Here are some recent Twitter Tweets  related to home staging I noted today. If you use twitter for home staging, please leave a comment about how its going for you in the comment section.

By sunriseled at 06/18/2010 21:56

By usacommunity at 06/18/2010 21:18

By UnitedCarolina at 06/18/2010 20:54

By StagedByGabi at 06/18/2010 20:11

By DeanaStyle at 06/18/2010 19:18

By LivingAirpurifi at 06/18/2010 19:55

By talkshoppetn at 06/18/2010 18:43

By CrazRealEstate at 06/18/2010 16:37

By home_stagingGA at 06/18/2010 15:15

Technorati Tags: Home Staging, home stager, home staging tips, twitter, twitter tweets,

Technorati Tags: home stager, Home Staging, Home Staging tips, Twitter, Twitter Tweets

You Tube has grown rapidly to the point that it is one of the dominant sites online. Google loves video and tying video to your Home Staging Blog is a natural. And its actually quite easy.

We won’t go into the how to today, but will show a handful of YouTube videos relating to home staging. Now tell the truth didn’t you always want to star in the movies. See how these home stagers are doing it.

Staging Your Home to Sell for Top Dollar

Home Staging Tips for Top Dollar Sale of your Home by Susan Botticelli, Realtor, Broker and Home Staging Expert. Susan specializes in residential sales in the Rancho San Diego area of El Cajon, California. Visit www.RanchoSanDiegoLifestyle.com or cal…

Home Staging TIps: Living Room Staging Ideas

Stage your living to attract homebuyers. Living Room’s are often the first space that a homebuyer views when walking through the front door. First impressions are crucial when selling your home. Start with a blank canvas and start removing everything…

Home Staging – Curb Appeal

You’ve got only a few seconds to make a good first impression when selling your home and it starts at the curb. If you’re putting your house up for sale, curb appeal can increase the value of your home and help it sell more quickly. Follow these tips…

Home staging – the master bedroom

Staging has, of late, taken on increasing importance in real estate marketing. Several weeks ago Prudential Rubloff agent Francesca Rose and I shot video of a unit at ParkView Condominiums prior to its being staged. The transformation, as you can see…

Home Staging, Washington DC : See A Vacant Home Staged From Scratch

www.redhousestaging.com Red House Style is a TV show from Washington DC’s to staging company Red House Staging & interiors.Hosted by Tracy Griffin – In episode 1 you’ll see how they transform a vacant loft apartment in downtown DC into a breath takin…

Home stagers are using video to tell the story, establish their own credibility and showcase their skill. You can do the same with your cell phone or an inexpensive flip camera.

Technorati Tags: home staging, home stagers, video, flip camera, youtube

Technorati Tags: flip camera, home stagers, Home Staging, Video, youtube

The Benefits Of Home Staging.

One of the hottest trends to sell a home today is home staging, an interior decorating technique for making the most of your home’s attributes and making it more appealing to the widest array of potential buyers. Home staging has been known to boost home sales prices, as well as quicken the amount of time the home stays on the market. But the question is – What is the pricing for home staging-and is it worth it?

Preparing Your Home for Sale.

Most sellers realize the importance of cleaning up their home before putting it on the market. Things like fixing leaky sinks, mending cracks in the walls and completing other minor repairs are also pretty standard. These things are often good to do, and, in many ways, are considered forms of “staging,” or preparing your home for sale.

What Do Home Stagers Do?

There are professionals, however, who will go above and beyond what most homeowners think of when they go to sell their house. While decorating is geared toward the owner, Home Staging is aimed first and foremost at pleasing the biggest possible number of buyers. For a fee, these home stagers will come into your home and use your existing items. Or, bring in items that add that special touch to complete a room and make your house as attractive as possible. Home staging costs often include moving around, removing or adding furniture and adding tasteful artwork or other decoration to make your home really shine.

Staging – Is It Worth It?

The main benefit of hiring a professional to stage your home is that they will look at your surroundings with an experienced, tasteful and objective buyer’s eye. They won’t be attached to a souvenir plate collection, like the homeowner would. They will be able to come in and tell you which items should be removed, what should be added, and how best to feature your home.

