Posts Tagged ‘Internet Marketing’
Have you added the Facebook “like” button to your website yet? I just added it to the REVATS site, and it was pretty painless.
Of course, our REVATS website is a WordPress site and after some searching and trial and error, I found the plugin that simply adds it to each page.
To find this plugin, log in to your WordPress site, and click “Plugins”—“Add New” on your dashboard sidebar. Search for FBLike and this plugin should appear.
Click on the Install button and then go take a look at your page. Hit refresh, if needed, and your Like button should appear!
What is really cool about this plugin is that someone can like specific pages. So let’s say a new visitor to your site likes a blog post you wrote (like this one!), they can click the Like button and it says they like that post. If they go to another page on your site, they can click the Like button again.
Here is a screen shot of what showed up on my Facebook wall after I clicked “Like” on two different pages of the REVATS site and a post on Online Dominance’s blog. (They have some really great stuff by the way!)
So what benefit can this have for your real estate business? How about this…you can create a WordPress blog post for each of your new listings and people can actually “Like” every single listing. How cool will it be for Mary Smith’s friends to see that she likes the house for sale at 123 Main Street! Talk about word-of-mouth marketing!
Not only that, but the Like feature also shows people if any of their friends are Liking the page. Which Realtor would you want to go with? The one that 5 of your close friends “Like” or the one that is apparently not liked?
Now if you don’t have a WordPress site, it’s a bit more complicated to add the Like feature. You can do it the simple way and get just a general “Like” button, or you can break it down to add a separate one to each page on your site—with similar results to the WordPress plugin.
If you are unable to use a simple plugin, go to the Facebook developers’ page http://developers.facebook.com/docs/reference/plugins/like, fill in the details and your code will be generated for you. Simply take that code and plop it into the code for your website. Now anyone viewing your page can click “Like” and it will appear on their wall for all their Facebook friends to see.
Want to learn more about utilizing Facebook for your real estate business? Check out this great webinar that I attended last night. (It’s why I finally took the time to pay attention to this Like feature!) It features Brad and Bobby Carroll of Dakno Marketing speaking about real-estate specific Facebook changes and how to use them. Great webinar! Thanks Mr. Internet! Click here for the recorded Webinar.
Oh, and don’t forget to click our “Like” button!!
–Kim Scott, Virtual Assistant
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Want to take your business to the next level with Facebook marketing, but don’t have the time? The virtual assistants at REVATS specialize in Social Media marketing, especially all things Facebook related. Email us today to let us know what we can do for you. Or give us a call at 417-310-9827.
Written on January 21st, 2010 by adminno shouts
A business card is such a basic element of just about any business, that most of us don’t give it a second thought. We get them printed up and hand them out like crazy. However, when you work virtually, as we do, it’s not easy to hand someone a business card. So we all have websites, and Facebook pages, and LinkedIn accounts…you name it, we’ve got it! But do most of us have a virtual business card?
I came across just such a virtual business card yesterday. The website is BusinessCard2 and it took just a few minutes to put mine together. It holds a great deal more than any paper business card! Not only does it have the basics, such as name, business, and contact information…it also has a location for business description, experience, and much more. It accepts up to 10,000 characters for those descriptions…so you can express yourself in great detail!
The information is condensed in a size comparable to a paper business card, with little buttons that bring up the various bits of information. The card can be given as a link, or it has code that allows you to embed it in your website. (Which I think is pretty neat!)
The best thing about it is the price…it’s totally free and the website says it will continue to be free. Time will tell on that, especially since it’s in Beta form, but for now at least it’s a bargain!
A virtual business card will certainly never replace a paper business card when dealing with people face to face, but if you are looking for something to take its place in the virtual world, BusinessCard2 may be just the thing you want.
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REVATS is a team of independent virtual assistants working together to bring comprehensive virtual services to real estate agents around the USA. Contact us today for more information!
Written on January 15th, 2010 by admin2 shouts
Whether you are a real estate agent or just in the market for real estate, even a rental, there are a number of cool tools to help you post and browse Craigslist real estate posts. Joseph Ferrara with Inman News came up with this handy list, which we are passing along.
Tech Tool Shed
By Joseph Ferrara, Friday, January 15, 2010.
Inman News
Craigslist.org is a very popular Web site for real estate classified ads — be it a home for sale, apartment for rent, or office to lease. And it’s a place where real estate agents and owners alike can advertise properties.
The following are some tools to reach Craigslist searchers:
Classified ad creation tools
GoGoPin lets you easily create eye-catching graphic ads. You can include photos, clipart, graphs, speech bubbles and much more. You can even add photos taken with your cell phone. (See some sample classified ads.)
