Does Your Social Media Mislead?

Provided By KW Blog
Published By Julie Lane

Are your social media marketing efforts infringing on a corporate trademark? If your marketing efforts are confusing customers—if they are misled to believe that you are affiliated with a known brand because of your URL, Twitter or Facebook name—then you could be liable. At the heart of the matter is an effort to fool customers.

Start by looking at your URL. If you have chosen a URL for your Web site or your blog that is similar to a large corporation, you could be infringing on a trademark—and you could lose your domain name.

Surprisingly, even some large corporations haven’t yet claimed their name in the social media world, including Facebook fan page names and Twitter handles. But that doesn’t mean you can cybersquat on it to win followers or traffic to your sites.

You may build a fast following, but you’ll lose it overnight if the corporation files a Uniform Domain Name Dispute with the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, or files a trademark complaint with the social networking site in question.

You can check on the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office’s online database to determine if a name is trademarked. You can also do a Google search for similar domain names and check to see if there are companies with the name you want to use. Where there are trademarks, it’s wise to choose another domain name.

You can also get into trouble using a corporate trademark in your Meta Tags. The Meta Tag is a code embedded in your Web page that helps search engines identify the content. This issue is finding its way into courts because it drives consumers to your Web site when they are really looking for your competitor’s Web site.

Finally, an emerging area of trademark infringement online is in the area of keyword advertising. You can infringe on a brand’s intellectual property rights if you bid on trademark protected words in your Google ad campaigns. The safest way to avoid a trademark suit in this area is to avoid using a competing real estate company’s name in your keyword campaign, either by bidding on the term or by using it in the ad copy.

Why Some Houses Sit While Other Houses Sell

Provided By KW Blog
Published By Jay Papasan

Even in the hardest hit markets, there are still properties priced well enough and in good enough condition to interest buyers. Those houses attract offers and sell. Houses that aren’t priced and staged competitively sit. It’s not complicated. It’s really that simple.

For your house to stand out from the crowd, you’ll have to listen to what buyers are telling you and make sure your house is priced well enough and in good enough condition to stand out from the competition. Here’s a quick video explaining how it works. Good luck!

Are You Holding Yourself Back?

Published by Alexis MacIntyre
Provided By KW Blog

Profit share offers unlimited income potential. But it requires unlimited thinking. When I first joined Keller Williams, I had one strong limiting belief around growing my profit share tree. I was afraid to come off like I was “selling” the company. As I’ve grown within KW, I’ve internalized a deep appreciation for our family and I’ve recognized that growing my profit share tree has absolutely nothing to do with selling KW. It’s about attracting talent.

Yes, growth is important to Keller Williams. We’re proud of this! If growing our company wasn’t important to us, what kind of business stakeholders would be? By the way, profit is important to us as well. But we are, first and foremost, a talent company. We are about attracting talent to provide extraordinary service to buyers and sellers. We are also about growing talent – and, most importantly, committed and gifted leaders. A company filled with talent attracts talent. Lots of talent equals lots of customers and lots of homes bought and sold. Lots of homes bought and sold equals lots of profit. And in a company that shares almost half of its owners’ profit? Well, that means more profit share dollars given to those associates who help grow the company!

If you want to grow a profit share tree and enjoy passive income, just spend more time getting to know the people who are talent around you. There is a quote that sticks with me, by novelist Alexander Solzhenitsyn, “Talent is always conscious of its own abundance, and does not object to sharing.” This philosophy is our soul. We share our models, our systems, our time and our owner profits. Our associates who earn profit share internalize this at a deep level. They build relationships with talented people who they’d like to be in business with and invite them to experience KW.

So remove your limiting beliefs. When you know that Keller Williams is an amazing place to be, it’s easy to grow your tree. Simple, really. People are honored to be recognized as someone who others want to be in business with. Admittedly, it can sometimes take time, but the long-term rewards can be astonishing. If you find talent and that talent feels like Keller Williams is the right fit for them, it’s a mutual win.

By the way, I’m continuing every day to work on my limiting beliefs around profit share. One of the first steps I took was to complete the exercise on page 19 of the Wealth Building Workshop: Profit Share guide–I’ve written down all the things that I love and appreciate about KW so that when I speak to someone about an opportunity with our company, I can focus on what’s most important to my heart.

What’s your limiting belief around profit share and what are you doing to remove it?

The Big Picture and YOU

Published By Gary Keller
Provided By KW Blog

I learned long ago that being steeped in the business of real estate does not necessarily translate into grasping the big picture. So I made a commitment to digging beneath the surface and understanding the critical interactions that drive the real estate market. As I did so, I realized how hungry my clients were for solid information.

I’ve never lost my fascination for the facts behind the headlines, and today, I believe that Keller Williams Realty’s sharp focus on research is central to what sets us apart as a company.

Nearly every client enters into a conversation about buying or selling a home with a lot of preconceived notions and anecdotal information. It’s our job to be knowledgeable of the actual facts and to step up as the local economist of choice. That’s what our clients are looking to us for, and it’s the basis for the trust they place in us.

But having walked several miles in your shoes, we recognize that in-depth research probably doesn’t fall in your “20 percent.” In fact, most agents aren’t trained to conduct the kind of analysis that the KW Research team is known for. So this year, we’ve compiled the results of our most recent research studies into the KW Market Navigator: Vision and Opportunities.

It’s filled with facts, stats and perspectives (see the example below or click here for a sneak peek) that you can draw from on a daily basis. And believe it or not, it’s fun to read.

Of course any observations on my part concerning the importance of research and market statistics would not be complete without my overriding perspective on the topic: The market determines the number of people who will be successful, not which ones. You get to decide if you’ll be one.

(KW agents can click here to order the KW Market Navigator)

Distressed Properties: Seek the Education

KWUs new self-study guides will help you tackle Tactic 11 of SHIFT: How Top Real Estate Agents Tackle Tough Times: "Listing REOs," "Working with Buyers," "Listing Short Sales." Each is packed with vital information and exercises to help you succeed in markets of the moment.