Having a presence in your community is an important part of being able to generate leads. Why? Because if you are a respected member of your community, i.e. you have ‘presence,’ then trust is established and people feel that they will not be ripped off when they deal with you. This is so necessary for a real estate business because that is recognized as one place where sharks abound. So how do you get presence in a community, establish trust and make a successful business?

One important way is to join clubs and organizations. Lions Club, Rotary Club are often featured in the local paper for the good work they do. If you also become the treasurer or secretary of the club, your picture will be in there along with the article. This will make your face known and you will gradually establish a presence. People will associate you with that club and good work and so you will become a trusted member of the community.

It need not be even as formal as the two clubs mentioned. You could simply attend the PTA meetings of your children’s schools. You could be an active member of your church or play golf on Saturdays. Wherever members of a community gather to conduct any type of pursuit, from schools to recreational clubs, is a good place for you to establish a presence. But you must actually make people notice you, don’t just be a wallflower.

A realtor whose face and reputation is known will often have people call him or her when buying or selling is being contemplated. These are known as hot leads and realtors are extremely happy to have as many as possible. There are other creative ways to establish a community presence.

You could write letters to the editor of your local paper on a whole range of issues, not just real estate. People read it and begin to know what sort of person you are, what you feel passionate about and what makes you tick. You could also establish a real estate newsletter for the local paper if you wanted to. But don’t just do one thing, more than that is necessary to establish presence.

You can do a similar thing with your blog, but there, people have to be motivated to look it up, while with a newspaper, they read it for other reasons than real estate dealings. You can write newsletters to be delivered around town, or placed into various places of business that attract good crowds.