Gmail has industrial strength spam filters, and can be uses to check all of your pop accounts. You can also then check this 'filtered' spam-less mail from your Outlook. I keep Gmail open in Firefox, and chat with technology partners while I am notified of incoming mail. I then occasionally download the remaining spam free mail to my Outlook, as redundant backup, and to allow robust followup options, including my linked-in signature: below; I export all my email lists from Outlook, and import them into my triple opt-in PHP list Server:

http://rothmanmarketing.com/lists/

Which is free software installed on my site to build my triple opt-in subscription list (nearly 10,000 and growing now)

I can also occasionally insert card-scan email lists easily into my op-tin-programming to build the list.

While this system does not allow for constant-contact style overdone spam, it is very effective for building a real and loyal reader base of my contacts and acquaintances who genuinely appreciate my updates and quarterly newsletter, which, while not personal, is actually real and useful and timely information.

Beginning in the 1980's, I have used similar strategy, though less automated, with great success, including sales of over $8,000,000.00 of products and services that I invented in the last nine years, even $1,000,000 in the last three years of new stuff, in spite of the economy.

While the usual spammy templated stuff will not work with this method, I highly recommend it to you if your are capable of providing real, interesting, and useful information to your contacts at least quarterly: these methods have served me well for over thirty years; and they work even better with today's technology.

Add to this the blogging of the newsletter information in a category at your own blog on your server to make it also available in HTML, and as a feed or pod cast of any kind the user chooses through Feedbuner, and you have a comprehensive, effective strategy: AND THIS IS ALL FREE, and/or I will set it all up for you and show you how to use it for $500 ;-)

This will also become a post in my group here:

http://www.realtown.com/Israel/groups/social-media-marketing-tips

In 2010, when you consider SEO, SEM, SMO: don't be stupid: the rules have changed again:

Beware outdated techniques and services: any methodology that is designed to bring an unworthy site up on the first page organic search results of Google and others, at best, will not work for long; at worst, these outdated, yet still widely offered services will get your website penalized, or even banned. Internet services and techniques, and the professors and self-proclaimed experts on the specific topics of Search Engine Optimization (SEO) and Search Engine Marketing (SEM); and now Social Media Optimization (SMO)  have always been purveyors and protectors of rapidly outdated skills sets: which is happening now at a much faster rate as the technology moves further into a parabolic curve of advancement.

Fortunatley, a new age is upon us: what we called an "I am a Realtor too!" website in 2001 (when most of our clients were Realtors, and we were able to create rankings for such sites by giving away free ads) simply cannot be ranked for any sustainable period of time if at all now: although many not-so-up-to-date sources of misinformation will tell you otherwise for long enough to get your money. Our free ads sites worked after until 2003, when the search engines decided that any number of links originating from one URL (website address) would be treated as only one link, and subsequently that a database address would be treated exactly the same as a unique domain. Link-farms (web-rings, etc) evolved and adapted with  social-bookmarking (Digg.com, Stumbleupon.com, Reddit.com) and user-generated, user-filtered content to compensate for subsequent changes to the algorithms determining that such contextual links needed to be from topic-specific authority sites to do any good, and now, as is always the case eventually, those sites have lost their relevancy because they became spam factories just as you started to learn about how well they worked for a little while. When Google decided that dynamic content was better that static content, and some rocket scientist decided that Blog sounded better than Weblog, or Newsgroup ( as we they were called  in the 80's), the blogosphere erupted, and social networking sites  really came into their own.  Now we all have too many profiles that we never update or use, too many ‘free blogs' to keep up with, and ‘Splogs' (spam blogs designed to robotically harvest spam and feed it to the search engines) don't work anymore either for any length of time, because people like me (and you , I hope) report them to Google and get them banned.

When my second-round investors took over my free-ads company (it was Adsforfree.com, you probably remember: it had more advertisers than Yahoo classifeds at one time), they wanted to hide what we were doing, to try to trademark or patent something: they thought we had a 'secret sauce'.  I tried to explain to them that what we do is a race: that protecting our methodology was like storing milk on a shelf at room temperature: worthless; but they would not listen and they put us out of business very quickly and spent over $600,000.00 of their own money doing it (Coracleinc.com) ouch!

