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Free YouTube App for Facebook Fan Pages
Published February 16, 2012 | 
As you know, I am always on the lookout for ways to make your real estate business stand out from the crowd. Technology is constantly changing, as are the habits of internet users. When I come across something that I think is fantastic, I just have to share it. Especially when it’s FREE! In my quest to bring you the latest and greatest in real estate marketing technology, I have found a free YouTube app for Facebook fan pages.
With the YouTube Gallery app, YouTube videos can be uploaded to your Facebook fan page automatically. All you have to do is install it on your Facebook page, follow the directions for set up, add your Twitter handle and choose which videos you want to be uploaded. It’s as simple as that. You can choose to pull videos from all across YouTube that have specific keywords attached to them, only upload specific videos or add videos from a particular username or channel. So, all those videos you are taking for your clients’ listings can now automatically be uploaded and posted on your Facebook fan page. Like your regular Facebook page, the YouTube Gallery also has privacy settings that will allow you to restrict videos to be seen only by whomever you wish or make them completely public if you want.
It only takes moments to install. However, I have noticed that the app seems to have some issues with Internet Explorer. You can install it on your Facebook page using IE, however, you may run into problems viewing your videos when you are editing your settings. When I looked at my page with Mozilla, it was clear that it had been installed correctly.
The free YouTube app for Facebook fan pages can help you market your videos to the Facebook community in a much more streamlined way. It’s simple, it’s easy and, best of all, it’s FREE!
Create Your Own Real Estate App for That
Published February 9, 2012 | Apps have become all the rage with smart phone users. In fact, app use has virtually exploded over the past few years. Want to stream radio on your smart phone? There’s an app for that. Want to keep up with your Facebook, Twitter or LinkedIn accounts while you’re on the go? There’s an app for that. Can’t live without playing Angry Birds while waiting in line for your morning latte? There’s an app for that. There’s even a nap app that you can download to help you achieve the optimum level of power napping. I kid you not! Want to offer current and potential clients the opportunity to view listings in your area online with just the touch of a button? Well, now you can create your very own real estate app for that!
Smarter Agent offers a fully customizable app to brokers and agents. Whether your customer uses iPhone, Android, Blackberry or another smart phone, you can create a real estate app with your own unique brand. With the Smarter Agent app, smart phone users can access your listings as well as all listings located on your MLS. When an interested party wants more information about that particular listing, all calls will go directly to you…even if the listing is not yours. What a great way to increase your clientele!
For a fee, Smarter Agent creates an application downloader that you install on your website. Visitors to your website can then access your app directly from your site. They will also create a custom text code that allows your clients to download the real estate app to their phone, regardless of which kind of smart phone they use.
If you’re interested in finding out how you can create your own real estate “app for that”, visit Smarter Agent now. Bring your real estate business into the modern mobile technological age. Don’t be left behind (they don’t make an app for that)!
Organize and Optimize Your Email
Published February 2, 2012 | 
Let’s face it. You’re a busy person. You’ve got real estate clients to meet up with, homes to show, appointments to attend to and family matters to take care of. Who has time to filter through all the junk emails coming through their inbox every day? Technology is supposed to help make our lives easier. And, in many ways, it does. But it seems that, sometimes, technology can interfere with productivity. To stay focused, you need to organize and optimize your email, eliminating clutter and directing your attention to those things that matter.
Studies show that most people have an almost compulsive need to check and answer every single email that comes in at the moment it comes in. While you may think this shows that you’re on top of things, it actually can be counter-productive. It takes your attention away from the tasks in front of you. Once you return to finish the project you started, your mind can take several seconds to jump back on track. When you factor that in to every time you check your email, you could lose several hours of time over the course of a month. Instead of jumping on your email several times a day, schedule two or three times throughout the day to check and answer emails.
Use your email signature to relay important information, such as your name (obviously), your company’s name, your direct phone number, your website and links to your social media (such as Twitter, LinkedIn and Facebook). WiseStamp is an email app generator that creates icons you can integrate right into your email signature. You can link the icons to your social media accounts so that anyone reading your email can access them directly with just one click.
The key to organizing your email is to reduce the amount you receive. I spoke about Unsubscribe.com, a free download that helps you reduce SPAM to your inbox, a few weeks ago. I use it and have already seen a huge reduction in my junk emails. Google Alerts are also a great way to keep track of who’s saying what about your business or name. You can set it to receive alerts once a day, once a week or as they happen. It’s up to you. Otherinbox allows you to set up incoming emails to be directed into specific folders, such as “shopping”, “business”, “clients”, “buyers”, “sellers”, “personal”, etc. That way you can tackle the most important emails now and save the rest for when you have more time.
