With the market like it is right now, you may want to take the time to build up marketing impact when the daily work of real estate isn’t all-consuming. Are you interested in finding new ways to advertise your listing online to improve that home’s chance of selling, while boosting your own visibility?

Featured Listings
Here’s a list of a few of the best online resources for advertising yourself… er… I mean your listing. Be sure that you have your listing FEATURED on your own home page. By doing this, any incoming links “for more information” will lead to the index page of your website. So, even if the home sells, you still have a link that’s live and is helping you. And when you sell a home, you will have other “featured” homes listed for the incoming traffic to review.

Landing Pages
You may want to add a landing page that gathers the “from” URL and customizes your website to say, “If you were seeking the featured home from Craig’s List, it’s already sold… but we have these great homes still available! And then list the home you do have featured in a thumbnail format so they can click for more information.

Localized Online Classifieds
Most popular websites for free (or extremely low cost) real estate classified ads today:

http://www.kijiji.com
http://www.craigslist.com/
http://www.backpage.com
http://www.tenant.com/
http://www.nfafn.org/
http://www.usfreeads.com/
http://www.freeclassifiedads.com/
http://listsomething.com/
http://www.nocostclassifieds.com/
http://www.postlets.com/
http://www.facebook.com (Free “MarketPlace” ads)
http://www.trulia.com/
http://base.google.com/
http://www.oodle.com/
http://www.local.com/
http://www.propsmart.com/
http://www.vast.com/
http://byownermls.com/
http://www.livedeal.com

Many of these websites have an expiration day- so don’t forget to renew!

(photo by mconnors of morguefile.com)

Although all the houses (and features) aren’t directly related to Tiny Homes, I just love this website, aptly named “Off Beat Homes” which displays unusual homes, details and treatments. I particularly like the idea of a tiny house with a fairytale styled roof. (Isn’t that sweet?!?!)

You may also enjoy looking at these unusual home and building photos, courtesy of HotHomesOfUtah.com (now this is an interesting way for a real estate group to draw in traffic to their website, bump up their rankings and amuse the general public, all at the same time!) Or, you may want to look through these pages of strange houses and these oddities.

Web two-point-oh. You have been hearing about it several years and in 2007, it was EVERYONE’s favorite online buzzword.Now it’s 2008 and all you know is that you are supposed to be more “involved” online and that you probably need to sign up for a bunch of “social networking” sites and get some cool widgets to make your site score more visitors.

You also know that you don’t have the time to send messages to people on MySpace (and you don’t really want to). So, if you can just find the right tool, the right technology, that elusive “thing” you are missing — you can conquer this Web 2.0 frontier. Right? (more…)

The housing market slump has been fueled by the wave of foreclosures resulting from those “creative” mortgages in our recent past. Last week I talked with Jeff Aicken, a loan officer with Century Mortgage in Louisville, Kentucky to get a professional’s view in layman’s terms on what happened, how it happened, and what real estate agents can do now to make the situation better for their clients and for their own bottom line.

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In addition to the Real Estate keyword help I offered in an article on WickedWordCraft.com, I also found this cool “right here, right now” tool from SEO Book. Give it a spin!

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Nope, not always. (But it is much more often than it should be!)

I just spoke with Russell Springs broker and real estate agent Kim Byrom of Lake Cumberland Properties who is the first real estate agent that actually tried to help me find a new office space. She is NOT the first one I contacted. In the future, she will be.

Kim asked qualifying questions, got my name and number and said she would give me a call back. I believe her. I told her how much I appreciated her help and that she was the first real estate agent of the five I’d contacted that was interested in helping me. She said that most of the office space rentals were not listings so she helped people as a public service. She went on to say that it strengthened the community… etc, etc.. and I found myself in awe. She said all the right things. She’s service-centric! I love it.

Yes, I work with Real Estate agents all day, every day. Yes, my own clients are overboard on the customer service. That’s one of the reasons I work with them instead of working with other agents and brokers in their zip code.

But locally, it’s always been hit and miss with real estate service and it was really nice to talk to Kim after what I’d endured on this one inquiry already today. It was refreshing and I told her so.

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With the constant droning buzz about social media and Internet communities, it can be pretty overwhelming to determine where you should spend your limited time and even more limited energy.

If you are considering joining some now, you should:

Select only a few - it’s better to do a few things really well than to “sort of” do many things. Choose carefully based on your interests, the others involved whether or not the layout/setup makes it easy for you.

Participate – social media doesn’t work if you don’t work it. Signing up and staying quiet is like going to a dance and propping up a wall all night. It’s no fun and it doesn’t help you become more visible to your potentials.

