GREAT TALKS AND PERFORMANCES

Here is a great talk by Tony Robbins, however, this site is nothing but great talks by inspiring minds of our time. Called TEDtalks. TEDTalks is a daily video podcast of the best talks and performances from the TED Conference, where the world's leading thinkers and doers are invited to give the talk of their lives in 18 minutes -- including speakers such as Jill Bolte Taylor, Sir Ken Robinson, Hans Rosling, Al Gore and Arthur Benjamin. TED stands for Technology, Entertainment, and Design, and TEDTalks cover these topics as well as science, business, politics and the arts. Watch the Top 10 TEDTalks on TED.com, at
http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/top10 www.ted.com

10 Ways to Attract Buyers to your real estate blog

I am not sure which concerns me more;

The fact that so many agents tell me they don't get any traffic to their site or the fact they are excited by the website company's guarantee of 60 leads over 2 months.

Getting consumers to visit your site isn't rocket science! A screen shot from Google analytics tells us we get, more than 14,000 page views the past month which is more than 400 page views per day.

For us that translates into a lot of signups for our Platinum Membership, free 7 day eCourse and our social media mentoring, but the shocking thing is that this isn't even that good if you want to be real honest about it. We are working on it though!

WRET pageviews 10 Ways to Attract Buyers to your real estate blog
But who cares how many people visit our site; isn't that what you are thinking?

Hhhmmmm, we thought so :-)

So how do you tweek up your real estate marketing to attract more visitors to YOUR site?

Here are 10 tips that we believe should make all the difference to your traffic – it's all about attracting visitors.

1. Post a status update on your Facebook page with a link back to a post or article on your blog. Do this at least 2 or 3 times a week.

2. Tweet about something related to your niche to attract your Twitter followers back to your blog post or page. Do this at least 2 or 3 times a week.

3. Post a Craigslist ad for one of your listings. If you don't have a listing, borrow one from an agent in your office or a friend. At least one a week.

4. Duplicate your Craigslist ad on Backpage. For that matter, place an ad on every online classified page that allows it.

5. Upload property or community videos to your YouTube account and link them back to your blog. Preferably at least once a week. Buy yourself a flip camera.

6. Leave a comment on an authority blog. Most comments allow readers to click over to the commenters blog. If you are adding value to the conversation & engaging other comments you will be very likely to click through to your site.

7. Set up an account at Posterous and use this to post daily or weekly photo updates that link back to your blog and Facebook

8. Setup your blog RSS feed to automatically feed into your Facebook Notes and then use the Facebook "Tag" feature to tag your friends, clients and prospects. This strategy will encourage those that you have tagged to leave a comment … thus creating a conversation and most likely click throughs to your blog.

9. Spend a few minutes every other day answering consumer questions on Trulia. When answering questions, be sure not to sell yourself and services. If you answer the question and provide value, consumers will naturally click on your profile to learn more about you.

10. Incorporate a Call To Action (CTA) on your offline marketing pieces.

Tip: Do NOT just put your website address, you want to use your CTA to direct people to a specific page or post.

This is good landing page strategy!

Use a link shortener like bit.ly or budurl to track the success of each online link or advertisement you experiment with. Quick note, Craigslist will not allow you to use link shorteners :(
Do these tasks and your website traffic will improve!

Social Media - THE FUTURE IS HERE!

WHAT EVER YOU DO TODAY, TAKE 4 MINUTES OF YOUR TIME AND WATCH THIS QUICK VIDEO!

Just one of the coolest videos I've seen lately...

You've got to check it out. Really makes you think about where we've been, where we are and where we are going... and FAST! Are you ready?...

5 Real Estate Actions You Can Turn Into Facebook Actions

So you’ve set up your profile and got a spiffy profile picture. Now what? How can you create a presence on Facebook and use it to drive business? It’s not as difficult as it sounds. The fact is that many of the things you already do as a real estate agent can be turned into Facebook actions and help get your name circling amongst the millions of Facedbook users.

1-Turn Open Houses into Facebook Events
Announce your Open Houses by creating a Facebook event and inviting friends and fans.
DO make sure to include the location of the Open House in the title of the event and make the event public so even those you don’t invite can view the details and RSVP.
DO NOT do these every week. Your friends and fans will hate you. Try once a month or once every other month.

2-Turn Talking to People into Commenting on Thier Profiles
As an outgoing real estate agent you love meeting new people and building relationships. You can do that on Facebook by commenting on things that people post on their profiles.
DO dedicate at least 30 minutes twice a week to interacting with people on Facebook. And when people comment on your stuff, be sure to respond.
DO NOT go around promoting yourself and throwing out links to your website everywhere you go. Show people that you are interested in them as people, not just as potential clients

3-Turn Isolated Web Surfing into Community Article Sharing
How many times have you been researching on the Internet and found an insightful article that gave you fresh ideas? Your Facebook friends and fans would love to read that article. Use bookmarking sites like StumbleUpon, DiggIt and Delicious to share those articles via Facebook. Your friends will appreciate the info and comeback to your profile for more.
DO post articles that are pertinent to the real estate industry and that will get a conversation going amongst your friends and fans.
DO NOT share articles that are unreliable or that feature dancing cats.

