You know how sometimes you just can't figure out what you should write about, and you really need to post something? That happened to me today. I have this small window of time to write in, and the part of my brain responsible for writing blog posts is apparently on vacation. So while navigating the vast sea of posts still unpublished because they aren't finished yet, I came up with this idea. I'm sure I'm not the only one who gets stumped and can't get their writing brain in gear, so in the event that you find yourself in this predicament, here are some ideas to get you out of your rut.

1. Tell your readers who you are, or what you're thinking. It's your blog, so nobody's going to stop you. You can take an online survey and post it with your answers in it. For some reason people like knowing odd, intimate details of other people's lives. The details don't necessarily have to be too personal if you don't want them to be though! You could simply make a list of your favorite things (raindrops on roses and whiskers on kittens, anyone?). For some quick and easy surveys, go here. Make sure you keep it rated PG though.

2. Find something funny on You Tube. Not only will you have a blog post in mere seconds, but searching for the perfect funny video will boost your mood as well. Maybe it will even clear up that darned writers block so you can post something important to follow your goofy You Tube video.

3. Publish A Poem. It doesn't even have to be one you wrote, although it could be. But for those of us less poetically-inclined (like myself), here's a good place to find old favorites. If you're not so into poems, you can also find song lyrics and other quotes there.

4. List some cool facts or laws. Here are some laws (pick your favorites) and here are some facts. Yes, this is a "fluff" post. But it gives your readers something to think about for a bit.

5. Show off the kids. Or the fluffy little dog that fits in your purse, if you don't have kids (or the purse-dog with the kids, if you're like me and have both). Your female readers will ooh and aah over the cutie pie (applies to both purse-dogs and human-kids). To accompany the photo(s) you can write a caption about it, or an antic that might have something to do with the photo.

Remember, don't take yourself too seriously. Yes, your blog is about real estate, but you have a personality outside of your job and it's okay to show that sometimes. So when you get stumped, reconnect with your readers by showing them you're a person. Your guaranteed to get a better response from any of these blog ideas than from doing yet another space-filling (and sleep-inducing) market report.

Related Reading: Ten Tips to Spice Up Your Real Estate Blog

You can't deny that this country is obsessed with looks and beauty. Aesthetics are important, whether we like it or not. When you meet a new client, you are expected to be well-groomed and have an outfit on that matches at the very least, and you should look like a professional person that can be trusted. So if you go to all that trouble to make sure YOU look good, shouldn't you put the same effort into making sure your real estate blog/website looks good? Think about it... your internet self is seen more than your actual self, and by many more viewers. You owe it to your real estate website to make sure it looks fabulous at all times.

You may have noticed that CyberSunshine just got a fancy new makeover. We're prettier than ever now (Jealous? You should be!). Every few years you should get a makeover for your site, for several reasons. And here is a list of those reasons:

1. Your site looks outdated and old-fashioned. That's not good. It makes you look like you're not up to speed with the times, and nobody (especially not the twenty-somethings that are currently making up the largest buyers market right now) wants someone that's outdated. Your real estate website is your image, and it is a direct reflection of you and your services. Make sure you're presenting yourself in a way that matters.

2. Your site is cluttered. This is really bad. Nobody wants to muddle through your mess of links and blurbs about how wonderful you are, just to find your listings. Not to say you aren't wonderful. I'm sure you are. But you don't have to drill it into people's heads a thousand times with all the testimonials and the paragraphs your assistant wrote six years ago covering your degrees and accomplishments. Make the site nice and neat, and spell out clearly who you are and what you do, and do it in a short paragraph if you can. Nobody wants to read your resume. They just want a basic description about why they should hire you, and then they want to see your listing. So make it easy, and make sure your content is limited and your navigation is clear and makes sense.

3. Your navigation doesn't work, or other links are broken. HUGE mistake! Always, always, make sure the links work on your page! Every couple of weeks (or days if you're a little OCD) check out the links on your page to make sure they work, especially the important ones (Contact Us, Listings, Home Search). If your links don't work, the potential buyer is going to continue on to another site that came up on Google and not even give you a second thought.

