1. Google Chrome

If you are still using Internet Explorer I highly recommend you give Google Chrome a shot. It is a much cleaner internet browser that is much quicker than I

E. There are fantastic plug-ins that make it much easier to use, as well.  The crashes & freeze-ups that come along with IE are much more reduced in Chrome.

2. Gmail
Are you managing several different email account? A personal email & a business email PLUS others? Gmail removes the need to visit various email sites to check your different email accounts. If you know your password for say your Yahoo! email, Gmail can pull your emails straight into Gmail. One email account to check. Simple. Using Outlook? Do you find it a pain that you have to be at a certain computer to check your email? Gmail solves that as well since it is web-based. Want to switch without a ton of hassle? Ask us to help you!

3. Scribd
Scribd is an online document host. Upload your files and share them with the world. You can embed them into your website, email a link, and much more.

4.  Point2
Point2Agent provides agents with customizable template websites for a nominal fee. We use it daily to help agents syndicate their listings to over 40 real estate listings sites online. If you need a website or want to change your current host, check them out.

5. Grooveshark
Because sometimes you just have to JAM! Keeping your nose to the grind is difficult for any extended period of time. Having your favorite playlist in the background makes it more enjoyable. Grooveshark is a web-based music player. You can upload your own music or listen to the albums others have loaded. There is no downloading so it is legit. You can ‘store’ albums to your account, create playlists, and share your music with others via Facebook, Twitter, and other social media services. Find your jammin’ real estate virtual assistant on Grooveshark. Groove on!

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

1. It’s not a good business tool.
2. It’s a waste of time.
3. They don’t want to share your life with everyone.
4. 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). I’ve had Twitter statuses pop in in my Google searches with an in-search window of scrolling twitter updates. Twitter provides results in real time – in seconds. Google indexing can take minutes to hours to days.

What does this mean to you? It means that you need to be on Twitter. If someone is searching for ‘real estate’ and Google is providing Twitter updates in page 1 of Google results, you’d better believe that those people talking about real estate on Twitter will get recognized faster than those who are not.

People are talking. Are you there to listen? Are you there to ‘be’ there? If not, you’re out.

Being on Twitter doesn’t have to be difficult or time-consuming.

• You don’t have to follow all of those businesses and strangers that follow you on Twitter.
• If you’re using Facebook you can link a Facebook page to Twitter so the updates are automatic.
• You can make you Twitter updates feed Facebook.
• There are plenty of services like www.socialoomph.com that allow you to schedule tweets so you can do them all at once and send them out periodically.
• Use Tweetdeck to keep up with Twitter and group the people you follow so you don’t lose track (a must if you follow more than 100 people). Plus, you can update Facebook as well!

Need help getting started on Twitter or maintaining your Twitter account? Contact us today.

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 are appearing online and if your clients are talking about you.
• Your company name – see what people are saying about your company.
• Your slogan- have a great slogan? Is it copyrighted? Find out quickly if anyone else thought it was great and is now using it.
• Listing marketing – set up a google alert for your listing address. Use the alert to let your sellers know of the marketing your are providing for their property.
• Research & Education – I have a google alert set up for ‘real estate’ + ‘social media’ so I can stay on top of new developments as they happen. You may want to set up an alert for your niche, say “South Bend” + foreclosure.
• Keep an eye on your competition. Keep you Google Alert wide enough to capture your competition in its results. If your website is optimized for Notre Dame Real Estate, set up a Google Alert to find any other references to Notre Dame Real Estate. This can help you learn of new competition and to stay ahead of them.

Need help setting up an alert? Just ask.

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 part of your total real estate website. Blogs are time-consuming, though.

Looking for some quicker content? Try real estate widgets. Widgets are mini-apps that run on your website. There are plenty of places that provide widgets but perhaps the largest virtual warehouse is WidgetBox.com. Check out all of their real estate widgets – from mortgage calculators to walking scores you can probably find what you are looking for at WidgetBox. Have a specialty website? You can probably find a widget just for you – Foreclosure Listings Widget is an example.  Zillow.com provides a great selection of widgets as well. Facebook also provides a fan widget if you have a fan page set up.

Back to blogs – have one? You can even create a blidget (blog widget) that will showcase your most recent blog posts on any website.

So what does using a widget involve? It’s not difficult at all. All it takes is a little copying and pasting of some html code. Need help? Give me a call or send me an email. I’m happy to help.

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 with a Comast and Bank of America issue and after our back and forths I received a call from the Assistant to the CEO of Bank of America who took care of the problem instantly. Crazy! I didn’t have to sit on the phone for an hour. I didn’t have to go through various people. 

