Twitter. Deep down I bet you were just hoping Twitter would go away. Were you hoping it was just a fad? Many real estate agents – actually, I’d dare say most – shy away from Twitter because they feel

It’s not a good business tool.
It’s a waste of time.
They don’t want to share your life with everyone.
Their customers/clients aren’t on Twitter.

Are you sure? Are you really sure? You may want to reconsider.
Google is keenly aware of Twitter’s unique ability to search in real time and has begun indexing Twitter updates (tweets). …

People talk. They talk about the good, the bad and the ugly and in today’s online world, they are talking online. Are they talking about you? How do you know?
Google Alerts are a great way to monitor your name, your brand, and your reputation. You enter in your name, your company name, or any other keywords you want to receive updates for and Google will let you know when it comes across any of those phrases on the web.
Some ideas on how to use Google Alerts:

Your name- see where you …

You already know you need a website. Right? Well, you should know. But what do you put on your site? Is it lacking content? Why would visitors come to your site, let alone RETURN to it? That’s the key, the most important piece – repeat visitors. What that means is that your content needs to be current, dynamic, and relevant. These factors are also very relevant to Google SEO (search engine optimization).
Blogs are a great way to accomplish all three of those requirements. You can even have your blog as …

With the era of instant information, it is growing increasingly important to manage your brand, your self, your industry, etc. Twitter is especially instant and viral. Motrin didn’t realize the importance of Twitter and ended up in a big ole mess. If you missed it, check out the Motrin controversy. 
I’ve had a great experience with companies on Twitter. Every time, I mentioned the company’s name they are quick to respond. I mentioned I love Uncommon Goods – guess what, received a tweet offering me a coupon. I expressed my displeasure …

What’s your purpose with Twitter use? Are you looking to expand your network and hopefully gain some new business? It should be. You should be finding new people to follow and hope they follow you back.
If you are using Twitter to gain a ‘following’ then you need to consider expanding your branding to your Twitter background. When people are searching for new people to follow they may come arcross your profile. What your profile says about you will result in a follow or having them pass you up.
You’ll need to …

Want to see what your Facebook friends are up to without having to keep Facebook open?

     
I went to my local grocery store for square orange cheese crackers. In particular I was looking for Cheese Nips because they were on insane sale.
Cracker aisle. Found the Cheez-Its but where are the Cheese Nips????? Can’t find them anywhere. But they’re on sale. They must be around.
Cruise down the aisle to the granola snack bars. Lo and Behold – there are the Cheese Nips. Why here???
This immediately gets my attention. Why in the world would Nabisco choose to put their square cheese cracker so far away from the other …

Google’s page rank system is virtually dead. Google is producing more sophisticated methods or ranking websites and are becoming better and better at weeding out dead sites. Sites that don’t offer fresh content, sites that don’t bring and retain visitors are going to suffer page rank. Google used to crawl sites by looking at the keywords in your website, finding other sites that linked to yours and ranking those sites as well in order to help determine the quality of your website. Now Google wants to see how others see …

With so many social networking applications available, it can become confusing to sort through all of them and really understand at the base what social networking is and why you should participate. You’ve joined local groups – BNIs, Chamber, Womens Council of REALTORs, etc – but have you joined groups online? Or did you realize that many of these real world groups also have social networking groups online??? The new web is based on real connections and real relationships. Come to the party! This video may help put it into …