agents aren’t seeing a difference in their business… so what they are teaching is a waste of our time, because it isn’t making an impact. It isn’t changing anything.

If you want to change your business, you have to change how you approach your business, how you approach your lead generation. This starts by building an avatar.

The next thing you’ve got to do is…

Step 2 Give your all

I can’t tell you the number of agents I’ve run in to, who actually have a website and do some semblance of blogging, that throw up a 500 word document and call it a blog post.

If they are answering a question in that blog post, their answer is so antiseptic and bland, they really shouldn’t have taken the time to write it. Why bother?

Give your all. If you are going to answer your avatar’s questions, answer their questions. If it takes 3000 words to do it, do it in 3000 words. Seriously. Give them the full and complete answer. Don’t hold anything back.

Don’t live with a scarcity mindset. Live in an abundance frame of mind. You really can’t give too much. It’s simply not possible. There is zero chance that they will be able to inhabit your body and accumulate all of your life experience.

Here’s the other aspect to this… always remember the 80/20 rule. Pareto’s Principal. In reality, it’s more like 99/1. Out of the 100 people who will read what you write, or listen to what you talk about, one or fewer than one, will actually take that information and run with it.

Meaning, no matter how much you teach, no matter how much you share, 99% of the people you reach, will simply absorb and then use you when they are ready for your services. The other 1% may try to “do it themselves” but the reality is… that’s not likely.

Service is where your value as a real estate agent begins

You need to give your all. You are creating a “virtual” you and that virtual you needs to have a good reputation. You want to build relationships before you even talk to anyone. You want to be seen as serving them.

And regurgitating local content is not valuable to your avatar. On the surface it seems to help with SEO, but it really doesn’t (more on that later in this article). When you regurgitate area history, area stories, area facts… you enforce the belief that “real estate agents are useless.” Our reputations are built on what we do, not what we say. Don’t be a regurgitator.

I don’t know about you but I prefer prospects who call me and ask me to come list their home because they know I’m the perfect person for the job… rather than trying to convert a sign call or a website visitor, someone who doesn’t know me at all.

Quality trumps quantity. Have a conversation and help your avatar. This isn’t about getting 500 short, useless blog posts out there (just to get traffic that will bounce right off your site). This is about building relationships, providing value, and capturing and keeping nearly 100% of the traffic you’ve brought through the value you are giving.

This next thing… you must stop. You have got to…

Step 3 Solve their problems

Here’s a hint. Their problems are NOT finding homes for sale or even getting their home value… and yet those are the ads we run expecting to reap awesome results from those ads. In fact, these are the posts we are constantly pushing out on social media: new listing, new home value tool, new app… none of these are problems that your avatar has.

Think about it… how hard is it to find listings? How are is it to find a home value? How hard is it to find real estate apps? The key here is… it’s not hard for the consumer to find these things. They do not consider these problems in their lives, which is why they don’t respond to us pushing them out to them.

If we aren’t solving their problems, they view us as useless… leaving you fighting to get them under contract, fighting to justify your commission, fighting to get some semblance of loyalty out of them.

So what are their problems?

Their problems. are their life experiences throughout their journey of owning a home. If they’ve never owned a home before, what are their problems in the years (not just the months) leading up to buying their first home?

We’re not talking “just” real estate here. We are talking hopes and dreams. Life problems they encounter, drawbacks, job and family changes. This is about their journey.

When we are able to connect with our avatar in meaningful and helpful ways, we no longer need to “convert” them. They are already converted. In fact, they become our tribe, before we’ve even had an appointment with them.

The next thing you need to do is to…

Step 4 Stop chasing SEO

I have a feeling I could go on for thousands of words on this one topic.

When you focus your business on what it really is, serving others, you know that you do not have to focus on chasing “search engine optimization” within your blog posts. In reality, you pretty much never have to chase SEO when you are serving your avatar.

Here’s why… because when you serve your avatar, that means you are helping them. That means you are identifying their problems and solving their problems for them. That means that when you write your blog posts or record your video’s identifying and solving their problem… and you keep doing this over and over again, the “content” you put on your blog will be insanely valuable. In other words, your avatar will find you though search because they’ll find you by googling their problems.

