Ok, so we’ve had plenty of “what” and “why” posts this week, now it’s time to give you some “HOW TO!” This post is called Mortgage Marketing Tools for a reason…

One thing that really mystifies me is why loan officers seem so resistant to learning how to market on the internet. With FSBO Lead Portal, I train both lenders and realtors, and I have to tell you, when it comes to online marketing, realtors are light-years ahead of loan officers in their willingness to learn and take action.

Sure, the agents have an advantage in that they have a product (homes) that tends to lend itself to online marketing, but let’s not make excuses… Instead, let’s make money! Sound good to you? Ok then, let’s get started. Today’s post is for those of you sitting around with a blog, but very little activity going on.

Without traffic, your blog (Just like any website) is useless! The blog you’re looking at right now, was picked up by Yahoo, MSN, and even Google in just under 3 days. We spent 0 dollars, and 0 cents in promoting it. Yet here you are, happily reading away! How’d we do it? I made use of the list you see below (Let’s call this mortgage marketing tool #1)

www.pingomatic.com

This is great. Sure, if you’re hosting your own blog, there are usually plugins with WordPress that can handle auto-pinging. But this is a great tool to target your focus on pinging some major directories when you’ve updated your blog. “Pinging” is basically a blogs way of tapping other blog directories (Which already have tons of traffic by the way) and saying “Hey!I’m over here! Come check me out!”

www.feedburner.com

I love this thing! You simply enter your blog URL and it will tell you what RSS feeds you have setup – if any. I went RSS crazy on www.fsboleadportal.com/blog back in April, and I needed to check and validate my feeds. In the middle of doing this, I simply setup a free account with Feedburner and now have access to traffic stats, subscribers and more. Powerful tool. It’s not nearly as complicated as it may sound. Just click on the link, and add your blog URL, and see what happens… Good times!

www.rssmicro.com

Here’s a feed directory you should be using. It took me all of 60 seconds to upload my information here. Not the largest directory around, but it has plenty of quality links. You can even search for other blogs you might want to add to your blog roll, or comment on. Get used to visiting sites such as this. If you want traffic, you need to go where the traffic already exists.

www.blogcatalog.com

The first rule of blogging is it has to be seen to be of any use to you. Get your blog added to some blog communities out there. Blog Catalog is massive! It also doesn’t hurt that you can setup a mini-community, and even get feedback from other blog owners. The backlinks…Don’t forget the valuable backlinks! (When submitting your blog, don’t forget to insert a few keywords you are optimizing for within the blog description! This will help!)

www.mybloglog.com

Here’s Yahoo’s entry into the blog directory arena. Another useful tool very similar to Blog Catalog. Use the same recommendation I made above when setting up your free account. My Blog Log also lets you syndicate dozens of accounts from social networking sites all in one place. Good stuff!

The tools listed above should be enough to get you started. If you complete each task above, and still crave more traffic generating activities, then here’s some more in my archives:

http://www.technorati.com/ping/

wwwfeedplex.com

www.blogsweet.com

www.solarwarp.net

There you have it! A quick overview of how to get traffic quick! I don’t want to hear any excuses. Just click on the links, and start submitting! If you have a blog, it will be better off when you’re done than when you started. Give it a few days for the links to start showing up. But don’t stop there! This is just the beginning. See you on the search engines!

CW – www.loanofficermarketinglab.com – www.fsboleadportal.com