RTV™ Announces New Full Service Providers in Athens, Georgia and Southern Maryland areas.Athens, Georgia - July 16, 2008— Blue Sky Virtual Tours has recently partnered with RTV™, the world’s largest and fastest growing virtual tour software provider. As a Real Tour Vision full service provider Blue Sky Virtual Tours will be able to offer state-of-the-art virtual tours and innovative online marketing solutions to local real estate agents and businesses. Blue Sky Virtual Tours has completed proprietary training as a certified RTV full service dealer and will also be offering their clients and customers expert advice on internet marketing. Jason LaVanture, Vice President of RTV said: ‘The RTV business model certainly sparks the entrepreneurial spirit. Most people who choose to use our virtual tour software and property marketing system do so because they are the kind of people that wake up every day and love the fact that they are in business for themselves but not by themselves. Blue Sky Virtual Tours is just such an operation and now with three locations in the US they are gearing up to be one of our larger virtual tour providers in the country.’ Steve Bartlett Jr., RTV Provider and Vice President of Blue Sky Virtual Tours stated, ‘We are very excited to start our marketing business that will focus on meeting and exceeding clients’ needs in the evolving business world.’ Since 1999, RTV has continually led the way in the virtual tour industry with marketing implementations such as their proprietary interactive software, RTV™ PanoRider™, single property websites, on-demand Virtual Tour Traffic Reporting 2.0, 2D/3D interactive floor plans, animated walk-throughs, custom websites, proprietary order-dispatch system, tour audio solutions, tour discs and sketch-and-fax services. For more information email info@blueskyvirtualtours.com or visit their virtual tour website. Those interested in business opportunities with RTV are encouraged to visit our virtual tour company blog for more information and current dealer testimonials before contacting Real Tour Vision™. Blue Sky Virtual Tours, LLC operates in three metro areas, Atlanta/Athens, Georgia; Southern Maryland and Washington DC/Fairfax, We provide high quality, interactive 360° panoramic virtual tours at an affordable price. In addition to this, we deliver customer-oriented service to ensure the best value in the marketing business. Contact: Steve Bartlett Virtual Tours of South Africa in Official Google Earth LayerCape Town, Western Cape, South Africa, 07/16/2008 – In association with the South African Tourism Board, Virtual Africa has recently announced the release of their official South Africa Tourism Google Earth Layer, which has been included into Google Earth’s Primary Database.
“We shot and processed about 60,000 individual pictures in 7 months, stitched them all into 5,000 panoramic images, chose the best 2,500 and dropped them into 100 location based virtual tours. It is a truly amazing accomplishment and we are excited to be included in Google Earth’s Primary database. The addition of these virtual tours will help stimulate tourism in our beautiful country by encouraging tourists to visit sooner rather than later.” says Tinus Le Roux, Managing Director of Virtual Africa. Internet users can now enjoy and explore South Africa virtual tours of places like Robben Island, Soweto, Cape Town and the Kruger National Park all with the click of a button. “We’re really proud of the end result. In less than a year we have created an incredible tourism tool for our country. We would not have been able to deliver on a project of this scale, within the timeframe allowed, if it wasn’t for the built in scalability and ease of use of the RTV virtual tour creation system and Google Earth layers. Six months ago a Google Earth layer with links to virtual tours was the only available way to explore South Africa online. Now we have created something much more powerful and effective.”
Virtual Africa is a Full Service Dealer for international virtual tour software company, RTV. For more information about this Google Earth project, visit their website or contact them directly. Contact Information: Google Phishing Alert!Just a few minutes ago I received an email from a colleague asking me if I knew anything about his Google Adwords account being deactivated. He forwarded me the email he received and after about 30 seconds I realized it was a Phishing email. At first glance however, it looks very authentic.
But three things gave this email away:
Number 1. It was sent from the future. Number 2. It wasn't sent to anyone at all. Number 3. When you hover over the link in the email, it doesn't go to Google.