Your goal is to create know, like, and trust relationships before they call, text, or email you. BEFORE. You can easily do this by “selling with service” and serving your avatar and not chasing SEO.

Fighting against the algorithm is such a waste of your time. The battle is futile and it’s unnecessary. Now, of course, our resident “SEO Experts” are going to get up in arms about this. They are going to come out of the woodwork and tell me how wrong I am. The proof is in the reality. When you chase the algorithm, you must always chase the algorithm. When you serve your clients, you never have to chase the algorithm.

“But what about driving keyword traffic to my site?” What about it? It’s pointless. Doh! I just ticked someone else off.

Yes guys, keyword traffic is a waste of your time. If you keep focusing on the wrong thing, it means working more and getting fewer results. the right traffic changes everything.

Traffic is NOT the answer to your lead generation problem. The wrong traffic actually HURTS your site rankings. Have you heard about something called “Bounce Rate?” Bounce rate is the percentage of people who come to a single page on your site and then leave your site from that same page. In other words, they didn’t go deeper.

So according to “real estate website experts” a “good” bounce rate for real estate websites sits at 55-65%. I literally shook my head in disgust when I kept finding this quoted stat in my research.

Um, yet again, I present to you the case for stepping outside of the real estate industry and looking at the reality for the rest of the world. Google (yes, the search engine itself) shared their idea of good, average, and horrible bounce rates and that 55-65% quoted above, falls in the “horrible” category according to Google.

What's a good bounce rate?

A bounce rate under 20% is considered very good (according to Google). A bounce rate of 20-40% is considered average. A bounce rate over 40% is something to be concerned about. In other words, if your bounce rate is “fine” at the industry average of 55-65% your website sucks… and it’s likely that the traffic you are driving to your site also sucks.

Google also said that a bounce rate under 3% is insanely fabulous and very few websites get there. So I’m going to brag on my LeadsAndLeverage.com site just a bit here… I have a bounce rate under 1%. UNDER ONE PERCENT.

My entire history (from the day I published the site until today, just under 3 years) bounce rate hovers at 2%. Why? Because I focused solely on figuring out what my avatar’s problems were (and are) and I provide solutions to those problems.

Ok… so why did I go on and on about bounce rate? Because your bounce rate shows you two things about your site…

First, it shows you how valuable and how relevant your website is to the traffic that is coming to it. Is it so full of solutions that your avatar is getting lost in it (and therefore not bouncing off your site) or is it so superficial, so shallow, so focused on SEO that they come, see that it’s just another real estate website, and then leave immediately.

Second, it shows you how untargeted your traffic is. When your bounce rate is high, you’ve done a poor job of understanding your avatar. You aren’t focusing on their problems and giving them solutions.

You haven’t done a good job of identifying their needs. If you keep focusing on “your city real estate” or whatever SEO keywords you are excited about today, you’ll never find your avatar… or rather, your avatar will never find you.

When we focus on “hyper local” without any context, we get a high bounce rate. Let’s face the music guys… providing “hyper local” content without context in hopes that people will “keep coming back” because you are “the source” for all things “your neighborhood” is a pipe dream.

People do not come back to our sites because we post Christmas lights tours, or local events. They don’t bookmark our site and keep returning to it. That NEVER happened, although we kept feeding that thought monster.

We have to focus on “hyper connections” not “hyper local.” If your content isn’t in context to their needs in real estate in some way, there is no context for them.

Instead of sharing a list of Christmas lights tours, how about sharing an interview of one of the homeowners that “decks the halls” every year… what are they like, what’s their neighborhood like, if someone else wants to be part of that community, what does that lifestyle look like?

Put things into the context of living a lifestyle and you’ll knock it out of the park.

Most people focus on increasing their traffic but what they really need to be focusing on is increasing their value.

I can not tell you how many times I get emails from agents that say “I got lost in the labyrinth of your website.” My goal is to provide so much information that an agent could come along and implement something I teach on my site and see immediate results. THAT is my goal.