4- Turn Cold Calls into Friend Requests
This is slightly misleading because you shouldn’t actually do “cold friend requests.” It’s an unspoken Facebook rule that if you have absolutely no connection to a person, do not friend them. However, if you are at your second cousin’s wedding and a couple at your table mentions that they are looking to buy a house, jot down their name and send them a friend request later.
DO send a little message with the request reminding them how you met and why you are friend requesting them.
DO NOT be afraid to request friends or fans. The worst that could happen is they could “deny” you and since this isn’t High School, I think we can all handle a little rejection.


5- Turn Your Regular Color Cards Into Color Cards With Your Facebook Information
When One Step Services prints your next batch of color cards, have them had a line with your Facebook url.
DO get a vanity url such as www.facebook.com/realtor. This way you do not have to use the long ugly url that Facebook gives you.
DO NOT put your Facebook link on the card and then not do anything with your profile or fan page. If you aren’t going to do any of the first 4 steps of this article, don’t bother with the last one.

How do you protect your data?

Did you know that 140,000 hard drives crash every week in the United States? I should know, it happened to me the other day. All my photos, music, work, argggg!!!! And my external back up drive was full and hadn't backed up in months! So I lost everything!

Then I was referred, by a trusted expert in the field, on an online back up service, Mozy.com. For $4.95 a month, you can back up all you data nightly, unlimited space, maximum security. Now that's piece of mind.

I can't stress enough how important backing up your computer is today. You cannot rely on keeping your files in your email, or your computer and thinking it will be there forever. Do something to protect you business and your personal data NOW.

Here is more information on Mozy.com

What is Mozy?

Mozy is a secure online backup service. It's a simple, smart and economical way to protect your data from hazards like file corruption, accidental deletion and hardware failure. Mozy regularly backs up your files to its secure servers automatically so that you never have to worry about losing important data.

What’s so special about Mozy?

Mozy is simply the best online backup service available. Here are just a few of the reasons we can claim this distinction:

• Mozy is simple to set up.
• It performs backups automatically in the background while you continue working.
• It handles versioning, storing yesterday's renditions as well as today's renditions of your files with each backup, allowing you to pull data from different backup dates.
• It encrypts all your files before transferring them to storage.
• It's fast because it backs up only the data that has changed.
• It backs up both open and locked files.
• It's inexpensive and reliable.

Check out the News and Press area of our website to see what some of the nation's most respected newspapers and trade publications are saying about us. You'll see that Mozy is much more than just a catchy name. We're the best in the business - and getting better every day.

How do I use MozyHome?

Simply install the software on your computer, select the files you want to back up and then never worry about data loss again. Once you set it up, MozyHome automatically backs up your data for you at regular intervals. You don't even have to think about it.

How much does it cost?

MozyHome customers may purchase unlimited backup for less than $5 per month. And a one-year subscription gives you one month free, making the cost of unlimited data backup only $54.45 per year. With a two-year subscription, you get three months free.

MozyHome customers can also get a 2 GB account for free — and assign up to two computers to one account. Simply download the client and log in with the same username and password, and your second machine will be associated with your account.

MozyHome Unlimited users may add up to five computers to their account and must purchase an additional license ($4.95/month) for each computer added.

Who owns Mozy?

Mozy is owned by EMC Corporation, a Fortune 500 company. EMC is the world leader in information storage, information management, and data protection software.

How often can I restore my data?

You may restore files as many times as you need to. MozyHome users are limited to one restore in the queue at a time, though multiple files may be requested within the same restore.

How many files can I back up?

MozyHome free accounts are restricted to 2 GB of storage space before referral bonuses. For just $4.95 per month, MozyHome Unlimited offers truly unlimited backup for your home computer with no size restrictions. Just note that the more files you back up, the longer your initial backup takes.

How long does it take to back up?

For a typical system on a typical broadband line — assuming you continue working on your computer during the backup — Mozy backs up data at the rate of about 2-4 GB per day. If left undisturbed on a fast connection, however, you can back up over 9 GB in a single day. You may experience faster or slower speeds depending on your connection.

During installation, Mozy runs a bandwidth test and lets you know about how much you can upload a day.

After your initial backup, subsequent backups are relatively quick. Chances are that you won't even notice them. This is possible because Mozy performs what are called differential backups, which means that it only backs up the portions of your files that have changed since the last time they were backed up. This saves lots of time, bandwidth and storage space.

