iMaxWebSolutions had the good fortune of being a sponsor of last week's ThinkMax "Crush It for a Cure" event featuring author, speaker, and social media guru Gary Vaynerchuk. After the event Gary was kind enough to provide an exclusive video message for iMax customers on the importance of creating content for your web site.

For those of you not familiar with his work, Gary Vaynerchuk is a businessman who "gets it." His message involves leveraging the power of the web and social media to grow your business. To do so, he believes you have to provide content regularly and be willing to work hard to do so - you have to put in the "sweat equity" as he calls it.

Sometimes, real estate agents want their web sites to "automatically" generate leads. The truth is, as with most things in life, success online doesn't happen automatically.

Some real estate agents also believe they "don't have time" to work on adding content to their web site. Ironically, the case could be made that agents can't afford NOT to work on their web sites.

Gary Vaynerchuk is a great example. He was running a wine store in New Jersey. He could have said, "I have to run my wine store - I have to work on inventory, manage my employees, etc, so I don't have time to create content for my web site." Instead, he made time for it, and created video content for his site Wine Library TV every day, thereby growing his business exponentially.

Think about what would happen if boston.com stopped updating their web site. With no new content, would anyone visit their site?

The same is true of real estate web sites - if your site never has any new content, and another agent's does, why would you get the leads? Why would anyone go to your site? As Gary says in this video, "not putting out content in the 2012 world is the quickest way to go out of business."

So you've decided to work on adding more content to your site. Now what?

The iMax blog that is included in your site, is a great way to regularly add new content. If you are not using your iMax blog, you should consider using it as it's easy to use and adds SEO value to your site.

What types of content can you create for your blog and web site?

A few ideas:

• Post market updates using iMax Market Intelligence Reports
• Write articles and posts providing real estate tips or focused on a specific real estate topic
• Create testimonial videos with your clients
• Pass along links to articles (or post full article while giving credit) your customers might find useful
• Create videos and / or written content highlighting towns you sell real estate in and even neighborhoods within those towns

Questions? Send us an email at help@imaxwebsolutions.com