That needs to be your goal. That buyers or sellers could come along and implement what you are teaching them and see results. That they can know that the remodeling project they are about to embark on is going to bring value to them. That they avoided a serious financial mistake by learning from you. You need to be the trusted resource for them.

I hear that all the time… “I want to be the trusted resource” or “do this so you are the trusted resource.” Well, I’m here to tell you that the ONLY way to be a trusted resource is to actually help and serve your avatar, without “expectation” of reward.

Now, that’s not to say that you shouldn’t also focus on capturing your avatar into your database, so don’t go there. I’m not saying that at all. What I am saying is that in order to build relationships before the capture, you have to give before you take. As Gary Vaynerchuk says… Jab Jab Jab Right Hook.

If you want to be impervious to the constant SEO changes… and completely ignore when Google does another algorithm update… then stop chasing and start serving.

And finally, doing everything I just taught you is…

Step 5 Building a resource

A resource for your avatar. A resource for you. A resource for your clients. A resource for your team.

What do I mean?

I bet you get hit with a lot of the same, repeat questions. I do (and did). Everyday I’d get emails from prospects asking me questions. When you have a resource that answers those questions, it’s incredibly wonderful to send those inquiries, right to the already created answer.

When you build a resource, you integrate multiplicity. In other words, you get to the point that you are working while you sleep. Literally. People find you (your site) and get to know you (through your site) while you are deep in slumber. This is a good thing. It’s on their terms. They don’t feel threatened.

Not only that, but you can re-purpose your valuable content.

But wait!!! Let’s talk just a bit about what re-purposing is, and what it isn’t.

Re-purposing is NOT pushing out “new blog post + the link” to every social media platform you are on as soon as you publish said blog post. That’s just noise and no one cares.

Re-purposing IS sharing your blog post in a way that is congruent with your avatar on each platform. SHARE it, don’t push it. When you share something you also share a thought, a comment, a question about the thing you are sharing.

Now, go and do it again, pointing out a different thought, comment, or question. Keep repeating. About once every 14 days (not closer together) you should be sharing your awesome solutions with your avatar on your social media channels.

Bonus: Quick Start Tips

Not sure where, or how, to start? Start by creating your avatar. Start by imagining your perfect client. What does it feel like to work with them? How does the entire process go?

Now, who is that person? If you’ve had transactions before and one was amazingly awesome, what made it awesome? What about your client made them a joy to work with? Start building your avatar by pulling from your past experiences with clients.

You’ve never had a transaction close? Then do this… think about your friends and family. Who do you enjoy spending time with? Who lets you speak into their lives? Take that person and start building your avatar from them.

Once you’ve got a good idea of who your avatar is, now go look for the questions they ask. Start by checking your email, your voicemail, remember your conversations… what questions about real estate have you been asked? Start answering them… on your blog!

Just starting out? Check out some real estate specific Facebook groups and find the posts where agents are sharing what their clients are asking. Refocus those questions specific to your own avatar and then go answer those questions… on your blog!

Always remember…

Your value, your worth, is not in your listings. It’s not in connecting buyers to listings. It’s not in getting sellers homes listed. You are not a commodity.

Your value, your worth, is in your knowledge and sharing that knowledge to and with your avatar. You are a service, not a commodity. Don’t devalue yourself by continuing to focus on the “things” when it’s about the relationships and the journey.

Featured Download

And as always, I created a template for you. It’ll get you solidly on the right track on creating your avatar. Download it. Print it. Work on It. Use it to change your blogging results.

You can click here to download the template.

by Christina Ethridge Leave a Comment

Focus on your future clients, not the search engines. You can revolutionize your real estate business immediately when you eliminate these 9 lead generation mistakes today!

Featured Download: I created a checklist just for you – to help you identify and fix these mistakes.Click here if you want a copy of “The 9 Biggest Mistakes Real Estate Agents Are Making With Their Online Lead Generation” Checklist.

I recently asked my RE-Freshed! community what they were struggling with when it came to strategically using Facebook.

Imagine my surprise when the answers I got back (and I got hundreds of responses) were more focused on something called “content marketing” than on Facebook directly.

Considering agents in my community are there because I teach them how to capture, convert, & close Facebook leads… it was eye opening to see their struggles when it came to their blog sites.

