Real Tech for Real Estate

Alright, folks - I'm in need of your help! I have been blessed with a ticket to the upcoming REBlogWorld event, September 19th in Las Vegas but as you all know, sometimes being an online Entrepreneur means you seldom have wiggle room in the budget for airfare and accomodations. That's where I hope all of you will come in.

I was going to raffle off big prizes for purchasing one hour of services, but realized that it would be very much against the law. So, instead I'm offering you three different options to help me get to RE Blog World:

It goes without saying that having top Google placement has its advantages. The great news for us this month is the fact that REALTOR Magazine featured our terrific drip email campaign service in their Buyers Guide for the September issue !

This post talks readers step by step through the process of installing Joomla to create a blog or website with excellent search engine optimization. I'm often asked for my opinion on the best open source platform for creating a well optimized blog. I've worked in WordPress, Movable Type, Typepad and many of the free blogging platforms and I feel that Joomla is the hands down winner. Of course, many great blogs built in WordPress and others rank well - I don't debate that at all. This post is for those folks who are leaning towards Joomla for their blog.

Let's Go! I'm Ready!

The amazing Moo.com has paired with Linkedin to offer 50 Free Moo cards to help you promote your Linkedin profile and your business! Plus, the shipping is totally FREE!

The process is extremely easy, I just did it! You can use their stock images or upload your own. The entire process only took 5 minutes and soon I'll have 50 terrific new cards. I've wanted to try Moo cards for some time but never had a need - until now!

Quick, head over to Moo.com and get your 50 Free cards today!

So, you've decided it's time to buy your very own domain name and now you need to know which registrar is the best and/or cheapest. Many "cheap" registrars online today give me the heebie jeebies, so my recommendation is pulled from my own experience and across only reputable registrars.

Our first post in a new Photoshop Video series, we'll help you fix color cast issues in your property photos.

This is a very large movie! Just right click the image or link below and choose "save as" or left click the image or link below to watch the movie right away.

 

 

Get Thee to a Nunnery...  er, to YouTube, that is! The exciting news from Jeff Turner at Real Estate Shows is certainly worth cavorting over, Milords & Ladies!  Jeff's RES Blog post states, "The simplest and most effective way to create real estate tours, is now the simplest and most effective way to get to video." If you've never heard of Real Estate Shows or for some crazy reason, you've hesitated in trying them out (FREE!) - then the time is NOW! You'll love how easy it is to create virtual tours and now with this exciting new feature, you can get your tours converted to video for easy upload to YouTube, Flickr, MySpace, PhotoBucket and more! What are you waiting for?

How healthy is your website's SEO? With the recent Google page rank update, many folks are wondering.

It pays to do your homework if you want to excel at optimization. Helpful resources abound, but a discerning approach is imperative - not all self-proclaimed "oracles" to SEO wisdom can back up their claims. Google's Webmaster Central is essential reading, and participation on forums such as High Rankings is a great way to learn from others in the search marketing community.

Andy Beal over at Marketing Pilgrim has done it again! He Twittered a recent blog post, so I jumped over to check it out -

Blog Marketing Tips #2: Increasing Traffic with Killer Slugs

Whether you're a new or seasoned blogger, you may not have known about this excellent tip. Blog 'Slugs' are the default post URL strings or permalink settings.  Andy explains it wonderfully and I picked up a new trick - while you may be crafting your blog posts to include keywords, Andy warns,

Greg Kime of GW Kime & Associates / Keller Williams just recently started working with VirtuAllin. We've had the priveledge of creating their entire marketing plan from logo concept/creation, business cards, technology recommendations, website and will soon assist them with creation of action plans and management of their listings.

I'm happy to welcome Greg to Real Tech for Real Estate and get his perspective on Virtual Assistance.

Chip Hughes of RE/MAX Hills & Valley in Branchburg, New Jersey and owner of BranchBlog, a blog dedicated to real estate trends, community events and other stuff happening in Branchburg NJ has been one of my clients for many years. Chip came on board with VirtuAllin in early 2003, back when nearly all of our clients were RE/MAX of New Jersey clients. VirtuAllin's second client ever was Mark Schilling, Information Technology Manager for the New Jersey Region of RE/MAX. He loved our work so much that he recommended us to all of their (then approximately 2500) agents.