While home staging may seem like an unnecessary expense, there probably isn’t a single house that couldn’t benefit from a bit of carefully manipulated staging. Only a mere 10% of home buyers can actually visualize living in your home, or your homes hidden potential. This is why having a vacant home staged is so important. Buyers cannot visualize size and scale, so furniture helps to give them a frame of reference.

Why Can’t I Just Stage My Own Home?

Home owners have gotten used to the way their home looks and in fact it is difficult emotionally to change it. If you can’t view something objectively then you are unable to market and package it effectively. Not to mention, most home sellers don’t stage homes everyday for a living. Staging is more than a “to-do” list, de-cluttering, and painting. Its about decorating a home for potential buyers. Home Stagers, rearrange, shop the home, and pull items from other rooms, to create a whole new look to rooms. It takes a designers eye, to pull the rooms together. And often, suggestions and changes from professionals can amount to significant increases in the bottom line profit when selling your home.

Will My House Sell If It’s Not Staged?

Eventually, every house will sell…it’s just a matter of when and for how much. Even if your house sells quickly in a good market, it doesn’t mean it sold for the amount it would have sold for had it been professionally staged.

How Much Does Home Staging Cost?

Having your home staged, doesn’t cost a fortune. It’s the most inexpensive way to achieve the most dramatic and profitable results. Home staging pricing runs from $200+ depending on the market you’re in. According to a 2003 Survey, by Home Gain, statistics showed an average of a 6+% increase in the final sales price on homes that had been staged, versus those that had not. On a $300,000 home, that’s a $18,000 increase! And well worth the low cost of home staging fees.

To find out how to best showcase your home for sale, contact a home staging professional or your local realtor. Many realtor’s will even offer home staging services as part of their listing package, so be sure to ask if that’s something they offer, or if they can recommend someone in the industry. If you’re willing to put out a bit of money up front, you just might find that the benefits from staging your home can greatly outweigh home staging costs. In the end, Home Staging is really a no risk, win-win situation for everyone involved!

Cindy Bryant – Owner of Redesign Etc. a Home Staging & Interior Redesign Service. Serving Houston’s Bay & Gulf Coast. Featured on ABC Houston, The Houston Chronicle, Live Talk Radio, and author.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Cindy_Bryant

Technorati Tags: Home Staging, home staging cost, Does home staging work, what do home stagers do, benefits of home staging, preparing your home for sale, preparing my home for sale

Technorati Tags: benefits of home staging, Does home staging work, Home Staging, home staging cost, preparing my home for sale, preparing your home for sale, what do home stagers do

Have you ever heard a real estate agent say that “It’s a buyer’s world out there”? The sentiment rings true because due to the economic problems that the United States and the rest of the world has experienced for the past few years, the housing industry has also sank to record lows. While things are still getting back to normal as far as the real estate industry is concerned, how can homesellers make sure that they are still getting top dollar for the residential real estate property that they selling? How can homebuyers get the best value for their hard-earned bucks? This is where home staging comes in.

Here, we will take a look at the reasons why home staging is necessary when selling or buying a home, and also enumerate the top tips on how you can stage your home in such a way that your home buying or home selling goals will be met.

Why is Home Staging Important in the First Place?

So why is home staging important in the first place? Experienced real estate agents would know this: staged homes sell twice as fast as a hastily prepared house prior to selling. Again, this is a buyer’s market that we are talking about so if you are a home seller and you do not exert enough of an effort to make sure that buyers will be interested in purchasing your home, then it might stay in the market for quite a long time.

Another reason why home staging is necessary is simple: staged homes sell for more money. If a real estate property for sales sits on the market for a long time, the seller will usually get lower offers because buyers think that there is something wrong with the property that you are selling. If you want the selling process to be over and done with quickly, you need to make sure to stage it properly.

Next, no matter which part of the house it is that you stage – be it your porch, kitchen or living room – these will have an instant impact to a potential buyer. When potential buyers drive over to your home, make sure that they will be enticed enough to actually get out of the car and get a closer look, rather than just driving by. More importantly, staged homes attract real estate agents; they get more advertising; they can be appraised for top dollar; and it helps you as a seller to speed up your move.

