TypePad Explained - Part 6 of Many

The Basic format of a blog (posts listed in reverse chronological order) is what makes it a living website.  But every now and then we need static content.  You need to frame IDX or develop an About page.  In typepad they call the writing “Pages.”  Depending on your design they don’t always show up automatically on your homepage either.  Here is short video on how to create a page, then add it to your sidebar in TypePad Advanced Templates.

Who Is Your Blogging Audience?

Who Is Your Blogging Audience?

I get emails often from agents asking me if I could look at their blog and tell them why they are not getting any listings from their blog. Over 90% of the time, it is because they are not speaking to an audience. There is no conversation going on. When you just post listings and market reports, well, for most readers online that is quite boring.

The most important tip I can ever give a new or veteran blogger is to know who your audience is. Who do you want to be having a conversation with? Who do you want to be contacting you?

• Do you want sellers or buyers to be contacting you?

• What age group do you want these people to be?

• What income levels are these people in?

• What do you want these people to do? Call you, email you?

Next, it is vital that you do your keyword research. You will not be getting the calls and inquiries about your services if your are not attracting the people you intend if you do not know and do not use the very keywords that they are typing into the search engine search box.

This is not about guessing or assuming that the keywords you are using are going to be typed into the search box.  Go to the Google Keyword Tool and spend time there figuring out what keywords will be great for you to use because people are actually searching those terms. Many of the agents I coach are shocked to discover that the keywords they have been using which they thought were so popular are actually not even searched for.

Once you have discovered and decided on who your audience is going to be then the next action is to speak to that audience. Write on their level in their voice. Make your blog one of transparency and polarization.  When the calls start coming in, you know you have done your job!

TypePad Explained - Part 4 of Many

Sorry I’ve been gone for a while…this is a short video on how to apply a new design to your typepad blog. Enjoy!
Rob

Care to comment on that? (Part one)

Just like real estate agents, no two blogs are alike. For instance, commercial real estate is very different than residential; Some agents are better with buyers, some with sellers. Some agents specialize in a niche or neighborhood, some feel they can be all things to all people. Blog styles, formats and specialties can be very different, as well, and no one can or should tell us how to run our blog. I want to touch on a way to “get your feet wet” in the blogging game. You see, there is still a very small percentage of agents that are really doing any blogging. Why not start out by reading interesting blogs and commenting on those blogs? Do you realize that comments can engage people in conversation? Comments can also lead people back to your blog for people to see what you have to say about things. Who knows, they might even come to your blog and leave a comment on something you wrote.

The fact is, many blogs do not get a lot of comments, especially in the beginning. Don’t feel bad and don’t feel like no on noticed your latest masterpiece just because no one says anything. The majority of readers do NOT comment on blogs. Just keep writing, start commenting, and “find your voice.” It is way too early for a beginning blogger to think they will be a “Rain City Guide” where some amazing writers routinely get dozens (sometimes hundreds) of comments on a single post. 

Many bloggers have good luck reading, writing and commenting on the Active Rain network. Heck, you even get “points” for comments on Active Rain. How cool is that!? I have seen people make a ton of friends on their network with very limited blogging and a whole lot of commenting. Again, there is not a right or wrong answer. So, feel free to leave a comment one this post, even if you just say “hi.” I promise to come take a look at your blog and return the favor.

In the future, we’ll talk about: Can/does commenting help SEO? And Getting carried away in comments.  If we are lucky, I can get some of the other AZREBN writers to chime in on this stuff. Either way, we hope you will be back for more…

Selecting A Microphone For Podcasting - Sound Advice

Considering what kind of microphone for your Podcast?  Let’s talk types, makes and what can work to get you started.  Almost any microphone will work for podcasting, but certain types can greatly enhance your sound.

You can start off with a simple headset microphone like the labtec and that will get the job done.  Practice recording into your microphone and your comfort level will come.

The ZoomH4 is an excellent choice for mobile recording.  It has two built in mics for  a nice sound.  The Shure SM 58 is the best all around microphone.  You can use it in the field and with your home studio.  Every podcaster I know has at least on of these mics.

The high end microphone (may be overkill for podcasting) is the AKG C214 and is great choice if you have a nice quiet area to record   BSW.com has all of this for you to see.

