| |
Giving Back with 1 Hour of Your Time
On Monday I spent one-hour helping out a NYC real estate professional who needed marketing help. People move around in their careers for many reasons and for most change is hard so I figured let me help Aldo out and see if there was a way for us to work together. After all I am a marketer with years of experience and hands on knowledge that I can share. In addition, my work experience has giving me the opportunity to work on many real estate marketing projects. It was time to give back and share.
During the conversation it became clear he didn’t have an online presence and for the most part did not show up as an expert in his local area. Well, we are now going to work on changing all of that. While he has accounts on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, YouTube and even Zillow, Trulia and Active Rain (not linking now until he builds out his profile and starts getting active) he doesn’t use any of them!
He is/was posting his listings to Craig’s list and feeding the listings to a few other local sites but nothing that sets him apart as the “go to guy” for his local real estate market or why he was any different from any other real estate professional. He does have a good understanding of what needs to happen. He said he is meeting with all the local stores and business (probably more for networking) so I told him to start writing, taking pictures, videos etc and sharing his interesting finds and points of view on his market. I have high hopes for Aldo so keep your fingers crossed that he follows through.
So in the spirit of the holidays and with the idea of what goes around comes around we spent a productive hour together and now Aldo has to get to work on building out his marketing program.
Best of luck Aldo and if anyone from the AR community has suggestions please leave them in the comments and I’ll point them out to Aldo.
Now what can you do to give back with an hour of your time?
 Now This is a Shower (if I do say so myself...)
When working on our home we had no idea what we got ourselves into. After all everything looks different on paper. Well, as the walls, pipes and wires were going up we realized our new shower was “a bit” larger than we had realized. There wasn’t much choice based on the configuration of our space but it still caught us off guard. As the plumber was doing his work we were asked if we planned on installing anything in addition to a standard shower head? Again as first timers at this we had to make some quick decisions. We realized one shower head in a 7 ft by 4 ft shower wasn’t going to feel right. So back to the bathroom appliance store we went and ordered body sprays and a handheld to turn our “modest” shower into an industrial people washer.
 Just take a look at all the handles now required to work this shower. I might have to get a degree in water management and maintenance just to use everything.
We also thought we were smart to have the handheld installed toward the back of the shower so it can be easily used while sitting on the bench. Not to mention that if you position everything just right you can probably get a shower done in 1-2 minutes.
I for one look forward to using our human car wash and hanging out in the new shower while getting a rocky foot massage.
Related Posts
What did we get ourselves into?
C & E Professional Painting – A lesson learned the hard way
Bathroom Renovations Can Be A Rocky Project
Bathroom Renovations Can Be A Rocky Project
As mentioned here and here we have done some work on our house. One of the more challenging but also fun parts was selecting our tile and shower floor.
It took a few trips to the tile stores to find the one we wanted to work with and ultimately we worked with Fuda Tile (in Ramsey, NJ). My wife did most of the work but like a good husband I provided my “2-cents” when they weren’t requested…When my wife brought home a pebble floor option I was sold. As y ou can see the finished product is great and we can’t wait to use it (we are still waiting for the shower doors to be installed). But the process to get to the finished product was definitely “rocky”.
- The flooring was a special order so it took a few extra days to arrive. If I knew this at the time I would have gone another direction – good thing no one told me…
- Then the tile guy installed the floor but used 35lbs of grout and covered all the pebbles.
- Thankfully the contractor agreed with us that the installation was incorrect and insisted that they remove the floor and a replace it at their expense with a new floor. Which of course took extra time and meant reordering and waiting for delivery!
After all the extra work we love the way it looks and everyone who has seen it firsthand agrees. We can’t wait to feel the massaging of our feet while using the shower. Hopefully that is only a week or so away.
One piece of advice, if you plan to install a pebble or rock floor in your shower make sure your tile installer has done similar work before.
C & E Professional Painting – A lesson learned the hard way
A few months ago we started a home improvement project. I was hoping to blog about the whole experience. Boy was it an experience that I hope I don’t have to do again. Well I didn’t get to post regularly between working and dealing with the daily “issues” there wasn’t much time left. Well I hope to write a few posts on the various lessons learned, highlight some of the great contractors, some of the not so great and who knows what else…
Working backwards I realized I learned a few valuable lessons from, of all people, the painter we hired (and in hind sight we shouldn’t have hired) so here goes…
C & E Professional Painting in NJ who use the tagline of “Wizard of Walls”
First some background
- When he asked for cash payments or a 7% premium for paying by check we should have turned and run.
