Sending out an email newsletter on a monthly basis is a great way to keep your name in the back of the minds of your clients. It can also be a great way to keep people coming back to your website.

Add a newsletter sign-up form to increase the effectiveness of your personal website.

When you go to networking events, enter all the emails from the businesscards you pick up. Those prospects may not be in the market right now, but 6 months from now they may be, and your email newsletter might pop-up in their inbox at just the right time!

The best thing about email newletters is they're cheap!

Which software should you use?

Our company uses Constant Contact:

Good luck and I look forward to your questions and comments!

Being in web marketing, I get asked this question a lot. The simplest answer is it's all about customer service. Talk to your customers using the medium they prefer.

Social Websites Are All About Communication

I know many people that would rather chat on Facebook than email! It's becoming a very common method of communication. By having a presence on Facebook (for example) you also increase the likelyhood of being the chosen Real Estate Agent over other hopefulls for someone who prefers using Facebook to communicate.

Other Benefits

Having a presence on social websites gives the appearance to your clients that you are technologically savvy. A percieved advantage is as good as a real one if it helps you get more customers, so even if you are not using these technologies effectively, the fact you are using them can be benificial. Put it on your business cards and marketing materials.

Rapid Communication

A common complaint you may hear about social websites is they are a waste of time, but they can actually be used to save time in some ways. They allow you to communicate with a large group of people with a single mouse click, they only thing you have to do is come up with an effective message to send out. :)

Closing Thoughts...

I hope this post will help some people who have been pessemistic about Social Media look at it in a different light, and maybe even unlock some of the potential power within. Thank you.

Hey check it out. Here is a video slide show I made that will be played through a projector at our trade booth for an upcoming home show here in town. I'm still perfecting my video skills, it's a new thing I've decided to learn. I'm not sure I've got the whole web optimization aspect of it completely down. The non-optimized version isn't pixelated at all, but the YouTube version is. Perhaps there are some web video veterans out there who can give me some tips.

I previously posted about Open Source Software, well I've found an even better resource. This one outlines all major business softwares and gives the best fee alternatives. I've used some of them, and they are quite good.

In my opinion, no one should waste any money on Microsoft Office suite, Open office works just as good.

Check it out, there is tons of other great software on here. If you have used any of it, please comment with your quality review.

Everyone is being totally cliche, the term "Web 2.0" has been around since like 1999! Stop saying Web 2.0, and Real Estate 2.0!

We need to come up with some new buzzwords to describe the "new" internet, and internet real estate marketing. And don't say Web 3.0! I don't know what those buzzwords would be, but hey I'm just calling for change, not proposing any salutions here. I leave it up to the AR Collective to help with that one.

I usually try to mention an Open Source alternative whenever I reccomend someone buy some software. Though OS software isn't usually as high quality as the professional stuff, it usually works great for people who are not professionals. There is usually tons literature out there on OS Software, and great support forums where you can get any questions answered within hours or even minutes.

Oh... did I mention is 100% FREE?

Here is a great website that categorizes most mainstream opensource softwares available, and gives you a short description of what they do.

www.osliving.com

Just a little tip to young graphic designers, I once used OS software to make enough money doing freelance to buy the Adobe Suite. :) If you can't afford to buy the Adobe software, you can get by with this stuff until you can save up enough money to buy it. 

There is one thing all blog readers expect to get from reading every blog post, they expect to receive some form of information or advice for free. If you are writing sales pitches or just talking about how great your product is, you are failing as a blog writer! 

I am seeing this kind of behavior a lot on AR, and on outside blogs. 

It's ok to talk about your product or do a shameless plug once in a while, but that should be secondary to some form of useful information that can actually benefit your target audience. Blogging is not a TAKE TAKE TAKE scenario, it's GIVE SHARE TAKE.

So here is my proposed Gold Rule for Blogging:

Post unto others as you would have them post unto you.

If you just read some killer advice or tips on a blog, would you mind seeing a shameless plug at the bottom? You'd probably even be a lot more willing to consider their product if they had just revealed a way to save you time or money.

Thanks for reading my post, happy blogging! 

