Bryan Vogt: Welcome back to Ready, Set Sold, with your host Bryan Vogt. And I tell you what, I say this quite often, but it’s really true, I’m always amazed what I learn from the mayors of these cities, of what’s actually going on and the information that they’re able to provide I think is true asset to not only the listeners, but I’ll be honest with you, to me.
In the first segment, we talked about three things that you could do, and one of them was Facebook and to look at what they’re posting. How often they’re posting. Are they posting 10 or 20 times? That might be fun, but again, if you’re hiring them to sell your house, you want to make sure that they may have a presence, there’s nothing wrong with that, but they’re not spending all their time on Facebook.
The other part of that too is do they have a Facebook page? And that’s a business page. And that’s important to have, to have that presence so they can put your house on Facebook. There’s no actual results-oriented record saying that having your house on Facebook is going to have a certain percentage of sales, meaning is a 5% chance better or whatever percentage, but, with a billion people, it’s not a bad idea.
When you have a billion users, it’s not a bad idea to be on there. What we’re going to talk about also in this segment is the other two and three things. The number two thing is Google them, is find their website. You should be looking for their own personal website. And it is indeed important.
Most agents will have a site or have houses on the company site. And that’s good, too, but remember, you want to be able to have your agent be able to direct them to your house, and not to have hundreds upon hundreds of houses they have to look through which actually is somewhat competition, that you don’t really want to have, solely. Nothing wrong with having that, but making sure they have their own dedicated website, so they can showcase your house.
And the second part with that is, is once you’ve established that they have that, and most top agents do, some don’t, but again, that’d be something you might want to question that this is the direction you want to go, because everyone knows that the Internet is a big source of how people find houses.
But secondly is, is it easy to find your house? Do they have featured home sections? Do they have nothing on the front? And that’s kind of important. Again, if your house is going to be on the market and they’re going to be marketing, how they’re going to be marketing to you and the importance of being able to see your home? I go to it very quickly, ideally, on the front page, that they don’t have to go hunt and peck through the website.
Look, we live in a world where things happen fast and buyers don’t always have the most patience, especially millenniums, god love them, but sometimes, they kind of blow things pretty fast, so if your agent is marketing their website, which hopefully they are, and directing people towards it to view their listings, you want to make sure they’re easy to get to. That is indeed remarkable.
The third thing you want to look for is to see if they have a blog. And the blog is usually going to be on the website. The blog is a fantastic way to be able to market your home. Again, we have blogs that we run for every house. And so we blog about it. That attracts people not only to the website, but it can attract people to view the home.
Blogging is becoming one of the fastest and easiest ways that people are finding out homes. Again it’s a new generation coming in of buyers, and that’s one of the ways that they do it.
The second thing that you want to be interested in is, do they have podcasts? I know this might be a little bit of research, but I can tell you, it goes a long way to finding out if this is an agent that’s connected to where people are looking for houses. And that’s with podcasts. And that’s going to Google Play, going to iTunes.
We’ve had sellers that understand that YouTube and all these things are different avenues that buyers are looking at and trying to find information, information about your house, or if nothing else, trying to find information about that agent, whether or not that buyer’s going to contact that agent who has the listing.
Those things can be extremely critical and really important, you really want to focus on those things, too. With that said, kind of going back on a point I meant to mention on the Facebook part, that becomes important, I may have mentioned it briefly, but maybe to highlight that, is you know, again, the political arena.
We’re in a highly-charged political arena. It seems like every year it gets higher and higher and higher. Oftentimes, good or bad, agents will voice their opinion. I personally think that’s a big, big mistake. I disagree. Maybe even you as sellers may disagree also, but many times, they will either love one section, whoever the president is right now and they may hate that president or whatever that situation is, and sometimes, you can see that they’re having quite the debates out there.
Had a seller talking about that, they happened to be on the other side of the fence, and they really didn’t want that person coming to their house, because their political beliefs didn’t coincide with the seller’s. Right or wrong, but you as a seller sometimes need to make that decision and make sure that you have a working relationship, that that isn’t something that is clouding your judgment.
Also, and we’ve heard this from other agents, talking to other agents … sometimes, being on Facebook and shouting their political beliefs or possibly their religious beliefs, quite frankly, they may not agree with them, and sometimes, that creates a situation, of not wanting to necessarily show their houses. We can call that good or we can call that bad, but sometimes, that comes into play.
The personality of the agent can have an effect on how many people … how many agents are going to be wanting to show your listing, and that can have a negative effect, definitely, on you, and that’s something that you really don’t want to have.
If you kind of follow those three things, again, with the Facebook, finding out how many posts they have, making sure they have a business page, so that they have their own website, making sure to how important that is, checking out to see where your house is going to be featured at so that you know they’re promoting your house 24/7.
And the third thing this, again, the blogs and the podcasts. This is the new way that people are getting information and you want to make sure that they’re current and up to date with what’s going on to promote your house the best and possible way.
With that said, we’re going to be going into the next segment, the last segment, we’re going to be talking about the Tip of Week, and that’s going to have to do with commissions versus value, and deciding which real estate agent to choose.
Hey, during the break though, I’ll give you to the opportunity, go to ReadySetSold.org, not .com, ReadySetSold.org, not .com, pick up the book. It’s absolutely free. No strings attached. We’d love to mail it to you. Many people already have taken advantage of the offer and I think it’d be great if you made that decision also, so do that during the break. We’d greatly appreciate it.
Ready Set Sold with Bryan Vogt #22-04: Mark Kupsky, Mayor of Fairview Heights, IL: Importance of agent blogging about your home
October 21, 2017