- When he showed up and repeatedly told us his plans but didn’t finish them we should have told him to go!
- When he provided an extra invoice for “extras” that far exceeded our agreement we should have tossed him to the curb.
- When we found out the reason for all his delays was due to him having a full time job and his “guys” knowing he wouldn’t be there (so naturally they took their time) we should have asked him to leave.
- When we were too far in to start over and we noticed he doesn’t have an address on his estimates – we should have run
- Since he was referred to us we didn’t bother to check his references or reputation online. Turns out he doesn’t have a website or presence online. Go figure.
- When he asked us for references and referrals before he was a quarter of the way through the work, we should have just sent him on his way.
- When every touch up became an issue and an argument we were so frustrated that we wanted to kick his a.. out but just wanted the work done so we could move on.
- He did what he claimed to do but I have to say there is nothing “Wizardry” about it. Here is the latest conversation:
Chris – I put two coats on but you can see the old paint is still bleeding through
Josef – So what do you want to do?
Chris – I can do a third coat. (Basically saying it is going to cost you)
10 – Over 4 months we had all sorts of contractors through our house and none of them were as messy or disruptive to our daily lives (even the demolition guys were cleaner) than C and E professional Painting
If you are a professional don’t you want to do whatever is necessary for your client within reason regardless of the black and white contract?
So what do I take away from this situation
- Check references and web presence regardless of how you find a contractor
- If the main “guy” is not going to be on the job every day I am not interested
- If you want cash payments give me a discount.
- Your friends may not always have the best recommendations
- When dealing with extended project contractors add a clause to the contract the gives you a credit for principles not showing up or delays beyond agreed upon time frame.
By the time this was all done I was so ticked off that I didn’t even want to talk to this guy and just wanted him out of the house. Yes I got taken and probably will need to hire someone else in a few months to fix all the stuff he didn’t do correctly but we got Chris and C & E painting out of our house!
The best part of this whole situation is he wanted a reference and referrals from us. So Chris of C & E Professional Painting in Bergen County NJ here is our recommendation – Don’t use C & E professional Painters. There is nothing professional about them and there is no wizardry about their painted walls.
Just another set of life lessons I learned the hard way.
Now to try and enjoy our updated home…
I have not fully explored the outside blog functionality for myself but Brad gives a lot of great information to help you optimize your outside blog. Via Brad Andersohn (Zillow - Outreach Manager):
ActiveRain Outside Blogs offer members the opportunity to have a "stand alone" presence outside the network and they are included with the rainmaker memberships. I still get many questions on how to set these up and the most common question is "How do you customize it so it's not like anyone elses blog?"
Here are my top 10 best practices and tips for those Rainer's wanting to maximize their outside blogs.
1. Select a theme that works best for you, your brand, your company and target audience.
2. Utilize all the features and tools available form the dashboard toolbar. (you must be logged in)
3. To customize the CSS formatting, colors, backgrounds etc. and if you're a techy, use the Chameleon theme.
I like it because I can make sure my blog won't ever look like anyone elses.
 
Maximize your SEO, analytics, and widgets by implementing the tools made available.
4. I highly recommend the "Google Search" which magnetically draws the Google spiders to your site. Since this is a Google product and tool, I can assure you that they follow its placement and use very diligently. Make sure you have plenty of content on your site first, you don't want to draw Google attention to your site if you only have 3 or 4 posts there.
5. Adding the "Analytics" tool helps so you know what's working best, and tracking your visitors and target audience couldn't be made any easier. You can't add the Google analytics to your ActiveRain blogs, but you can add it to your outside blogs.
6. Each of these tools available adds additional value to your outside blogs but it's your content that matters the most. Great content on ANY blog will garner traffic and create business opportunities. Allow those that find you the chance to get notified via email every time you post something by adding the "feedburner" widget. Let people subscribe to your blog.
Note: MyBlogLog and Retaggr are no longer services that are available on the web.
7. Give your outside blog a Kick-Arse custom domain name (it's included) making it easy to search for your site, find your site, and easy for you and clients/targets to remember. What's in a name? Everything, so try to incorporate the most important aspects of your blog in the title to get the most impact and results. Including Hyper-local if you can is always a good thing.