Search engines are not mystical beings that are moved by the correct sequence of cerimonial rituals. Search engines are simply trying to bring the best results to their users for their searches. If you just use some basic logic as to how a search engine might determine the best results you can rule out a lot of common myths that people claim help you rank higher, here are a few that I've been seeing lately:

Resubmitting your web site to the search engines regularly. This helps nothing, search engines are smart enough to know how often you update your web site, resubmitting doesn't make them check more often. Resubmitting is a waste of time, submit your site once, and don't worry about it after that.

Making your web site XHTML compliant. (sorry if this one is over most people's heads, but at least you'll know about it if someone tries to sell it to you) Seeing that 99% of the internet is not XHTML compliant, search engines would have a real problem if they decided these web sites were somehow not important. Search engines are trying to get you the best information for your searches, how cleanly your code is written is not a factor.

Trading links with other people. This is probably one of the most widely practiced method of search engine optimization that doesn't help you at all. Search engines are smart enough to know that your are trading links, and they know why you are doing it. It's ok to swap links for the traffic it might bring to your site, but it's not going to help you rank higher in search engines.

Just think about it logically. If you were a search engine, and you wanted to give people the best results for their searches, what would you look at to generate your results?  I bet you wouldn't care how many times they resubmitted their site that week. :)

If you're like me, you spend more time on the computer than sleeping. This can be very unhealthy if you don't train yourself to use good ergonomics, here are some tips to help you make sure you'll be blogging until you reach a ripe old age!

Sit up straight. If you have one of those office chairs that let you lean back, lock it in the upright position while typing large amounts of text to help you remember to keep those vertebra lined up.

Keep your wrists straight while typing and clicking. Raise your chair or push the keyboard back and rest your arms on the table top. Keeping your wrists straight minimizes the rubbing of your tendons against the wall of the Carpal tunnel, thus helping to prevent Carpal Tunnel Syndrom. 

Look away from the screen periodically to relieve eye strain. Give your eyes a breather from time to time.

Stay hydrated. Keep a glass or bottle of water at your desk and sip it all day. This is healthy and if you practice it regularly you'll lose a few pounds of water weight because your body doesn't feel like it needs to store up as much water.

I plan to continue spending 10 to 12 hours on the computer every day for a large chunk of my life, I don't want to suffer any adverse effects from it. So join in with me and lets make a New Years Resolution to practice healthy blogging!

Believe it or not, there is a philosophy and a method behind which fonts should be used depending on the situation.

Fonts are divided into two basic categories, Serif and Sanserif.

Serifs are the little tails that extend from the ends and various parts of some fonts.  The most commonly used serif font is Times.

Sanserif fonts do not have these tails, this would include fonts like Arial and Helvetica.

When should I use a font with serifs?

The purpose of these serifs is to create subliminal lines for the eye to follow and keep its place. Serif fonts are meant to be read in large blocks of text at smaller sizes, which is why they are a popular choice of newspapers and magazines.

When should I use sanserif fonts?

Sanserif fonts are intended for headlines, and small pieces of text, not large blocks of text. If you are creating a larger publication such as a newsletter, it is highly reccomended that you do not use a sanserif font for the body text. On the flip side, most of the time it is better to not use serif fonts for headers or logos. Text in logos and headers is meant to grad your attention and pull you into to read the body text. Serif fonts, thought easier to read up close, lose their definition at greater distances and are not as attention grabbing.

There are exceptions, there do exist very bold serif fonts designed to work well at greater distances. These are referred to as slab-serif fonts.

Cheat Sheet:

Some general font usage tips: 

Never stretch a font! A skilled typesetter will never stretch a font, it destroys everything that the font was designed to accomplish visually and it is a dead giveaway that the layout was not professionally done. If you need to make text fit in a space, try changing the letter or word spacing, using a hyphen, or changing the font size. Never resort to stretching text!

Always select a bold font for your logo. If the logo is not readable at great distances, it is a failure. Look at all major national company's logos, pretty much all of them have a bold font, there is a reason for that. 

As always, please feel free to ask any questions about specific situations, I love to answer them. Thank you!