Good thing inbound marketing and social media have no selling season.

As the holiday season approaches, the prime selling season for real estate and many other industries is winding down. Now that your Fall marketing push is coming to a close, it seems natural to take it easy in December and January with your traditional outbound marketing efforts. But what about your inbound marketing efforts?  Fewer prospects may be showing up at your sales office during the winter months, but it doesn’t mean they are not doing their homework online. If a prospect visits your Website, you’d better look alive if you want to be on their short list for consideration.

Here are some things you can do to “Winterize” your website and maximize your opportunities online to be in good shape when the selling season rolls back around next Spring.

1. Evaluate Your Structure and Content
Make sure your website still works. If not, the off season is a great time to make upgrades and improvements to your foundation to start gaining some SEO traction before spring, as most SEO efforts take at least three to six months to begin to pay off.

2. Make Sure You Are Tracking User Activity
Are you running Google Analytics or some type of tracking software? It is free to install and provides more than enough information for you to begin to understand where your traffic is coming from. And if they are staying.

3. Tweak Your Content Based On User Activity
Once you have tracking installed, pay attention to your popular pages and content. Then continue to add similar content to keep users interested. Also, tweak the less popular content to increase the traffic on those pages.

4. Update Your Events Section
People want to see activity. Update your events calendar. Even if you don’t have on-site events scheduled, add local events. Your local Chamber of Commerce should be a good place to start your research.

5. Write A Blog a Week
Post at least one blog entry a week. This not only shows activity, it helps with search engine optimization and drives immediate traffic. If you have a few people in your company to share the writing responsibilities, it will only take a couple blogs per person to get you through the winter. An easy blog topic for December is a list of things to do around your area during the holiday season. If you don’t have a blog, see #1 above.

7. Take Advantage Of Social Media Sites
Create a facebook page, join LinkedIn, share your photos on flickr, feed in video from youtube and then tweet about it. These social media sites are usually the top referring url’s to the sites we track. Many of these free sites make it easy to offer engaging content for your visitors to enjoy and share. They help you on many different levels so take advantage of them.

8. Make It Easy For Your Visitors To Share Your Content
Make sure you provide easy ways for your users to share your content. There are many free tools available to add social media sharing to websites. Even if users don’t use them often, it sends a message that you are keeping up with technology and that your content is important.

9. Promote Your Content for Search Engine Optimization
Take the time to work on your site’s search engine optimization. There is no better time to beef up your SEO. While your competitors are resting, do all you can to jump ahead in the search engine rankings.

10. Personally Respond to Blog Comments and Form Inquiries
If you receive a comment or Web form inquiry, respond immediately. Get involved in the conversation and send people all the information they want in a timely manner.

Everybody has good intentions, but those that act now will benefit as things turn around. So please take the time to follow through with these suggestions, you’ll thank yourself (and me) in the spring.

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