I noticed a trend though… and I’m going to share that trend with you. There were 9 things that really stood out to me…. essentially, the 9 biggest mistakes real estate agents are making online…

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Mistake #1: Not Knowing Your Avatar

This is the biggest mistake real estate agents are making but unfortunately, most agents don’t know this is a mistake!

As real estate agents we tend to focus on one (or two) “target” audiences. Sellers and/or buyers. That’s it. We lump everyone into one of those two categories and then we run ads expecting them to resonate with these two target groups.

Here’s the problem. No two sellers are the same. Some are selling their last home, some are selling their first home. Some are selling a vacation or second home, some are selling a rental home. So many different types of sellers just in these descriptions. Not to mention, how close are they to selling? Are they just starting to imagine the possibilities or are they ready to list today?

If you want prospects to call you ready to list, you have to show them you care

If you don’t have a clear understanding of exactly who your seller is and what their needs are, your ads on Facebook won’t resonate with very many people. You’ll be trying to appeal to all sellers in a single ad and as a result, you’ll have horrendous click-thru and conversion rate (well, our industry thinks an 8-10% conversion rate on an opt-in landing page is good… and unfortunately, that is a terrible conversion rate).

This is why you see so many “get your home value” ads from those who are running Facebook ads, and why so many agents who’ve “tried” Facebook ads decide they don’t work. Because… they didn’t work. Not because Facebook ads don’t work, but because they have no idea how to actually reach their ideal prospect, mostly because they have no idea who their ideal prospect is.

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Mistake #2: Not Having A Blog

One of the biggest mistakes real estate agents make is not having a blog site! For whatever reason… whether it’s fear of making a mistake, not knowing how to get one, not having the money to pay for one, not knowing what to put on it, believing that over-saturation has occurred, thinking that being online is a losing game against the big bad portals, thinking it’s unnecessary, believing it’s a waste of time… anyone one or all of these reasons are common reasons why real estate agents don’t have a blogsite.

Of course, you’ll find those who will tell you that websites are dead, get a mobile app… the problem with this is that their brains are still swirling around the old school way of marketing. That’s a problem. It’s not all about the houses for sale, if it was, real estate agents would be extinct. Don’t fall for the line that websites are dead… it’s the same line that people have been saying about email and yard signs. They aren’t dead. They’re just not sexy. They’re not the shiny object of the day.

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Mistake #3: Not Promoting Good Blog Content Enough

When it comes to blog posts, if real estate agents actually create their own post (as in, they wrote it), they spend 99% of their time writing & posting it and 1% of their time pushing it out, usually in the form of “New blog post! <LINK>.”

That’s it. I call that a one then done type of promotion. Is it any wonder that the content we create flops? And then we think well, that wasn’t worth the time I spent!

When you automate it right from your blog post… it ends up being “new blog post blah blah blah” and you aren’t speaking with anyone, you’re just spewing out noise and very few people listen to noise. When you create valuable content… how you share it is insanely important and it’s different depending upon the platform… each platform attracts a different type of user. Speak in that platforms language and you are building relationships. Spew it out automatically without thought and you are simply robotic.

First of all, you have to appeal to your avatar (see mistake #1) and then you have to constantly promote your content. In other words, spend 20% of your time creating & posting and the other 80% of your time promoting it!

Stop sharing “new blog post” and start sharing elements and pieces from it… things that appeal to your avatar, that entice them to take a second look, that get them to think or ponder.

And then? Then do this every . single . month . WITHOUT fail! When you think “been there, done that” and don’t keep promoting your older content, you assume that everyone connected with you has seen everything you’ve given them… you are completely forgetting that new people come into your presence every single day and every one of them start at the beginning of the relationship process.

Don’t short change yourself and your avatar by not continuously sharing the content you’ve created. After all, you’ve given them the answers to their problems, share it with them!

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Mistake #4: Not Using Your Blog Site To Develop Relationships

This one is a biggie and requires a mindset shift.

When we write to the search engine and not to the person, not only are we subject to the whim of the search engine algorithm (it changes constantly) but we aren’t making any connections with the very people we want to work with!!