Note: The "Internal" URL is your back-end dashboard, the "Custom Domain" is the public view.
8. Adding good "links" and using great anchor text for "calls to action" is a key traffic generator and lead capture opportunity that often times gets over-looked and most often under-utilized. Think about what would make someone absolutely have to click on these links and trust me, they will. I can prove this by just having you create a link similar to this one that says something like... "DON'T CLICK HERE!" haha~
Adding links is easy: Just paste the URL in the Link box, and place the anchor text in the Title box.
BTW - Did you click on the DON'T CLICK HERE link? lol~
9. The last thing you should know is that the SEO (search engine optimization) on outside blogs carries a great deal of weight in the SERPS (search engine results page) which is great for your ROI (return on investment) since ultimately the people you are trying to reach and get in front of are the ones that will find you when searching the Internet.
Google search results DO matter, and where you land on the page makes all the difference in the world.
10. All of these tips and best practices are to help you do one thing: create content that cultivates traffic/visitors which allows you to capture contacts and convert them to clients right? There are really ONLY two types of people out on the web and searching Google: Those that know you, and those that don't. Which audience is your target? Exactly! :-)
ActiveRain outside blogs are one of the best and most powerful tools that I think ActiveRain offers its members, but then on the other side of that coin, the greatest tools and power of ActiveRain IS IT's MEMBERS!!
Stop by anytime and check out my ActiveRain Outside Blog at http://ActiveBradsBlog.com
This is a great opportunity for anyone who missed or was unable to attend a live Rain Camp. The AR team shares lots of great real estate marketing tips. Block off some time and enjoy. Via ActiveRain Corp.:
We announced RainCamp Online a couple of weeks ago by letting you know that Ben Kinney would be joining us to bring RainCamp to everyone across the country on Thursday September 8th from 9am-1pm Pacific Time (12pm-4pm Eastern Time). You don't have to be within driving distance this time, you just have to have access to a computer to come away with a ton of practical tips that will help your business as 2011 draws to a close.
As promised, we'll have two more great speakers and a ton of free stuff to give away.
Katerina Gasset, the most subscribed to members on ActiveRain, and a Wellington FL REALTOR® will be answering one of the most common questions we get here at ActiveRain. How do I use my blog to generate listings? Katerina has been doing just that for four years with a tremendous amount of success. In fact, she attributes over $150,000 in commissions directly to her ActiveRain blog each of the last few years......and much of that is from listings.
It's almost every day that someone asks us how to use their blog to target potential sellers. It's no small feat but Katerina has figured out how it's done, and she's going to share it with you at RainCamp Online. Getting buyer leads online is a little bit easier to grasp. However, once you hear Katerina tell it, we think you'll have a pretty good idea of how to go after listings with your blog too.
If generating listings with your blog won't help get you through 2012, then maybe you could use some practical tips about using Facebook to generate additional business?
Chris Alston, REALTOR® and Team Leader from Cupertino CA is going to discuss Facebook. Chris is a nationally renowned trainer with Keller Williams and has trained many thousands of agent across the country on the usage of social media to improve business. He's also sharing his knowledge daily here on ActiveRain and if you follow his blog you'll know you're in store for something special.
You've all heard of Facebook right? We think everyone knows they need to be using Facebook, but maybe not everyone is sure exactly how they can use it to impact their business. What specific actions should you be taking to increase your chance for referrals from your past ciients because of Facebook? What kind of status updates can I make to keep me top of mind for my past and current clients when they have a friend looking to buy or sell? How do I avoid being the person that other folks block from their stream because all I do is promote myself?
The internet is a gold mine for your business, and there are some practical things you can and should be doing every day to increase your chances of striking it rich. The prospectors that hit it rich back in the mid 1800's didn't just jump in swinging a pick ax randomly and hope to hit pay dirt. They carefully scouted the land, learned from the guys that had gone before them, then methodically plodded their way to success.
Let Ben, Katerina and Chris show you the way to your own internet gold mine.
Speaking of gold mines, we'll be giving away a bunch of great stuff during the day for RainCamp as well. Some of it will require you to have Twitter, one thing will even require you to have a camera. Someone will win a free Rainmaker subscription and some random ActiveRain swag. Kodak is giving away some cool stuff that I'm 100% sure you can use in your business. I've seen the list of things Kodak has in store for a couple of lucky winners and I promise you don't want to miss it. We'll also have some fun interactive stuff going on where you can help us decide what kind of classes you'd like to see in the future at ActiveRain University. We'll also have our sponsors with us, mainly Market Leader and Kodak.