Gmail, eBay and PayPal have started using DomainKeys to fight phishing emails. The three companies are working together to ensure that these phishing emails do not even show up in Gmail accounts if the sender is not authenticated. The official Gmail blog talks more about what is to come from fighting phishing with eBay and PayPal.
If you would like to know how to set up your outlook account to seamlessly work with Gmail, check out the blog SPAM and PHISHING - Your email
Cheryl Waller Unzip My WHAT?Jason LaVanture of BlueLaVaMedia recently posted a blog, Virtual Tour Follow-up is KEY to Success. In his blog he talks about the importance of (...you guessed it) following up with your clients and customers. If your business services include the delivery of digital photos via Zip files from FTP (or if you are a real estate agent that sends zip files to homeowners), I would recommend that you add instructions on how to properly Unzip images. While many people are familiar with unzipping files, there are a few that are new to this process.
The easiest way to ensure uniformity (if you use Microsoft Outlook) is to setup a template that is sent out to each client upon completion of their virtual tour. You can do this by writing an email as normal and then saving it by clicking on FILE>SAVE AS and then selecting OUTLOOK TEMPLATE from the drop down menu at the bottom. Remember to name your template something that you will remember before saving it. From them on it is as simple as selecting TOOLS>FORMS>USER TEMPLATES IN FILE SYSTEM> MYFILENAME. I have included a sample of what I would send to my clients at the bottom of our delivery emails for your convenience. Feel free to copy and paste this into your email template. ***************************** To download photos: 1. Click on the photo link above. 2. Click on open 3. When the folder opens, click on 'extract all' 4. Extract the photos to a folder on your computer. Please note that if you save the zip file to your computer, the photos cannot be uploaded directly from the zip folder. The photos MUST be extracted from the zip file as instructed above, otherwise your MLS system will not recognize the images as valid and you will get an error. ***************************** Adding these simple, yet straightforward instructions to your emails will assist those clients unfamiliar with Unzipping files and your clients that do understand will still have step-by-step instructions for reference. Real Estate Marketing and the Mortgage CrisisA recent article on CNN.com, Experts Tell How to Deal with Mortgage Crisis, answers questions that millions of homeowners find themselves asking. CNN's Larry King talked with several real estate and financial experts to get advice on handling the mortgage meltdown. Another article on CNNMoney.com, New Home Sales near Historic Lows, sheds light on just how low home sales have fallen. 
I’ve Been MeMe’d!! (and apparently I am Spider-Man)Well, this is something that I did not expect when I checked in to see who has been blogging lately in our RTV Virtual Tours group. Apparently I have been MeMe’d by our Kansas City dealer, Karisma Olson. Thanks Karisma, I love how you thank Fran for ‘a ‘kick in the pants’ and then proceed to pass it on to me…lol So … thank you Karisma for the ‘kick in the pants’ and here’s your answers… Who is my favorite musical artist? I would have to say the entire band the Eagles… Hotel California is my all time favorite song! I can’t believe after all these years they are on the May 2008 cover of Rolling Stone magazine wait! What am I saying? Of course I can believe it!! Who is my favorite artist? Thomas Kinkade… hands down! Check out the video on his site about the Nascar® Thunder Painting Who is my favorite blogger? Wow… what a question.. I have several bloggers that I follow and I don’t think I could ever choose one over the other. I follow each for uniquely different reasons so I really can’t say that I have a ‘favorite’. What is your favorite city that you have visited? I would have to say London England. Getting used to driving on the other side of the vehicle is a bit unnerving, but if you ever want to get really good at it… scare the living [[[enter favorite phrase here]]] out of yourself and drive in London during rush-hour. That’ll cure ya quick! But seriously, I loved it there. So much culture, so much to learn. Absolutely amazing! – by the way, if you stop in at McDonalds to get a quick bite, the answer to the question ‘flat or fizzy’ is ‘fizzy’. See… I just saved you from standing at a McDonalds counter in England with the ‘deer in the headlights’ look. OH and one last thing, I never want to hear about bad women drivers again! I successfully drove in downtown London during rush-hour on many occasions & on the small roadways in Italy at crazy (but customary for the country) speeds while leap-frogging (that’s my little imagery of how they pass in Italy) on two lane roads that apparently have an imaginary passing lane in the middle. My soon to be ex-husband however managed to damage many vehicles