Wave Google’s Wand And POOF! – You H...

Calm Down Big companies and famous people hire public relations (PR) people to keep them out of trouble. Sure, they might say it’s to communicate better with their fans, but really they know there are lots of people gunning for them and their wealth…

With that in mind, famous and wealthy people and corporations actually want their PR folks to:

See if anyone is about to sue them;
Find out if someone else is using their name or brand;
Spy on their competition to see what they are up to;
Research demographics in potential new markets;
Learn some background on their customers; and
Check out other parties they might do business with, such as employees, suppliers, legal services, etc.

We here at Real Estate Mogul want to do everything we can to put you in that ‘wealthy people’ category. (The famous part is up to you.) Therefore, we think you might need to start thinking about some PR protection for your REI business.

But we don’t necessarily think you should have to pay the rates of those high-fallutin’ PR firms. In fact, we think you should get a lot of this protection for free.

Many investors do some of the PR function already. For instance, landlords will do background checks on tenants before renting to them, or flippers will check references, licensing authorities and other customers when looking for a new contractor…

That’s all well and good as far as it goes. It’s worth doing more. And doing it for free.

Let the Power of Google be Your PR Firm

Google Alerts can become your free, individualized PR firm. They can help many other parts of your business as well. When you set up an alert, you can have google do periodic searches on various aspects of your business and deliver the results right to your inbox or RSS feed.

alerts Here’s a quick Google Alerts tutorial. When you go to the Google Alerts website, you will see a box with several questions like this picture. Here are some quick tips on what to enter in each box:

Search Query – Put in your search terms, just as you would for google. Remember, there are all kinds of special formats to do a more targeted google searches.
Result Type – Select from Everything, News, Blogs, Videos, Discussions or Books if you are looking for a specific type of file.
Language – Pretty obvious.
Region – You may want to refine your searches to the United States.
How often – ‘As it happens,’ ‘daily’ or ‘weekly’ makes it so you won’t have your email overloaded with search results.
How many – ‘Only the Best Results’ – most closely related to your search as determined by Google, or ‘All results,’ which means you may receive a lot of unrelated junk that has some distant relation to what you are searching for.
Deliver To – Whether you want email or RSS. If you have a gmail account, the google alert menu will be sent to your email automatically. If you have another email, you will have a couple extra steps to set everything up.

What Should PR Firms do for us Investors?

Now that you have the alert(s) set up, start thinking about what would help you in your real estate business. What would we, here at Mogul, use? Well, I thought you would never ask!

Here are some of the searches we think might be useful:

Your Name
Business Partner’s Names
Your Company
Your Website
Contractors you’re using
Tenant’s Names
Names on Your Buyer’s List
Your ‘Farm Area’ – the neighborhood you’re working for your deals
Realtors you use
Your Contact Information (phone numbers, emails, etc.)
Your Property Addresses
Your Competitors (other investors, property management companies, etc.)
“Must Sell,” “Foreclosure” or other terms for your Farm Area
Things you might need for your properties (used appliances, surplus materials, etc.)

These kinds of searches can identify potential threats and opportunities for your business. They can also let you know about the problem before you’re blindsided by it.

Or maybe it lets you know about an opportunity before your competitors find out about it.

Either way, the best thing an investor can do is be armed with a lot of relevant information. Using Google Alerts is a great way to find important information when you can act on it.

Holla at us

Have you used Google Alerts? Let us know how its helped your REI business in the comments section below.

Gather Information – Use Google Alerts to gather info about your area, your properties and opportunities you can take advantage of.

Network – While technology is awesome, the biggest REI opportunities can come from the realtor who likes you, the mailman who saw a vacant house or the bird dog who is trying to make a little cash on the side.

Organize Your Information – Put systems and processes in place to organize the information you receive by controlling the inflow.

Play Around with Google Alerts – Think of other searches that might be useful to you as an investor. If you come up with some good ones, leave it in the comments below so other Mogul members can profit from it too.