It's thanks to our sponsors that we get to bring you this great information and some fun prizes for people to win. We hope to see you next Thursday and if you're not registered yet, what are you waiting for?
Thanks to Our Sponsors:
(as a quick side note, for anyone that has ever done a webinar you'll know that if you're lucky about 50% of the people that register will show up. Gotowebinar, the webinar software that we use has room for 1000 people. We currently have 1700+ registered for RainCamp. We are going to leave registration open until we hit about 2100. That will mean on the day of the event you'll want to show up 10-15 minutes early to make sure you secure your spot. If are late and we hit the 1000 person limit....which we will at some point, you can check back throughout the day as people have to leave additional spots will open up. We had 2100 register for our 37 ways Not to Suck at Real Estate webinar last month and at the exact time the webinar was suppose to start, there were 970 attendees present of the 1000 available spots. By five after, the room was maxed out. You can expect something similar with RainCamp Online. We'll post the schedule on Monday of how the 4 hours will play out.)
Check out this webinar (I plan to) and learn how to become a Facebook power user. Facebook is a great way to market your business and all you need to do is learn how to use the platform in the correct ways. Via Bob Stewart - Community Evangelist - ActiveRain (ActiveRain):
 Facebook has over 750 Million active users. Over 50% of those active users log in to Facebook on any given day. These numbers are astronomical. Heck, my 89 year old Grandmother has a Facebook account. Yours may too.
Facebook has become many things to many people. Some of us use it as a way to keep up with old friends. Others are using it as a way to stay in touch with distant family. Parents are using it to keep up with their children and sometimes their grandchildren. Some of us are wasting passing the time playing Farmville.
And for a few people out there, Facebook has become an important part of your business. It has become a place for you to keep up with past clients and a way to subtly remind them who they can refer clients to when their friends and family are thinking of buying or selling. It has become a hub for referrals. My wife has gotten two referrals in the last week because of her involvement on Facebook. And believe it or not, it wasn't because she was posting her most recent listing or screaming from the mountain top about how great of an agent she is (although she is.......of course I'm biased).
How can you utilize Facebook to be a more effective marketer to your sphere and your past clients?
Continuing our Tuesday series with Chad Hyams, community manager at IMSD, ActiveRain University will be hosting Stacey Harmon and Jimmy Mackin to discuss how you can become a power user of Facebook for your business. Please join us Tuesday August 23rd at 9am Pacific Time (Noon on the East Coast).
What should you be posting on Facebook? Should you completely separate your business and your personal profile? What are effective ways to get people to follow your business page? Are there some hidden tools on Facebook that may allow you to segment who sees what on your page?
Stacey and Jimmy will share some of the things that are working for them and some of the things they've seen work for agents around the country to help them capitalize on this 800 lb. marketing gorilla.
If you know that Facebook should be a place that you dedicate time to for prospecting, but you're just unsure of how to go about doing it, we'd love to have you join us for this round-table discussion of getting the most out of the largest social network in the world.
If you've missed some of our past webinars with our friends from IMSD you can find them here:
37 Ways Not to Suck at Real Estate
Stalking, the Legal Way
It all started with our outdated kitchen needing an update and then the project grew and grew...
I have only great things to say about Bill our contractor. He is always on time, takes the time to explain everything for us and most importantly does what he says he is going to do. After 2-3 months of going back and forth with plans and estimates we agreed to get the project started. Which now includes:
- A new kitchen with extension
- New home office
- Moving a bathroom
- Siding
- Roof
- Central air
- Additional bedroom
- "minor" updating in the living room
Well, the next thing I know this dumpster was in my driveway... and my roof was being ripped off for the extension (yeah the kitchen is still part of the plans.) It seems that every few hours something interesting is being delivered...
I told my wife we could save a lot of money while adding an extra bathroom by leaving this in our yard... needless to say that didn't fly.
So now the project is in full swing. People are coming and going, dust, wood, sawing, banging, plumbing etc going on all day but I am told when it is all said and done "your house is going to be great".
Oh and we are going to be living in the house the whole time.
Wish me luck! We are one week in and the fun is just getting started.
Now off to pick some cabinets, faucets, tile, siding, granite...