Staging Your Home to be Sold for Top Dollar

Now that you already have a basic idea about the importance of home staging from both the buyer’s and the seller’s perspective, how about when you are a seller? How can you make sure that the way that you are staging your home is good enough for it to be sold at premium value, despite the economic crunch?

It all boils down to how staging your home will make an impact to a potential buyer. To help you out, here are a few home staging tips that you need to keep in mind if you want to sell your house for top dollar:

1. Learn what home staging is all about.
Simply put, home staging is a cost-effective way of enticing home buyers to purchase your home. It’s all about getting a potential buyer to imagine how it is to live within the walls of your home, or beautify the existing garden even more. The basics, however, involve decluttering and cleaning the premises. Make sure to get rid of all the personal clutter like family portraits. Even if those things have a sentimental value for you, a buyer would want to have his or her own family portrait in the living room – not yours.

Remember that home staging is all about teasing a buyer’s imagination so that living in the house in the future would seem like a viable prospect.

2. Remember that home staging is more than decorating.
After decluttering your home from all the personal effects, you can use strategic decorations such as mirrors to make a room appear larger, for example, but home staging goes beyond that. Make sure that whatever furniture’s left is artfully arranged to highlight a focal point in the room. Upgrade accessories if you need to. Naturally, you should have already attended to the needed repairs and fresh paint is always necessary.

3. Do to the exterior what you are doing with the interior of your home.
Sometimes, all it takes is the sight of a white picket fence to entice a buyer to purchase your home. Make sure that the exterior is as inviting as the inside of your house. Replace any dead plants, trim the lawn and add a few outdoor furniture if you have to or go for strategic lighting to highlight the features of the house’s exterior.

On average, a staged home sells twice as fast as the average home on the market. In addition to speeding up the selling process, taking the time and effort to properly stage your home will greatly increase its asking price. It wouldn’t even matter if you take the economic crunch into factor. Generally, a staged home has a better selling value as compared to a run-of-the-mill, freshly painted home.

How to Use Marketing or Design Psychology to Up Your Home’s Value

There is one more important factor that you need to take into account when it comes to home staging. What you can do is combine marketing and design psychology so that the value of the house that you are selling will increase. When creating flyers, for example, create a copy which goes straight to the heart. Instead of saying that the large backyard has a built-in barbecue grill, indicate that the property has a ‘private backyard park with a built-in barbecue where you can entertain your friends.”

At the end of the day, being a home seller or a home buyer requires some effort on your part so that you can go about proper home staging. By doing so, you can sell your home to your target market at top dollar if you are a home seller; and get the best value for your real estate property if you are a home buyer.

Let the Mark Z Home Selling Team help you find your next dream home… Are you looking for Bank Owned Homes in Michigan? How about Commerce MI Real Estate or homes in Oakland County. For more information you can contact us at 248.937.1337.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Mark_Z

Technorati Tags: Home Staging, de-cluttering, design psychology, staged homes

Technorati Tags: de-cluttering, design psychology, Home Staging, Staged Homes

Here is another in my series of articles from Home Stagers who have learned how to drive traffic and back links to their sites by article marketing.

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Home Staging – Why It Works

With the popularity of home staging television shows, many are wondering if staging works in the “real world.” Home staging is more than just good entertainment on a Saturday afternoon, it is a proven technique that sells homes in Hollywood and across the country.

HOME STAGING DESCRIPTION: Home staging is the art of preparing your house for sale by highlighting the home’s features through furniture arrangement, accent placement, and color choices. An Accredited Staging Professional is a real estate expert that performs an objective evaluation of a property to determine any obstacles that may hinder buyer interest in your home. Staging is not decorating. Home staging involves using interior design principles and marketing strategies to best represent your home.

WHY STAGING WORKS: Home staging works because a properly staged house is a house shown at its best condition. Each room contains important design elements: highlighted focal points, proper furniture placement to create a larger space and smooth traffic patterns, tasteful color selections on walls and through home decor, and properly placed home accents. All these principles working together create an atmosphere that triggers buyers’ emotions, causing them to fall in love with the home.