Advertise – if you are a member of a social network and you don’t tell anyone — how will you be found? Many of the people you already know (or those who know you) may be interested in becoming involved with you on a social network — if they know which ones you use… (more…)

I have a client, a Realtor, with a particularly hairy situation. This genuinely nice individual has managed to become entrenched in the mire with a unethical builder. Normally, I’d find this situation incredible — but I’ve watched it develop and it has made me wary of such situations for my other clients.

I know that times are hard for many in the industry right now. I know that people are running scared as the houses sit and the inventory increases. Builders are hard hit, real estate professionals are starting to struggle, even the general public is starting to worry and sweat what Forbes Magazine is calling a Recession Dead Ahead. But, as I read over the letter that this particular builder is now posting all over the Internet, blaming the Realtor and the broker for all the problems he and his family are experiencing, I just have to shake my head. (more…)

I nominated two of my own clients for the RISMedia 50 Days of Leaders recognition. I’m happy to say that Diana Beam of SmoothMovesForSeniors and Miguel Berger of TechValleyHomes have placed in the top 50 Realtors in the states. (more…)

WordPress is extremely user-friendly. If you have ever hand-coded or altered or edited any HTML, it’s a snap. If you haven’t — you really need the easy-to-use interface… like WP. And widgets improve the ease of use factor.

What’s a Widget?

Widgets are tiny programs, usually with specific functions that people add to their desktops or (in the case of WordPress) their websites.

What Do They Do That’s So Cool?

Widgets allow individuals to customize the look, feel and function of the chosen platform quickly, easily and (usually) without the need to touch a single line of code. Read this article about the general concept of widgets and how Coldwell Banker has a desktop version to show new listings in a tidy little package.

Do People Really Use These Things?

Comscore, a digital data tracking service, recently launched “Widget Matrix” to track widget saturation across the Internet. According to the report on widget popularity, the top ten most popular of these little snippet sized programs reached an audience of over 177 thousand unique visitors and in North America alone over 40% of all Internet users visited a website with a widget. The most popular type of widget? Photo-related (think randomized shots of your current listings with “click to view full description” capability).

How do I use them?

Widgets allow you “drag and drop” functionality in many cool features for your new WordPress site — and you can select those and install, activate and customize them yourself. It will give you the ability to be creative and to add new “stuff” without calling a webmaster.

It also gives you the ability to turn off, activate and move around your site’s content to your satisfaction. Once you get it the way you want it, a single click on the “save” button in the widget dashboard and it goes live!

How Do I Use Widgets on My WordPress Install?

First, select a pre-widgetized theme. If the theme you love doesn’t offer widget capability built-in, you can get it widgetized by a code-jockey or you can widgetize it yourself (which is what I did for mine).

Widget-Ready WordPress Themes

Download the WP Widget Ready Theme Pack (15 megs) of over 100 themes.

How to Use Widgets – a step by step guide for beginners

Widgetizing Your Own - http://automattic.com/code/widgets/themes/

Making your own Widgets

Finding Cool Widgets

http://www.widgetbox.com/

http://widgets.wordpress.com/

http://www.widgipedia.com/ - Widget supersite (but not for WP specifically)

Turning Plugins into Widgets – Here’s how!

Learn more about widgets:

How to keep widgets from slowing down your WordPress site

Real Estate Widgets:

http://www.thegoodblogs.com/wordpress_widget – the good blogs widget

http://patrick.bloggles.info/wpwidgets/ – several widgets offered here.

http://www.ozpolitics.info/blog/wordpress-plugins/#links – I like quite a few of these widgets — like the aggregate RSS feed widget (I need this for my own blogs).

Good Storm Widget for Sales on your Blog – http://mecommerce.goodstorm.com/blogwidgets

Category Replacement Widget

Clock Widget

Cluster Map Widget

The energy and enthusiasm of youth is amazing. It utilizes the leverage, strength, and sheer “force of will” to grow, mature and eventually to become self-sufficient. The same is true of your small business.

You watched in awe as your business grew. (Never mind the lack of sleep and the volume of work you endured to make it happen). Every tiny success made you work harder and kept you moving forward.

Then you were breaking even (or maybe even making a small profit) but the business needed your constant, careful guidance. Later, you were forced to endure a stretch of “business adolescence” complete with the inevitable identity crisis.

You were forced to make difficult decisions about the direction your business should take. You knew benign neglect wouldn’t work and even your focused diligence didn’t prevent some small details from wiggling out of your grasp. There was so much to juggle!

Now the business isn’t quite so needy. Finally, it has matured enough that you don’t have to tend it 24/7 and you are officially playing with the “big boys.” A mature business obtains the power of experience, professionalism and polish.

Showcasing these traits makes your business more appealing to the best clients and helps you to secure your place in your industry. It’s time your business “dress” for success… I’ll show you how in five easy steps! (more…)

I wanted to be sure I could take my calendar information with me on my iPhone. Since I’m not a Microsoft Outlook user anymore, I had to find another way to sync up my information.