So if you are still reading and wondering where this is all leading, here are some tips: the new way to do this, every time, on purpose, without breaking the search engines' rules: from the guy who still, to this day, always ranks for whatever searches he desires , even when the competition has created literally hundreds of millions of documents to compete:  (real life examples of this strategy follow below)

• Your site must have dynamic content: it must grow at least rate that the Internet and Google's cache are growing
• You must use a CMS (content management system) to manage your website: you cannot maintain the dynamic, growing site required to meet Google's criteria by manually editing pages, and You must be able to instantly change every page of you growing site when things change
• You must make a contribution: you can no longer manufacture spam to get rankings, you need to be a source of real information, the kind your target audience wants to read, see, watch to reach them, because Google can tell the difference, and so can we
• You must be the source of a constantly refreshed feed of topic specific, unique in all the world, human edited data: REAL CONTENT: for example this article, video, audio: all can be optimized now with META data that makes it searchable by Key Word Search: this is called RSS (Really Simple Syndication)
• You must have video on your website: this trend will continue: the website of the future will be navigated with ‘point and watch until you want to point again', and not ‘point-and-click' as before.

And now the good news: all of this change creating wonderful opportunities for you to be heard, by making a real and valuable contribution, no matter who you are: 

Examples of SMO (Social Media Optimization  >>more here>>

If you are even thinking about using Elance, Rent-a-Coder, Freelancer.com or any other online freelancing site, get ready for some Brain Damage! These sites are terrible for both the clients and the freelancers and here are just some reasons why: For Clients:

1. What if I don't know exactly what I want? Too bad! These sites want a piece of the transaction so they control your freedom to work directly with the client to help define the project to meet your business goals!
2. Who is actually doing the development? Because you cannot work with the freelancers directly, you may THINK you are working with a qualified freelancer but they just hand the project and a programing book off to a high school student!
3. These prices are too good to be true! They are! The freelancers are forced into a competitive bidding process so early in the project that is so heavily weighted against them that they are forced to underbid poorly defined projects. In fact, these projects are typically a miserable experience for the freelancers and you are likely to get crap back!
4. Why can't I find top-notch professionals? On these sites, the freelances are incented to do quick and dirty jobs to meet hard deadlines. Scope can and should change as you learn more about the project. It is nearly impossible to do Agile or intelligent development in this way!

The rest of the article is here:

'What an amazing story': that is what you will hear on the Dr. Bunny show : In my opinion, Dr. Bunny Vreeland herself is the real story: an animated redhead with a bubbly personality, Dr. Bunny Vreeland, Clinical, Medical Hypnotherapist in Ventura California has more than one gift: she can read you like a book, help you quit smoking, erase hurtful memories, create good ones: basically Bunny is the master of a very little known, real skill: she can literally re-program your mind like a hard drive: but when you listen to the Dr. Bunny show on local news-talk radio station KKZZ 1400 AM 12-1 pm Monday-Friday, you will here her exclaim over and over again: "What an amazing story" as she interviews a wide range of interesting people. Born with the amazing gifts she has, the ability to look inside a person and feel who they are, and why, Dr. Bunny has spent her life understanding not only her gifts, and how to use them for good, to actually help people change their lives for the better; but also the ongoing clinical, medical science behind the human mind, and what actually makes us the way we are, and what makes change possible. A modern day saint to those of us who are lucky enough to know her in person, you have never met a more humble, bubbly, genuine person. But that is not all she is good at: she is also tech savvy, and media savvy, a wonderful marketer: here radio show is my idea of excellent integration of a local and worldwide media strategy, with a strong web-presence, mobile device listenership with broad appeal, and a strong web presence, with a complimentary message which feeds her core business. The stories she shares with us on the radio are about people she finds amazing, and indeed many people ae amazing: Dr. Bunny says: " Everyone has a story." I guess that is true, and even I would like to 'reprogram' some of mine: it is our past (our stories) that define who we are now, good and bad: but the story that amazes me, is Dr. Bunny. When you search her name online you may the rantings of an obsessed crazy woman who she once had for a client: Dr. Bunny hypnotized here and she quit smoking. When the un-named lady realized Bunny's amazing ability to do this so effectively, she asked that she be hypnotized again to erase a memory in preparation for a police lie detector test: she wanted the memory of a crime she actually committed erased. When Dr. bunny politely showed her the door, this very dangerous crazy woman went crazy, doing everything she could to damage Bunny's reputation, including actually buying PPC ads under Bunny's name to hurt her! The rest is here..

My suggestion is to import all of your contacts from everywhere into two places:

1. Plaxo - online contact management with birthday notifications, ecards and many wonderful algorithms built in, not to mention online backup of everything - syncs perfectly with Outlook and most all other mail clients and imports easily with wizards.