4. The services listed are no longer services you offer, and your photo is from 1986. Okay, seriously, you do not still have a poufy bangs thing going on, nor do you rock the blue eyeshadow. And what's with those shoulder-pads? Are you a line-backer for the Cowboys? Make it a point to update your photo once a year. Misrepresentation is a mark against you, and when your potential lead meets you for the first time and realizes that a) that photo was not from last year's Halloween party, and b) you're nearly 25 years older than they thought you were, they are going to be a little perturbed. While you're at it, make sure your service and your specialty areas where you sell are actually accurate. Nothing turns a buyer off faster than calling your office for a specific neighborhood and finding out that you USED to sell there, but it's been several years since you actually have.

I'm sure there are other great reasons to give your site a face lift, but for now these are the best ones I can come up with. So check out your site, give it an assessment from a non-biased point of view, and determine if it needs some help. Then email me and I'll get you set up with a fantastic designer!

This is part of a new series I'll be doing that will give you tips on how to improve your blog with subtle changes and easy-to-implement techniques. The first tip I'm going to cover is replying to comments left on your blog.

There are several reasons why you'll want to reply to your comments. First, it shows the commenter that you actually read the comments you receive and you value them. Most of the time when people leave you a comment they come back to see if their comment got any responses. People get the warm fuzzies when they see that the blog author read the comment and actually responded. You'd be surprised to know how many blog authors don't bother to respond to comments, even though it seems like simple logic to you and I. Personally, when I leave a comment and it doesn't warrant a response, I feel ignored, and I find that rude. It's like when you leave someone a voicemail and they never call you back. Another reason to respond to your comments is that it can gain you additional comments. You can start a dialogue of sorts on your blog. If someone comments to you, you have the opportunity to respond and possibly open up a conversation (depending on the topic, of course). Then you can invite other people to share their opinions on the comment, and then you have a dialogue (or a debate, but we'll talk about that some other time). Not only does this dialogue get you more hits to your blog from people checking back to read the comments, but it also gives the commenting parties a feeling of community, as if they have made friends on your blog and they're sharing ideas and thoughts. That's another warm fuzzies type of feeling.

Now on to how to do it. First of all, you can't really respond to a comment like, "Great point, I love your blog!" and expect to start a conversation. You have to look for the right type of comment. If someone asks a question or makes a point that corresponds with your original point (the reason you wrote that post), then you can comment to get an intelligent conversation started. Sometimes it won't work, and the commenter won't return, and nobody else will comment. That's okay. You did the polite thing by responding, so let it go. Don't post an additional comment asking for more opinions or wondering where the original commenter has gone. It makes you look desperate, and nobody wants to look desperate. Another thing to remember is that you do not bother responding to mean, hurtful, or negative comments unless you are fully prepared to deal with the lashback. The blogosphere can be a harsh place. There are so many types of people with so many varying opinions, so make sure you can handle the heat if you're starting an arguement. When I get unpleasant comments, I usually just delete them and move on. To me, it just isn't worth the hassle of starting a huge arguement, and it makes your blog look unprofessional.

Good luck in your commenting endeavors, and try to remember a very important point. You will not get a lot of comments. That doesn't mean your blog is boring or you're unpopular. You're not writing a blog for the comments, you're writing it to boost your site and to introduce yourself to potential clients. The comments are just an added bonus.

The real estate market is slow. There is no denying it, no sugar-coating it. But that does not mean you should just curl up in a ball and give up. Its likely you're not selling as many properties as you were a few years ago, and you're either a) waiting tables/delivering pizzas/working the cosmetics counter at Macy's to pick up the slack, or b) throwing all your efforts into marketing yourself, improving your image, and getting to know the community around you. Can you guess which is going to pay off when the market starts to accelerate again?

I know, it's hard to imagine what it will be like when the market picks up, since you've spent so much time thinking about how down it's been. But if you've been in this business more than five years, you know that the market goes up and down and constantly fluctuates. Just like the dollar. So if you're smart, you're preparing appropriately.

