Huh! Go figure, I found out I may be distantly related to an alleged murderer on the FBI’s Wanted list. They just nabbed the guy overseas. The FBI wants him back. They’re going through extradition now for the come-uppance.

I know, you’re thinking, "Is Mel goin’ over the edge? What’s this got to do with real estate?"

—– continued —–

Well, it’s the "getting there" is what’s related.

One of my siblings asked me how was it I came across such a tidbit of information sitting way out in left field? One word, Google Alerts. (One… two… Well, okay, two words.)

Wouldn’t you agree that it would be prudent for real estate professionals, as business owners, to keep their finger on the pulse of what’s going on around them? If you’re out and about and you’re visible to your customers and clients — as you should be — I imagine you’re making some kind of an impression. Depending on the effectiveness of your campaigns, how you network, where you add your voice, or the quality of your customer touch points, I further imagine your hope is that folks will remember you. And if that impression is strong enough, they’ll write about you. Good or bad, if they write something, wouldn’t you want to know?

Have you ever Googled your name or the name of your business? If you haven’t tried it, I’d recommend it. It’s an interesting experience. Now, certainly, if you remember to, you can go in and Google yourself every couple of weeks. But I’d say that if you have any kind of online presence, or, let’s say you blog fairly regularly, then it’s possible someone may quote you, or comment about your service, or reference something you’re affiliated with. When that happens — good or bad — an opportunity opens up. You have an opportunity to reinforce a message or mitigate it.

Let’s say someone posts a blog article and comments about something you’ve written, something you did or something or someone you’re related to. If favorable, reinforce it with your own comment of a simple "thank you," or an offer of additional information. If it’s unfavorable, you have an opportunity to set the record straight. And, it might even help your search ranking. Who knows?

As fast as things move today, waiting for two weeks to go by before discovering these things with a "manual" search may be too late to be effective. So, an alternative to doing a manual search is to set up an "alert" on a search engine such as Google’s. By setting up an alert, you can let the search engine do the work for you.

Simply set it up with keywords you want to look for (hint: include quotes around your name to make sure the engine gets the literal spelling, i.e., "John Smith" or "John Smith Brokerage"). Once setup is complete, let it run. When it finds something, it’ll e-mail you a headline with a link to the site on which those keywords are found.

I’d love to hear comments about other favorite tools some of you use to manage information overload. If I get enough of them, I’ll be happy to post a summary in a future post. Or, if you want to blog about this article, go ahead and quote me. It’s okay…I’ll know.

Thinking of your success,

Mel