If your primary aim as a real estate agent is to persuade people to do business with you, then the most important thing you can do is to put your clients first.

In order to prosper in your business, you need plenty of leads. Without leads nothing moves. Your business is at a complete standstill. You won’t have any sales, and without sales there is no revenue, and without revenue profits don’t exist.

Besides making an effort to stay in touch with past clients because they can be a rich source of referrals, there are many advantages to working with real estate seller leads, including getting more control over how you manage your time, as well as the opportunity to take on a few more clients.

Besides networking to generate leads, what else can you do? Here are 5 ways to generate leads to keep your business alive and well:

1. Create a blog.

While it’s fine to have a website, you need a blog, too. Think of your website as working like a catalog and your blog as working like your newspaper. You don’t want to rearrange the catalog too much while you want to constantly add fresh content to your blog. Attach this blog to your website to have everything work together in sync.

Your blog is a value-generating machine, and it’s a long term asset. Besides writing regular posts that help readers with all aspects of real estate, you can add videos, too.

Here are 4 reasons why blogging is going to work for you:

• 1. Most real estate people are too busy (or lazy) to blog on a regular basis.
• 2. Your prospects are looking for some guidance, and your educational posts will help them understand things that befuddle them about real estate.
• 3. The combination of low competition with consistent evidence that you are an authority in your field will increase your marketing influence.
• 4. Your blog should offer a free-report in exchange for an email address to your email newsletter.

However, don’t think of your blog as a fast way to generate leads. Instead, it’s a long-term proposition, a way to establish your value over time with prospects when they are looking for someone to help them out. In short, it’s a way of building an asset whose value will increase over time.

2. Create a YouTube Channel.

If your website is like having a catalog and your blog is like having your own newspaper, then a YouTube Channel is like having your own TV station.

Although this, too, is asset building, you will get results fast because a good video has the potential to go viral.

Link your video to your website and blog, and then go buy some Facebook ads. You aren’t promoting your real estate business through Facebook advertising, you're promoting the video! This is a much more subtle approach. Instead of coming across as a Carnival Barker, you will come across as a teacher.

Your goal is to leave your viewer better informed than before they discovered your channel. In addition, you should have a link to a landing page that will capture email addresses to build your email newsletter subscriber list.

3. Ask for Referrals from Buyers.

Your best source of leads remains your buyers. It's estimated that as much as 75% of leads come from referrals. 

Once people have already worked with you, they tend to know you better than the competition. After you hand them the house keys, be sure to provide any follow-up help that they need.Give these happy homeowners a parting gift to celebrate their new phase in life, and also leave your buyers with your business cards and brochures and ask them to share these with anyone who is looking for an agent.

4. Use Door Hangers.

In this day of hi-tech networking, it’s easy to forget the traditional way of generating leads. One of these is using door hangers.

Although this may seem like an archaic way to generate leads, the story of Joshua Smith should inspire you to take the idea of using door hangers seriously:"Joshua Smith, voted the 30th top realtor in the country by the Wall Street Journal in 2013, started out listing 7-15 homes a month from placing 10,000 door hangers in his farm area. The technique was so successful for him that he ended up closing 463 listings worth $49 million in one year."

You can get door hangers made from a local printer or use an online service to do it. On average, it will cost you about a nickel or a dime per door handle if you order in a batch of 1,000.

The best way to distribute door handles is in person, because you will get a chance to meet people and know more about your prospects needs and interests. However, to be truly effective, you should also consider using a distribution service to cover a much bigger territory than you could in person. A national distribution service will charge between 15-20 cents for each door handle and will provide video proof as well as GPS that your door handles have been distributed.

5. Cold Calling Still Works

By cold calling expired listings and For Sale By Owner Listings (FSBO) is a way to connect with people who you know are eager to sell. If they’ve been trying long enough, they are likely to be fed up with the whole process and eager to have a professional takeover for them.

Try out these 5 ideas today and move the needle forward in your real estate business.