in every country we visited while telling me that ‘he’ knows what he is doing… Really!! Is that why the Italian mafia is STILL looking for you for sideswiping their vehicles right in front of them and then taking off? Who would you want to meet dead or alive? I don’t think that I would want to meet anyone dead (that’s just creepy), so I am going to stick with living people. There are so many people that I would love to meet and have just one hour to pick their brain on marketing. This is almost like asking me ‘who is my favorite blogger’. I have a long list of people, and maybe just maybe… someday I will find the time to write them all and ask them for that hour. Hey, you never know if you do not ask! What did you want to be growing up? I actually wanted to be a lawyer. I attended law classes when I was in high school and I am still, to this day, fascinated by the intricacies of law and how it is applied and evolved. I am not sure that I would be happy as a lawyer, so I am actually glad that I ‘fell’ into marketing as a career. I love what I do and not many people can say that. What's the most interesting piece of trivia you know? Not sure if this qualifies as ‘trivia’ but it’s the first thing that popped into my mind when I read the question. Maybe it qualifies better as the ‘oddest’ thing I know... but anyway… here it is. The answer to, “How much wood could a wood chuck chuck if a wood chuck could chuck wood?”… is… “A wood chuck would chuck all the wood a wood chuck could chuck if a wood chuck could chuck wood.”…say it out loud… I dare you… If you could live in any point in history what would it be and why? I would absolutely have to say ‘right now’. I am too addicted to this computer. So, the past would send me to the loony bin and technology moves too fast as it is, so the future is not an option either. What is the most interesting job I've ever held? Paying or volunteer? This is definitely the most interesting job I have ever had. I have learned so much from all of the people I come in contact with every day. I learn innovative and remarkable things every time I communicate with someone new. One of the great things about this job is that every time I turn around, there is something original to learn… apply … and teach. Even better is the ability to help so many people with their businesses and ultimately their freedom from having to have ‘a job’. Although I miss being an entrepreneur, I find this job to be the most rewarding out of everything that I have done and all the businesses that I have run.RTV is truly the best place in the world to work. I would never leave and even if I did, they would send out a search party to drag my ___ back… I really do love it here. I still do freelance work on the side to keep my entrepreneurial spirit from withering to dust, but I think it will be a little while before I open another business.
And, even though it wasn’t asked originally, apparently I am Spider-Man…
Click here to take the Superhero Personality Test
So, who am I going to kick in the pants... Uh... I mean MeMe next? Hmmm it would have to be Michelle Spalding, Suzanne Roy, Chris Grumley and Jason LaVanture
A Tale of Two Marketing CampaignsNo matter what your business is, it is crucially important to remember that you are not primarily ‘in’ that business; you are primarily ‘in’ the business of marketing that business. So whether you are a real estate agent that uses RTV software to advance your real estate marketing strategy or if you are a virtual tour provider that makes a living providing commercial and real estate tours, your primary focus must be on the marketing of your business to be at all successful. Without marketing, there is no business and there is no way around that fact. The marketing department here at Team RTV understands that we have many different businesses that utilize the marketing material, systems and campaigns that we produce for our Inner-Circle Members. That is why we are always on the lookout for unique ideas, even from outside our industry. This week we came across two very different marketing campaigns, each from outside the virtual tour industry and each with very different conversion goals. In the first example I will show you how a company effectively spends marketing dollars on a campaign to bring highly qualified (yet unsuspecting) leads right to their front door with one advertisement in a magazine. In the second example, I will show you how a very large corporation spent what must have been hundreds of thousands of dollars on a marketing campaign that brings them zero qualified leads. The first example is a marketing campaign for a children’s book company which is placed in a children’s magazine. The advertisement features a ‘scratch & match game’ that uses the assumption that you are playing to ‘win’ something. But, if you look closely, nothing in the advertisement says that you are going to ‘win’ anything. In fact, every bit of text on this advertisement clearly states that you ARE getting free gifts. All you have to do is scratch, paste, enter