Rethink Your Web Presence

Establishing a purposeful online presence drives real estate services.  It is important to be online, where home buyers and home sellers can find you.  But key to making a difference online is purpose.  What is your purpose? What point are you trying to make?

Before creating a real estate website, blog, Twitter account, Facebook business page etc. think about what your message is.  Think about how you want people to explain who you are and what you offer.

Recently Chris Brogan wrote a thoughtful blog post about this topic, outlining several key questions any business should ask themselves when evaluation the purpose of their online information.

Continue reading to see his comments...

When I go to your website (or blog, or twitter page, or facebook page), what do you want me to do? What do you REALLY want me to do? Don’t answer that right away or glibly. What do you want me to do on your site? How do you want me to feed into your systems?

This is what I want to give you: a few questions to consider, from the same side of the fence as your prospective customer/visitor/reader/member whatever. Remember, these questions are not from your side of the fence. They’re from the other side, the important side.

Answer These Questions for Your Audience:

Who do you want me to be? – In designing my up and coming new website, I had this great breakthrough. And I started working on it, and then I realized that this design I had in mind would be much more “male” in flavor and I wanted women to feel welcome. I want older people 35-60(ish) to come, so I know I want my font to be large enough and distinct enough. So, that’s what I thought about for my would-be buyer. Who do you want me to be on your site?

How will I know that I belong? – Will I be able to see “me” in your site? Will it make sense? When I go to Runner’s World, I don’t see me. There aren’t any fat trail runners there. I don’t feel like I belong there. (I probably do, but you know what I mean?) How will I know that I’m supposed to be on your site?

What do you want to show/tell me?

You’ve dragged me here. Make it easy to find what you’re hoping I consume. This is your main thing. This is where you want me to get really excited.

What do you want me to do?

I’m here. Now what? You want me to buy your something? You want me to hire you? You want me to sign up for your something? Make that really obvious. This is where things go the most wrong, I think.

How will we keep this relationship going?
– You want me here more than once, right? I’m hoping you do. How can we do that? Shall I subscribe to your blog? Do you want me to do a newsletter? What’s next for us? (This one’s pretty important too, eh?)

How shall I talk of you to my friends? – You don’t want the relationship to end with me, do you? How can we find some of my friends that will also like you? What message do you want me to carry? Is there a way we can do that together?

How Do You Answer This?

I don’t know, but I’m thinking these end up being important questions. What do you think? How does your site stack up?

Chris Brogan is a well-established blogger and business man, to read his original blog post, click here.

To learn more about website offerings, click here.

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