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Hey you get off of my cloud (computing)

Microsoft is announcing that they too are going to be launching an online version of their Office product. This is being seen as a direct target of google’s cloud “Documents” product, which though only registering about 5% of the market, is growing.

The new product from Microsoft will be available through their Windows Live portal, that’s hotmail for those who still use it.

The word is that with google soon be lauching their operating system, Chrome OS, in direct competition to Microsoft’s strangle hold of Windows, Microsoft are going after google’s “Document” products!

On the face of it I wouldn’t be too worried if I was google…

However, the major coup is that they are going to be partnering with Facebook to offer this as an app there.

On second thoughts, google should worry!

Hiring the right company to build the right website is very effective in generating more business

The National Association of Realtors 2010 member survey suggest that their agents are becoming more tech savvy, and for those who are increasing their spend on their websites are getting returns!

56% of agents are now using a smart phone daily compared to 42% in 2009,  of which 66% were agents who had been in the business 2 years or less, compared with 48% usage for those with careers 16 years or more.

Social media, (twitter, facebook, etc) and  personal networking in general rocketed up to 51% in 2010 compared with 35% from 2009.

10% of agents reported having a blog (i wondering what % are actively blogging , 63% reported having a website, with a median of 3% of their business being reported coming from it.

Interestingly, agents who spent  $1000 or more to build & maintain on their site said that it generated 19% of their business.

Suggesting that simply ‘having  a website’ misses the mark by a long way. Agents who embrace the web and create a substantial and effective website site get significant returns.

Does your website strategy compliment the recent changes to google's interface?

Google has updated their user interface this week, thats the bit you use, and a ton of stuff that you don’t see. You may have noticed a subtle change in the way it looks, (that always throws me, my first reaction is that i have some malware installed, which has redirected me to a scam site!).

Really, the update brings some of the features that were ‘snuck’ in last time to the fore.

Type in a search query and you get the same set of results in essentially the same format. This is google’s ‘everything’ set of data. What’s new is the left column.

At the top you have, ‘everything’, all normal so far. Below that, they have moved the Maps, Images, Videos, News, Blogs etc to a much more prominent position. This means that its going to be more likely that people are going to perform subsequent search variations, from their original entry search.

As a real estate agent, you should make sure that your online strategies try cover all of these bases. Make sure that your website and blogs are loaded with local images, town images, development images, videos of the above, (even quickies from your smart phone) and blog posts.

Below, the ‘everything’ navigation is another category, More Search Tools, this is where users can find the most up to date information posted to the web. You can sort your results by the time they were updated such as latest, past 24 hrs, past week, past month, past year. Latest may show your twitter tweets!

I’ll say it again, you have to be blogging!

How fast is google chrome?

If you haven’t already done so, I would highly recommend downloading google chrome today. It’s simply the best browser we have used to date. I like it for a series of very subtle reasons, the tabs, you can change their order, you can break them out into their own window, the fact that you can search from the same place you type in urls.

The fact that it just seems to know what you are looking for. I rarely get more than two letters into the url i am looking for and chrome pops up suggestions which are usually bang on.

I am sure my every click is being monitored somewhere, by something for all this to happen, and perhaps I am sharing stuff I don’t know that I am sharing, but frankly, I’ll trade that for a great user experience.

I can also sync by bookmarks from one computer to another.

Did I mention too that it was fast? Check this out…

I can’t see Microsoft having as much fun as this…and it shows in their product.

Well they are here, and finally I was able to grab some time on one, albeit via my local apple store, rather than sitting on my couch.

So there has been much written about how the ipad will be a game changer for real estate agents. For that I am not so sure, but like most things apple do, it does change the game nonetheless.

It’s not so much what the ipad does, its more what my current laptop doesn’t, or how comparatively cumbersome my laptop now feels.

I think that the ipad is the best way to read the news online.

The scale of  it feels to me just like holding a magazine, without having to live with the discarded slab of paper until I finally get around to recyling it.

Since playing with one, it just seems silly to be reading the New York Times or the UK’s Guardian, newspaper on my laptop. Ergomically laptops have never fitted the lap at all. The landscape nature of the screen did not fit the portrait nature of the media. The opening of the screen, the constant adjustment of the screen angle as I settle down into my chair. When your done, you just put it down, no closing the lid, which now seems very outdated.

I am not so sure that its a device for doing, all this speak of using it to sign contracts and rewriting the rule book for real estate technology seems quite a reach. I do think though that its a cute device to show clients your presentation on, and you can certainly wow them with your comfort with technology.

Ssshhhh... I am following you

Inman news today suggested that buyers and sellers can be ‘stalking’ or agents online for as much as 18 months before they do business with them.

If nothing else, this tells us that if you are serious about getting more business from your internet presence, you need to be in it for the long haul. We couldn’t agree more. Too often the feeling is that a website is the silver bullet thats been missing.

The article was dead on when it suggested that Gen X and Gen Y clients want to actively remain anonymous, until they are ready to want more. To us, this is a reaffirmation that you don’t want to have any kind of mandatory sign-in process in between potential clients, and your information, which is essentially public anyway.

