I wanted to get some ideas on what others are doing to get the word out there that they are short sale specialists. Here is what we are currently doing:

* Blogging We have a short sale blog (typepad blog), a regular area real estate blog (typepad blog), and blog on our main website.
* Website
* Stealth sites with forms (not blind, of course)
* SEO work
* PPC-having trouble finding the terms to drive sellers
* Facebook to let our networks know, through status updates, that we are focusing on helping sellers in need.
* Expired Campaign-we are in the process of testing an expired campaign, through a series of 8 regular mailings (over a month and a half) targeted to educate the seller, but the conversion numbers are very low so far so we're thinking about scrapping it.

Lately we have found it to be a lot harder to get the attention of sellers. I think this is largely because nearly every agent in the area has decided they are a short sale specialist...even if they know nothing about working short sales.

I wanted to see what others are doing that is working to get the short sale listings.

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Hi Stephanie! I find #1 is my blog fo get short sale sellers. I post my new short sale listings on AR, AR outside blog, blogger internally on my company site, wordpress and sometimes others if I have time. I post some of my approvals, but may start posting ALL of them. I got a $500,000 listing yesterday because I posted a local short sale approval. I am on PPC but feel like I am floundering on there. I am on FB, but don't use it to its fullest. What is a stealth site???

Wendy- Mentioned you post short sale approvals- what are you actually posting? Thanks

Wendy--a stealth site is where you make it about the topic, not you. I just did mine with "Coffee Cup" software and bought a cheap hosting plan with GoDaddy. Here are our short sale stealth sites:

http://www.shortsalesjacksonville.com (Just saw I need to fix the listings on the bottom. My IDX is not cooperative once the properties go into "Sold" status.)
http://www.jacksonvillepreforeclosure.com (Have gotten several listings and appointments from this one.)
http://www.distressedpropertiesjacksonville.com

I usually duplicate my posts on my typepad and main website. I wasn't sure if I would start getting into trouble with the search engines if I put them on Active Rain as well. Have you found that you can put your blog posts in multiple places and it's okay? I haven't been posting my short sale listings. I think I'll start.

With Facebook I've had a couple of "near misses" for listings lately...ie a friend told a family member about me the day after they listed. :-(


Wendy Rulnick said:
Hi Stephanie! I find #1 is my blog fo get short sale sellers. I post my new short sale listings on AR, AR outside blog, blogger internally on my company site, wordpress and sometimes others if I have time. I post some of my approvals, but may start posting ALL of them. I got a $500,000 listing yesterday because I posted a local short sale approval. I am on PPC but feel like I am floundering on there. I am on FB, but don't use it to its fullest. What is a stealth site???
Stephanie - I will check out your sites... Are they all dup content? I have not seen a problem, but read about dup content being a problem.... ALSO if you nave the time, install Share This and re-post to a dozen other spots. I don't normally hae the time, but MIXX posts can sometimes go high up in the rankings.......
No, the stealth sites are just informative sites explaining how things work. It's original content on each one. I have a blog feed going to one. I might try posting my blog posts to active rain as well and see if it looks like I'm being penalized. I'll also check out the program you suggested.
Stephanie I too have been noticing that listings are getting more difficult to get. In my area it's because inventory is way down.

I have always relied heavily on my expired listing mailer for business. I'm very interested in stealth sites. Are you building these yourself? Have you ever tried mailing to NDO lists? Or pulling late pays off of realtytrac?

Brian- I rely on Expireds also. Do you say or mail anything different for a potential short seller, from a regular expired you are contacting?  I'd like to have something specific for short sale Expireds. Thank you-

Stephanie, I have been cross posting to/from AR for years. You will not be penalized for it. It's your own content. You can also change the title a little and have the article truncated on your other blogs.

Stephanie Lim said:
No, the stealth sites are just informative sites explaining how things work. It's original content on each one. I have a blog feed going to one. I might try posting my blog posts to active rain as well and see if it looks like I'm being penalized. I'll also check out the program you suggested.
Stephanie,

Are you setting up a separate website just to get prospects (this is just one page). This is linked to your main website so that when they enter their email address it goes into your database. In exchange for their email you offer them free reports. This could be - i.e. 5 ways to Avoid Foreclose or Things you need to know before applying for bankruptcy or Will a Short Sale affect my Credit Score. You are looking for people who need help and by offering them solutions you have a better chance of them contacting you. As you say there are lots of agents out there saying they are experts, so you need to show them that you are in fact the Expert.
You can also set up a separate web page for buyers interested in short sales and REO and again offer them free reports in exchange for their contact information.
Hope this helps
Sharon
Bryant--don't know how I missed this before. I read your next post to me and responded. Sorry about that.

I AM building my stealth sites myself. I use Coffee Cup software from www.coffeecup.com. The one I build the sites with is the Visual Site Designer. It's WYSIWYG...as easy as drawing it out on paper. I publish it to GoDaddy. I have one hosting account and I can put multiple sites on it with multiple domain names. There is no need to buy multiple hosting accounts. I also use the Web Form Builder from the Coffee Cup suite. I use this to create my response forms and can make them as simple or elaborate as I want...once again WYSIWYG. I upload them to the same GoDaddy hosting account. It sounds far more complicated than it is. Once you've done it once...it's easy after that. :-) I can help you through it if you decide to try it.

We've done the NOD list on and off. Think we tried RealtyTrac for a bit too. At that time I think anyone and everyone who was interested in short sales was doing that so the sellers were getting tons of mail. It might be good to try my campaign I've been using for the expireds, tweaked a little bit, for the NOD list.

I really want to figure out how to capture more internet leads since you can set it and forget it. I really don't mind blogging at all, but I have to do it when I'm not all bummed out about stalled files. :-)

Bryant Tutas said:
Stephanie I too have been noticing that listings are getting more difficult to get. In my area it's because inventory is way down.

I have always relied heavily on my expired listing mailer for business. I'm very interested in stealth sites. Are you building these yourself? Have you ever tried mailing to NDO lists? Or pulling late pays off of realtytrac?
I have the stealth sites to capture prospects. I think this is what you are referring to. These are linked and after they fill out a lead capture form it redirects them to my main site. I used to have the free reports and require sign up but found that didn't work so well in this market although I'm not sure why. Now I'm of the school of thought that believes that you just give them a lot of info on the site, and blog regularly, and that will set you up as the expert and they will come to you. So my "free reports" are now essentially in the content of my website. I know there are strong proponents of both methods and I have flip-flopped over time on this issue. :-)

Sharon Senger said:
Stephanie,

Are you setting up a separate website just to get prospects (this is just one page). This is linked to your main website so that when they enter their email address it goes into your database. In exchange for their email you offer them free reports. This could be - i.e. 5 ways to Avoid Foreclose or Things you need to know before applying for bankruptcy or Will a Short Sale affect my Credit Score. You are looking for people who need help and by offering them solutions you have a better chance of them contacting you. As you say there are lots of agents out there saying they are experts, so you need to show them that you are in fact the Expert.
You can also set up a separate web page for buyers interested in short sales and REO and again offer them free reports in exchange for their contact information.
Hope this helps
Sharon
Website and Referrals are where most of our leads come in. We run ads in Craigslist and door knock the sheriff's auction list also. I like the door knocking because you are face to face and people can get to know you. We leave a brochure with our contact and website info.

http://www.freeshortsalehelp.com - if you wanted to check out our site.

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