Getting Your Text On with TextID

If you are in Phoenix, and you have yet to attend one of the Phoenix Social Media Club’s monthly meetings, you are clearly missing out.  This is a monthly meeting of people that are social media fanatics and newbies, and each month we get to hear about all of these great new things coming down the social media and .NET pipeline.  I’ve attended it rather poorly in the past, but I regret it each time I miss out.

I didn’t, however, miss October and with PodCamp AZ this weekend (November 1-2), you need to know about one of the coolest ways to pass out your business card with 600+ people expected to be in attendance.

Let me introduce you to TextID.  The folks at TextID have created a way for you to rent a keyword such that when that keyword is sent to 555-411, whatever message you program in will be returned as a text message.  For example, I leased the keyword “steve” (how fitting, don’t you think?).  Here’s what comes back, as a text message:

Steve Belt
Realty Executives
steve@teambelt.com
www.realphoenixliving.com
www.teambelt.com
(480)215-9490
(480)383-8701 (fax)

Now think about this for a second.  Instead of handing out a business card to someone new that you meet, encourage them to text your keyword to 555-411.  If they do, they’ll get all of your business card info, but even better, all that info is in their phone.  If they have a smart phone, they can probably immediately click on your email address, website, or phone number.  All of your information is right where you want it to be: in the device that they never leave home without.

Don’t believe me:  Text “steve” to 555-411, and see mine for yourself.  I’d love to be in your phone anyway.

Even better, though, is the folks at TextID think that this could be an ever better way to get home info into the hands of potential buyers.  To that end, they are offering a special pricing just for REALTORS.  Contact Mike Halvorson (mikeh@textid.com) and he’ll hook you up with a package of multiple IDs to be used for each property you have listed.  Then, you could hang a rider that gives the texting instructions with that property’s TextID.  Naturally, the resulting text message would give price/size/your contact info/website.  And here again, you’ve found your way into a potential buyer’s phone.  Who are they going to call when they need an agent, even if it’s not your listing they want to buy?

Yea, I know I’m fanboying TextID a bit here, but I really do like the product/concept, and am just beginning to get my hands around all of the creative ways it could be used.  FYI, you will never get the name or cell phone information for the folks that request your information.  You can, however, see the number of people each month and in total that are using it.  They have ID plans that start from $5/month on up to $30/month (which, may get you up to 10 IDs as a REALTOR).

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