The title “real estate virtual assistant” was attached to my name back in 2001 when I first started working with Realtors from my home office.  Back then blogs were unheard of by most (when they were officially known as ‘weblog‘ in 1997, and then simply ‘blog’ by 1999) and were touted as being an online diary of sorts, and thought of by the majority as a waste of time.  I was one of those majority that, due to both lack of knowledge and the ultimate evolution of today’s blog utter power, didn’t persue the blog as a means to further my business, nor that of my real estate clients.

Times have definitely changed since the turn of the millennium, but have times changed so much that websites are no longer necessary?

Here’s how I see things will continue to be and how they will be made standard for Realtors in the coming years ahead:   You need BOTH.

“Why?“

Great question!

One does not replace the other – each has it’s own place and purpose, significance and role.  Below I’ll discuss exactly what these are and why I believe you need not just one, but both to truly make your mark on the world wide web.

Three Important Things A Real Estate Website May Provide:

1.   Your Portfolio
Being that your website is effectively a very static place on the ‘net (meaning, nothing much really changes on it, other than your new listings or a design tweak once every few years), it’s going to be the best place to send your prospective buyers, sellers and current clients to learn more about you and your services.  To get that kind of information usually would be more deep-rooted on your real estate blog site or Facebook fan page.  There’s no need to make your selling points a maze for people to search through…

2.  History
One thing you and your website may have going for you and longevity.   Not only may countless people know your branded website name, but it also might be printed on a whole lot of materials that are still floating around out there… not to mention the Search Engines.  Search engines love a site with history behind it, so before you consider dropping your site altogether, take a look at how well it is ranking.

3.  Lead Capture and Direct Syndication to CRM
Many sites are set up with some pretty legitimate lead capture opportunities that have been producing a substantial amount of business for you over the years.  If this is the case, you probably have a fairly good CRM in place for them too (linked directly through your lead capture forms) – The saying goes, “if it’s not broken, don’t fix it“.  Same thing applies here.

Ok, so those are some pretty solid reasons why a real estate website is still necessary for many of you out there.   So let’s take a look at your self-hosted blog:

Three Important Things A Real Estate Blog Will Provide:

1.  Consistent Content
Whereas your website is very static and a great place to send people to learn more about you, your brokerage, your services and your background, your real estate blog will be a deep well of information – consistently being filled with relative content that will make you a star!  As a Realtor, the evolution of the real estate industry has widened to so much more than just the house.   Being a highly knowledgeable resource for your market area is what many homeowners look for and expect to see – and if they don’t expect to find that in you, then it will certainly be well received!   The blog is THE place to provide this resource to your prospective clients on an ongoing, continual basis.

2.  Relationships with your Prospects
Heard of the “Thank You Economy” yet?  If not, it’s the new way to not only gaining business, but gaining trust.  When we give freely, like we are in our blog right now, we are appreciated and seen as a great, worthwhile place to return to on a regular basis.  But remember, content is only king if you keep giving and care for your readers, and in return they will thank you.    Word of mouth is now World of Mouth (you’ll hear Chris and I say this alot in our comments on FB!) – it’s gone from a slow shifting sloth to a steriod driven horse!    Saddle up and hold on for the wild ride!

3.  SEO to the Max!
One thing websites have a hard time competing with is the amazing impact your self-hosted blog has on the search engines!  I can give two amazing examples of just how strong the force behind a well written, consistently given blog can give you in a very short period of time:

1.  TulsaGolfHomes.com – this was put together with the site map provided by a client of mine just in June of this year.  Within 6 weeks, it was found on Page One of Google under several very quality search engine phrases, such as “Tulsa Golf Homes” and “Tulsa Golf Neighborhoods”.

2.  BrentwoodCAEstate.com – this was created from scratch for my client out in California who wanted to focus on her market area’s estate homes.  Within just a few weeks also, her blog was found on Page One of Google as well – but not just once or twice, four times on the first page!  A website simply cannot do this in such a short period of time (maybe a few years, but not a few weeks!).

I’m guessing that the majority of you have a website, but if this hasn’t convinced you that you truly need both a real estate website and a blog, then I’d be checking your pulse!

Please Note:  I have only provided three reasons why you need both a website and a blog here, but I know there are many more – please feel free to share the reasons why you have one, or the other (or both) in the comments below (don’t forget the importance of backlinking!).

For 15 years, Inman News has been recognizing the Nation’s best of the best real estate-based companies with, what has proven to be the industry’s top honor awards to those who have proven to be both technologically and innovatively sound in their applications and business dealings. This comes in the infancy of Tech Savvy Agent’s life, since they have yet to crest their one year anniversary of being founded. Past award winners have included Google Maps, Curbed.com, ActiveRain and Altos Research.

Tech Savvy Agent has certainly proven that the philosophies and strategies are not only highly effective, but now award-worthy too. Co-Founder, Chris Smith, explained his insight as to how they reached this milestone so swiftly, by saying it was “ultimately due to the entire team’s passion, drive and dedication to what they love to do.”

The team at Tech Savvy Agent comprises of Co-Founders, Chris Smith and Stephen Pacinelli, and Lead Contributor, Suzanne Roy. Smith and Pacinelli both have been speaking in front of thousands of Realtors across the nation over the past decade regarding tools, social media, online marketing and techniques that Realtors can take and use on a daily basis within their respective businesses. Roy has owned and operated her own real estate virtual assistant business,V.A. Work, over the last 8 years, providing up-to-the-minute online marketing, blog design and social networking services to Brokers and Realtors alike throughout North America.

