Real Estate Agent, Brokerage and Mortgage Blogs

Are you contagious?

Get your vaccinations and slip on the body condom, we are about to tour the infectious world of viral marketing. Viral Internet marketing is about harnessing the power of your existing visitors and social networks to explode your real estate blog community without spending a dime. Sounds pretty good, huh? Where do I sign up? Hold your infectious little horses, there are rules to this viral thing. And you gotta play by them to get the job done right.

What is viral marketing?

According to Wikiedia, Viral marketing refers to marketing techniques that use pre-existing social networks to produce exponential increases in brand awareness, through self-replicating viral processes, analogous to the spread of a computer virus. Viral marketing is a technique that avoids the annoyance of spam mail; it encourages users of a specific product or service to tell a friend. Basically, viral marketing describes any strategy that encourages individuals to pass on a marketing message to others, creating the potential for exponential growth in the message's exposure and influence.Like viruses, viral marketing strategies take advantage of rapid multiplication to explode the message to thousands, to millions.

Examples of viral marketing

YouTube is the Mecca of viral marketing. What would Paris Hilton be without it? All her pseudo-ebrity moments have been caught on tape and passed around the Internet like wild fire all thanks to YouTube.

Need other more business oriented examples of viral marketing, well look no further than those silly Vonage commercials or:

• Burger King's The Subservient Chicken
• McDonald's "McRib Farewell Tour"
• The Ring Two movie promotion used another blank-label videotape ending with www.she-is-here.com, a website where users shared their unexplainable experiences with the cursed videotape
• Snakes on a Plane's "Get a call from Samuel L. Jackson" campaign put this little known film on the path to cult classic-dom.

The hallmarks of viral marketing

1. Harnesses the power of “free” and “giving to get”

"Free" is the most powerful word in a marketer's vocabulary.  Most viral marketing programs give away valuable products, information or services to attract attention. Free e-mail services, newsletters, wallpapers, ring tones, information, "cool" buttons, software programs, e-cards, etc. Wilson's Second Law of Web Marketing is "The Law of Giving and Selling". "Cheap" or "inexpensive" may generate a wave of interest, but "free" will do it much faster. Viral marketing is about delayed gratification. You may not profit today, or tomorrow, but if you can generate a groundswell of interest from something free that will help you profit "soon and for the rest of your life." Free attracts eyeballs. Eyeballs generate leads. Leads convert to sales.

2. Easily transferred from one person to the next

Viruses only spread when they're easy to transmit. In order for your message to go viral, it has to be easy to transfer and replicate: e-mail, website, graphic, RSS feed, software download. Viral marketing works well on the Internet because web communication is instantaneous and inexpensive. The key to viral marketing is keep the message short and compelling. For example: Hotmail’s compelling and susinct viral message included at the bottom of each email is: "Get your private, free email at http://www.hotmail.com."

3. Capitalizes on human motivations and behaviors

Clever viral marketing campaigns take advantage of common human motivations. The two most common motivations are greed ad love. The hunger to be richer, more popular, more loved, and have more friends is pretty universal. Therefore, messages that promise that readers will save money, make money or grow their friend network will have the most impact.  

4. Piggy-backs on existing communication networks

By nature, people are social. We thrive in social environments and seek out community situations where we can interact with others. This is the primary reason why the social web has become so popular. Social scientists tell us that each person has a network of 8 to 12 people in their close network of friends, family, and associates. A person's broader network may consist of scores, hundreds, or even thousands of people, depending upon thier position in society. Network marketers have long understood the power of these human networks, both the strong, close networks as well as the weaker networked relationships. The Internet is particularly adept at exploiting people’s social networks through permissions emails, e-mail aggregation tools, affiliate programs and social networks like MyBlogLog, MySpace, ActiveRain and WanaNetwork. By placing your message into existing communications channels like this, you can rapidly multiply its dispersion.