In a staged home, buyers will see that:

* Staged homes look well cared for: staging addresses updating the home’s decor while working within the home owner’s budget.
* Staged homes are uncluttered: staging involves removing excess items so buyers can see the home’s features.
* Staged homes have a pleasant atmosphere: staging displays the best furniture layout for your home, highlighting the focal points and creating easy pathways around the furniture.
* Staged homes appeal to a wider range of buyers: staging neutralizes a homes decor, giving it a model house-like appeal, thus attracting more buyers.

These elements help to generate buyer interest causing wonderful side-effects

HOME STAGING SIDE EFFECTS (BENEFITS):

1. Higher Asking Price: Statistically, homes that have been staged command higher asking prices than non-staged homes, because the house is in top showing condition.
2. Faster Sale Time: Statistically, staged houses sell in one-third time than non-staged houses
3. Greater Rate of Return: Statistically, the investment in staging is returned to the homeowner when their house sells. The average rate of return is about 120%. For example, if a home owner invested $500 in staging their house, they are likely to receive $560 back from the sale of their home through fewer (if any) price reductions or from an increase in asking price.

HOME STAGING STATISTICS:

Staged homes sell quicker than non-staged houses…

* Nationwide, staged home is on the market for an average of 31.9 days
* Nationwide, non-staged home is on the market around 160 days
* 93% of ASP homes sell within one month
* This could mean the difference between days and months!
* For complete statistics visit the Staged Homes Website

Staging is a win-win situation. The sellers win because their houses are sold in a shorter amount of time compared to a non-staged homes, and the real estate agents win because their listing sell faster than agents who don’t recommend staging. Results do not lie. Story after story has been told of how staging made the difference in the sale of a home.

For more information on staging or to view gallery photos of staging projects visit: www.kfmstaging.com.

Kristina, owner of KFM Staging & Design, is an Accredited Staging Professional and has been working with Realtors, builders, and homeowners in the Twin Cities for over ten years. KFM Staging & Design specializes in consulting as a real estate expert, performing vacant and occupied staging services, and working with re-design clients.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Kristina_Mosloski

Technorati Tags: Home Staging, Staging, selling houses,

Technorati Tags: Home Staging, selling houses, Staging

If you have followed my postings for any length of time, You will be aware that I am an advocate for using Squidoo as a source of traffic and in particular high ranked backlinks to your web site.

I’m so positive on Squidoo, I’ve even published a book on the site. You can get it here: Squidoo Basics If I say so myself its a bargain at $17 and could go a long way toward helping you establish your web site on Google and the rest of the search engines.

I’ve discovered though, that most people are either too busy or too lazy to go from reading the information to actually doing it.  Now I have been asked to do it for others, but that isn’t the type of work I am really looking for. I prefer not to trade my time for dollars.  But it is clearly what a lot of people are looking for – someone to do it for them.

My buddy, Bill McRea who also appreciates the power of Squidoo, however has found a person who is not only willing to create sites for other people, she is a master at it.  And she is willing to do it for far less than I would charge if you could talk me into doing it for you.

https://mcrea.infusionsoft.com/go/WBSL/EarlNetw

If you are going to get you web site to the top of the search engines in your market, you need to do more than put up a web site and hope people will find it.

One of your best options is to create a Squidoo page and link that to your site.  Sometimes you will find that your Squidoo page will actually rank higher than your own page.  And while that can be a bit frustrating, it gets you noticed, and that in turn leads to business.

https://mcrea.infusionsoft.com/go/WBSL/EarlNetw

Technorati Tags: home staging, squidoo, squidoo help, search engine ranking, Earl Netwal, Bill McRae

Technorati Tags: Home Staging, search engine ranking, squidoo, squidoo help

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Kristina_Mosloski

Technorati Tags: Home Staging, Picking a Stager, Realtor, Staged Homes, Kristina Mosloski

Technorati Tags: Home Staging, Kristina Mosloski, Picking a Stager, Realtor, Staged Homes

Here is another in my series of eZine articles demonstrating the type of material that you could also produce in article of your own. As homestagers you are likely able to come up with your own list of the five biggest don’t do’s you have encountered or heard about in your career. Write them down in 300 to 600 words or so and put them on eZine articles and other article directories. Include a reference box at the bottom that links back to your web site. This will give you “Google Juice” and start establishing you as an expert article writer, and home stager. The article below was written by Teri B Clark, and while she is a professional writer, I bet you could have written the article below, and maybe an even better one, what do you think?
—
Home Staging and Renovations – The 5 Don’ts
By Teri B Clark

It is time to sell your home. You take a good hard look and realize that there are a few things you need to do to make your home a showcase. But now you wonder…..what things are the best? You certainly don’t want to fix your home in a way that doesn’t get you any return on your investment. Why waste money, right?