What makes GoGoPin a favorite of mine is the ability to export the graphic ad to Craigslist. Simply copy and paste the HTML code in your ad. GoGoPin ads are free.
Tip: You can hyperlink your ad to any Web page by simply adding a URL when you save the ad. Now, if a Craigslist reader clicks your ad, they are sent to a more detailed page, or your Web site.
Postlets lets you create graphic classified ads that you can display on Craigslist simply by copying and pasting the HTML code. (See a sample Postlets ad.)
Viewing tool
CraigsToolbox is an amazing Firefox and Internet Explorer add-on that automatically reveals images and other features in your Craigslist search results. Beside images, you can see the map location and text preview without having to click each ad. You can also request notification, via text message, of all new ads.
The tool is available for a free trial and the annual cost is $9.99. CraigsToolbox also works for non-real estate ads. (View a video demo of CraigsToolbox.)
Mapping tools
PadMapper allows users to search for apartment and house rentals on Craigslist (as well as Oodle and Apartments.com) and displays the properties on a map with details, including the date the ad was placed. The mapped listings can be shared via e-mail, link or embeddable code.
PadMapper has good search filters, such as sliders for rental cost and number of bedrooms, listings less than seven days old, sublets, no-fee apartments (in New York City and Boston), pets, photos, and proximity to subways, etc.
Tip: Set up e-mail alerts on PadMapper to receive new listings that meet your search criteria.
MapThatPad is another rental search tool. When searching for apartments, use MapThatPad to map the properties you find, add notes, save the map and then send it to clients (or their parents). A “bookmarklet” (a small program contained in a bookmark) makes the tool easy to use. The tool currently only works for apartments but it may be expanded to include homes.
A great feature, and time saver, is the ability to contact all apartment listings with one e-mail.
Multi-location search tool
SearchTempest lets you do a proximity search of Craigslist, based on distance from a specified ZIP code area or in many selected states and cities, thereby saving you the time of searching each area separately.
What’s nice is that CraigsToolbox works on SearchTempest, allowing you to see images in the results. SearchTempest also has a forum to help you get advice and help.
You can get an RSS feed for any search you do on SearchTempest, to keep up to date on new listings.
New alert tool
CraigslistChecker is one of many ways to set up and receive alerts about new Craigslist ads, and its beauty is its simplicity. Just enter the URL of your search results and every hour you will be notified by e-mail about new listings that meet your search criteria. End the updates by simply clicking the cancel link in your e-mail. Simple.
Mobile app
Craigly is a mobile Craigslist app for iPhones. Among its neat features is a multiple-location search by city, state or distance from your location, image preview, and portrait/landscape views. You can also post ads with photos. The current cost of the Craigly app is 99 cents.
Hope one or more of these tools are useful to you. What Craigslist-related tools do you use?
Joseph Ferrara is publisher of the Sellsius Real Estate Blog and a partner in TheClozing.com, a real estate news aggregator site. He is an attorney with 25 years of experience in New York, and he also coaches agents on the use of blogging and social networking.
Did you know that your REVATS Virtual Assistant can help you manage all of your real estate listings? Getting them up and running on Craigslist is just one small part of a complete package!
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REVATS is a team of independent virtual assistants working together to bring comprehensive virtual services to real estate agents around the USA. Contact us today for more information!
Facebook is incredibly popular. Everyone has heard of it. Many people have a Facebook page. And many of them are even active on it! Now that you can update it from a variety of sources, including your cell phone, the activity on Facebook is tremendous. In fact, Christmas day set a record for Facebook—it was the most visited website on the net! It even beat out Google!
What do people do on Facebook? Well, they keep up with their friends, they make new friends, they play games, they promote political and social causes, and they expand their business connections. Just about anything. Facebook is a place that people “live”.
Businesses are finding that the free advertising they get on Facebook is more effective than thousands of dollars of television or print advertising. We have long known that word-of-mouth is an effective way of getting business. Facebook is, in large part, word-of-mouth (err…hand?) marketing at its best.