5. Takes advantage of others' resources

The most creative viral marketing plans use others' resources to get the word out. Affiliate programs, for example, place text or graphic links on others' websites (example: blogtopsites). A news release or RSS feed can be picked up by hundreds of periodicals or websites and form the basis of articles seen by hundreds of thousands of readers. This is a prime example of someone else's newsprint or webpage relaying your marketing message. Someone else's resources are depleted rather than your own. This is the ideal viral marketing situation where you use other sites proliferate your brand or marketing message for you.

Example: Check out how popular the RSS Pieces Real Estate Blog Swap has gotten!

Top 10 ideas fOR real estate viral marketing:

1. Offer free services and information delivered via email

Free email marketing like newsletters, market reports and listing notifications are a great opt-in way of reaching visitors and prospects again and again.

2. Feature free personalized RSS subscriptions

Free RSS feed subscription (standard blog feature). High end blogs are starting to offer personalized RSS feed subscription where email notifications can be sent to subscribers for new listings that meet a their housing search criteria

3. Allow users to send personalized e-cards to their friends and family from your site

Let your users send free e-cards to their friends and family that use pictures of local attractions/photography, listings or the home they just bought. This is surprisingly easy to implement on any blog or website.

4. Provide an email to a friend option on listing pages

This is a great feature for couples that search homes from work and want to instantly email the listing to their spouse for review.

Example: MyRealtyBlog Listing Search

See how the listing page has an option on it to email it to a friend? You want to make going viral as easy as possible

5. Create your own reality TV show and upload it to YouTube 

You must have some funny things happen in your office- get a digital video camera and record them as short clips. Or create your own reality show of either office happenings or a local review show of area hot spots like restaurants, golf courses and beaches. You can do this kind of stuff on a shoestring budget and get incredible results. Create your own reality show with enough humor, drama and character arch to engage people. Upload them to YouTube for best results and let your brand market itself across the Internet with video viral marketing. 

6. Podcast interviews with local celebrities. 

Make sure they are funny and upbeat, and then upload them to various podcast directories. 

Read also: Ultimate guide to podcast marketing

7. Announce & Host Events

Hosting a carnival, contest or other event on your blog can drive serious interest and backlinks for your site. Be sure to always make a quality graphic to go with your event. It incites people to use it to advertise the event on their own sites. If you run a contest- make sure to issue winner graphics, most winners will post the graphic with a link to your site on their own as a badge of honor.

Example: Funniest Real Estate Story contest

Example: Real Estate Blog Swap

Read also:  What Madonna can teach you about blogging

8. Tickle the funny bone

People like edgy and funny. Try a humorous list of top 10 things to do in Town X during January. Or, let’s say you are a Florida Realtor: you could post a picture of an obsessed golfer searching for their bright orange ball under 2 feet of snow with a caption that reads “wouldn’t you rather be in St Petersburg, Florida?” People love to pass these kinds of posts on to their friends. Make sure that you provide some other valuable information about the local golf courses or an event coming to the greens near you as well. Make the post a double threat by giving the reader something to laugh about and providing quality information.

Read also: Guerrilla blogging

9. Spread a little gossip

There has to be something going on in your town that is gossip worthy. Does the PGA stop at a golf course in your town? Are there a couple of local celebrities causing a ruckus? Is a big build threatening to devalue homes in a neighborhood? You can gte this kind of info from either Google news or you local paper. Basically, if something interesting is happening in your community- talk about it. 

Read also: Pimp my blog: become a guilty pleasure and daily read

10. Get catty: start controversy

People love strife. We love to watch it and be a part of it, oddly. The hearts and rainbows, love fest blogs die because they get boring. So, create a little controversy and watch participation and new visitation climb. Controversy re-engages existing readers to invite friends and family to your site. It creates a buzz for your site. People love to be the one to say, “Did you see what so and so said on such and such blog?”  The plan is to create a "tightly knit community" and a "war" within it. The first step is to write "tutorials."  Post articles that give step by step instruction on how to prepare for a closing or stage a home for an open house, etc.  Write an article like this at least once per week to establish yourself as an expert.  This creates your "tightly knit community."  Once you have created community- engage it!  Incite strife with an article at least once per month.  People like managed strife.    Too much and it becomes uncomfortable and you become a curmudgeon, but a little helps create community. 

Read also: How to write a blog that generates leads

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