Finally, use your email filters. Just about every email program offers some kind of filters. It may take a little time in the beginning. But, as you designate which emails are SPAM and which are actual emails you want to receive, the filters are programmed to recognize potential SPAM in future emails. This helps reduce the junk and keep the good stuff coming through.
I’m trying to reduce the clutter in my life so that I can stay focused on the important things: my family, my friends and my clients. Organizing and optimizing my email is one way to get rid of the junk. These free tools can help you as well. Please let me know if you need help organizing your real estate business so you can continue to be productive and prosperous in 2012.
Free Video Channel for Real Estate Listings
Published January 26, 2012 | 
We can all agree that videos make great advertisements. Whether it’s for a property, an event or even showcasing your real estate skills, videos have surpassed still pictures and even slideshows in helping market you and your listings online. YouTube has become the second most used search engine (behind Google and in front of Yahoo! and Bing) on the internet today. Wouldn’t it be nice if there was a place to upload the video of your client’s real estate listing without having it compete with cats playing the piano, stunts gone wrong and startled baby faces? Well, there is. It’s called Property Tube.
Property Tube was created exclusively for private sellers and renters as well as professional real estate agents and offices as a marketing platform for their properties. They give exposure of your clients’ properties to a world-wide audience. All you have to do is take any video you’ve created or had created by a professional and upload it to your free Property Tube account like you would with a YouTube video. In just two easy steps, you can map the location of the property, upload the video, add a catchy headline and provide details of the property in question, including adding a link back to your website or blog right in the description.
Just like YouTube, you can even create your own real estate channel. Keep your data base updated on what’s happening with your office, what’s going on around your neighborhood, new listings that need to be seen to be believed and general real estate news that everyone can use with your own branded real estate channel. This is a great way to engage an audience and keep them asking for more. And all this is absolutely FREE!
If you don’t fancy yourself a cinematographer, don’t fret. Property Tube can help you find a videographer near you to shoot an amazing, professional quality video. However, anyone with a Flip camera and some imagination can put together something truly special on Property Tube.
If a picture is worth a thousand words, a video is just about priceless. And, with Property Tube, your priceless video can be advertised to millions of potential buyers all across the world for FREE! Just think of Property Tube as the YouTube of real estate listings.
Stuffing’s for Turkeys, Not Websites!
Published January 20, 2012 | 
While content is critical to creating an amazing real estate website or blog that internet users will want to visit again and again, there is more work to be had behind the scenes…primarily keywords. Keywords are the specific words or phrases that internet users type into the search field when looking up information. Each search engine uses their own algorithm to determine what websites will provide the best information that the searcher is looking for based on these keywords. When it comes to keywords, though, stuffing’s for turkeys, not websites!
Search engines frown upon the practice of adding thousands of keywords to a website or blog (known as “keyword stuffing”). You can actually be penalized for this. Instead, it is recommended that you find a few key words or phrases that you want to focus on.
When narrowing your choices, think of how you typically search for things online. For example, let’s say you heard about a balloon festival in Sonoma and want to know more about it. You wouldn’t just type in “balloons” or even “balloon festival”, would you? That would give you tons of extra websites ranging from party balloons to the annual Albuquerque Balloon Festival, none of which is what you are actually looking for. You would instead type in something more specific like “Sonoma balloon festival” in your search engine’s search field and hit enter. Then, your search engine would look through all the sites it had in its database to list the best sites for you to visit to find the information you are seeking.
Most people get as specific as they can when typing in the search field. Searchers typically look for a specific thing (person, company, event…in this case, “balloon festival”) and then a specific location (in this case, “Sonoma”). Instead of focusing on a generic term for your site, such as “real estate”, you want to get specific so that you get those people really looking for your services in your particular area. These terms may be searched less, but they increase the likelihood of a cold prospect turning into a hot lead.
There are several tools available to help you create a list of keywords to focus on your real estate site or blog. One of my personal favorites is Soovle.com. Soovle allows you to compare top keyword searches on multiple search engines at one time. You can choose the search engines you want to compare (anywhere from 7 to 15 at one time). All you have to do is start typing in the keywords you would like to use and you will instantly see the most searched words/phrases on each search engine. You don’t even have to finish your word before Soovle begins offering suggestions. This can help you optimize the keywords on your site/blog so you can find your audience and they can find you.
Don’t fall for the “if one is good, more is better” way of thinking. Stuffing’s for turkeys, not websites…or blogs. Keep a few key words or phrases in mind when working on your real estate website or blog and you’ll find yourself at the top of the search engines soon enough. Best of all, potential clients will find their way to you, too.
Customize Your WordPress Site for FREE!
