Title

How to Start your own Blog

Keep it Simple

These days its very easy to start your own blog. There are many platforms like Wordpress or  Blogger, where you can go in pick a template & start designing your own blog. Or you can hire a company that will design your blog using one of those platforms. It’s all a matter of time & money!

I think the simpler the blog the better, what really counts is the information you share. The information you share is called your content .

Here are some tips on developing content for your blog

1. First ask yourself who is your audience, are they buyers & sellers of real estate or another sector of the market?  You will be writing for them so you will need to put yourself in their place and figure out what is important to them.
2. Read other blogs in your industry & see what others are blogging about.
3. Your writing does not have to be perfect it should be as if you were having a conversation.
4. Write about your property listings or someone elses!
5. Write about events in your community

Offer help, be consistent, add value. This is what you do anyway. Now you are doing it online for the world to see !

Google Voice for Mobile

Realtors Use Google Voice Mobile

Google Voice for mobile allows you to make calls and send texts from your Google Voice number. You can dial your Google number then press 2 and call the number that you want to connect with and the receiver of the call will see you Google Voice number! Inexpensive  international calls are also an option…. Google has dome it all!

 

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Realtors check out Google Voice!

One Number Rings all your lines !

I have been using Google Voice, formerly Grand Central for quite some time. I got a number when it was still Grand Central. I am sure you would agree that in the Real Estate business your phone is your everything! Customers have your number, your office has your number, vendors have your number, its on your cards and website. As realtors, you need to be accessible & responsive by email & phone.

Well, Google Voice makes that very easy. You need be invited to join & then you can choose practically any area code you want, from local or faraway destinations. You set it to ring your work phone, your cell phone & your home phone or whichever numbers you want to ring. You then can screen your calls, listen in and then decide to pick up or send directly to voice mail. Google Voice also transcribes the voice mail into text and it emails it to you !

SMS and Miscellaneous features

When people SMS your Google Voice number, the message will go directly to one or more (however many you have set up) mobile phones. You can respond to those SMSs directly from the phone, and that response will appear to come from your Google Voice number. You can also send and receive SMSs right from the Google Voice Web interface, so that you don’t have to take out your phone every time you want to text your friend to ask why he’s late picking you up—assuming you’re in front of a computer already, that is. Google Voice lets you archive your SMS logs too so that you can reach them anytime from the website.

Stay tuned for more information on how to use Google Voice in my future posts.

My Google Voice # is 954-892-6199.

Give me a call!

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Ellen Windheim & Michael Solovay Of EWM Realtors Aventura, FL

On Blogging & Social Media

Ellen & Michael have embraced the web 2.0  environment & are reaching out to colleagues & the community to build their business and sell their listings.

Using Vflyer to Promote your Property Listings

 This is a continuation to my last post. Many of my agents use Vflyer

It’s a great way to share properties across the Web.

Please take the survey below

Realtors Get the Word Out About Your Listings

How to Use Postlets to Share your Listings

Here is a video on how to use Postlets

 

Postlets are a great way to get your property noticed. Where other Agents may post their property listings on Craigslist and other sites, a property listing done on Postlets outshines them all.

You can also post the same flyer on various sites like: Craigslist ,Facebook,FrontDoor, GoogleBase,  HotPads  
MySpace ,Oodle ,Trulia , Twitter,  Zillow 
This is a major time saver. Vflyer is another program that is also very good. 

Please participate in the survey below

 

Real Estate Agents Must Have a Google Profile

Is Google Getting Social ?

As real estate agents we all want to be easily discoverable  on Google. Well now is the time to add a google profile to your marketing arsenal.

Rismedia states that 30% of all Web searches are conducted to find other people so it stands to reason since Google is the number one search engine that having your google profile can only help you.

If you don’t have a google account you need to sign up for one and then fill out the profile. You can add your website and other profiles on Facebook & Twitter, LinkedIn, Flickr, etc.

Add information that people may search for like current employer, other companies you worked for, & schools you’ve attended.

Here is a short tutorial on Google Profiles

Make sure you check off “display my whole name so I can be found in search” and make sure you do not display your email address. When you enable the contact feature people can contact you directly from your profile. Of course add a photo!

This may be google’s segue into the social media world to compete with Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter & Flickr …so hurry and get in on the action!

Google Profiles is a great way for real estate agents to promote their visibility and build business.

Using Social Networks in Real Estate

Its All About Your Connections

 

 If you have kids at home, I am sure that at times you begin to wonder – what are they doing online all the time?  Their answer many times is Read the rest of this entry »

Why Use Google Alerts?

Now that we have learned a bit about how Google works and maybe you have even checked out the results for your name, it is time to turn an eye toward your market and see your real estate market like Google does.

 

 In a Google search you can get results in two ways.  First, you can pay for results – you will notice this when you see sponsored results or the right hand side bar of any google search.  Second, you can earn “organic” results which come from the information and backlinks you have on your website.

What search terms do you think are important in your real estate market?  Let’s start with big area searches like Aventura Real Estate, Miami Beach Real Estate, Sunny Isles Beach Real Estate, etc.  Maybe your focus is a little more narrow -  think of subdivisions and condo buildings like Acqualina, Aventura Lakes or The Beach Club in Hallandale Beach.  Whatever your terms are – you need to set up a Google Alert to keep an eye out on the competition.  Here’s how: (the end of the video gets a little more advanced, but you will get the idea)

1. Your Market area and real estate.
2. Your name – hint:  if you have a common name  make sure you put it in quotes and maybe use one other word ( like the city where you live or work).   This way you willonly get Alerts for yourself not someone else with your same name.
3. Just your market area – keep up on all the news
4. set up a link: yourwebsite alert for your website and maybe one for a competitors website so you can “spy” on what they are doing
5. Anything else of interest to you !

About Google and Other Stuff!

Google was founded in 1996 and is the most popular search engine around.  You can view this video to learn more about how and why google works!

 

 

Learn About the History of Google

What does this have to do with real estate?  The consumer turns to search engines like Google to look for everything, including real estate .  Understanding how Google works is the first step to improving your internet marketing. 

As the video mentioned, what made the Google experience different from other search engines was the concept that ideas and information on the internet are related and that relationship in the internet world is demonstrated by links.  The relevance of any website can be judged or ranked by how it links or relates to other sites.  Here are a few new geeky terms for today’s vocabulary lesson (all from Wikipedia) :

Backlinks are incoming links to a website or web page. In the search engine optimization (SEO) world, the number of backlinks is an indicator of the popularity or importance of that website or page (though other measures, such as PageRank, are likely to be more important). Outside of SEO, the backlinks of a webpage may be of significant personal or cultural  interest: they indicate who is attracted to that page.

 

Search Engine Optimization  is the process of editing and organizing the content on a webpage or across a website to increase its potential relevance to specific keywords on specific search engines and importantly ensuring that external links to the site are correctly titled and in abundance. This is done with the aim of achieving a higher organic search  listing and thus increasing the volume of targeted traffic from search engines.

 

Page Rank is a link analysis  algorithm that assigns a numerical weighting to each element of a hyperlinked set of documents, such as the World Wide Web ,with the purpose of “measuring” its relative importance within the set.

Now that you have added Backlinks, SEO and Page Rank to your geek talk , let’s look at a tool that will show how your website might be doing.

 Meet Website Grader  Go to the website and enter any website you want – yours if you dare – and get your site scored.  There may be things on the report that you don’t understand but with your new found geek skills, you will get the  idea.  As an example, you can find the report for ewm.com here.

 Put your new skills to use.  Google yourself – see what comes up.  How many entries are there for your name that are you and not that other person with your same name?

Grade your website – how did you do?