When we use ghost writers, we are not writing to what our ideal client wants or needs, we are again, writing to a search engine. We are “checking off” a task, not building a relationship.

The point on this is, don’t make noise, don’t chase a ranking, do write/talk to your ideal client one-on-one. Find their problems and solve them. You’ll building relationships. You’ll rank in search engines. You’ll have a fabulous business.

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Mistake #5: The excuse of “no time” shows itself in inconsistent lead generation

I’m busy! I’m crazy busy! I work weekends! I work nights! I don’t have time to… <insert whatever here>.

These are all of the phrases I constantly hear from my fellow real estate peeps. Let’s face it, we are busy. But. What are we busy doing? Have we actually taken the time to track what we do… and have we honestly faced ourselves and the reality of how we are spending our time?

Too much automation will kill your real estate lead generation

If you aren’t going to consistently do something, it’s not worth doing. Period. Lead generation must consistently be done… day in and day out. Without fail. Regardless of how busy you are. No matter how many transactions you are (or are not) closing in a given day. It’s just like exercising. A random workout session, no matter how long and arduous, will do nothing for you (just leave you hurting) if you aren’t consistently, day in and day out, doing a workout session.

If we have time to watch TV (at all)… if we have time to go out to coffee or meals with anyone… if we have time to chat at the office… if we have time to spend in industry groups on Facebook, we aren’t “crazy busy,” we’ve just deceived ourselves into believing we are.

I’m not talking about never spending time with friends or family. I’m not talking about working 10-14 hours every day, 7 days a week. I’m talking about being honest with ourselves about the use of our time and re-prioritizing our time to doing what needs to be done vs. what we often end up doing.

One of the best books I’ve ever read about prioritizing is The One Thing by Gary Keller. Grab a copy of it and read it and take it to heart. Practice it. It will change your life.

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Mistake #6: Being A Know It All

Let’s face it. Most of us real estate agents are pretty self confident. We are focused and driven. We know a lot. But. We don’t know it all. When we head into trainings or classes, we often go in with the attitude that we already know this and we are wasting our time. Instead, we must go into all situations looking for something to learn.

When agents join my Leads and Leverage membership, they are there to learn. When an agent joins and proceeds to tell me they already “know this” or they’ve been doing lead capture funnels “for years” I always wonder, then why are you here? And then, when I start to dissect their funnel, looking for leaks… I find a lot of elements that I can help them improve on, but if they keep on going with their “I know it all” mentality, they’ll never reap the results they want to reap.

The lesson here is to not be a know it all. Always look for what you can learn, what you can tweak, what you can add to increase your knowledge and subsequently increase your business.

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Mistake #7: Using Ghostwriters

I don’t even know where to begin with this one. Well, yes I do. As real estate agents, we are busy. And, unfortunately, so many of us just don’t see the true value in creating our own content. We think it’s a necessary evil and we act accordingly… by hiring out our content creation, both for our blog sites and our emails.

We’ve got to change our mindset and rather than be resigned to creating content, we need to realize that we are creating valuable information for our avatar. We are answering their questions, we are giving them what they want and need. We are helping them.

And most importantly, we are building know, like and trust relationships… virtually. If we aren’t revealing our personality, pieces of ourselves, there is no way we will help as many people as we want to help. Period. Our avatars know when they are reading (and I use the term “reading” here very loosely, because let’s face it, people don’t read robotic crap) a boring journalistic piece and when they are engaging in something passionate and powerful.

If you don’t know your avatar, all your efforts are pointless

This isn’t about “touching” our list. This is about helping our avatar. Ghostwriters do not understand your avatar nor do they know how to reveal pieces of you. It’s really that simple.

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Mistake #8: Focusing On SEO

This is a BIG one! Real estate agents who are online are very focused on SEO (search engine optimization). We believe that the only reason we are there is to “rank,” otherwise, what’s the point? We believe that we must write our blog posts or our website pages around certain keywords.

The problem with this is that we start spewing out content that is robotic and provides no value to anyone, except (hopefully) us because we are using what we think are the right keywords to get search engine ranking.

