Those who have been in the commercial real estate industry for any amount of time know it lags the business cycle. Nobody gauges the economy by what commercial real estate is doing. Commercial real estate brokers, investors, and principals watch the economy, knowing that whatever happens there will be coming down the pike a year or two later for commercial real estate. It’s a frustrating way of life, but commercial real estate professionals have learned to deal with it.

Savvy commercial real estate investors always seek advice and counsel when it comes to making investment decisions. That said, all “experts” are not created equal – Those investors who have access to better, more timely information provided by more sophisticated advisors simply have an edge. So here are a few questions to ponder: How broad is your sphere of influence? Who are the “experts” you’re seeking advice from? What if I told you that you could have real-time, 24-7-365 access to the world’s best practitioners in every aspect of commercial real estate, and that this unfettered access was free – would you be interested?

To continue reading Vincent’s post, or any of his others on his blog, visit The Sentinel Realty Blogosphere.  Vincent is based in Chicago and represents properties nationally.

“Most entrepreneurs still don’t know how to use Twitter. They still think it’s a social network to update their friends on the current state of their pets or the lines at Starbucks. For entrepreneurs, Twitter is the ultimate marketing platform, and they need to embrace tools like Tweetdeck, CoTweet and Objective Marketer.” –Guy Kawasaki, founding partner and entrepreneur-in-residence at Garage Technology Ventures. He is also the co-founder of Alltop.com. Previously he was an Apple Fellow at Apple Computer.

“The common reputation of Twitter is that it’s frivolous, which isn’t the case. If it’s set up right, it’s a rich environment of lots of learning and sharing of important material. It’s not just ‘what I had for breakfast.’” –Lee Rainie, director of the Pew Research Centers’ Internet and American Life Project, as quoted in the Baltimore Sun

Drive traffic to your website. Twitter pairs nicely with your content marketing efforts. Whether you write a blog, run webinars, produce a newsletter, or create video or podcasts, Twitter can help you distribute your thought leading content and drive traffic to your site. When linking to your site, use provocative headlines to grab attention and improve clicks (the fifth most effective tactic). But beware: the least successful tactic is driving direct sales. Sales come from relationships. Twitter can and does help build and foster these relationships, but it can’t do the selling for you. (via HubSpot’s Inbound Internet Marketing Blog)

Today, Entrepreneur.com posted an article that talks to some successful ghostwriters, how they work, and what they charge.  One blogger points out:

“Ghostwriting can have a seedy appearance: Somebody you’ve hired is pretending to be you,” says Katie Gutierrez Painter, a writer in Austin, Texas. “Before I started, I saw it the same way. But you need to look at it from the business, branding and marketing standpoint. It’s just outsourcing an employee to work under the name of the company.”

And what are they charging?

Ghost rates vary, but generally, it costs far less to create a ghosted blog or Twitter account than to launch a traditional PR campaign. McCord charges $18 to $32 per blog post, and $150 to $500 a month for multiple daily tweets. Lindsay Manfredi, a social media strategist in Indianapolis, charges $75 to $100 for a blog post, a fee that includes research, writing and editing.

Click HERE to read the full article.

And, if you have been considering working social networking into your marketing strategy but aren’t sure how to take the first step, or want to contract someone to handle the management of this for you, Contact Us!

Social Media Savvy

One of the most important parts of setting up a blog is Search Engine Optimization (SEO). SEO for a blog is different than SEO for static websites, mainly because of the social nature of blogging technology. It is less about buying links or tricking inadequate search technology. SEO for blogs is more focused on the technical infrastructure of your site, and your ability to write creative articles that are noteworthy for others to read and link to.

Why bother with SEO? If you want to get more exposure for your blog, Search Engine Optimization can make a huge difference. It can bring 10,000 visitors to your site compared to the 100 that you were getting. Therefore if you are thinking about getting organic traffic from search engines at no cost, implement the certain techniques can take it to the next level.  The techniques simply require a bit of the investment of time.

Click HERE for a detailed guide on how to optimize SEO for Wordpress blogs.

Again, blogging is a FREE tool, and is very easy to configure. We integrate a Twitter feed on all blogs so readers have an opportunity to follow your feed.

Click HERE for information on Search Engine Optimization (SEO) and blogs.