your kid’s name, place it in the mail and you get the free gifts. You don’t even have to fill out your address, because the magazine company has already personalized the advertisement with the address of the magazine recipient. So, why the ‘scratch & match’ game? Its way more effective in drawing attention to the ad, getting people involved with the offer by scratching the apples and dropping it in the mail. It’s so simple that even a kid could do it. And kids love games, especially ones that they win. Redemption of the ‘prize’ requires nothing more than the kid to fill in their own name and drop it in the mail. This tactic is borderline manipulative (using kids to obligate parents) in my opinion, but very effective in converting the magazine’s customer list to their own. The second example is a small game piece featuring a “$50,000 cash out contest” for a lunchmeat company. The game piece is place inside the lunchmeat package with images of $100 bills and the words “$50,000 Cash Out Contest” in monopoly-like lettering. When you open the game piece to reveal your ‘PIN number’ for the contest, you are directed to a website to enter your code and find out if you have won. So far, so good. The company has effectively reached people that are already buying their product. So you would think that the next step would be to collect information from these customers and sell more to them right? Nope. When you get to the website, you click on the link to take you to the page where you enter your pin. A screen comes up with an ‘entry form’. You enter your number and it tells you whether you did or did not win. That’s it. Game over. I couldn’t help but feel an empty void when that happened. Is the marketing department sleeping? They spent ALL of this money on these game pieces and the website and they didn’t even ask me for my name. Nothing! Even if they had a ‘consolation prize' of a 50 cent coupon, then there might have been a clear conversion goal, but there isn’t. Zero leads, zero up sell. The most they would get out of a campaign like that is geographical location of the consumer via IP address, but since the product is shipped to supermarkets and people usually purchase from supermarkets close to home, so that would be a waste. Once this contest is over, they have no effective means of reaching consumers that engaged in their contest. At the end of these two marketing campaigns, the first company has a customer list of parents with kids old enough to read, write and manipulate stickers on a page. Exactly the target market they are looking to sell their books. And I would be willing to bet that a pretty high percentage of those parents pay for the books that their kids ordered, so they also have many new customers. On the other hand, the second company has a cool looking website and no customer list. Which company would you want to be after spending your marketing dollars?
BlueLaVaMedia Announces Extended Virtual Tour Service Coverage for Real Estate One® Agents in MichiganTRAVERSE CITY, MI - June 4, 2008 - BlueLaVaMedia offering Traverse City virtual tours announced today a strategic alliance with RealVisionStudio, provider of Metro Detroit virtual tours. These companies have aligned to offer Real Estate One® (REO) agents a new powerful listing tool and extended virtual tour service coverage. The back-end real estate listing system that REO agents use to publish listings to the MLS features an integrated ordering page which allows agents to order full service virtual tours from a list of preferred vendors at the same time they enter in their listings. Until recently, only REO agents from the Metro Detroit area have been able to place orders for virtual tours from these vendors within this system. This new strategic alliance now allows agents in Northern Michigan to also place orders for full service virtual tours. "It just made sense for us to partner with RealVisionStudio to service the two largest REO markets in Michigan. Home sellers and real estate agents, now more than ever, need access to effective property marketing tools. That's been our offering since we opened our doors." said Jason LaVanture of BlueLaVaMedia. BlueLaVaMedia also announced their all new ‘PanoRiderTM Custom Round' which is a panoramic sign rider made specifically for the signature REO round yard signs. The PanoRider is a powerful marketing tool that converts foot traffic from a real estate yard sign into online web traffic. These eye-catching riders feature a panoramic scene from the within the home which is printed in full color and displayed above the REO round yard sign. The sign prominently displays a custom single property website address (utilizing the physical property address) which points directly to the online virtual tour and property listing information. This remarkable tool drastically saves home shoppers time as they can simply type in one web address to pull up that specific 360 home tour rather than spending time searching the MLS or agents site for that listing. Both virtual tour and PanoRider services are available to all real estate firms in the Northern Michigan and Detroit region and samples of each technology can be viewed by visiting their websites www.BlueLaVaMedia.com and www.RealVisionStudio.com. About BlueLaVaMedia About RealVisionStudio