Here are a few things you could/should be doing with your newly abundant free time:

• Blog. Yes, you should be writing a blog on your website. If you're a client of ours and you don't have a blog, email me and I'll get you all set up with one. If you're not a client of ours (then you should be, *wink, wink*!) you should contact your web company and demand they install a blog ASAP. Not only does a blog give you something to do, but it turns you into a human being. You will get readers and they will be interested in what you have to say. Imagine this... You currently get, say, 1,200 visitors each month to your website. Each visitor goes to maybe 5 pages on average while at your site. The reason they're there is to get to know you, and see what properties you have to offer. Well sometimes your About Me page just doesn't cut it. I can tell you, that's not enough information to sell me on a specific realtor. That's where a blog can be helpful. Not only does it turn you into a real person, it can also show how knowledgeable you are about your community, and how involved you are as well.
  
• Learn about SEO. Currently, you don't have any knowledge of SEO (Search Engine Optimization) because you don't need to, right? Well, I can tell you from my own experience that the top real estate agents in this country right now know all kinds of stuff about SEO and how to enhance their sites. You should be one of them. You want to be on the cutting edge so you can stay in the game. If you don't focus on SEO now, while you have time, then once the market picks up you WON'T have time and all your competitors who spent the time and effort will have a leg up on you. If you want to know more about SEO or where to find some excellent resources that can help you get started, email me.
  
  
• Network. And not just with people in your area, per se. You should be on the social media sites like Twitter, MyBlogLog, Facebook, Myspace, LinkdIn, and any others you can find. If you don't have time for that many, you should at least be on Facebook, Twitter, and MyBlogLog. Twitter is even mobile, so you can put it on your phone and keep up that way. And if you have an iPhone, Facebook has a really good version to use on the go. The purpose of all this networking is that one day, one of those awesome real estate agents in another part of the country may have a friend of a friend who needs a good real estate agent in your area. Who do you think will get the recommendation? You, or some realtor they have never spoken to before?
  
  
• Read Blogs. As many as you can find. I have a personal list of favorites that I visit frequently, and so should you. You should probably just subscribe to the blogs you like, that way you don't have to remember them all. By "subscribe", I mean via RSS Feed. You'll see a link for it on any kind of decent blog. We have one here, to the right and under the Archive. All you do is put in your email address and Voila! new posts are emailed to you for your enjoyment and convenience. The purpose of reading all those blogs is twofold. First, you can see how the market is doing in other areas, what other agents are doing to market themselves, and what topics are relevant to them and their readers. Second, you can stay on top of technology. Many real estate bloggers find some cool stuff on the internet and blog about it. You'll be privy to the cool tools they find just by reading their blogs.

I hope this has put some things into perspective for you, and if you have any questions about any of these hints, or need assistance implementing them, don;t hesitate to contact me. You can comment here or email me.

I come across a lot of cool things in my web browsing, but this beats all as far as I'm concerned. This tool is called Google Insight, and I have to tell you, it has been a long time since I have been this stoked about a web tool! This one was pointed out to me courtesy of Advanced Access.

Google Insight basically allows you to search for search terms to see their popularity. It allows you to compare several search terms as well, like I did it the chart above. I compared Naples Real Estate (blue, bottom) with Miami Real Estate (red, top). You can see that the two terms followed similar paths. Naples Real Estate seems to have a more up and down line than the steadier Miami Real Estate, which leads me to believe that real estate in Miami is probably not as rocky as in Naples. However, Miami Real Estate consistently is higher in popularity, which leads me to conclude that more people are searching for real estate in Miami than Naples.

Insight also allows you to see where the searches are coming from, both by state and by country. So if you want to know which state is most interested in Naples real estate, this would be an excellent tool for you. Perhaps the coolest and most useful feature of this site is that it gives you a list of search terms that are up-and-coming that also relate to the term you are searching for. For instance, in this search I learned that Sarasota Real Estate and Pelican Bay Real Estate are becoming more popular search terms for the Southwest Florida area. That's good to know, especially if you sell in Pelican Bay (which is in Naples). That kind of knowledge allows you to know when you need to add new keywords to your site, making you more searchable.