Here are five things you don’t want to do:

1. Adding high-end appliances to a modest home. Unless you live in an area where every home on the block has high-end appliances and a granite countertop, don’t add them to yours! You will spend a lot of money and see none of it in return. If you need new appliances or countertops, consider refinishing either or buying nice but less costly versions.

2. Adding hand painted tiles in the bath or kitchen. Sure, they look lovely. And, if you were planning to live there for years, you might want to do that for your own enjoyment. But adding a hand painted tile reflects YOUR tastes and you are trying to sell the home to others. If they want hand painted tile, they will add it!

3. Adding a central vacuum. These are a great feature. But, once again, only do this if you plan to live there and enjoy it yourself!

4. Replacing windows with newer models. Windows are very expensive and will not increase the value of your home at all. People expect a home to have windows and they don’t expect to pay more for a house just because they have them!

5. Adding a swimming pool. This is true even if people in your neighborhood do have them. It is true that a homebuyer likes the idea of a pool, but they are not willing to pay more to get it.

Just be sure that you check to see if a permit is needed before starting any new project. Many departments require permits, even for things as simple as changing a dishwasher.

There are other projects that are often part of home staging, such as replacing old or worn carpeting, painting the walls, refreshing the kitchen with new cabinet or freshly painted cabinet doors, or even putting in a new kitchen floor will give your home added value. That is what home staging is all about – adding value so that you can sell your home faster and for more money!

Teri B Clark is a professional writer and published author. Her most recent book, 301 Simple Things You Can Do To Sell Your Home NOW and For More Money Than You Thought, explains these tips in more detail and offers many, many others. To learn more about Teri’s latest book, visit http://staging-your-home.blogspot.com or sign up for a free newsletter

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Teri_B_Clark
http://EzineArticles.com/?Home-Staging-and-Renovations—The-5-Donts&id=501421

Technorati Tags: Article writing, Home Staging

Why Market Maker? Podcast

Home Staging Marketing: Why Market Maker?

The Market Maker program is now live and available for Home Stagers interested in getting more business from their existing web pages.

I did a survey of home stagers last year. One of the things many expressed disappointment in was how little new business they got from their web pages.

Since then, I have held a tele-seminar, and written dozens of articles on how to turn that around. Yet relatively few home stagers have applied the secrets well known and taught in professional internet marketing circles.

I recognize the problem in myself. I often know what to do, but doing it is often another story.

Properly setting up your web page to get customers isn’t about nicer and fancier before and after pictures. It’s about attracting people potentially interested in home staging from YOUR market place, and getting them to identify themselves, so you can directly market your services to them.

The steps required include: changing some techie things about your web site; adding an opt-in box, which used to mean you needed to redo the front page of your web site; writing a special report; and then a long series of email marketing pieces.

Now none of these are too difficult, if you know how to do them, and seemingly impossible if you don’t.

And so, most people didn’t.

That’s why I developed Market Maker. Market maker will do all this for you. Develop new Meta Tags for your web site that will help more people from your town find your web site. Create an opt in form that doesn’t require you to redo your existing web site. It provides a great “ethical bribe” that will encourage people that visit your site to let you know they were there. Let you know they are interested in home staging and most importantly giving you permission to tell them more about you and your services.

Market Maker will dramatically boost your business.

Market Maker improves your marketing in two ways.

First it helps your home staging company stand out among your competitors. You will be the one that catches and keeps your prospects attention. This will get you a larger percentage of the existing business in your community.