2. PHPList on your own website - your contacts, and especially your double and triple opt-in list (the people who will read whatever you send because they like what you have to say) are your biggest assets. PHPList is a content management system for email lists, opt-in, opt-out, updating all done by the recipients, also excellent for using blind mailings to build this list from scraped or purchased targeted lists. Lists can be imported in almost any common format - this is free, open source software installed easily with a push of a button on any server with Fantastico in Cpanel. (Hostgator, Bluehost, our servers, many others, most good servers use this software) See a living example where I have recently done exactly what you are saying imported all my contacts from 10 years here:

http://rothmanmarketing.com/lists/

You will notice that it feeds the website by linking to past issues in HTML format and making available as RSS feed that can be syndicated through Feedburner (also free! owned now by Google)

Past issues are made available on my blog: http://rothmanmarketing.com/10/the-rothman-letter/

I added this comment I added to another persons blog because this is something where many people are spending good money on bad soclutions, when tech-savvy novices can do it all for fee ;-)

For once, my son, Solomon Rothman, gets to say "I told you so": This is the official launch now of the new invention: Collaborative Digital Entertainment Production and Distribution: moviepals.org: Sure you can do your own videos, virtual tours, but can you so this: http://rothmanmarketing.com/10/the-new-new-thing-in-social-media-collaborative-open-cinema//Or how about this: More here>>

To say I am proud would be an understatement, but think about how inexpensively we could create a travel series,  welcome video, a set of training films to communicate complicated technical, and/or selling concepts:

 Mob Mentality Series Poster

The audience will have a chance to participate!

Now, let me do for you what my Son has been helping me with for many years: let me give you an enlightened glimpse of the future:

Television and the Internet, Books, Audio, Journalism, News will all merge: the largest transfer of money and wealth in history was not the bailout, it was not the deregulation of the banking industry, it is not even the technological revolution: it is underway now, an has been for years already: and you do not even know what it is, do you?

Allow me to enlighten you: a little ground work is necessary:

At one time, a college education, a good upbringing were the best to an almost certain good job and quality life: now, as it was in the seventies, a diploma and some change (change would now be 4 bucks instead of 10 cents) would get you a cup of coffee, but not a job.

At one time, it became a cliche:

"It is not what you know, but who you know."   Now I put to you that neither matters, if you are popular.

Once upon a time, the way to reach an audience was through the right channels: Doubleday and other major book publishers; the Associated Press; the Main Stream Media, the "Hollywood Casting Couch"; NO MORE!

What has changed:

Once upon a time, geniuses were not recognized in their lifetimes.  Now people become rich and famous before they are adults:

1. The speed at which things happen has accelerated steadily, it is a parabolic curve.  As much as I hate to admit it, it matches the premises in Revelations.
2. The split second decision; young people, unencumbered by the drudgery of a slower moving, more labor intensive time, can do five to ten things at once, WELL!  They make decision in a split second based sometimes on nothing but a URL or an email subject to click on.
3. Distribution has been, is being completely dis-empowered: money, breeding, upbringing, even location have less and less to do with education, access, opportunity to succeed...
4. Creativity is having a field day: this will continue: as people are more and more empowered without encumbrances, they are more and more creative, and, yes, productive. 

Now what has not changed:  the ability to win friends and influence people is more powerful than ever!

What to do about it:

1. Wake up and 'smell the coffee'
2. Hurry up!
3. Educate yourself constantly, everything you thought you knew is outdated
4. Forget about retirement, you can sleep when you are dead, and that may not be for 100 years or more the way things are going!
5. Take care of your health: you are going to be a centurion if you do not screw it up
6. Give up your vices: actual creativity is more fun anyway, and you will not be able to compete
7. Build an audience, you have access, and it is easier than ever
8. Get a video: a video never has a bad day, never sleeps, does not eat, does not get a day older, and last forever, and that is more than I can say for you and I!
9. Discover yourself: who, where, how rich, and what you are no longer matters: what you actually can do, can contribute matters more than anything now (sorry professional slackers, just the way it is)
10. Do it now: what never changes: a quote from Rabbi Hillel: (born Babylon 110BCE-10CE in Jerusalem):

 "If I am not for myself, then who will be for me? And if I am only for myself, what am I? And if not now, when?"

Or, just put it off: you are probably too late anyway   It is not expensive, it is not slow, you can be anywhere, anybody, any age..

NOW WHAT IS YOUR EXCUSE?!

Check out our new Los Angeles Hardwood Flooring Contractor Blog: at http://kalleycontractors.com. Wordpress themes are free, but, like all open-source software, they are not optimized well "out-of-the-box'. Hardwood Flooring Installation Blog – Los Angeles Floor Refinishing is the Title we chose (setting>general) for the title, because the title is very important for optimization for the search engines: the Title of a Wordpress blog in many well-done themes links back to the blog on every page, with semantic anchor text: this is critical to search engine recognition. Learn more here>>

Many of you are being approached daily in your in-box, on the phone, in high-cost PPC campaigns, and in every way to buy SEO services.  If that many people are out there pushing these mostly over-priced, and very often outdated services, it is time again to remind you all that SEO is dying a slow death, and that, as the coding standards are more and more standardized, it will disappear completely very soon, and your traffic if it is predicated on these outdated techniques: DO NOT BUY THESE SERVICES WITHOUT READING THIS!