This week, we were informed that CyberSunshine has been ranked in the Top 100 South Florida Small Businesses in South Florida Business Leader Magazine! There will be a mention of CyberSunshine in the upcoming South Florida 500 issue. Check back for a link to it when it's published.

Time for three more grammatical lessons to help you expand your knowledge of the English language and (hopefully) seem smarter when you write things. This section will cover apostrophes, double negatives, and making confusing word choices.

7. Improper Usage of Words
We are all guilty of this. Maybe some of us more often than others, but I know you're not perfect and you have made a mistake before. Misusing words is one of the most common (and most annoying) grammatical errors out there. Some of the more commonly misused ones are:
- There, Their, They're
- It's, Its
- You're, Your
I'm not going to give an explanation of every one of these, because that would take all day. But the basics to know are these:
- An apostrophe followed by other letters means a merging of two words. So You're means You Are. Same goes for They're. It means They Are.
- It's means It Is. It does not insinuate that something belongs to It.
- There is a place, and Their means belonging to Them.
If you want additional explanations, and examples of more of these misused words (yes, there are more of them!) go here.

8. Apostrophe Disasters
Apostrophes are pretty basic. You use them for (mainly) two reasons. The first is to show ownership. The second (as we learned above) is to merge words. But you can't just make up your own word merge and throw an apostrophe in there. That's not how it works. Anyway, here are some examples of those:
- Ownership: Tim's bike, the Realtor's blog
- Word Merge: Don't = Do Not, Could've = Could Have
As with everything, there are many, many more examples of how people screw these up, and the best ones I found are here. One additional thought on apostrophes... If you are writing about the 1980s (or whichever time period you like the most), there is NO apostrophe! Leave it off.

9. Don't Do Double Negatives
Double negatives surprisingly go unnoticed by many writers. This is one of the reasons I highly recommend reading what you write before you publish your post (or whatever you're writing). A double negative sentence is where you use two negative words in combination, therefore making it a positive. For example: "I don't want nobody to come visit us next month," actually means that I do want people to visit. The correct way to say this would be, "I don't want anybody to come visit us next month." Don't and Nobody are both negatives, so they cancel each other out. Here's some more information on double negatives, including a list of common ones.

And so comes the end of our grammatical lesson. Stayed tuned for the next awesome series. It'll be a good one, I promise!

Welcome to Part II in our grammar series. This installment will teach you about proper sentence structure, quotation marks, and how to properly use commas. Stick around and learn a little!

4. What's in a Sentence?
The most basic sentence you can build will need only one word: a verb. For example, "Go!" could be considered a complete sentence, because it doesn't need any additional words to make a statement. However, when writing a blog you're going to need many additional words to get your point across, so I'll give you the basic rundown of the sentence parts and which you need. First, you need a verb. No sentence is complete without one. A verb is an action word, like run, write, blog, go, stop or whine. Next you will probably want a noun. A noun is a person, place or thing. If you're not sure if something is a noun, just ask yourself if it is a person, place or a thing. Dog, house, James, and peanut are all nouns. He, she and it are pronouns, which can be used in place of the noun when you have a sentence like this: "She runs fast!". Now on to adjectives. Adjectives are descriptions of nouns. In the sentence "The blue car was totalled," blue is the adjective. Finally, we have adverbs. Adverbs describe the verb. So an adverb would be "fast" in the sentence, "She runs fast." The following are two sentences, one is complete and the other is not. I'm not telling which is which. You figure it out.

"Last week admitted that the market is experiencing difficulties."

"Prices of fuel and food inflation increased to 5%."

Don't forget to pay attention when you write your blog. I sure wouldn't want to hire someone that can't write a complete sentence, especially considering that person would be writing descriptions of my house to be used in online and print marketing!


5. Quizzical About Quotes?
Aren't we all? Quotes are pretty easy, if you can remember the rules. But if you can't, then just come back here for a reminder.
1. Punctuation goes inside the quotes only if it applies to the quote itself, or if it ends a sentence.
Sophie said, "I know!" Sophie asked, "Do you like my dress?" Did Sophie say, "Eat your peas"?
2. When using a quote at the beginning or the middle of a sentence, it needs to end with a comma.
"Here's your package," said the UPS man.
3. When quoting a quote, use the double quotes first and the single quotes inside of those.
"She said, 'I have an idea!'" repeated Mary.
4. When you quote numerous paragraphs of text, only the last paragraph gets end quotes, but all the paragraphs get beginning quotes.
"Paragraph one.....
"Paragraph two.....
"Paragraph three....."
For additional rules about quotes, check here.

