Real Deal REInvestor Network

When you are starting a business, in order to be successful you will first need to have a Business Plan.
Having a clear Business Plan will help you have more hassle-free transactions.
Think about what are your goals, what is that you want to achieve. If you don’t know what you want, you’ll never get it.
Choose your niche. Focus on what you want to invest and become an expert in this area.
Your investing strategy is a general plan for obtaining what you want in life.

• Write your plan. It doesn't have to be long but it must be written down.

• Be specific. What kinds of property you want to buy. Residential? Commercial? What types? What areas? What price range? What condition?

• How do you plan to fund your investments. Are you going to use private lenders,hard money lenders, lines of credit, cash?

• What is your exit strategy. You must know up front what you're going to do with the property. Are you wholesaling? Selling Retail? Lease with Seller Financing? Or are you going to buy and hold?

• What is your ultimate purpose. Why do you want to invest in the first place?.

Once you have your plan down, it's time to move to your action plan.

Setting up a blog is a great way to promote yourself online and share your expertise as a real estate investor with others. Most investors use the internet regularly, and motivated sellers are no different. It is a great resource to get in contact with homeowners that are looking to sell fast. You can also use it for establishing your credibility with others and eventually attracting private lenders who will be interested in investing in your real estate projects.

So, What is a Blog ?

A blog is a type of Web page that can be viewed by the public and contains high quality information on real estate investment . It is free to set up and it has to be consistently maintained and updated so your readers
will continually come back and remain interested. The content of the blogs can be in the form of articles, graphics, or video. Readers can also leave comments on your content and ask questions about the information.

Blogs can be excellent sources of insider information on marketing, partnerships, real estate lead generation services, motivated seller leads, ways to close deals and also to share ideas and useful information.

Real Estate Investors are always looking to stay ahead of the competition and the economy. Blogs can also peovide a variety of resources to keep other investors and motivated sellers informed and educated. In order for your blog to be successful, it needs to be fresh and relevant. New content should be added as often as possible, once a week at a minimum. If you run out of ideas for content just write about what you know, real estate!

Here are some tips when creating your Real Estate Investing Blog

• Content should be unique, timely and relevant to your industry or market.
• Credible material from credible sources.
• Engaging and easy to read.
• Use industry key words in your content.
• Clever and creative post titles that will catch the reader’s attention.
• Link similar posts to each other.
• Update it regularly so motivated sellers and other investors visit often.
• Be professional, this is a representation of your company and an opportunity to sell your service to potential clients.

Marketing Your Blog

Once you have a blog created for your REI business, you can use multiple methods to market it and generate traffic.

• Social Media: Link your blog  to your social media page(Facebook, Twitter, Linked In...).
• Search Engine Optimization: Increase the visibility of your blog with the search engines by including keyword rich content that relates to your area of expertise in real estate. Do some keyword research to discover the words people are typing in to find what you have to offer.
• Post Comments: Visit other real estate investor's blogs and post comments that have high quality content to clearly demonstrate your knowledge and expertise. If you use high quality content, people will start to visit your blog to find out what additional information you have to offer.
• Post Links: Post links on your blog to other blogs or websites that you feel offer quality information. This is known as a blogroll and over time, the people will begin linking back to your blog. Make sure the links you are using offer quality content otherwise it could cost you your credibility.

What is a Gravatar? Your Gravatar (Globally Recognized Avatar) is an image that follows you from site to site, appearing beside your name when you comment or post on a blog other than your own. It could be your photo or an image that represents your business.

On Gravatar, users can register an account based on their email address, and upload an avatar/photo/logo to be associated with the account. Gravatar plugins are available for popular blogging software; when the user posts a comment on such a blog that requires an e-mail address, the blogging software checks whether that e-mail address has an associated avatar at Gravatar. If so, the Gravatar is shown along with the comment. A Gravatar avatar can be up to 512 pixels wide is always square and is displayed at 80 by 80 pixels by default.

Wordpress is wonderful blog site that supports Gravatars. Google also loves wordpress websites. More about Wordpress sites to be posted later.

The nice thing about the Gravatar is that it gives you control over the image that is used. Otherwise, your comment will be accompanied by a generic symbol or gray silhouette. Your Gravatar shows a little bit more of who you are, and can even encourage people to click through to your site. Readers are more apt to connect to a face rather than a name. This is a step in helping to build a relationship and gets them once step forward to trusting you.

 If leaving a comment on a blog that does not have the “Show Avatar” setting selected, your Gravatar won’t show up. No worries, the use of Gravatars is catching, so it’s only a matter of time and every blog will have it.

Go to www.gravatar.com to add some character to the comments you leave on other blogs.

Rick Strubel, Millionaire in Training, MMMChallenge.com

http://www.realdealcommunity.com/members/profile/475/Rick Strubel, Millionaire in Training - MMM Challenge.com

Using Your Keywords

To help the search engines know what a web page is about, use your top keywords 6 to 8 times on a page. If you sell a number of different products and services, build individual pages for each set of keywords.

Don’t’ just repeat your keywords more than 6-8 times. In this case more repetition is not better. Search engines reject pages with too many keyword repetitions. Use natural sounding copy and integrate your keywords so the copy reads well for both visitors and the search engines.

Link Your Own Keywords

Once you have your individual product or service pages optimized for your keywords, link other pages on your site to them using your keywords again. If you have articles on your site on short sales, link your keywords to the corresponding optimized page from 4 to 5 other pages.

Incoming Links to Your Site

The above steps lay the groundwork for getting noticed by the search engines. The next step in getting your site listed at the top of the search engines, and particularly Google, is the number of links found from other sites to your site.

Your sites "link popularity" is one of the most important factors the search engines look at in ranking your site. When the search engines see that hundreds of other web sites have links to yours, they rank your site higher than those with fewer links.

How many links do you have to your site? Use http://www.linkpopularity.com to find out. You can also use this site to find the number of links to your competitors’ sites, and identify who has links to them.

Getting other people to link to your site is easy. Ask for a link, ideally one using your keywords, and offer a link in return. Create a links.html page and when businesses link to your site, provide a link back.

1)    Start doing link exchanges. Keep the number of link exchanges you do low. They can help you build traffic, but sites that link to you with no return links are the ones that really give you search engine credibility. Look for websites that will be useful to your site visitors, but don't directly compete with you. Once you find a site email the site owner and ask to do a link exchange.

2)    You want to have your content on others sites, you can ask to be a featured blogger on their blog. Include your link on all of your content. The content should relate your target audience and use keywords that you have chosen. Again use natural sounding copy.

3)    Comment on blogs about your subject. When you leave comments on blogs there's a place to put to URL to your site. This is a no follow link so search engines won't pay attention to it, but if you write an interesting comment the people who read that blog will pay attention and visit your site.

4)    Participate in a forum about the topic your website is about. Actively try to add value to the forum. In forums there's a signature section where you can add a link to your website. As you add value to the forum the other people in the forum will see the value you have to offer and become interested in your site.

5)    If you have a newsletter or e-zine, allow others to publish it to their site. Make sure to include your link.

6)    Get involved with social networking sites. Don't spam the sites with lots of your URL. Put up links to some of your best content but mix them with other good sites on the web that have nothing to do with you. You can do this naturally. When you find something that you think is interesting online, share it.

Research on the web, there are so many ways to optimize your website, to get more traffic. This is a time consuming task, you may want to find companies that specialize in doing this for you.

http://www.realdealcommunity.com/members/profile/475/Rick Strubel, Millionaire in Training - MMM Challenge.com