If I get time Ill keep you all updated on the various activities during this project. It should be fun!!!
The worst massage ever
Last night I went to a day spa (name withheld for now) in River Edge NJ to get a deep tissue massage. I should have canceled at the first sign something was off but here is what happened and why it was the worse massage ever:
11:00 AM Thursday I called in the morning to make an appointment with a specific massage therapist. Great all set for 7 PM (love the late appointment so you can go home and go right to bed). I was informed I couldn’t cancel since it was day of etc. I said no problem.
6:15 PM the day spa calls to say the therapist is running 30 minutes late. Fine not a big deal.
7:15 PM I check in so I can get settled. I fill out the paper work etc
7:25 PM I am now informed the therapist is running an additional 25 minutes behind (if you are following she is now almost a full hour late). I should have left at this point. I am told I can wait or someone else (“equally strong and skilled”) can give me the massage. Fine I say and am told to wait.
7:35 PM I inquire if they are ready and told another 5 minutes.
7:40 PM I meet the therapist who does not seem happy to be there this late after being called to replace the other therapist. Again I should have left but figured I am here let’s see what happens.
From this point forward I don’t know the exact times since I was in the massage room.
I inform the therapist to work on two areas and not to worry or work on others and I try to relax.
A few minutes later she is working on the very areas I didn’t want worked on so I stop her and tell her again. She inquires why I didn’t want those areas worked on and I explained (not that I should have to explain since this is my massage, right?)
A little while later I hear a buzzing. It’s a cell phone. Would you believe she answered it! Bad enough it was on in the room, but to answer it? She apologized and continued.
The same thing happened again approximately 20 minutes later. This time she had a longer discussion in a low voice, as if that mattered, and at the same time worked on me with one hand! Now I am really not happy but try to relax and just finish the massage.
Next thing I know she working on the areas I specifically asked her not to work and ignoring the requested areas. I figure the massage is almost over and just wait for it to end.
When she is done she leaves the room without a word.
8:30 I don’t feel relaxed but I change, get a drink and go to leave and of course she is there waiting for a tip.
At the main desk the person is on the phone and I didn’t want to wait to discuss this issue so I just leave.
Today I called and spoke to the spa explaining the issues (I just have the highlights here) and am told the owner will call me on Monday.
So tune in on Monday for the conclusion of the worst massage ever. What do you think was this the worst massage ever or do you think I am over reacting.
UPDATE
They gave me a credit for the massage and one additional one for free. So in the end they did the right thing. I still don't feel like going there but I will have to use my credits and determine if I stick with this spa or move on.
The long awaited reBlogging feature is back. This is a great way to both share information but also give your friends and other members an indication that you thought they posted some interesting content. Enjoy and Welcome Back reBlogging! Via ActiveRain Corp.:
We are happy to announce the return of reBlogging!
We have been working hard to get this feature fixed over the last few weeks. After hearing from many of you recently about how much you loved the feature and how much it was missed, we doubled our efforts to get the last few kinks worked out with reBlogging. Our members feedback is vastly important in making decisions about the community.
A little background on what went into the decision to pull reBlogging down initially.
Let me take a moment to share with you one of our priorities. In fact, it's our first priority as it relates to our features on the site. Our first priority is making sure that your content is able to be displayed to consumers who are visiting the site. A super close second would be making sure that search engines are able to crawl and index pages on the site, since the majority of the traffic to ActiveRain comes from the search engines and ensuring that pages display in a timely manner has some bearing on how search engines will rank your site.
A few months ago when the site was experiencing slow downs, and we were forced to pull back the reBlogging feature, it was done to make sure we could deliver on our first priority, having your content available to be read by potential clients. We know that many of your love the reBlog feature and it was not a decision we took lightly. But in any case, where we find that one of our features may be causing interference with our number one priority, we will take action to ensure your content is reaching consumers.
In every imaginable case, if it's a decision between one of the features of the site, and the ability for consumers to read your posts, we are going make sure consumers can read your posts, at the expense of the feature.
Our development staff was able to get it all fixed up, so we no longer have to choose, which is great! So thank you for your patience, and.....reBlog away!
~ Bob
|
|
Josef Katz {Marketing Maestro}
Manhattan,
NY
More about me…
Education Marketing and Direct Response Marketing
Address: New York, NY, 10024
Cell Phone: (201) 921-3292
Email Me
 Listings
Links
Archives
|
;)
;)
;)