Published January 12, 2012 | Creating an interesting, interactive website used to cost thousands of dollars a year. Even if you went the “do-it-yourself” route, you ran the risk of looking like many other real estate sites out there by using the same old limited freebie themes. However, websites have come a long way, baby. Most real estate professionals are ditching their old expensive websites for a hosted WordPress site. They are much more affordable, offer a wide variety of plugins and widgets to completely customize your site, and, most importantly, they are completely user-friendly. Even computer novices can look like geniuses with WordPress.
Theme Shock is a great program I have found to help my real estate clients create a truly impressive WordPress site. Through Theme Shock, you can download your own free bundle of WordPress themes to use on your hosted site. Each free bundle includes your choice of 99 different WordPress themes (you can use 10 different ones at a time for free), 750 free high quality icons and more. For a fee, you can download the premium Shock Bundle. This includes 102 Premium WordPress themes, icons for Android and iPhone, credit card icons, social media icons, logo templates and so much more. The following are just a few examples of Word Press sites using Theme Shock my clients are currently using:
Don’t delay. Stop spending thousands of dollars on your real estate website. Get Theme Shock now and make a true impression on future clients. Just let me know if you need any help getting started.
SPAM is a Four Letter Word
Published January 6, 2012 | 
The internet has become a way of life for most people. You can go online to do just about anything: shop, socialize, pay your taxes, find real estate clients, look up how long George Jetson’s work week was (or is that just me?), etc. It’s very convenient to have the wealth of knowledge you used to have to go to the library to find now available at your fingertips. The downside of all this convenience, however, is SPAM…the other four letter word that sends shudders up your spine. It can clog up your inbox and take forever to clear up. I’ve found a solution to reduce SPAM as well as managing your own contact list absolutely FREE! Unsubscribe.com.
Unsubscribe.com is offered as a free download that integrates with most email programs, including Outlook, Gmail and Yahoo! Mail. In essence, Unsubscribe.com becomes your SPAM blocker. All you need to do is click the “Unsubscribe” button next to an email you know is unsolicited and you will never receive emails from that source again. As you continue to “unsubscribe”, the program learns what to identify as SPAM so that future SPAM will never make it into your inbox ever again.
Another neat feature of this free program is the Social Monitor. With the simple click of a button, Unsubscribe.com is downloaded as an add-on to your toolbar. Social Monitor helps you find out who is accessing your information on any of your social networking sites, including Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter. Remove any connections you may have to applications you don’t use, applications you aren’t sure you can trust and applications you know to be unsafe. When you find unsafe applications, quickly and easily let your friends and followers know about them through Unsubscribe.com so that they can protect themselves as well. With the recent Ramnit worm that infected thousands of Facebook accounts overseas recently, stealing more than 45,000 login credentials from users in the UK and France, you can never be vigilant enough.
Real estate professionals can also use Unsubscribe.com to manage their contacts. When you download the Safe Send program, an extra button will be installed in your email program. With Safe Send, an “unsubscribe” link will automatically be added to the bottom of all of your emails. If someone receives an email from you, all they have to do is click the link and their email will automatically be removed from your contact list so they never receive an email from you again. That way, YOU don’t look like annoying SPAM to your contacts. All you have to do to activate the Safe Send is to click that button rather than your regular “send” button.
Unsubscribe.com has several other features, too. I encourage you to visit their website to see how amazing this program is. In my vocabulary, SPAM is a four letter word. Wash out your inbox’s mouth with Unsubscribe.com today. You’ll be so happy you did!
Using YouTube for Real Estate Promotion
Published December 29, 2011 | 
Unless you’ve been living under a rock for the last 20 years, you have heard of, visited, searched and/or shared videos on YouTube. However, this hugely popular site is more than just videos of piano-playing cats, silly baby laughs and dumb stunts gone wrong. YouTube has, in fact, become a force to be reckoned with as a promotional device. Since it is the second most used search engine (right behind Google and a step ahead of Yahoo!), it’s time you started thinking about how you can use YouTube in your marketing efforts.
Creating a real estate website or blog used to be the first step in getting noticed on the web. Adding photos to said sites drew visitors’ attention by breaking up a page full of simple text. Now, video has replaced still images as the site enhancer needed to capture and maintain a potential real estate client’s attention. You should already be creating videos that promote your real estate clients’ listings. They don’t have to be big productions. A simple handheld Flip video camera is all the equipment you need to walk a viewer through the wonderful aspects of a listing, with you as their personal tour guide. These videos should then be uploaded to your YouTube channel.
The first thing you need to do is create your own YouTube channel. It’s free and simple. Then, create a few fun videos that showcase your skills, knowledge of the area, places to see, etc. that can be uploaded to your channel. This will provide people with a reason to want to visit your channel again and again. Shoot videos of each of your listings to add to your channel that include appropriate tags and a search-friendly description that relate directly to your video. I would also suggest including the complete address of the property being promoted in the title, at the beginning of the description and in the tags. In your description, you can also add a link to your website or a direct link to the listing itself. You can even add annotations (text) within your uploaded video to encourage the viewer to investigate the listing further on your website, creating a better opportunity to convert them into a client.