I'm thrilled at the opportunity to interview Chip and get his perspective on Virtual Assistance.

Bob Carney of GotBob4Homes , FocusOnFrederick and Bob's Brain Dump knows internet marketing for real estate.  I was fortunate enough to "meet" Bob via our shared social networking addiction, Twitter . We struck up a friendship... and then a partnership when we reworked his Advanced Access website and converted it to Joomla . It was Bob's first time working with a Virtual Assistant and he was kind enough to allow us to interview him about the process.

Since the wonderful Got Bob? Bob Carney was cool enough to post over at Active Rain and his 'Bob's Brain Dump ' blog about his recent experiences with the Joomla content management system, I thought it would be an excellent opportunity to blog more about exactly what Joomla is and why you might find it beneficial in your real estate marketing plan.

Everyone is Twitterpated these days, right?  Well, just what is Twitter , and why would it be useful for you as a Realtor to get in on the twit action?

What is Twitter?

Twitter is a free social networking and microblogging service utilising instant messaging, SMS or a web interface.  You sign up and you get a twitter page such as @virtuallin where you can make a post of up to 140 characters to update the world about what you're doing.  If you have other twitter users who 'follow' you, they can see your posts live. 

To me, twitter is more like a cross between instant chat and a forum - you can twitter via your mobile and connect with folks while you're at lunch, in the car, on the plane, or sitting at your desk.

Benefits of Twitter

So, you've got Twitter now and don't know why?  Some of the benefits of twitter may not be apparent at first. I'll go into a few here and don't hesitate to twitter me if I leave anything out!

Freelance Switch has done it again - they've created yet another amazing article that makes it seem as if their writers are hovering over my shoulder watching me run my VA business!  This wonderful post about balancing your work life with your personal life when you're an entrepreneur offers excellent advice on how to set boundaries and avoid burnout.  I highly recommend you run over, read and bookmark this article!

Is Your Work/Life Balance Killing Your Chances Of Freelancing Success?

Lea Woodward

Bleeecchhh! I've gone from a PR of 4/10 to a PR of 2/10 (insert expletive here) - boy, all from having a wee few paid links on my site?  A gal just can't get ahead, LOL.  While I'm not alone - the news about Google's Halloween page rank update is all over the web - it's a shame that my small site is lumped in with some of the bigger sites that sell text link ads such as The Washington Post , Forbes , Engadget , Search Engine Journal , etc.  Technorati Profile

It is with great sadness that Carol Allin, Buddy's wife , announced to the world that Buddy passed away at his home in Hemet, California, on
Saturday, March 10, 2007.

Buddy completed the manuscript of his life's work in Golf Teaching called "Preferences", working up until the last week of his life to ensure that his 50 years' study and thoughts on the golf swing could be brought to a
wider audience.

Buddy was indeed one of those rare, exceptional human beings who touched the lives of all with whom he came into contact. He will be sorely missed as a great golfer, an authority on the swing, and as a mentor and teacher to
thousands of students.

Good golfing in Paradise, Buddy, and give St. Peter at least 2 a side.

Alrighty, the wonderful Anna Baron of The Virtual Link tagged me, so here goes nothing:

They say imitation is the highest form of flattery, so {josquote}I must admit to being insanely flattered by the recent and huge influx of Virtual Assistants who have adopted Joomla{/josquote} as their content management system of choice.  A content management system or CMS is a method of creating a website utilizing software to enable easy updating of files, images and documents.  Rather than creating a website with pure HTML or be kept hostage by a template site provider, a good CMS can make it easy for non-coder's to add content to a website anytime they wish - as easy as working in a Word Document.  Drupal and WordPress are famous CMS systems, as is Joomla. 

 

It's Friday and as an interlude, I wanted to do some quantification.  I've been reading "The E-Myth Revisited," by Michael E. Gerber which discusses taking your small business past the "Technician" stage, whereby there is no real business, only YOU - to a place where you have systems and processes in place to the point where someday if you stepped out, your business could go on without you.

Today, {josquote}I'd like to learn your thoughts about Virtual Assistant's and get your ideas on what makes a good Virtual Assistant{/josquote} and the experiences you've had (if any) working with a Virtual Assistant.

So, feel free to add your comments to this post below - include your website and you'll get a link back to your site for the effort!