If you would like to learn how to make your blog a performance stage to give you the best chance at capturing and winning over new clients be sure to stay tuned with me for my next podcast on how to pick software for podcasting.

Find me on Twitter @mrdwpman

David G. Lopez

Neat Receipts Business Card Gadgetgirl Review

Organize your paper. Simplify your life. I was asked to review the NeatReceipts Neat Business Cards scanner by a friend Chandler Peterson, with Realty Technology Review. I’ve included a short video for you to see, be sure to check it out. 

I’m thinking Chandler must have known something about my “put off ’til tomorrow’ filing system to ask me to review this scanner.  This little gadget had my name all over it.  I have been collecting business cards for years now, more so since I began my Real Estate career in 2003.  I had always had good intent to index them and put them in my database, however it’s always been a matter of time and kept putting it off!  

For those of you that know me a bit better know that I love gadgets and own a few, OK — maybe a bit more than a few! 

This little beauty is a nifty little gadget and yet a powerful little guy too.  It’s so small and mobile that you can take it on the road with you tucked in the tiniest pocket of your briefcase or suitcase. The whole scanner weighs less than 4 ounces! That’s about a half a sandwich!

It’s the smallest color card scanner on the market.It scans directly into Outlook and ACT, and it’s small enough to not clutter up your desktop and yet small enough to bring along on your business trips.  You can stay organized as you go instead of having to face a stack of business cards or in my case a pile of 1000’s of them when you finally get the time.

Right out of the box, the Neat Business Cards scanner was pretty accurate with a range of business card styles, both scanning the text fields and then assigning them to the corresponding database fields. It even correctly distinguished telephone, fax, and other phone numbers printed in different styles (parens, dashes, periods), and identified with wildly different marks. I had a few fields it seemed confused with, but over the text was recognized and populated the fields pretty well.

Of course, the scanning is not perfect, and you should verify each card for mis-assigned fields (like phone extensions) and incorrect or missing letters or digits (i.e., at the end of a long number).

The software did struggle with some company information and business titles that were not clearly structured on the page — it still scanned the text as additional text, which then needed to be manually moved to the proper field. And there were some odd features that I could work around.

You also can export records from the Neat Business Cards database to RTF (Word), CSV (Excel), PDF, and other formats to print or share. 

I give this little ‘under $100′ gadget a thumbs up and just know it will come in handy to help you scan and organize your contacts and help you simplify your life.

Key Features

• Scan directly in Outlook
• Scan directly in ACT!
• Scan into Neat Business Cards database
• Use vCard, csv or Plaxo to export contact information to smartphones and other email applications
• Highly accurate card reader for US Cards
• Color scanning at 300 dpi
• Free travel case

What’s in the box
Neat Business Cards portable card scanner, software CD, USB cable, scanner travel case, user guide, one piece of calibration paper, one piece of cleaning paper

Heather Barr - AZREBN Blogger Spotlight October 2008

AZ Real Estate Blogging Network is proud to announce our very first BLOGGER SPOTLIGHT. Each month we will be featuring a blogger that has shown excellence in growth and passion about blogging! Heather Barr with Thompson’s Realty began blogging in the summer of 2007.  She has developed a Wordpress residential real estate blog for the Phoenix metro area, NorthPhoenixAgent.com.

She has done a wonderful job keeping it alive and well. Heather has a variety of topics she covers from market reports, news and resources for both buyers and sellers!  I had the privilege to interview Heather and wanted to say, “thank you, Heather” for your willingness to allow AZ Real Estate Blogging Network make you our honorary first AZREBN BloggerSpotlight member!

With no further ado, I give you Phoenix’s own, Heather Barr:

Q.  Tell us a little about yourself and your real estate career.

A. Before becoming a Realtor, I was an elementary

education teacher and a paralegal. Those two were a huge help when I made the transition to real estate in 2005. The legal

background meant I could focus on developing the prospecting and salesmanship skills

that were new to me, instead of struggling to get used to the language on the AAR forms.

Teaching 5 and 6 year olds was helpful too, because high-stakes negotiations involving

hundreds of thousands of dollars tends to bring out the immature in some people!