Focus on your future clients, not the search engines

When you write content based on what your avatar needs, the search engines will find you. But most importantly, your avatar will find you. THIS is what is important, NOT the search engines.

Not to mention, if you are writing to the search engines, you are building a house on sinking sand. As we all know, search engines change their algorithms almost daily… and they penalize and punish constantly. Don’t get caught up in providing value to search engines, focus on giving value to your avatar instead.

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Mistake #9: Automating Promotion

Another mistake is when real estate agents automate everything. We quickly post something (from our library of canned crap) on our WordPress blog and then have IFTTT or another plug-in set up to automatically push that post out to Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram, Pinterest, and RSS feed it to our email list… in other words, full automation.

As much as I love automation and delegation, there are cases in which it hinders, hurts, and doesn’t help you (time saved is exactly zero, because the results are exactly zero – well actually, the results are often negative).

Remember, promoting your valuable assets is about building know, like and trust relationships. You can’t build know, like and trust relationships if you spew out automated content.

You can’t build know, like and trust relationships if you
spew out automated content

However, this doesn’t mean that you can’t use scheduling tools like Edgar to leverage your time. Just don’t have your blog setup to push out your blog posts as soon as they publish… that’s where agents fail and leave a gaping hole between promotion and relationship.

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So… are any of these new to you? Are you making any of these mistakes? How many? What are you going to do differently to change the direction of your online lead generation?

I created a checklist just for you – to help you identify and fix these mistakes. Click here if you want a copy of “The 9 Biggest Mistakes Real Estate Agents Are Making With Their Online Lead Generation” Checklist.

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by Christina Ethridge 2 Comments

I don’t have time to blog and the “I’m too busy” lies we believe…

I hear this all the time. I don’t have time to blog. I’m too busy “actually working.”

Huh. Well… I challenge that statement. I challenge you to challenge yourself. The reality is, you do have the time. You simply choose not to have the time.

Featured Freebie: Are you ready to start using your time better and getting your blog pumping in business? I created Get Your Blog On, a 5 day blogging challenge just for you. It’s free and it’s been so much fun! I hope you’ll join us. Click here to join the Get Your Blog On 5 day blogging challenge.

The average American watches 4 hours of TV every single day. This isn’t how long the TV is on, this is how much TV we are WATCHING.

Now, don’t start with me that you don’t watch that much TV. If you watch TV, you spend a lot of wasted time watching it. And, if TV isn’t your thing, then something else is… browsing Facebook? Getting caught into the rabbit whole of the web? Getting involved in conversations and debates in Facebook groups? Attending every event known to man? Hanging out at the local pub every evening?

The truth is, we find the time to do what we want to do. It’s not enough to say that something is a priority, our actions must show that something is our priority.

If building a real estate business is a priority for you, then you need to challenge yourself and look at what you are doing throughout the day, every day.

Everything is a choice. What you do today influences your tomorrow. If you choose not to make the time to blog today, then you’ll never build a real estate business with a pipeline of people reaching out to you who already know, like, and trust you.

Yes that’s a bold statement. It’s also the truth. If you won’t make the choice to blog (or vlog) then you’ll never build an easy, smooth, consistent business. A business that doesn’t have to spend it’s time cold calling and cold converting.

It’s that simple. And it’s that hard. It’s not easy to admit we are choosing something different. And then, sometimes it’s not easy to take action and then keep taking action.

Here’s the deal, you have to find out where you are throwing away time. Yes you want to look at the big things (like 4 hours of TV or Facebook a day) but you also want to look at the small things.

I woke up this morning about an hour earlier than normal. I picked up my phone and started scrolling through Facebook. AN HOUR LATER I put the phone down and went on with my day. Now, I got up when I initially wanted to, but, when I was really thinking about it I realized that I really wasted that hour. I didn’t do anything truly enjoyable or productive while I was on my phone on Facebook. I could have been doing something that would propel me forward… spending time in God’s word, exercising, working on my “One Thing”, writing a letter to my dad, doing something special for someone else, leveraging my time so I had more free time later in the day to get a massage or be with my family… and yet, I just let that time slip by.