Here is how it can work. Shelley goes on Facebook to knock out a few more “Mafia enemies,” and while she is there she thinks about her upcoming house hunt. She has browsed houses online quite often, but she wonders if there is a local Realtor on Facebook. So she searches for one. And sure enough, she finds one! Let’s say the Realtor’s name is Jim. Shelley becomes a fan of Jim’s business page and begins to get great updates about real estate in her area. When Shelley becomes a fan of Jim’s business, every one of her friends sees a nifty little update about her, it says something like “Shelley became a fan of Jim’s Real Estate.” Shelley’s friend Mark is also thinking of buying a house in the future. He sees Shelley’s update, and clicks on the link to Jim’s page. Mark likes what he sees, so he also becomes a fan of Jim’s page. Mark’s status is updated to reflect this, and his friend Peter sees it and clicks….well you get the idea. Once the first fans have been found, a business page can spread like wildfire!
Who are the people in your area finding when they search for Facebook business pages? If you aren’t on Facebook, then someone else is getting fans—and customers—that could be yours!
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Looking for some help getting started? The virtual assistants at REVATS are experienced “Facebookers” and enjoy setting up business pages, managing fans, posts, etc. We would love to have you become a Facebook fan of ours!
Written on January 1st, 2010 by adminno shouts
Happy New Year! Now is the time for lists, lists, lists. There are lists highlighting everything from “worst dressed celebrity of 2009″ to “top political stories of 2009″. People like to review the previous year, and make predictions for the new year. Some of the most helpful studies were ones regarding social media marketing strategies. Maybe some of these findings will help you formulate a plan on how you will use social media in 2010. Or if you need help setting up and using these sites and platforms, please contacts REVATS and let us help! We have a full social media marketing package to help get you started.
According to eMarketer, the number of people who use Twitter has increased by over 200% over the last two years, and 2010 shows a predicted increase of another 44%. According to their study, an estimated 26 million adults will be using Twitter in 2010. I recently blogged about the effectiveness of Twitter. I was a ‘hesitant convert’ and didn’t necessarily understand all the hype. That is until I started using Twitter. If you do not use it, you must!
Email may be the first form of online marketing, but it is still an effective form according to Bizreport.com. They predict more integration between email and social ad platforms. A good example of this integration is Posterous.com which I blogged about earlier. Bizreport.com also released a study that 40% of email marketers plan to increase their email marketing budgets in 2010. Another study on this same site concluded “email remained the most popular media among marketers for use next year (56.8% “realistically” plan to use it), social media isn’t far behind. Over half (56.3%) “realistically” plan to include it in future marketing plans.”
Ad-ology.com wrote the “Small Business Marketing Forecast 2010” and this states lead generation is the biggest benefit of social networking. Small businesses rated Facebook as the most beneficial site. The forecast continued to say awareness of social media is high but nearly one-half of respondents wished they knew more about how to use it.
If you are one of the people that need help utilizing these sites, please consider using REVATS. There are a variety of packages available to get you started with social networking.
Check back to read more on recently conducted studies on internet marketing.
Written on September 25th, 2009 by adminno shouts
While on Facebook today, I noticed that TopProducer had posted a link on their fan page from another blog which had such good advice for real estate agents and just about anyone with multiple web site domains that I just had to share it with our readers:
Can’t I just forward all of my domains to my homepage?
Not too long ago website owners and even search marketing professionals were buying a ton of domain names and simply pointing them back to one destination. They would then submit these domain names to the search engines in hopes of having all of their domain names indexed and ranked, in the hopes of creating a mass populated search results page of their domain names. Over time the search engines picked up on this, and realized that some people may not have the most relevant content; rather they just have a ton of domain names pointing back to the same content. Search engines fixed this by not allowing those multiple domain names to be seen at any significant position, and in some cases not allowing for the primary domain name to be as successful as it possibly could be within the results.
What should I do with all of these domain names I own?
The most ideal scenario for using multiple domain names is to have a website on each one of the domains that you own. Each website should be at least 2-3 pages and, like any other site you want to get ranked, they each should have a lot of really resourceful, unique content. By creating this portfolio of specific websites targeting certain aspects of your business or areas that you farm, your websites and their domains will receive much more value and recognition from the search engines than forwarding all of your domains to one site ever could.
What if I don’t have the time, money or technical knowledge to create more websites?
Unfortunately, not everyone has the ability to create a website for every domain name that they own. So, one useful technique is to take your great real estate domain names and direct them to specific internal pages of content that are relevant to that actual domain name.
Click here to read the rest of the article.
Sounds like some work, huh! We own a few domain sites ourselves, so we will have to consider doing something along these lines for our other domains as well. Currently our second domain, real-estate-virtual-assistance.com simply links to our main site. What creative use could we come up with for that? Hmm…
–Kim, virtual assistant with REVATS
Click on the Install button and then go take a look at your page. Hit refresh, if needed, and your Like button should appear!