Sending Money by Cell Phone?Back when PayPal first started, they were a free service that operated on float. I remember because I actually signed up with them when they were a free service and thought it was a clever idea. Those days are long gone and anyone that uses PayPal knows just how fast their fees can add up. So, if you want to send money quick, but you don't want to pay the 2.9% plus $.30 charge to PayPal... what are your alternatives? Send money by text! Today I signed up for a service called Obopay. With this service you can send money to anyone with a cell phone. Once you set up your account and link it to your bank account, you can instantly send money to anyone with a cell phone number. Better yet, you can even accept payments from customers via your cell phone. All they need is your cell phone number and they can pay you instantly from their Obopay account or directly from their bank account through the Obopay service. Signing up took me about 4 minutes total. Just enter your personal information, your bank account information, verify your cell phone number and a few identity questions from your credit report and you are done! Oh, and the best part... no matter how much you send, the cost is just $.10 to send and absolutely free to receive. The funds are automatically deposited into your bank account. Sitting at a table and need to split the check but you don't have enough cash? Just send your friend a text and the money gets deposited into their account. Your son in college and needs $50, send him a text and the money gets credited to his account. Just complete a virtual tour and you need to pay the service provider? Send them a text on the spot and the bill is paid! Check it out on their website www.Obopay.com And yes, you receive $5 for referring others to Obopay, so before someone blasts me for using an affiliate link... I will put that out there. But either way this is a great service and I would definitely recommend it without the affiliate bonus, but I'm not one to turn down a free gallon of gas...lol
Something Strange is Going OnThere is no denying that there is something very strange going on in America today. I am not talking about politics, the price of gas, or the economy. What I am talking about is a little bit closer to home and much more influential upon our future... In fact, if you're reading this, you are partaking in it and it is affecting your future right now. Conceived in the 1960's by the scientific and academic need to communicate in the event of a catastrophic event; borne in 1990 of the idea of interconnecting computers to share and document evolving information; the Internet has changed the world. What it has become, and is still becoming, was beyond anyone's wildest imagination at the time of its birth. Today, a social networking revolution has begun. People are taking to the Internet and connecting to each other; contributing their ideas; sharing their views; and creating a future that one can only conceive through the eyes of a child. Imagination and creativity are alive again; something most of us lost an early childhood... or did we? Some call it Web 2.0, some call it social networking; I call it the beginning of what is to come. Mavericks, mavens, and entrepreneurs are coming together and masterminding incredible innovations every second of every day. and none of it would be possible, this fast, this efficiently, without the Internet. I invite you to check out this video by Charles Leadbeater. (thank you to Chris Keiff for sharing this video through his internet marketing blog)
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Cheryl Waller National Marketing Manager Traverse City, MI More about me… Real Tour Vision Office Phone: (866) 947-8687 Email Me
There are very profitable lessons to be learned from the experience of others.. a LOT to be learned in hearing about the successes (and roadblock pitfalls) of other business owners, marketers and salespeople. Exchange ideas, learn from others, share and improve marketing strategies. Ready Set BLOG
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This layer includes 100 scenic virtual tours of the most important tourism destinations in South Africa, compiled by
With the 2010 Soccer World Cup around the corner and South Africa’s popularity as a tourism destination at a constant rise, the timing of these virtual tours is perfect. But, according to Le Roux, it’s only the first step. Le Roux revealed that Virtual Africa is in the process of geo-locating each of the images shot during the project and embedding them into a 
So, to avoid the question "Unzip my what?" I always found it helpful to include instructions on extracting images from a zip file on every virtual tour delivery to my clients.
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