Posts Tagged ‘Social Media’
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 6th, 2010 by adminno shouts
Recently while attending an all day webinar I learned even more ways to utilize Twitter for lead generation in real estate. One recommendation was to find tweeples (or people that use twitter) who are searching for homes in your area. There are endless possibilities for what groups of people you may want to follow, but chances are you want to stay in your geographic area. Now there is a simple way to find those twitter users.
A new Twitter application called GeoChirp uses Google maps to pinpoint the most recent tweets from a zipcode. You can set it to search within a 1 to 50 mile radius.
The example given on GeoChirp’s website states:
if you want to search for people Tweeting about ‘Golf’ in Richmond, Virginia, you can just select the area in the map, set the radius within 1-50 miles of that area, enter the keyword “Golf” or any other related keyword and BOOM you have all the people Twittering about ‘Golf’ in Richmond, Virginia.
So you just set the location, set the filter and see the results. This is a powerful tool and can connect you to hundreds, even thousands, of potential home buyers in your area.
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 January 1st, 2010 by adminno shouts
I’m always on the lookout for new ideas, websites or tricks to help market my clients, or market myself. While scanning various articles that have accrued over the holidays in my Google Reader, I came across a few that sound interesting and ones I plan to check out. It’s a constant battle to obtain and remain on the first page of Google so any new ideas are welcomed. Today I will highlight Posterous.com.
Posterous is a new social media platform where you can post anything from text to videos to pictures. But you post these by sending an email. Pictures can even be sent via a cell phone. This sounds like it could potentially save precious time. As one reviewer states, “It’s also the ideal solution for sharing content that’s too long to tweet yet too short to blog post.”
Posterous also autoposts to all other social media sites you use. You simply email your content and it will automatically update your blogs and sites such as Facebook, Xanga, WordPress, Blogger and more. You can also publish your content on your website by setting up your Posterous account on your own URL, which could be a sub-domain on your website. And because posting videos and pictures is so easy, you will share more and more content therefore increasing your presence in online search results.
Posterous is easily customizable as well, and has plenty of themes to choose from. If you know CSS/HTML however, you can build your own theme. Google analytics is built in and Itunes podcasts work automatically.
This seems like a really innovative site worth checking out. To set it up, you simply email Posterous at post@posterous.com with your first blog post, or pictures, and your account is automatically set up. So easy! I’m going to try it now.
This poem is from VANetworking’s site, written by YvonneW. Its adorable and I wanted to share it with our clients and future clients.
On the first day after the holiday my VA prepared for me:
an SEO ready website
On the second day after the holiday my VA prepared for me:
two ghostwritten articles
and an SEO ready website
On the third day after the holiday my VA prepared for me:
three personalized databases
two ghostwritten articles
and an SEO ready website
On the fourth day after the holiday my VA prepared for me:
four booked speaking gigs
three personalized databases
two ghostwritten articles
and an SEO ready website
On the fifth day after the holiday my VA prepared for me:
five social media campaigns
four booked speaking gigs
three personalized databases
two ghostwritten articles
and an SEO ready website
On the sixth day after the holiday my VA prepared for me:
six months of blog posts
five social media campaigns
four booked speaking gigs
three personalized databases
two ghostwritten articles
and an SEO ready website
On the seventh day after the holiday my VA prepared for me:
seven research projects
six months of blog posts
five social media campaigns
four booked speaking gigs
three personalized databases
two ghostwritten articles
and an SEO ready website
On the eighth day after the holiday my VA prepared for me:
eight formatted reports
seven research projects
six months of blog posts
five social media campaigns
four booked speaking gigs
three personalized databases
two ghostwritten articles
and an SEO ready website
On the ninth day after the holiday my VA prepared for me:
nine transcribed audios
eight formatted reports
seven research projects
six months of blog posts
five social media campaigns
four booked speaking gigs
three personalized databases
two ghostwritten articles
and an SEO ready website
On the tenth day after the holiday my VA prepared for me:
ten new client info packs
nine transcribed audios
eight formatted reports
seven research projects
six months of blog posts
five social media campaigns
four booked speaking gigs
three personalized databases
two ghostwritten articles
and an SEO ready website
On the eleventh day after the holiday my VA prepared for me:
eleven article submissions
ten new client info packs
nine transcribed audios
eight formatted reports
seven research projects
six months of blog posts
five social media campaigns
four booked speaking gigs
three personalized databases
two ghostwritten articles
and an SEO ready website
On the twelfth day after the holiday my VA prepared for me:
twelve months of bookkeeping
eleven article submissions
ten new client info packs
nine transcribed audios
eight formatted reports
seven research projects
six months of blog posts
five social media campaigns
four booked speaking gigs
three personalized databases
two ghostwritten articles
and an SEO ready website
Remember, the virtual assistants at REVATS can do all this and more for you! Add to it 13 listings, 14 new leads processed, and 15 updates to TopProducer 8i! What a way to get your real estate business rolling!!
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Filed under Christmas, Just For Fun
Tags:Blogging, database management, ghost writing, Lead Management, Listings, Marketing, SEO, Social Media, TopProducer 8i, VA, Virtual Assistance, virtual assistant
Written on September 21st, 2009 by adminno shouts
image courtesy JadeGordon stock.xchng
Today I was doing some maintenance on our REVATS Twitter account and stumbled upon a site called Twibes.
I joined several groups on there and, of course, haven’t seen the value of any of them yet, but I wanted to share the info with everyone!
There are no less than 195 Real Estate groups, although most of them have only a few members and are location-specific. Joining these groups provides yet another opportunity to network via Twitter.