At first, I just thought it was an issue with my browser or bandwidth - perhaps I needed a quick cache clear or reboot, but I realized quickly that ALL Advanced Access websites were totally offline today.  After doing a quick search, I found news at Active Rain that indeed, AA were having some "power" issues and needed to relocate all of their servers to another location.

Of all the various scenarios I've heard over the years with multiple hosts, both big and small, this is a first for me.  I've heard the "denial of service" attack, we're working on it.  I've heard the "close your browser and reboot," it's all your own fault excuse.  I've heard the "you're using unsupported xyz."  IMHO, it just seems a little fishy.

There's an unsubstantiated rumor over at Active Rain that they're moving servers to obtain new IP's due to spam black listing.  If all of their IP addresses are black listed from most servers due to spam, few of their subscribers would be able to get any email through to anywhere. 

Follow up -  May 24th:  It's official - on behalf of a client who has an AA website and Comcast as her ISP, we contacted a rep at Comcast because she has had serious email trouble.  It seems Comcast blacklisted the entire Advanced Access range of IP's due to spam issues.  The rep at Comcast stated that the blacklisting of all AA sites wouldn't be listed unless the management at AA contacted them directly to work out the issues.

So, you can firmly bet that the "power outtage" is a cover story for AA moving their entire server base to new IP's - however, it may be a short-term solution if Comcast quickly detects this move and simply blocks the new set of IP's.  Be warned! 

I usually review my website statistics every morning to track who's coming to my website and where they're referred from.  Statcounter.com offers a nice, easy interface and their free service keeps me informed.  However, today I got a nasty surprise.  I found a referrer link and after taking a closer look at the site that referred to mine, I noticed they had copied just about every page of my website and even foolishly linked to my own portfolio (very dumb).  Normally, I try to track nasty plagiarists via CopyScape.com , but their dumb mistake led me right to them.

WannaGirlFriday.com is the site in question, and they've just been reported to Google for copy theft.  Why should I bother?  Because Google hates duplicate content - and while Google might realize that my content is the original, I'm not willing to take any chances on getting a ranking hit.

Just about every single page of this site is a carbon copy of mine - the owner even put a Meebo widget on her contact page!  While this angers me, if I suddenly have less relevant content at Google because of it - I'd take an economic hit.

The lesson to everyone:  Once you achieve high ranking, you absolutely need to take time to hunt down and deal with thieves. 

 

Another late night, uploading files and cleaning up some of my bookmarks.  While I was browsing through Del.icio.us , I found a really terrific website to help with your Search Engine Optimization! 

There is a Virtual Assistant that I owe a great deal of gratitude to - today she saved my hard earned Google ranking simply by being kind enough to let me know that I was asleep at the wheel. 

One of the biggest hurdles in my business so far has been effective communication - keeping clients updated, returning calls and emails promptly and just ensuring my valued partners know I haven't died or dropped off the face of the earth.  When you're deep into an exciting new website design, sometimes you look up and realize it's three days later...2:00am....and you forgot to eat again.

As a person who balances analytical and creative skills daily, I've often found communicating effectively difficult.  There have been times where my communication has been excellent (several calls and emails per day) and my turnaround time stellar (same day results) with a brand new client yet they've expressed disfavor due to some unexpressed need.

 

Yes, I'm still alive - although rather sleep deprived due to a gigantic influx of prospective new clients.  I'm not sure who's been out there raving about me or if it's just a search engine thing, but my phone is ringing off the hook!  Bear with me if you're waiting to hear back, I haven't yet gotten my new assistant up to speed.

I was doing my usual morning search at Google News for real estate items when I stumbled on an investing blog hosted at Blogger and now I'm seeing spots!  While the content of this blog - The Millionaires Blog is interesting and worth grabbing the RSS feed, the layout of his blog is awful on the eyes.  The Millionaire's Blog has a 100% black background with white text - and while this format may capture attention for its' uniqueness in a world stuffed with white backgrounds, the content is difficult for the eyes to adjust to and once I left to view another site with a typical white background, my eyes were burning and seeing black horizontal lines. 

Once again, we've been hit with a blast of snow which is quite unusual for the North West.  In the last ten years, I can count on one hand the number of times we've seen snow and it's only ever been a wee bit - but this year, our weather has been quite volatile. 

Of course, us Washingtonians barely know how to drive in the rain (if you can believe that, with 99% of our days being rainy) not to mention how bad we can be trying to navigate in the snow. 