6. Crazy Comma Conundrums
Commas can be a source of great confusion. The most basic rule for commas that I can give you is this one: use a comma if you need to separate things, or if there should be a pause in a sentence. Of course, you also use commas when listing things, in dates, and in quotes.

Here are some good examples of comma usage:
I'd like to eat steak, crab cakes, or pasta for dinner. I would not like chicken, pork, or fish.
Her daughter was born on March 8, 2008, in Omaha, Nebraska.
Unfortunately, I will not be attending Inman this year.
Your ultimate goal, to sell a house, won't come true unless you market yourself properly.
I love my dogs, but they certainly annoy me.

Here are some examples lacking commas:
I want to go to the beach home to change and then the restaurant.
Obviously your plan won't be successful.
I want to date a soccer player not an attorney.
Helen you can't go to the movies!

For more on commas, check out this site.


Come back next week for part III of this series, and lots of other great stuff that is sure to come!

Earlier today I was browsing Facebook like I normally do, just to see what everyone else in the Real Estate blogging world was doing, when I came across this group. I found it to be a fairly interesting concept, so I did some additional research on the matter. It seems that people are using sites like Moniker.com to "flip" domain names.

No, I'm not kidding. Apparently there is a broad and vast market for domain names. Not surprisingly, either. I recently had a client who badly wanted to buy NaplesRealEstate.com, and of course, it was not available. She was able to find other domain names that were suitable to her needs, so it all worked out.

With the recent flux in SEO concerns, people are buying up domain names by the dozens just to keep their competitors from owning them. It's getting cut-throat out there, too! Since we're based in Fort Myers, FL, we have a lot of clients that are selling in Fort Myers, Naples, and other Southwest Florida communities (we do have clients all over the world as well, but I can't speak on their behalf since I don't see as much of the competition in other parts as I do in my own backyard). With our clients alone, I see the need for better and more keyword-rich domain names, simply to improve their searchability (is that a word?). So I know real estate agents all over the world are dealing with this issue too.

I find it fascinating that the market for a non-tangible item is so hot! It seems that the domain name market is most definitely a seller's market right now. So if you have domain names that don't benefit you (based on your keywords), and you don't want to hold onto them any longer, you could potentially turn a profit. There is always somebody, somewhere, that wants what you have.

Welcome to the future of search engines. Pretty cool, huh?

Now let me tell you why this is important. There are a few reasons.

1. This is the new look of things. Just ask Steve Jobs. If you have an iPod, iPhone, or an i-anything, you know what I'm talking about. On the iPhone and in iTunes, when you look at your albums, they appear like this search engine does, with little squares that show you a thumbnail of each album cover. This is not only visually-pleasing, but it's also neat to flip through them. It's like a tiny, on-your-pc jukebox. And since we all know about the popularity of anything that starts with an i, you can bet that this look is going places. That means that all the twenty-somethings and younger are acutely aware of how this type of technology works. That's important because you WANT to be in the loop on things like this, otherwise you'll be behind the times.

2. People can see your website without going to it! Of course, for CyberSunshine this is awesome news since we specialize in building custom websites for real estate agents, and we pride ourselves on making sure they look amazing. So now when people search for stuff on SearchMe.com, they not only get great results (not quite as accurate as Google, but give it time), but they also get to see the site before they go to it. So now, having a visually appealing site just got even more important, don't you think? Just think, if your site looks really great, and its appearing in a search next to some ugly sites, where do you think the searcher is going to click? People naturally like pretty things, it's human nature.

This is the future of websites, and I can assure you that SEO and site design are going to merge beautifully with this type of technology. I bet Google is already scheming a way to use this technology to their advantage. Something to keep in mind when you're thinking about redesigns on your blog or website...