Secondly, not everyone who thinks about using a home stager ends up doing so. With Market Maker, a larger percentage of them will, and when they do decide to use a home stager, it’s highly likely they will pick you.

To get more information go to Market Maker

Technorati Tags: Home Staging, home staging marketing, Market Maker, marketing

Listen to the Pod Cast

Getting People To Find Your Web Site

There are many ways to market ones home staging business. Most of them are enhanced by having a good web site where you can refer interested people to learn more about you and your business.

That way, when you give a talk to a church group or Chamber of Commerce luncheon you can give people a web page to visit.

But you can also get a lot of free traffic from people surfing the web for information on home staging, if your site is properly set up so it can be found.

Unfortunately, most home staging web sites are not easy to find, because they have not been optimized for search engine traffic. About 85% or all web traffic results from searches on search engines like Google, Yahoo, MSN and a myriad of others.

If you were to enter the words “home staging” into Google today you would get over 6 million responses. The top 10 names on the page get the vast majority of actual page views, the others 6 million don’t, and that includes your page.

That means that 85% of the people searching for a home stager are unlikely to see your page at all. That’s lost business. Business you could have a shot at…if your web pages were properly optimized to get the search engines attention.

There is an entire industry devoted to Search Engine Optimization or “SEO.”

But there are some simple steps anyone can do, if you are willing to take action and make your web site more attractive to the search engines. If you do, you will get more traffic to your page. And that’s the first step. What you do with that traffic is another issue. But first things first.

In the next week I will be posting a series of articles on SEO. This is a prelude to the release of a major new product. The exact release date and time is being held under wraps for now.

The new product is called Market Maker. Not everyone that wants to will be allowed to join when it releases. I encourage you to sign up for additional information at
http://homestagingbusinesstips.com/MarketMaker/ComingSoon.html

Today, I want to let you know how easy it is to begin to find keywords that apply to your business and website. In later articles I will tell you how to use these keywords, for that’s where the magic of SEO takes place.

There are a lot of expensive paid keyword tools, but the best free tool is Google’s.
Go to https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal
In the middle of the page, you will see a blank box with directions to enter a single word or phrase. Type in the word “Home Staging.”

Make sure the box that says synonyms is checked.

Then you will need to enter the letters from the Captcha code that is there. This is to confirm you are a person and not a computer or robot.

Then click get keyword ideas.

When I did this recently I got 127 keywords related to Home Staging and another 73 related terms. Not all of these are appropriate for a home stager looking to find customers. But many are. This is because different people will use different terms to search for you. If your web site is only set up to attract some of these keywords, you won’t stand a chance of showing up in the results the search engines return at all.

There is a lot more to say about all this, and it does matter. If your web site is properly optimized to get traffic from all the relevant keywords and your competitor across town isn’t you will get more business.

If your competitor’s website is properly optimized and yours isn’t you will loose out on business you could be getting.

If you’re not turning away customers today because you are too busy, you may want to consider making the effort to understand keywords and how they apply to your web site.

More on this tomorrow. And don’t forget to sign up for information on Market Maker.

It is designed to put your web marketing on auto pilot and to pay for itself!

Go to http://homestagingbusinesstips.com/MarketMaker/ComingSoon.html

Best wishes,

Earl Netwal
www.HomestagingBusinessTips.com

Technorati Tags: Home Staging, homestaging, Homestagingbusinesstips, Market Maker, SEO

Listen to this Audio Post on Why People Aren’t calling you to stage their homes.

3 Reasons People Don\’t Buy

Last week, internet marketing expert Frank Kern launched a new product that sold for $2,000 each. In less than 24 hours he sold 2,000 units.  That’s $4,000,000 in one day.  Not too shabby.

Who would have thought you could sell such an expensive product to so many people so fast in today’s economy? How did he do it?  Well, that is actually the information Frank was selling.  How to sell goods and services on the internet.

Part of Frank’s success stems from his willingness to share a good deal of valuable information with his prospects before he launches his product, and I am going to share one of the key tidbits he  offered with you today.

Frank would say there are just three reasons people aren’t buying your home staging services today.

• They Don’t Want It
• No Money
• Don’t Trust or Believe you

They Don’t Want It.