Is MozyHome secure?

Absolutely. MozyHome gives you the ability to select your data's encryption method: a MozyHome key with 448-bit Blowfish encryption or your own personal key with 256-bit AES encryption. Your files are encrypted on your computer using the key of your choice and then transferred to the Mozy servers using 128-bit SSL encryption, the industry standard for safe and secure data transfer. Please note that if you select to use your own private key, it will be impossible for Mozy to decrypt your data, so you must be very careful not to lose it.

How does Mozy respect my privacy?

The short answer is that we don't read your data or sell your information to anyone. The long answer is in our Privacy Policy.

How does Mozy protect my data?

Your data is stored in its encrypted state in Mozy's data centers with 24/7/365 on-site monitoring and security, state-of-the-art fire detection and suppression systems, redundant power distribution units and seismic safeguards that can withstand a 7.5 magnitude earthquake. In addition, we use a proprietary protection mechanism based on a complex encoding structure to ensure that your data is safe, even in the event of multiple hardware failures.

I just received a new lead from Net Aspects, what do I do?

Question: I just received a new lead, what do I do? How should I react to this? Solution: A new lead is very exciting. Business which you haven't had to cold call or "work the phones" to develop is always a time to rejoice. However, dealing with an electronic lead requires some patience and special skills. First of all, you're probably reacting because you received a lead alert like the one below to your email or mobile device. Login to SalesAspects. If you have the Contacts panel on your desktop, you can see right there that you have an unaccepted contact. If you don't, go ahead and click on Contacts, then click on the Views menu and you'll see your unaccepted contacts there. Go ahead and click on that to view your unaccepted contacts in SalesAspects Contact Manager. You're going to want to go ahead and accept this contact using the accept button to gain access to all of the details. Those details will let you know what the contact is looking for so you can give them a call and effectively address their question. On the general screen you get as much information as the contact has volunteered. Sometimes you'll get a phone number, usually you'll get an email. You may also get a zip code or other information depending on what form on the website the contact filled out. Now that you have all the tabs, go ahead and click on the leads tab, then choose the lead to view. Sometimes there are more than one lead. Click to view the details of the lead and see what the person asked. Now that you know what the contact wants, you can give them a call and talk to them about their needs. Fill in the contact record general with any additional information you learn - spouse's names, phone numbers, work places, etc. A good thing to do is to use the Notes feature in SalesAspects to record your conversation. Notes will let you keep track of information there isn't a spot for in SalesAspects. It also lets you communicate information to other members of your team - whether you are working in your own team or as part of a company team. You can even view the notes of others on your team. Now that you've talked to the customer and made a note, there's a good follow up you should do which is to start the contact on an eFarming drip email marketing campaign. In order to do this, you need to have a few eFarming campaigns setup on your account. See the related issues below to setup eFarming on your account so you're ready. From the General tab, scroll down in the bottom window to the eFarming section and add a drip email campaign. That you add them to ANY campaign is more important than the information you send. Of course you do not want to disrespect them by sending them something off topic, but if the topic is close, go ahead and send it. eFarming sends your brand and image to the contact on a recurring basis. Its a way to keep them aware of you, so even if they're not ready to go today, they'll remember you when they are! A final tool you have to use is the Audit trail. The audit trail shows you everything that has happened with this contact in the past. This is more of a tool you may find useful once the contact has been worked for several weeks or months and other leads and events have occurred with the contact. Here are a couple of notes specific to Real Estate and Property Searches. A lot of the Leads you'll receive will be Registrations. A Registration is creating a user account on the website. The customer hasn't necessarily asked for any information, but they are a prospect who should be followed up on because they expressed an interest on your website. In the Leads tab, you'll see the Lead is a Website Registration. Since this is a registration, you can gain further insight into the contact's interest using the property search tab. Click on the Property Search tab and you'll have a row of links at the top of the screen. You can click on them to see the information the customer has entered. You will often not have Saved Searches or Saved properties, but you will normally have viewed searches and viewed properties. Finally, a 2nd way, in addition to eFarming which you can use for Real Estate buyers is to setup a saved search and New Listing Email Notification. When you use SalesAspects to send out Email Notifications, they are branded like your eFarming messages - which makes them a great way to keep you and your brand in front of the prospects, particularly when their purchase timeframe is farther away. Simply create a saved search and mark it to send email on a recurring basis to the prospect. For more about Contact Management and SalesAspects, see the related items below.

Related Issues: VIDEO: How to create and manage eFarming campaigns VIDEO: SalesAspects Overview Why is there a column in my contacts that says IL? Can I turn off the fields for beds and bath on the property search? I accidentally deleted one of the boxes on my home screen. How do I get it back? VIDEO: How to setup your Notifications How to create an eFarming campaign How do I add contacts to my efarming campaign? How do I set up to be notified when I have a new lead?