Lately, despite my conviction that blogging is a terrific and necessary tool to market your business online in the world of Web 2.0, I've discovered that in the real world daily grind, blogging often ends up way at the bottom of the priority list.  I have a short litmus test that I try to reference whenever I get that haze of "what precise next action should now be taken" at any point in the day.  It's ranked on a point system:

When is something worth doing?

 

Well, we're finally back online after the giant storm late Thursday evening.  We had wind gusts up to 70 mph and the giant oak in the backyard seemed so close to toppling that I was having a bit of a panic attack.    We lost power about midnight and broke out the flashlights and radio.  Thanks to having a gas stove, water heater and fireplace - we weren't as bad off as many all over the state, but it still was very trying.  We could see transformers blowing on the horizon every few minutes and knew we'd be in for quite a bit of damage and the reports were widespread from Issaquah in the north to Olympia to the south.

Update Jan 5th, 2007:  Well, after two weeks of nearly no service, Comcast has finally fixed whatever infrastructure that kept our internet service offline.  Do they offer a discount?  Duh, of course not... :( 

If you've tried search engine optimization on your website ever, you've probably done a lot of research at a lot of different websites.  You've also probably been spammed by some pretty creative boneheads that promised the moon and never actually visited your website before spamming you.

Well, here in the great northwest we're a few pounds heavier thanks to a yummy turkey with all the fixin's and we're now getting hit with the most snow we've seen in a few years.  Here's my 8 year old Madison enjoying the snow!

Here's hoping everyone has a wonderful Thanksgiving holiday with their family - enjoy the parade, catch the game with Dad...and be prepared for that oh so nice drowsy feeling after dinner.    See everyone back on Monday!{tagbot} 

Looking for a simple and easy way to spice up your website?  You may have considered adding some Flash elements, but didn't relish the idea of trying to learn a complicated program or spending tons on a Flash designer.  Well, you can now get the spice you were hoping for free - and without a huge learning curve!

After some very wet, gray and murky days - one tends to get a little blue.  Well, if you're feeling the same and need a little pick me up, you have to check out this video from YouTube!  Click here to get a healthy dose of pure laughter!

{tagbot} Performancing, home of the “jobs for bloggers” board and the much loved Firefox blogging plug-in, has added an ad network to its family of services. Performancing Partners is accepting bloggers and advertisers now. Bloggers drop javascript into their sites, prices are either set by the bloggers themselves or by an algorithm relative to traffic and market sector and then ad buyers purchase 125×125 graphic ads for a 30 day period.

If you're like me, you go to a lot of different sites every day - your own site, news sites, blogs, you do searches, etc.  A few months ago I found an excellent free tool that has increased my productivity by leaps and bounds.  

Hoorah for Google as evidently last Friday, September 29th 2006 - Google updated those Page Rank toolbars and we now have Page Rank, Captain!  Go, now!  Take a look at your site - check all your pages and see how your page rank is doing!  If you've been in the sandbox, you may be out!  One day you're in, the next day you're out. (In my best Heidi Clum german accent).

If you're in real estate - or even online these days and you haven't heard of Digg.com yet, then you're probably either selling too much real estate or very little at all.  Digg is a news website with an emphasis on technology and science articles. It combines social bookmarking, blogging, and syndication with a form of non-hierarchical, democratic editorial control. News stories and websites are submitted by users, and then promoted to the front page through a user-based ranking system. This differs from the hierarchical editorial system that many other news sites employ. (Definition from Wikipedia )

It seems 1and1 - the webhost I've recommended for so long has completely dropped the ball.  For the second time this year, a client of mine and a 1and1 customer has gone to upgrade their hosting account and unknowingly wiped out their website!  The first time, I thought it was simply an accident of choosing the wrong package, but it seems that 1and1's backend assures that this will happen for everyone.  What has happened is my client was on a Linux shared hosting account and when she went to upgrade for more features, the backend only offered her one option:  an MS hosting account.  Of course, you would say - so what?  What's the difference?  Well, MS hosting accounts do not have MySQL databases which means no Joomla support.  It also means that 1and1 immediately removed ALL of her files and deleted her databases!  

Hello folks! As you know, I’m always on the lookout for tips and tricks to get more visibility for my clients. This tip is so juicy, I just had to blog about it!

