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Health & Fitness

Referring to Success

Don't cook the books to show a profit! Cook up some revenue the easy way!

 

Find out what's happening in Norristownwith free, real-time updates from Patch.

Don't cook your books to show a profit! Cook up some revenue the easy way.

 

Find out what's happening in Norristownwith free, real-time updates from Patch.

How many calendar magnets from local realtors do you find in your mailbox during the December holidays? I could cover my entire refrigerator with the ones I’ve received in just recent years. Do you ever wonder why realtors send you a calendar magnet for Christmas?

 

It’s because they want you to think of them every day, or nearly every day.

 

If you are a realtor, or a small business owner or entrepreneur, you are no doubt always concerned with acquiring new and more clients. Coaches, webinars, and workshops abound to teach you how to do so. But there are a few basic tips you can employ at no charge that will help you begin or improve your client flow.

 

First and foremost you must have a presence so potential clients can find you. If you don’t already have a website, there are many free, user-friendly platforms you can use to quickly create one. If you seek a national following try WordPress, Blogger, or Weebly. But businesses seeking local followings can often use hyperlocal newspapers such as the Patch. It has about 900 outlets in 23 states across the country and offers free blog sites.

 

Once you’ve developed your platform be sure to feed it! One of the best ways to be found by search engines is to publish new content regularly. If you don’t have the time, skills, or desire to do it yourself find established content generators who can write knowledgably about your area of expertise.

 

Use social media that fit your business. LinkedIn can be your best friend for promoting traditional business services. But Twitter, Facebook, Pinterest, and Instagram work well for businesses selling products. Promoting your business through social media can be time consuming. Hootsuite offers a free service through which you can pre-schedule posts for 5 social media platforms. I’ve used it for Twitter and for Facebook, and it helped to keep me on track.

 

But I really didn’t like spending so much time finding content to tweet and pin. And like many people, I’m growing tired of all the hashtags. If you feel the same way find a college student in your home, neighborhood, or through a local college or university to do it for you. Many will do it for the resume credentials alone. I used to pay a student “tweeter” per follower acquired, but I’ve found that college communications and social media departments will offer credit to students who do social media development for local businesses at no cost to me! Some professors love to give “real-world” assignments to their students.

 

Having lots of followers can make you feel great. But once you’ve got them how do you convert them to clients? 

 

You become indispensible to them. This can be accomplished by making yourself the go-to authority in your area of expertise and the best way to do this is to stay in front of potential clients as frequently as possible supplying helpful information and tools to make their lives easier.

 

And that takes us back to all of those refrigerator magnet calendars. Every time you look at one, the realtor’s name appearing on it lodges into your brain—which is excellent subliminal advertising for those who are still looking at paper or magnet-based calendars. Unfortunately for the magnet manufacturers, and the realtors giving them out, more and more of us default to electronic calendars in our phones and computers because that is also where we store our schedules.

 

A more powerful way to stay in front of potential clients is to find a useful tool that stores in their smart devices, which they will consult almost daily. This leaves calendars out because they are standard features on smartphones and computers.

 

Find more information about how to make this happen for your business here!

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