Get creative with your videos. After all, the point is to make an impression and keep a viewer’s attention for as long as possible. This doesn’t mean spending tons of money on a huge production. You do need to make sure that any audio is easy to hear and the video itself is steady, clear and conveys the message you want it to.
Like paid Google ads, YouTube Promoted Video Ads are a way to get your videos seen right away. If you have the budget to do so, consider bidding for keywords through the YouTube Promoted Video Ads. You will need to think about your budget, conversion rate and expected volume before you bid on any specific keywords, though, to make the most out of your time and money. One of the key advantages to a Promoted Video Ad on YouTube is that you can also create an overlay ad. This is a clickable link embedded into the bottom of the video that will send the visitor to another outside site (like your website or blog). This is a fantastic way to send more traffic your way.
As technology evolves, the uses for it evolve as well. With YouTube’s popularity steadily increasing, it’s time to consider adding it to your marketing arsenal by using YouTube for real estate promotion. Create a marketing strategy like you do for your website and blogs. If you need help promoting your YouTube videos, just contact us. We’re always ready to help you succeed.
Keep Track of Santa on Christmas Eve
Published December 22, 2011 | 
Did you know that NORAD has been tracking Santa’s progress every Christmas since 1955? It’s true! And now you can track Santa no matter where you may be: via website, Google Earth and social media. You can track him on your mobile phone with Google Maps for Mobile, too. Wouldn’t you know it? There’s even an app for that. Keeping trakc of Santa’s whereabouts on Christmas Eve is even easier than ever before.
Like all great inventions (potato chips, teflon, silly putty and penicillin..yes, I mentioned all of those in the same breath), tracking Santa began by accident. The local Colorado Springs paper ran its annual ad by Sears & Roebuck giving out a phone number for kids to call up and speak to Santa directly. Unfortunately (or not, depending on how you look at it), someone at the paper misprinted the number. Instead of the North Pole, callers actually were rung through to the hotline of the Commander-in-Chief of CONAD (the predecessor of NORAD). Not one to disappoint the children, Director of Operations Colonel Harry Shoup played along by ordering the staff to track Santa’s whereabouts via radar. Thus, a tradition was born and continues to this day.
Beginning Saturday, December 24, 2011, you can track Santa’s sleigh thanks to NORAD using any of these methods below:
- NORDAD Website
- Google Maps for Mobile (click to download to your mobile phone)
- App (for Apple-related products, click here…for Android, click here)
- Facebook, Google+ and Twitter
- Google Earth
I guess no one can be stealthy in today’s world if even Santa’s every move can be tracked. Hmm…I’m not sure how I feel about that. Maybe George Orwell was right, albeit a couple of decades short. Oh well. Forget Matt Lauer! I’ll be playing “Where in the World is Santa?” this Christmas Eve. Happy holidays, everyone!
Why You Need a Mobile Website
Published December 15, 2011 | 
Real estate sure has come a long way in the last couple of decades. No longer is paper the top choice for advertising (whether that be general mailers, postcards, flyers or print ads). Today’s buyer is typically pretty tech-savvy. In the hustle and bustle of today’s consumer, more and more people are even shying away from their computer screens to seek information on their smartphones. But not all smartphones are created equal. Your website may look fantastic on a regular laptop or desktop. But, view it on a smartphone and you could see a completely different picture. That’s why you need a mobile website now!
Websites use a certain amount of bandwidth to be viewed. On a mobile device, this could cause a problem with load time, missing information, etc. In fact, most cell phone companies will not allow websites that aren’t optimized for mobile use to be viewed in their entirety on a mobile device because the bandwidth can get too expensive to provide. Since most people accessing the internet via their smartphones are really looking for a few key pieces of information, a much simpler mobile-friendly site is recommended. That’s exactly what a mobi site does for you.
As a real estate professional, you want a potential client (buyer or seller) to be able to view information from anywhere at any time. Make it easy for them to view your listings on their smartphones with a mobile website. They aren’t expensive to create, they are easy to maintain and you will have taken the next evolutionary step in your real estate marketing. There are also a separate set of search engines specifically for mobile websites. So, if your website isn’t mobile-friendly as well as optimized for the mobile search engines, chances are your site will be relegated to the bottom of the mobile search engine rankings where no one will find you.
Second Self can create a mobile website for you quickly, easily and efficiently. All you have to do is contact us to tell us that you need a mobile website now. Click here for a free one-half hour consultation. We’d love to work with you!
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