Blogging is a great way to communication with your anonymous readership and build trust over this 18 month courtship. Blogging will also push your search engine rankings as their demand for fresh information can be solved through your posts.

Blogging also keeps your site fresh. If you are comprehensively covering all their informational bases, why would they go someplace else?

So what to say, what to say…

1. Market Updates: what’s closed, what’s new, market stats
2. Questions Posed By Clients & Your Answers: blog about the things you talk about all day in your car
3. Lifestyle Posts: love local businesses in town, or just a pic of the cherry trees in bloom, add it, write a paragraph and you have moved your blog forward. Make your blog the #1 resource for relo clients online. Include photos of your local schools. In many areas, there is an equal amount of search volume between schools and real estate.

This week marks the 25 anniversary of the first registered domain name, or dotcom, for mere mortals. Before then, the domain names were for government or educational use.  Since then, many, if not most domain names have been bought, sold, and expired a few times.

Anyone looking for that great domain name a few years ago would have had a hard time finding what they were looking for. Back in 2005 when the $$$ was flowing in real estate, there was a domain name land-grab.

Agents who were looking for a new domain name wouldn’t just buy one, they would buy 10.

Roll forward a few years, and when those bills from their domain name registrar each year, people are being more selective over the domain names they are actually using, versus the ones they meant to use, but didn’t really do anything with after all.

Were agents going to re-up their 10 domains for $100, or pay the cell phone bill?

They paid the phone bill.

What we are seeing now is opportunity. Whereas finding a great domain for your real estate website was a frustrating task a few years ago, it’s now fun again. There are some great domain names out there again.

To blog or not to blog...I think it's pretty clear, BLOG!

Still not blogging? Well, we’re not going to rest until you are. Are you blogging, but not really sure why?

Here’s yet another reason why it is such a good thing. It might get a little geeky here, but we’ll insulate you from the worst of it.

Ok, on a fundamental level websites and blogs are typically constructed using different frameworks. This is essentially because historically speaking they have been built of different purposes.

The Typical Website Model

Generally speaking websites, at worst, are rather like pretty fleshed out yellow pages ads. A series of pages who’s content seldom changes, (disclaimer: this is not the approach we approve of ), how many times does a Contact Us, or About Us page really have to change. So whenever a page changes or new pages are added, its wise to update your sitemap.

In short, a sitemap is a file that features all the links to pages on your website. When you have an updated site map, you notify the search engines that it’s updated and at some point they’ll pop over to take a look.

There is often a delay, of days if not weeks for search engines to come by and check out the changes. Frustratingly there’s not much that can be done to encourage them to by any sooner.

The Blog Model

Blogs are about being current, what’s happening now, or what’s just happened. Their MO is to get news out there.

The whole point of news is that it’s…that’s right, NEW.

When you write a new blog post and hit ‘publish’ something amazing (you might have to be a geek to use ‘amazing’ in this context) happens. Hitting publish, not only publishes your content to your blog but, importantly it sends out a ‘ping’ to the search engines to notify them that some news has just been reported.

Newness is what search engines crave.

By writing content on your blog you are giving search engines what they are looking for. Is it starting to become clear?

The Difference is Remarkable

Whereas it can be days if not weeks for search engines to find your new page on your website, you can get them to see (or index) your new blog post in minutes, which is frankly, astounding. Simply give search engines what they want and be rewarded.

See For Yourself

Click to enlarge

The blog post you are reading was published to the web at 9.15am this morning. It’s now 9.25am and google has already indexed or seen the post and this can only help our relevance in search results… That took 7 minutes.

Most Realtors call us to complain that they can’t be found at search engines. I think we both know what you can do to change that.

We can help you design and configure your real estate blog and coach you in your blog-craft.

"Extra Extra read all about it..."

The irony of Twitter’s Biz Stone sending an email newsletter over the weekend was not lost on me.

Could it be that perhaps the single most efficient tool for disseminating information, the micro-blogging phenomenon, Twitter, really sent out a newsletter by email???

Well, it did, and I, as uncharacteristically, read it.

Ultimately, I think it depends on who’s it from, when Biz Stone sends me and email which begins, “Dear limeyboy..” my interest is piqued.

However, I think that an email newsletter is today, at best, a bi-product of time better spent elsewhere.

Meaning , create a blog post, write to the point, original content, feature it on the homepage of your website, tweet to it, and link to it from your facebook business page, ooh and while you are at it send an email out to your contact list.

A lawyer we know each month sends us a ‘company’ update via email with a pdf attached. We never read it…

Increasingly I think your news is more likely to be read on your facebook business page, where it’s already opened and paraphrased. You don’t have to rely on people opening an email. (It is true that email still works for the “old-timers”)

I would also say that if you are going to send a newsletter make it relevant, which essentially means write it yourself and also don’t send it as a pdf, which is a good format for legal contract but a dreadful format for some warm and fuzzies.

We see lots of very generic content on real estate websites, such as:

• cupboard organizing ideas
• window treatments
• green decorating

Let’s face it, this is NOT why you are being hired, and not what people are looking for. Stay on point and always be relevant to real estate information in your town.