Some never will want your services. And while others just need to be educated a little, it’s a mistake according to Frank to be spending too much time on people who don’t want your services.  Instead look for ways to market to people who do.

No Money

Frank makes a more important point here. While no money may mean no money, it usually means that they don’t want it badly enough.  If people are telling you they don’t have the money, you haven’t yet found a way to increase their desire.   You may need to focus more of your marketing efforts on what’s in it for them.

For your home owner, it may be a higher sales price, or a quicker sales, but it also may be just getting help doing everything that needs to be done to get ready for the big move.

Make sure you are clear on the real motivations of those you have already worked with, and then share these with those you hope to work with.

Don’t Trust/Believe You.

Your prospect needs to not only believe that your services will benefit them, they need to trust that you are someone they can work with.  Someone they like.

While credentials may help, social proof is far more effective. A list of past homes staged, testimonials from happy customers are powerful tools to help bridge the trust gap.  These should be part of your standard presentation.

But in addition, you should find ways to reach out to your prospects and share. Provide them with good useful information, and keep in touch over time.

Little gifts in the form of useful information on how to prepare for a move, provided via luncheon talks to a local church group or social group not only give you visibility and credibility, it offers value.

Little gestures along this line, activate a sense of reciprocity, in which the recipient begins to feel a bit of an obligation to return the favor.  This can lead to you at least getting a chance to bid a project.

I recommend that home stagers web sites offer a free gift that viewers can download, and then follow up with over time with a series of additional tips. This helps build that reciprocity response, and more importantly helps build a sense of friendship. And we tend to trust our friends.

Technorati Tags: Home Staging, Home staging marketing tips, Internet marketing, marketing

If you read my home staging survey analysis, or listened in on the tele-seminar I conducted last year on how to make web pages better, you will know that I think most Home Stagers are not setting up their web sites properly.

I am not a web page designer. So I am not interested in revamping them, but I do have two suggestions that apply to most home stagers, in fact they apply to most small business web pages period.

Today, I am making a special recession fighting offer to help you resolve the easiest of the two. But first let me explain why this problem exists, even on web sites you may have paid someone thousands to develop.

Most web designers are great at the techie end of the game. They may even be good at graphics and have a sense of design. But while they may be good at those things, few of them understand marketing. I suspect if you’ve been in the home staging game a while, you know people who may be great at home staging but not so great at marketing. (Maybe you are one of them.)

In the hidden code that’s behind each of your web site pages, there is code that the search engines see, that no one else does. In the past two weeks, I have randomly checked about a dozen home stagers web sites and found that almost all of them had opportunities for improvement, – but not all.

Another reason many techies don’t pay attention to this is that Google no longer looks at some of this code when they rank web pages. However most search engines still do, including Yahoo and all the other major players. Since you have no control over the search engines your prospective customers use, it’s a real mistake to ignore this very sizable source of business.

So for the month of January I will, on a time available basis, examine your home staging web page free of charge. All you need do is send me an eMail with a link to your web site. I will check to see whether or not your web site would benefit from a “tweak.”

If it does, I will let you know and send you a very brief questionnaire to fill in. If you decide to proceed, I will prepare the appropriate code for just $35 rather than the $75 minimum I normally charge. You save $40 and get more traffic to your web page for years to come. If any one of them uses your services, you’re sitting pretty.

Now the fly in the ointment is that I cannot make the actual change for you. I will compile the code and email it to you, but you will need to post it to the site yourself, and/or have your Web site person do so. This shouldn’t cost you anything, as it’s a very simple process to upload it, but it does require having access to your web site host and your passwords.

The tweak I am proposing won’t change anything about the way your page looks, but it will ensure that more people find <strong>your page </strong>when they are looking for a home staging professional in your market.

I am willing to do this for other small businesses as well, if I have time. Drop me and email and I will do my best to include you.

This offer expires no later than the end of January, but I may pull it earlier. It costs you nothing for the free look see on my part, so drop me an email today.

Email to enetwal@gmail.com and put “Free Tweak Peek” in the subject line.

Technorati Tags: Home Staging, Home Staging Web pages, Meta Tag Fix, Meta Tag Review, Meta Tag Tweak, Meta Tags

Many but not all web hosting services utilize C-Panel for their user interface.

