Yesterday I attended a meetup featuring Peter Shankman. It was an informative and entertaining experience that I would recommend to anyone interesting in social networking. He said that each day we receive about 17,000 requests for our attention. The average persons attention span is about 2.6 seconds. What is your strategy to snag your customer in the 2.6 seconds he is looking at your website? Fill in the info box at the right and we can discuss some possibilities.
http://www.youtube.com/user/probusinessblogs?feature=mhum
What Are Your Customers Saying About Your Business?
Our job is to get customers to your local business and we do it very well. Is your website or blog,old, stale, or unproductive. Let’s talk!
I’m coaching a real estate investment student who is also a Realtor. He gave me his website URL and after our session was finished I went to his site. For a minute I thought I had made a typo and ended up on the wrong page. After searching the site I found his name and email address in a corner (small print) but the only way to find who he worked for was to click on a box that led me to his broker’s company web site. Then I had to go to the pull down menu to see the agents. My student was 13th on a list of 15. There were no pictures of the agents until I clicked on each individual name. About 5 of the 13 agents had a picture. Some had a little blurb. All of them had a link to a personal website. In real life I would probably never have searched past the first four or five agents. When I finally did get to my student’s information it linked back to the same page I had started on. At that point I asked my wife to tell me who’s site this was. It took her a couple of minutes to pick out the agent’s name. What a shame. His chance of getting a customer through the company’s website or his own were about as good as a snowball lasting 30 minutes in a hot Arizona sun. If you are not blogging and branding yourself on the search engines and through the social networking sites you may be extinct before you know your business has died. Brand yourself, blog yourself, and win. 
Got the Mama Donna Buns video edited. It’s long but I don’t think we can edit any more out or the magic will be gone.
I’m sitting in my home office looking out the window at huge flakes of snow falling. The scene reminds me of a phrase we used in some meetings we put on for friends and neighbors, and some their friends and neighbors as we started our real estate investment business in California. These people had observed some of the trappings of our quick success – ie new Corvette, new boat, new Mercedez, and they wanted to hop aboard the train. We talked a little about the economy and then outlined some of the basic reasons real estate was a sound investment. A frequent question was, “Where do I get the money?” My answer was often, “Unlock your frozen equity.” Then I would give them my personal example.
In 1967 we bought a new 3100 square foot, 5 bedroom, 3 bath home, 3 car garage home for $40,000. It had increased in value and in 1975 we refinanced it through our friendly banker. We pulled out around $37,000 and usedthat to live on, to start our business, and to buy rental properties. Even though values have dipped almost everywhere in the country many people still have equity sufficient to launch them into real estate investing. A HELOC (home equity line of credit) is something to talk about with your banker and it could be your launch pad to success. We can talk more about the types of HELOCs on the next post. Right now I want to get out and make a snowman.
Just bought a new Canon Vixia HG40 Camcorder to take some quality video to post on my blog and YouTube. I already have the lights, tripod, and mikes. I lined one corner of the office with white board to write on and as background. Now if I can just get the camera away from Donna I’ll start using it myself. She has been filming grandchildren decorating graham cracker houses for two nights. We can’t get them all in the kitchen at one time.
So far she has made chocolate chip cookies, caramels, fudge, almond chocolates, her famous cinnamon rolls (Mama Donnas’ Buns), and Scottish short bread. Then she tells me not to eat any of it because I’m gaining back the weight I lost this summer. I can’t figure her out. She loves this time of year. We will be putting a 12 pound prime rib roast in the oven a little later today for a neighborhood “Threshold Dinner” this evening. The idea is to get better acquainted with people we don’t know very well.
If anyone wants the recipe for the cinnamon rolls email dickpexton@gmail.com. We’ve always called them Mama Donnas’ Buns. Do you like Mama Donnas’ Cinnamon Knots better?
Happy Holidays!!!
Mama Donna