Everything we do is a choice. Everything. Even something as mundane as me picking up my phone earlier this morning.

So… if you are ready to make some time saving choices, here are some tips to help you…

First and foremost, analyze your big chunks of time.

What are you doing that is more mind-numbing and not truly beneficial for you? TV, in any form, is not beneficial for you. Sure it can be enjoyable, but spending an hour or more a day on it is not beneficial. It’s also not relaxing. Don’t fool yourself into thinking it helps you “relax” at the end of the day. A walk, a massage, a bath, sitting around the firepit with people you love, sitting on the porch enjoying nature, meditating… those things help relax you.

What about your time in the office. What are you really doing? Really track your time… are you spending time focused and productive or are you having a whole lot of conversations with your colleagues or spending a lot of time in meetings or “getting ready” to do something productive?

Remember, it’s all a choice. Ones we make every single day.

Second, use all your 15 minuteses.

This involves taking advantage of all of the little chunks of time the pop up throughout the day. That extra 10 minutes you have before you need to be somewhere. The 15 minutes you wait in line. That extra hour I had this morning that I totally wasted.

Watch out for these moments and don’t get lost in your phone playing Candy Crush or watching YouTube videos. Utilize those moments to record topic ideas, conversation inspirations, or to even take down thoughts.

Here are some time saving hacks you can be implementing.

Turn off the notifications on your computer and your phone. Seriously, you don’t need to run over to Facebook every time there is a little red notification. You don’t need to know every moment you receive an email. It is AMAZING how much more productive you become when you aren’t chasing the distractions.

Turn off your TV. I’m not just talking about not watching it, I’m talking about not letting it be on in the background. Ever. Background noise from the TV does not help you stay focused. It does the opposite. It distracts you.

Close Facebook. Seriously, when you are focused on doing your “One Thing” you need to close everything and eliminate all distractions. Don’t fall into the thought trap that leaving Facebook open in another browser because I need a brain break once-in-a-while is a good thing to do. It’s counter-productive. It’s ruining your productivity.

Close your email. Yep I said it. Close your email and don’t go into it until specifically scheduled times of the day. It’s called batching and yes, you can do that in real estate. Ideally you’d schedule twice a day to dive into your emails. Once in the late morning and once right before the end of the business day. That’s it.

Delete time sucking apps from your phone. Do you have a habit of checking Facebook or email or Twitter or Instagram when you are waiting in lines, or are in a group of people but maybe feel like you want to look like you are doing something? Guess what… this is bad juju for you. You need to delete those apps and start engaging in the moment.

Remove yourself from Facebook groups. There are a million and one Facebook groups for real estate agents. Some of them are insanely popular. Those insanely popular ones are unproductive time sucks for you. You don’t need to know about every software tool out there. You don’t need to know which ads are “the perfect ads” to run on Facebook (here’s a hint, perfect ads don’t exist). You won’t miss out on anything.

Get help! Hire people to help you! Even if it’s just a high school student that comes to your home or office 3-4 hours a week to help with filing, or envelope stuffing, or something else. Get. Help. Outsource your lawn maintenance. Outsource your house cleaning. Outsource your grocery shopping… have Amazon deliver your groceries (or Safeway, or a local concierge service). Outsource your dry cleaning to a cleaner who picks up and delivers. The point here is to get help with things you don’t love doing.

As I said earlier, there is always time for what you what to do. And, to make sure there is always time, you want to implement time saving hacks. But you also want to do what’s most important every single day, before you do anything else.

Every single day you should be doing your One Thing, first. Before anything else. Nothing else is as important as getting your One Thing done. Don’t assume you know what I’m talking about when I say this. Please go grab yourself the book, read it all the way to the end, and implement it. Don’t be like me and assume you know what it’s talking about. Don’t be like me and think you’ve heard this all before. I hadn’t. You haven’t. Read it. If you read it and implement it, it will be a pivotal change for you in your business and your life.

Are you ready to start using your time better and getting your blog pumping in business? I created Get Your Blog On, a 5 day blogging challenge just for you. It’s free and it’s been so much fun! I hope you’ll join us. Click here to join the Get Your Blog On 5 day blogging challenge.