In a recent string at Realtown, a Realtor asked for feedback on Compass Internet Systems (an SEO spin-off from the failed Coracle after the takeover from the investors).

I am sharing the meat of my reply here because it is timely and relevant:

Right on Gwen, and Win: the goal of an SEO firm, and many old-fashioned web-design firms, is to create a dependent, when in reality, a successful effort works the SEO vendor out of a job immediately. That is the reason for the poor service: clients do not last, representatives burn out.

A far better solution (and much less expensive, BTW) is to automate and plan your web presence in such a way that you become independent of needing any consultant.

This can be done for less that $500, and if the CMS (content management system) is properly setup, the SEO effect is automatic,, and ongoing without further expense, except for hosting.

When the second round investors destroyed the company that Compass is actually a spin-off of, it was because they wanted to hide what we were doing, to somehow guard a trade secret, to trademark something.

I would liken this to protecting milk on the shelf at room temperature.

Internet marketing, and marketing in general, is not about megalomaniacs who want to find a way to make a un-Godly amount of money: it is not about protecting anything proprietary: because like milk at room temperature, any advantage is temporary on the Internet, if it is not of real value.

The basic concept of SEO is to help an undeserving website somehow excel over a more deserving one due to a technology gap. A much less expensive, more sustainable solution is to actually create a genuine online resource that ranks on Google because it should, because of it's value: and we are heading quickly towards a time when nothing else will work, due to advancement in Google's algorithms, and the gradual standardization of coding standards.

While it is often a much less popular approach amongst the greediest and laziest among you ( the ones that, for the most part, will not be here next year), our advice (mine) has always been much more old fashioned, in a way, although I actually invented much of what SEO vendors sell: we recommend designing an online resource of some kind, that targets a niche market (for a Realtor this can be a community blog, an affinity group niche informational site, a school guide...)

Such a resource in owned by you, travels with you from broker and firm to wherever your career takes you, and even has the potential to out value the underlying core business if you are successful.

When you add-in that it is also the most effective SEO model, and the most cost effective (as Win pointed out) method of marketing Real Estate, and establishing your brand or proper name as the source (what we call an 'authority source'), the decision to use such an approach is a no-brainier, whether you do it by trusting a reliable vendor with a good reputation and excellent rankings of their own, or by learning to do it all yourself, which is free and doable, but, in the long run, even more expensive than outdated SEO services.

Think about how you found your vendor, or, did they find you?

I am Israel Rothman: Google me, or Google 'social media website design' or 'Internet advertising consultant' or 'Realtor SEM' or 'Realtor SMO'

My clients call me on th phone and have already sold themselves: all I have to do is not screw it up.

I got three foreign clients last month, one in London, one in Australia, and one in Japan. Isn't that they way you want your Real Estate business to work, as your own lead generator?

Check out Spermcenter.com (no it is legitimate, not that at all) as an example of an enterprise-level Drupal site launched yesterday, with custom search functions and real value. I will let you guess what the client does, and why this approach was used

I am Israel Rothman; no secrets: Google me, then call me.

As we did years ago, we will sum it all up by reviewing all the pieces to a successful social media marketing (online marketing)  campaign: many things have changed in the last 6 years, and some have not: one thing that never changes is the need for competitive attention to detail, because one weak link breaks the chain: let us review: 

1. Just say it: lesson number one is to ‘just say it'; don't beat around the bush; don't mitigate your risk; don't spare anyone's feelings; just give us the straight ‘poop', and we will reward you by wanting to see what you will say next.
2. Group Building - Opt-in  Build a following and increase lead capture using Social Media.
3. Use Social Media for local Farming
4. Use Video for Lead Capture
5. Become an authority - Reputation Management
6. Online Branding: image matters for Internet Advertising
7. Get numbers working for you on Social Networks
8. Recent Case study : The execution of a complete and integrated Social Media Marketing Campaign
9. Niche Marketing and Picking a Battle
10. Attention to detail, the final competitive edge!

Now the real guts of it all come together; any one of these things done right will help: but just as the best plans of a Real Estate transaction do not result in a sale or a commission unless every little nit picky detail of the transaction has been ‘put to bed'; you will not be as succesful as you could be, and you may not survive periods like the last two years, unless you get it all right!  Join the discusssion and debate with your comments on this whole series or any individual post in our group

http://activerain.com/groups/WEB20