Some of you agents may have already heard about Google Base. Google Base is a place where you can post all types of content and have it show up on Google (including real estate listings). If you have a Point2 site, you know that they’ve been feeding your listings to Google Base and Trulia since last March. Do a Google search for Real Estate - and you’ll see the Google Base functionality that allows users to bring up a map of all listings available in that area.

Hi folks,

Thanks for your patience this last week and this week. It’s been one awful August. As some of you know, my husband Vance slipped and did quite a number on his ankle - view the horrible photo here. So, he’s not getting around too well and just hates being immobile - and that means I’m running around fixing meals and helping him get around.

I’m sneaking work time in when I can, but it’s hit or miss. Hang in there with me! Thanks!

Yes, I love tech! This week is the Bergstrom annual family reunion and I’m posting this from Fort Warden (where the movie, Officer & a Gentleman was filmed) with my PC which now is sitting on the picnic table next to my father-in-law’s huge RV. He was nice enough to allow me access to his satellite internet connection, so it’s a working vacation for me!

I’m here plugging away at projects and just wanted to share how quirky it is these days with technology that all the neighboring campers are giving me very odd looks as I type away.

With today’s tech, location isn’t nearly as vital as it used to be. If I had my own RV with satellite, I could work from literally anywhere! The breeze is a bit chilly coming off the water, but I could always move inside the RV.

I’m constantly being asked by clients and prospects “how do I market my business successfuly online?” They tell me that they hear reciprocal linking is what they need to do or some even tell me that they want to start a blog but have no idea what to do or what to write once they get one. They get so much information and mis-information from so many sources, they often just give up and stick to the old fashioned methods.

The three steps you must take before you can be successful in any online marketing goal are:

1. Know what everyone else is doing right now!

Yes, I bet you think this is yet another blog post about search engine optimization and reciprocal links, but I promise it isn’t!

So often, my clients and us web gurus are so totally focused on how to get our site linked from other sites that we sometimes forget that we can have great success the other way around, too!

As a real estate professional, you already know that close to 95% of internet empowered consumers start their home search online. This means that it’s vital that you have a fantastic website with tons of amazing content and the lead generation tools to land those hot new prospects.

So - tell the truth - Just how much have you invested in - The Most Vital Tool - to your real estate business? How much time have you invested to add relevant content to your website? Does your website look just like thousands of other real estate websites?

If it does, you’re making a critical mistake that could cost you thousands and thousands of dollars in lost business.

…That was the title of a book I purchased recently off of Amazon. As many of you know, business has grown at times beyond my capacity to keep up. Hiring Keely back in February has helped a great deal, but things still become bumpy once and awhile what with 30 clients, a new mortgage, a teenager, a husband with a very fragile case of Type 1 diabetes and two wee ones to manage.

This is a response I posted to the Real Talk listserve - thought I’d post it here as well…

Reciprocal linking isn’t quite the panacea it once was, but there is a reason. Google’s Oct 2005 algo change adopted a
means of checking those recip links and analyzing the sites you’re linking to - they analize that link partners links and so on and - if your link partner links to less than relevant sites, then the impact of their link to you is lessened.

In other words, you have to take extra time to actually check out the sites that you’re ‘recommending’ with your link exchanges to make certain that they’re actually a quality site.

Desktop Publishing

First of all what the heck is it?

It’s when you use a computer to create documents for printing. So, real estate flyers, newspaper ads, manuals and more are often designed by desktop publishers.

What’s the difference between using a virtual assistant desktop publisher and creating your own designs with Publisher or similar program? Often, your real estate virtual assistant has the skills and experience to produce much more effective results. Your specialty is real estate, while the real estate virtual assistant has honed his/her skills over several years and has learned what works and what doesn’t.

SEO - The Good, the Bad & the Ugly

Inspired by a recent article blogged out by Mike Davidson we felt compelled to try and enlighten as many as you as we possible can by giving you some handy dandy tips on the wonders of SEO (search engine optimization) and how to get right to the tip of the top of Google ranking wonders.

………….Of course that’s why you pay us the big bucks right?

Well….yes you are right, but we wanted to let you know in a little more detail what can get you a #1 ranking and what will get you a ranking on page 4098 (that’s a lot of hitting the *next* link on the bottom of the Google search page…..