You can create your own group too. So you could potentially create a group for people searching for real estate in your town! Many of the real estate groups are just that.
In addition to the real estate groups, there are many groups for marketing, sales, etc, as well as just about any group your personal interests would fit in.
You join a Twibe by clicking on the group and then clicking the “Tweet to Join” button. Make sure you are already signed in to Twitter itself when you do this. Your Twitter page will open and a tweet will be right there waiting for you to click “update”. The tweet will say something like: “Just joined a twibe. Visit http://twibes.com/RealEstate to join.“
Its kind of annoying if you join several twibes, you will have a long list of tweets like the one above, but they will soon be drowned in your twitter feed.
Simply typing a key word into your tweets will cause them to appear on the twibes page that you joined. So, for example, if I type a tweet that says “We love Real Estate agents!” it would appear on the Real Estate twibe page!
Have you signed up for Twibe already? What do you think about it? Have you gotten any results?
–Kim, virtual assistant with REVATS
Written on September 19th, 2009 by adminone shout
I will shamefully admit that I only recently started using Twitter. Of course I recommended it to clients, attended different webinars on using social media for marketing yourself and your business, but I personally never used Twitter. I did sign up for an account, tweeted once, then thought it was pretty weird. Why would anyone want to follow me anywhere? I imagined my tweets being something like this:
‘I am heading to the kitchen to cook some mac n cheese because I forgot to grocery shop yet again’ or
‘Getting ready to call the doc because I still am not convinced dog food is harmless to an 18 month old’ or
‘Sitting here trying to think of something entertaining, important and informational to blog about’
However twitter is more than just announcing the mundane aspects of your day. I just learned this and am quite possibly addicted. I decided to log in after being told numerous times that I could get late breaking news from other Tweeps before it is ever on the TV news or internet news sites. I read up on how to use twitter (more info to come), and logged in. I started searching for hashtags related to my interests. All of a sudden these tweets start popping up with vast amounts of information, including links to the articles. I was in information overload!
So I started reading, re-tweeting some, posting articles of my own. Then in the blink of an eye (well, one week to be more accurate), I had 100 followers! I did not solicit people, or try to obtain followers, but evidently things I tweeted about were interesting to some people, so they followed me. It was then I realized the power of twitter!
Now I log in a couple times per day to read late breaking news that I mainly get from people I follow. In just a month I’ve built up a huge network of people with related interests as mine. Yet every day, I still get at least five more followers. Who would have thought a 10 second blurb and a link to an article or blog I just read would generate the amount of traffic and new contacts that I now have?
How does this relate to your real estate business? I will answer that tomorrow. Right now, I’m going to go tweet.
–Stephanie, virtual assistant with REVATS
Written on July 9th, 2009 by adminno shouts
There has been some talk about whether or not some real estate agents, or any bloggers for that matter, should or do use ghost writers.
Well, to answer the last question, yes, some do use them. (Some of these “ghost-written” posts have even been featured on ActiveRain!)
Should they? Well, that just depends on their purpose in blogging.
If they are blogging simply to bring in and retain clients with community and real estate information or to increase the SEO of their website, then there is really nothing wrong with it. Everyone needs at least a little of this anyway, and let’s face it, some people just have no ability to write or no desire or time while still seeing the value in it.
If a blogger blogs because they love it, because they see their blogs as a tool to be themselves and to touch their readers in a unique way (isn’t that the real purpose of a blog?), and if the blogger is good at maintaining their blog on a regular (daily or even more often) basis, then there is little need for a ghost writer. In that case, a virtual assistant might come in handy to edit for grammar, to research supplementary information, or to take the finished piece and push the necessary buttons to post it on the site.
Should a ghost writer, usually a virtual assistant, pretend to be the person they are writing for and create a false relationship with others on the site? Hmmm…that’s where it gets sticky, huh? I would personally not choose to do that, although I know some who do. I might post a comment now and then in order to increase a client’s network (or to earn them some coveted points on a site like ActiveRain), but it would be rather generic sounding…something like “in MyTown, USA there are x number of houses on the market and the average selling price is…” in response to a blog post about nationwide numbers perhaps. But would I say “Hey Sally, I sure hope to see you around at such-and-such conference. We could hook up for lunch!”? No, to me that would be deceptive in every way. But, at what point is the line between those two crossed?
At REVATS we do offer a blogging package and a social media package for our clients. But we encourage them to do the “personal stuff” themselves. We see our role in ghost-writing as simply a supplement to a real estate professional’s interaction with their online network.
What exactly do we recommend? Well, if budget is no issue, we would recommend that a virtual assistant write and post 2 to 4 blog posts a week on general topics that would be of interest to the online community in one respect or another. At the same time the agent would be encouraged to write their own blog posts and to comment and network. This would be a win-win for the agent. The posts we would write might require a great deal of research, which the agent probably doesn’t have time to do, but it is research that we are doing on a regular basis. So by simply carrying on with the networking and expertise type of items in their blog network, the agent would be enjoying their time, creating connections that would (hopefully) build their business and freeing up a few hours a week to pursue that business!
This can also carry over into the rest of the social media world. A virtual assistant is a good source for regularly scheduled informative Twitter or Facebook posts, which would free up the agent to post their daily happenings while still knowing that their network was getting a regular feed going, even if they happen to have a day where they are just not in the Tweeting mood.
Afterall, your business is selling real estate. Our business is doing the things that increase or support your business, especially when those are things you don’t want to or can’t do.
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!
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