Nov
21
Facebook + Real Estate = Relationship Building
Posted by Michelle Sterling under For Realty Professionals, Social Media & Real Estate, tech tools
The Michelle Sterling Las Vegas Real Estate Team continues to expand our efforts on our Facebook Business Page. In order to take our presentation to the next level, it is critical for the agents on the Team to become more actively engaged individually. As you might imagine, this involves educating our people about the goals of the Team Facebook business page and how best to get where we want to go. As a starting point, we discussed a stunning statistic from just last week that exemplifies the phenomenal power of the Facebook business model. If you can believe it, Facebook now accounts for 25% of all page views on the Internet in the United States, making it far and away the single most popular website in the country. Yes, you read that correctly. For every four people viewing a page on the Internet at any given time, one of those four individuals is viewing Facebook. This is a great way to impress upon your people how important it is to be visible and effective in this increasingly ubiquitous social media space.
Ok … so now your agents are motivated to participate on Facebook for business purposes, but unclear how best to proceed. What guidance should you provide? First and foremost you want to get the point across that your people should structure their posts with an eye towards building quality relationships. The key is to present oneself as a highly competent, knowledgeable and valuable resource for your particular real estate market. Intelligent and constructive postings and comments that reflect one’s status as a serious professional will develop confidence in your followers and engender their trust. Once the “confidence hurdle” has been cleared, you can expect Facebook viewers to reach out to you for your specific services when they are ready. This is a gradual process that takes time, effort, focus and patience, but again, one out of four Internet page viewers are up for grabs. How much more incentive could you need?
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Nov
17
More Developments in the Social Media Frontier
Posted by Michelle Sterling under For Realty Professionals, Social Media & Real Estate, tech tools
The Michelle Sterling Team continues to place heavy emphasis on social media as a means of supplementing and augmenting the marketing power of our Las Vegas real estate website. Blogging continues to be at the core of our social media strategy and we don’t see that changing anytime in the foreseeable future. The beauty of Twitter and Facebook is that they allow us to promote new blog posts across a wide spectrum of followers from both venues. For example, as soon as I finish this blog post, I will immediately send out a tweet from our Team twitter account with a link to this story. Tomorrow morning we will also provide a brief summary of this post on our Michelle Sterling Team Facebook business page that will of course include a link to the complete story as well. If you talk to people that are utilizing these social media tools for business purposes, you will find that the most prevalent utilization is linking to blog posts. In fact, I read somewhere the other day that a full 50% of tweets from business-based twitter accounts were links to blog posts. This makes perfect sense if you think about it. Quality content has tremendous customer value and the integration of your Facebook and Twitter accounts with your business blogging efforts allows you to leverage your online visibility in exciting new ways.
You also may have noticed lately that Facebook and Bing are well on their way to integrating information in the search-based realm of the web. If you use the Bing search engine and also have an active Facebook account, you probably noticed the new messages in the upper right corner announcing the collaboration and asking if you would like to participate. How does it all work? Let’s say you were thinking of buying a new book. A search for that book on Bing might very well now include references to people you follow on Facebook that “liked” that book, along with any comments they might have made about it. In other words, information from your personal “social media sphere” will now be presented as an augmentation of the standard search results that Bing serves up to you. So, if you were to perform a Bing search for a specific person, say a real estate agent for example, you would probably see a link to that agent’s Facebook page along with the rest of the search information. Pretty cool stuff!
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Nov
7
Tax Incentives for Business in Las Vegas, Nevada
Posted by Michelle Sterling under For Buyers, For Realty Professionals, Las Vegas, Regional News
In my last post I talked about the many reasons why it is financially attractive to choose Las Vegas as a retirement destination. I discussed why it makes financial sense from many vantage points to enjoy the golden years in our desert oasis. But what about Las Vegas if you are still in your prime earning years and have a strong entrepreneurial streak? What if you happen to have some great ideas and a knack for the business process? Or, what if you currently own and/or operate a small or medium size business and need to make the most of that opportunity? Here again, Las Vegas is an excellent choice. The State of Nevada has the fourth best tax climate for business in the nation according to the recently released 2011 rankings tabulated by the non-profit and nonpartisan Tax Foundation. Nevada has no corporate or individual income tax whatsoever and this is the primary factor that keeps us at the top of the rankings year after year. Who are the three states that beat us? The cold weather trio of South Dakota, Alaska and Wyoming ranked first, second and third. While it’s always prudent to save as much money as you can, it also has to be acknowledged that Las Vegas businesses and Las Vegas real estate enjoy certain advantages that go beyond taxation rates as compared to the great white north. If you take our number four ranking in the State Business Tax Climate Index and cross reference it with a weather-based State Climate Index … I think we come out even better!