Smith, Pacinelli and Roy created Tech Savvy Agent after it became apparent there was no true resource available for Realtors to go to, to gain relevant and reliable tech news, tools and tips of the trade. By utilizing these free tools, Realtors are now able to take their businesses to a whole new level and become a “Tech Savvy Agent”.
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First and foremost, you are a Realtor, and in being such, you are in business to sell property, not to be sitting behind your desk downloading your newly found, can’t live without, plugin for your wordpress blog. There is no fine line between selling and being a computer geek – there is a time and a place for both. With that said, while you are out prospecting, showing homes and selling, your time away from the desk can be utilized by a professional Real Estate Virtual Assistant.

Being a Tech Savvy Agent doesn’t mean that you still have to go it alone – far from it. Real Estate Virtual Assistants bridge the gap between you and your ever-increasing online presence and social media needs. As a Tech Savvy Agent, you probably have heard of the profession V.A..  Do you know just how essential and beneficial they can be to your productivity and sales production, especially, when you know what to ask of them and best utilize their time “on the clock”?

Here are 8 ways the team at Tech Savvy Agent thinks you should be using(or at least considering) a Real Estate Virtual Assistant:

With social networking taking such a strong hold on the real estate industry, it could (and undoubtedly would) take all your waking (and working) hours to cash in on the amazing tools you must incorporate in to your online presence. To be honest, most agents are “social notworking”. A real estate virtual assistant can keep your presence strong within the social networks by integrating them all together – making them work simultaneously as one well-oiled machine.  The key is that they won’t get too busy the way that you do because it is their job to keep it all running, focused on specific goals at that!

In a perfect world by now you should have at least one blog in place that is making an undeniably great impact on your website traffic. However, if it is not a self-hosted wordpress blog (through GoDaddy for example), then you are probably missing out on the true potential it can have on your business(see Tech Savvy Agent for example!). (If you haven’t yet viewed our “Blogging For Realtors Using WordPress” video, we will post it soon. It will define the differences between a wordpress hosted and a self-hosted blog.) Your real estate virtual assistant will be able to get this in place for you, customize it to match your existing website design and add the essential plugins and widgets you must have.  Do you cringe when someone asks what your website is?  You won’t with a WordPress Blog set up properly by a V.A..

A tech savvy real estate virtual assistant should be highly versed in creating strong SEO content blogs both for their own blogs and yours too. Creating content with your SEO keywords used within your website, using H1 and H2 tags, titles, backlinks, videos and photos with SEO configured alt titles and descriptions are all part of making your blogs impact your traffic, leads and sales. If any of that last sentence confused you don’t fret you are not alone.

Having a real estate virtual assistant create your weekly blogs is one thing, you may even want to write your own if you are feeling a bit Twain, but bookmarking them is a step in the blog process that cannot be missed or denied and that a real estate agent should NOT BE SPENDING TIME ON. A blog that is written and bookmarked correctly will gain ten times the amount of traffic to your website than a blog that is just simply written. Posting links to your blogs on bookmarking sites such as StumbleUpon, Digg, Reddit and Delicious are a must and something that your real estate virtual assistant can and should be doing for you if you choose to pursue one.

What’s a website or blog without an RSS feed(check out our cool new icons on either side of this post)? If you don’t have any opt-ins, (other than your IDX solution forms, of course) then you are missing out on gaining dozens of leads each month.  I mean honestly if someone isn’t looking to buy or sell in the next year is there really anything of value on your JoeAgent.com website for them. Your RSS feed on your blog can be created to give your viewers the option to get your new posts emailed directly to them versus having them bookmark your site and checking it (maybe) in the future. This is just one more “touch”(like that one KW agents?) that can be gained by your prospects without you having to do anything, the more relevant the content to the communities you work in the better.  Lot’s of topics are being talked about daily, not all of them involve real estate, widen your voice!

Being a tech savvy agent, you should know the difference between a Facebook fan page and profile page – the most important part of this difference is that anyone can find and read your fan page through the internet organically using a search engine like Google(here is an example of a search in Google that returns a Fan Page on the front page “tech savvy agent”). Only your invited friends can view your personal profile – your fan page is for your business and your profile is for your personal life. A real estate virtual assistant can create as many fan pages as you want and integrate it into your social networking; installation of must have applications, integration of your blog sites and custom tab content creation are just some of the aspects your facebook fan page should include.

Having your listings promoted online has been, and continues to be, an essential part of marketing your seller’s homes. A real estate virtual assistant lives online and should have this part of your marketing down to a fine art.

Having them create a virtual tour using your photos will save you thousands of dollars each year, by using such online tools as RealEstateShows, and will enable them to promote your property on YouTube, your blog, and all of your social bookmarking and social networking sites. Posting your properties on prominent sites such as Craigslist on a regular basis for you while you are showing your newest website lead homes will benefit you greatly too.

I’m guessing that the majority of our Tech Savvy Agents are using CRM programs (such as Top Producer 8i or Daylite) and not working off of AOL or even worse,  index cards in a shoe box! Having leads being automatically pulled into your database and then set up to be placed on an action plan is excellent, however, what about all those other leads, prospects and past clients that are sitting idle in your database not receiving anything from you? Putting your real estate virtual assistant to work for you in creating groups (hot, warm, cold, for instance), creating group specific action plans and applying them to your contacts takes time and know-how and again falls into the area of things you may not be focusing on or even enjoy.

There are dozens of other ways you could be using a real estate virtual assistant in your daily business – from basic data entry to highly technical Facebook fbml writing. Virtual assistants vary in rate schedules, depending on the depth of work required.   It is our opinion that it will be something every agent at least explores because you can save time and make more money by taking advantage of what they have to offer.

Take a look at what this real estate virtual assistant has to offer, she has our Tech Savvy Seal of Approval and has even answered a question and downloaded a plug in or 2 for us!  If you know of any other V.A.’s that are worthy feel free to post their info as this is an open community and leave any comments or questions you may have below.