Q.  How did you get started into blogging and why?

A. I started blogging in the late summer of 2007 because I’d heard this was the wave of the

future. At the time I was looking for a long term plan for cultivating leads. I spent about 2

or 3 months in early 2007 checking out leading blogs, and generally figuring out how the

whole thing worked. I made a practice blog and kept at it for about 2 weeks just to make

sure I could find something to talk about every day. That was a major concern in the

beginning!

I understood right away that your blog is your public face, and your online reputation is

everything, so I didn’t want to wade right in and get it wrong somehow. I wanted to make

sure I had a handle on the etiquette of link love, blogrolls and commenting. Also, I’d

been active on the forums at TelevisionWithoutPity.com, so I had to make a mental jump

from pop-culture message boards to business-oriented serious content that would

represent me as one of many online authorities in Phoenix real estate.

I’d probably still be a voice in the wilderness if Jay Thompson hadn’t found me in my

first week out, and published a link to me in one of his posts. Jay wields a lot of power in

the blogosphere. When he says “she’s new but good” people listen!

Q.  What type of blogging platform do your prefer?

A. I use Wordpress mainly because several of the bloggers I admire were there. I signed up

with WP.com a year ago when I started out, not knowing the cool kids in the WP world

were all at WP.org. Now I understand there’s quite a kerfluffle about the benefits of .org

over .com. But I’m happy with any platform that lets me focus on my content and my

“voice” and makes the back-end tech stuff relatively simple.

Q.  If, while running a new blog, you were allowed to promote your blog using just two methods, what would those two methods be and why?

A. Commenting on others’ blogs is really important and one of my ongoing goals is to be

more consistent about doing it. The other promotion method I couldn’t do without is

emailing a monthly eNewsletter sent to my sphere of influence which basically

consolidates the best posts of the month.

Q.  Do you use any social media networking such as Twitter, Linkedin or Facebook? If so; which ones and how does it help your business?

A. The next big task on my To Do list is to utilize either Facebook or Flickr to deepen my

online relationships with clients, friends and prospects. Everyone’s so busy that getting

together in real life is challenging. But sending a quick email to say “I love the new pix

of the baby!” takes only a minute and means a lot to the recipient.

Q.  What are some of the benefits of blogging for your real estate business?

A. Surprisingly, the biggest benefit to date is that I can mine my own blog (and my broker’s

and colleagues’ blogs) to back me up when I talk about pricing and market statistics at

listing appointments. People still have a bias towards believing things they see in print.

Q.  If you could give one sentence of advice to bloggers, what would that be?

A. Blog Frequently.

Q. Do you feel that real estate blogs should be a mixture of content ie; personal — or strictly only real estate related content?

A. A blog is a way for readers to interview you from afar, so there has to be some personal

content to make readers feel comfortable with your style. Ultimately, I want readers to

come back when they need answers, statistics, data or help and then one day like my blog

style enough to call me and use me as their Realtor. But I’ll never forget that one day a

blogger re-posted one of my Day in the Life posts, and then commented to her readers

that my revelation that I’d spent some time that day making lunch and cleaning out the

cat box was too much information! There’s a fine line between having an authentic voice

and revealing too much.

Q.  Please share a link to your favorite post on your blog.

A. Picking a favorite is really hard, but I was happy with the way “Spuds and SPDS”

turned out. I  wrote it to include in my listing packet and then adapted it for use on the blog.

Interestingly, my most viewed post is my second favorite – What Ice Cream Has to Do With Selling Your

Home. It’s pulled in something like 17,000 views since I posted it in October 2007. Blog stats show that

people are finding it because they’re searching for pictures of ice cream. Who knew there were sugar dipping

hoards out there searching for an online buzz?

Obviously Heather has personality, charm and definitely talent to back her blog posts! She comes with much experience in her background and no doubt her clients love her for it! Thank you for sharing with us your blog and we encourage everyone to stop on by Heather Barr’s NorthPhoenixAgent and check her out!

Well done Heather and we here at AZREBN wish you much success and a prosperous blog and career!  Happy Blogging!

** If you know a blogger that would make a great candidate for being AZREBN next Blogging Spotlight, please contact us.