You can find out if your hosting service does by typing in your URL in your browser and adding /cpanel to the end. Example: http://www.yoururl.com/cpanel

If your web hosting service uses cpanel, it will pop up. That’s good. It means you have control of your web site. With a little knowledge can take charge of it. But you need to know how.

Discovering how to control my C-panel was the most significant bit of learning I’ve done to date on the internet.

Controlling your own internet presence is critical. Even if you decide to let someone else have the keys to your internet presence, it’s wise to understand what’s involved. (Particularly, how easy it is.)

I took a video course from Bob the Teacher called Discover C Panel. In a series of short videos I learned in just over an hour how to take control of my internet destiny.

I highly recommend this program. DiscoverCPanel.com – Step-By-Step Video Tutorials

Having a Cpanel interface makes it easy to set up a WordPress Blog, to upload files to your web site without needed an FTP Program and much more.

Technorati Tags: C Panel, Home Staging, Home staging survey

Over half of the 123 Home Staging Professionals who answered my survey question on the “Climate of Competition” in their markets rated it as “Mild, we are all friends.” Only one rated it as “Hostile, we are fighting for every advantage”

That said, those with 2-4 years experience were the least likely to claim competition as Mild. My guess is after two years of business, they were more likely to have run into competition and not necessarily come out ahead in every case.

The “Top Dog” category in the survey seemed to share this attitude, although a few seem to have arrived at the point where they had developed strong relationships with Realtors which was providing them with a steady stream of new business. For them the competition was less relevant. In in many cases it may have been seen as asset as it provided an overflow valve when they were too busy.

The unasked question I refer to in the subtitle, was the “Null Set.”

The biggest competitor Home Stagers face is the number of Realtors and Home Owners who decide to not stage at all. Or who never consider the possibility.

While a few markets report large percentages of homes being staged, that is not true in most markets.

When you think about competition in that light, I think most markets could accurately list competition a

Technorati Tags: Home Staging, Home staging survey, marketing

One of the more surprising aspects was the fact that over half of the survey respondents reported calling fewer than five Realtors in the past three months as part of their marketing efforts.

This floored me. In the survey report, I break out seven different categories of respondents, and it turns out in this case that those with more experience are far more active in contacting Realtors, than are the newer stagers.

The new guys should, in my opinion, be burning up the telephone lines to get their businesses in front of as many Realtors as possible. How else are they going to get those initial jobs to develop their portfolios and referral business?

One anecdotal comment captured in the many essay questions on my survey suggested that they were calling a lot more than the three Realtors they were advised to contact in their training course.

I have to believe this was a misinterpretation of a comment that maybe all they needed was three regular Realtors to build their business with regular referrals. At any rate if this is being taught, I have to wonder about the wisdom of the instructor and the school employing them.

Technorati Tags: Home Staging, Home staging survey, marketing, Realtors

If you are a Home Stager, or considering joining the ranks of Home Stagers, you should be interested in what you can learn about the business from others in it.

In May and June of 2008, I conducted a series of personal interviews with several home stagers and gathered some initial information about the industry.

From there, I developed an internet survey which I presented to over 600 home stagers from around the US and Canada. I got responses from over 180. These I analyzed and broke the data into eight different categories, the first being all responses, then those who had less than two years experience in the field, those with two to four years, and those with four or more years.

I also asked how many actual homes respondents personally staged in the prior three months. Some had quite a few, with two reporting over 120. Many however are far more part time and so I split all the responses into two groups, those who did 9 or fewer in the prior three months and those who did more.

I also pulled a group out who were clearly Realtors in addition to being Home Stagers as I saw these as a distinct group.

And finally, I used a set of criteria to pull out what I referred to as the Top Dogs.

These multiple groupings allowed me to observe differences in the responses by various groups. This provided insight into the differences between new stagers and those with more experience.

The differences were significant in many cases, and
should be useful to those trying to emulate those more successful in the business.

This Blog will discuss some of the survey results and collect comments from those who have a copy of the report.

Technorati Tags: Home Staging, Home staging survey, Survey