Recently, the latest calendar plug-in for Thunderbird (Lightning) was released and after the upgrade, I also added this Thunderbird plugin to allow bi-directional updates to Google Calendar directly from my Lightning calendar. (more…)

Are you curious about WordPress as a publishing tool for your online success as a real estate professional? I was too. And I’ve been using WP on my own blog for some time now. I must say, I love it!

I’ve helped several clients switch over to WP. They love it. Currently I’m in the midst of the process to switch over a HUGE real estate resource site to WP for content management. Using WordPress as a real estate website has many benefits: (more…)

If you have a website, you need a custom 404 page.

Why?

• Because there is nothing LESS “sticky” than a standard 404 page and you want a “sticky” site to retain visitors
• Because you want to deliver the BEST personalized service to your clients online and face-to-face
• Because you hate 404 pages yourself
• Because getting a generic “Error 404: Page not found” makes people run away, feel stupid, belive they have done something wrong, or it simply frustrates them when they didn’t get what they wanted

People don’t like to feel stupid and they avoid situations that make them feel that way. They don’t like to be frustrated and ditto on the avoidance there. You don’t want YOUR site to be the cause of these feelings, do you? (more…)

At the end of last year, I blogged about the buying power of women in the real estate arena over on ActiveRain. Now, having just made a move from the country (where I own a farm) to the city (where I’m begrudgingly renting for the next 18-24 months), I’m even more firm in my conviction that women do the lion’s share of decision making in families. *I’m exhaused!*

Today, I get a couple emails in from a client with an emphasis on the buying power and the decision-making role of single and married females alike. One is from Inman News and the other is from the New York Times (I apologize if a registration is required to read it):

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You have learned about the importance of metatags and contextual keywords and are now ready to select a handful of your own. Would you like some help with the project?

I’ve assembled a list of resources to help you keyword your website by first researching keyword popularity. Since most tools only evaluate the popularity on a single search engine, you are going to need several to get a well balanced picture.

You should also remember that your content will drive traffic. If you offer helpful, entertaining and well-written information that your niche market seeks, you will gain readership. Adding keywords and keyword phrases will get you in the search results, but may not secure visitor loyalty. You need a sticky site that gives good information.

Now, back to the keyword portion of this equation… (more…)

It’s been awhile since I’ve really “dug in” where SEO is concerned. Basically, I’ve been working under the assumption (a fairly good one, IMHO and in my humble experience online) that if you build good content, organize it well and use common sense when titling your articles, posts and web pages — that the readers will come.

For my own sites, and my client sites, it’s worked like a charm.

To be fair, I have spent a great deal of time studying SEO in the past and still try to keep abreast of any big changes. But mostly, I’ve determined that avoiding the “tricks” and the “blackhat” methods — and relying on offering a site of useful information and making it easy to find and access that information is the best long-term SEO approach. (I do keep an eye on well-crafted metas and always have an eye on local search.) (more…)

Brian Brady, over on BloodHoundBlog.com urged Realtors to stop selling houses in a blog post this weekend. Amen, I say! The alternative? Build memories, of course! He says:

“Neighborhoods don’t have character, they have Characters. Weave these Characters into the stories you tell when you talk about your market. Characters are what entice us. They make the memories your customer’s children will cherish .

Connect the sights, sounds, and smells of the present with a story from your market and you will have inspired the reticent homebuyer’s imagination. Characters call out and beg the buyer to join them in the comedy of life, unfolding on the stage (your market), from a seat in the front row (the house).”

Combining an obvious dedication to service and the decision to place clients before profit, while adding a pinch of nostalgia, Brian cooks up a winning recipe!

And the reward for the Realtor? IMHO… A booming business, happy clients, great referrals and the joy of knowing that what he/she does for a living really matters.

Want to call information for free? Willing to listen to a 15-second audio ad to avoid the usual information charges? Maybe you are out on your cell phone (like I was this weekend) and need some info to save drive time? (more…)

The technology playing field just expanded. A new multi-touch technology, incorporated into Microsoft’s Surface product, is due out before the end of the year. It’s being marketed as a corporate tool for restaurants, cell phone distributors, casinos and hotels on the Microsoft site.

As usual, when I see a great new tech tool, I begin to envision how (and if) it will be of benefit to the Real Estate Industry. In this particular case, I see a brave new world opening up for brokerages that lay down the $5,000 – $10,000 required to buy it. Rather than spell it all out, I’d like to create a scenario for you… on how YOUR office might function using this type of technology…

(Disclaimer: I’m NOT a Microsoft advocate. In fact, I’ve been decidedly ANTI-Microsoft for some time (since Vista) and blog about that fact regularly. Despite this, I’m truly impressed with this new product. It’s remarkable.)

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