You should see some of the stuff that is said about Realtors and real estate. Really, you should. Ever wonder if maybe someone is talking about you as a Realtor? There are many ways to monitor your name, your brand and your industry through various Twitter alert services. You will be notified via email when your specified keywords are mentioned.

Tweet Beep: You can even track who is mentioning your website or your blog – even if they are using a shortened url (tinyurl, bit.ly, etc.) Quite cool.

Twilert:  I have Twilert set up but have found that its notificiations are at least a day old. I want to respond to tweet immediately as they are mentioned. 

Seesmic Desktop: Twitter is instant. Your information is there and then it’s gone off your radar screen.  Email alerts are good but only if they are timely. Motrin should have JUMPED on the first mention of their brand in a negative tone. Seesmic Desktop is a computer program you download. It allows you to manage your Facebook & Twitter accounts AS WELL AS monitor your keywords instantly, just like your @replies. It’s a great tool.

Whether you are in the conversation, the conversation is happening. Be in it.

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 create a file (I used Publisher) and save it as a photo to then upload to Twitter.

I’d be glad to help you create one if you need help.

I can’t get the time to log in to Facebook throughout the day but I want to know what my friends are up to. Logging in at the end of the day requires me to browse through perhaps 100 updates. I get lost. I get behind.

Well what did I find today?

Facebook provides an RSS  feed for your friend statuses. This allows you to see all updates to Facebook without having to log in or keep Facebook open.

Log in to Facebook.
Click on ‘Friends’.
In the left-hand column you will find a ‘Subscribe to this feed’ option.
Click on the link and you will be taken to the feed page.
Click on the subscription link and voila, you’ve got a feed.

Now how do you view your feed?

There are several ways but probably the easiest will be through Internet Explorer. You know how to access your favorites? That’s how you get your feeds as well. Click on your little Favorites star and then click on the orange ‘Feeds’ icon. That will display the feeds you are subscribed to. Click on the Facebook Status Feed and you will be taken to the list of all updates.

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 square cheese cracker? Why would they choose to put their cracker where the other crackers are not?

Now, this was like five days ago and I can’t let it go. Something is significant here. Today, I think I figured it out.

Location, Location, Location!

You’ve heard it said before in real estate but it really is the best thing to consider in much of marketing, listings and otherwise. I don’t like Cheese Nips as well as I like Cheez-Its. My guess is that most people agree with me or at least they recognize the red Cheez-Its box much faster than they recognize the orange Cheese Nips box. My guess is that Nabisco purposefully moved their product out of their competition’s reach. Move it where there is no competition besides granola bars. The guilty indulgence may get the best of some people and they’ll reach for the cheese crackers instead of the granola bars.

That’s my theory.

What does it mean to you?

This can be applied to both listing marketing and agent marketing. If you can’t get a house sold, what is the first thing you recommend to the seller? Price reduction. If you can’t beat the competition, move away from it. Move away in price. Set yourself up with new competition. Sit next to a granola bar.

Same goes for agent marketing. Get out of Homes & Lifestyles and put yourself where the saturation is much more in your favor of getting seen. Where is that you say? Right now, it’s in people. It’s in social media. It’s in getting yourself out there where the people are. It’s about walking your neighborhood and talking to your neighbors. Ask for a referral. If you don’t have the guts, get some. (psssst….you’re in sales).Don’t be afraid to move out of the cracker isle. (No, I didn’t just call you a cracker). Hang out with some granola bars and you might find yourself with better exposure. At the very least, someone might start talking about you on some blog.

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 your website.

Google is now going to be focusing on a deeper algorithm. It is no longer going to just track your hits each month but is going to take into account how long each visitor stays at your site. Say someone did a search and your site came up in the results. They click on your site and then quickly realize it’s not what they were looking for of they just don’t like your site and leave rather quickly. A person can bounce by:

• clicking on a link to another site
• typing in a new website
• closing the browser window
• remaining idle for too long, causing the analytics session to timeout
• hitting the ‘back’ button

Basically, Google wants to see that people like your site and want to stay there and look around.

How do you get people to stay on your site???

• Videos
  Record a video, upload it to YouTube, embed on your website. You want to try to keep your visitors around for a few minutes and have them check out other spots on your site while they are there.
• Downloadable forms
• Make clickable urls open in a new window, not in the same window
• Sidebar widgets to entice visitors to look around your site (maybe Featured Listings if you’re a Point2 member or real estate agent)
• Blogs

Be prepared to revamp your website and to really take a leap onto the social networking bandwagon if you haven’t already. It’s a great way to share your website with the world, gain traffic, and make friends. If you don’t have the time to blog, consider hiring a Virtual Assistant to help write your articles. Or, you could write them and your Virtual Assistant could post them all over the internet, driving traffic back to your site. Either way, now is the time to really consider getting involved before you lose your search engine placement to those who are.