Editor’s Note: Social media expert and appraiser Bill Cobb offers tips on using new technology to solve an old problem: increasing business.
Five Ways to Grow Business (Online)
by William D. Cobb
Here are five ways to attract visitors to your self-hosted real estate appraisal blog to grow business!
1. Establish your appraisal Twitter account and Tweet your appraiser blog posts. Just after the self-hosted WordPress blog, Twitter stands as the next most efficient way to use Google and other online search engines. Twitter is an excellent site that works for you 24/7 to enable your blog posts to gain higher ranking in the major search engines. Twitter is also considered to be one of the most popular search engines. Your blog posts are sent automatically from your blog to Twitter, through WordPress plug-ins, which means that they are automatically directed from your blog and Twitter.
2. Establish your appraisal YouTube channel, link it to your blog and upload your appraiser-related videos with a link back to your blog. Google owns YouTube. According to a March 2009 study, Google owns approximately 43 percent of the video market. This implies that Google also indexes YouTube videos. If you have a YouTube channel, the people who read your blog are viewers of the videos that you have loaded on your blog as well. With YouTube it takes just a few minutes to create your video streaming.
3. Establish your personal Facebook profile and fan page and add a link to your appraiser blog posts. Facebook is one of the most popular social networking sites with around 350,000,000 active users or members, according to a study in December 2009. According to a recent study, almost 76 percent of Realtors are active members of Facebook. Moreover, Facebook fan clubs and groups are flourishing due to the huge potential businesses see for new potential customers. You can post your blog “URL” as a link on a Facebook fan page to help you attract potential clients as well as higher ranking in Google.
4. Comment on other appraiser blogs. This is a “must do” habit. Generally, when you post a comment to a blog, you will create a similar link to your own appraisal blog. Google keeps a record of links diverting back to your own blog which is a good way to get higher rankings. The greater the number of links, the better your rank and likewise, fewer links mean a lower rank for your blog.
5. Become a local housing market trust agent. In 2009 Chris Brogan and Julien Smith introduced the book, “Trust Agents: Using the Web to Build Influence, Improve Reputation, And Earn Trust!” This shows that while it previously took several years to build trust between a business and its clients, now, an appraiser can build trust with local and national customers in a comparatively shorter time by simply posting a single blog along with market reviews and effective videos of himself as an appraiser. Other key factors for building a trust relationship with clients are writing enticing content and providing dependable services.
About the Author
Bill Cobb is a residential appraiser in the Louisiana market for 18 years. Bill builds self-hosted WordPress Video Blogs for appraisers with Google optimization and incorporating the “big three” social media techniques with the service. Find out more at www.appraisersblogsample.info/. Bill also teaches Appraiser Video Marketing techniques at www.appraiservideomarketing.com/.