I found an interesting article today on BusinessWeek.com that mentions the importance of how to go about social networking online. When most people think of networking they automatically think of association meetings, seminars and other social gatherings. As the internet becomes more and more of an important role in the Real Estate business we need to begin looking into online networking and how we should go about it.
Currently the top online networking sites are mySpace, Facebook, LinkedIn and ActiveRain. The ones recommended for business are LinkedIn and Active Rain, the other two are more based around business and pleasure. ActiveRain.com is very Real Estate specific and is the top site I recommend for agents to become a part of.
The article below has a very good fact about online marketing and that is "trying to sell your products, services, or yourself when you first meet someone is the fastest way to ruin a networking relationship before it begins.". If you would like to read this article further please click the link below.
So you are reading through this website and you are wondering "Ok so this is a blog. What's the big deal? The funny thing is that even most people who have a blog do not really understand what it is used for and why they are so important. The video below should give you a quick idea why blogs are so important and why they have become the "next big thing".
First off as a real estate professional you should highly consider buying a "mobile broadband" device. These devices plug into either your PC card slot in your laptop or you can buy the newer USB versions. These great devices give you the gift of having Internet access wherever you have cell phone service.
The great thing about mobile broadband is you never need to worry about signing into a secure network or paying for wireless internet from Starbucks again. The applications for these products are endless and we see most agents using them to help in their listing presentations because now they can use the internet and online tools to show potential clients what they are capable of.
The newest in the "Mobile Broadband" family is Verizon Wireless' new USB727. If being named after a jet doesn't make you want to run out and get it the speeds will. This little "jump drive" sized broadband modem can download at speed up to 1.4mbps and upload up to 500kbps. These are blazing speeds for a mobile device. The other option that sets this little device apart from the competition is the fact you can store up to a 4GB SD card into the device for storage. This means you not only have internet anywhere but you also have a tool to store data, transfer pictures and videos and use portable applications to really make your business mobile. Soon we will go over the next step in your communication upgrade. For now go out and treat yourself with Mobile Broadband.
Today we are talking about some useful web sites including a registered sex offender database and some mass mailing techniques. Also be sure to watch the Google Docs video located below this podcast.
A few weeks ago I posted that Google now allows you to embed a map into your website or blog. Well now you can take that technology a step further because Google has raised the bar once again.
Yesterday a Real Estate Technology Specialist e-mailed me to show me how they are using Googles new mapping technology to help market their listings. They found a way to use Google Maps along with the "My Maps" technology to create a listing map with pictures, videos and more!
If you would like to see how this new technique can be used to benefit your business please click the link below to see the map we created of our "Celebrity Listings". When you look at the map click on any of the blue place marks to open the listings and look how one place mark even has a video(potential virtual tour) embedded into it. CLICK HERE TO OPEN!
Many real estate professionals are photographer connoisseurs and we think that photography is a very large part of real estate technology. Most of the time we like to keep real estate professionals updated on what is coming in the future instead of what is happening right now because like most of you already know "new" technology is "old" news. I say this because by the time one great idea has time to spawn there is already a better idea in the works.
Let's take a look at that "better idea". Let me introduce you to the GIGA PIXEL digital photograph. A giga pixel is used to describe the resolution of a photo much like the more common mega pixel. So how does a mega pixel compare to a giga pixel? Well, your average digital camera can take a single picture constructed of somewhere around 7,000,000 tiny dots(pixels) to create an image. A GIGA PIXEL camera on the other hand uses 1,000 mega pixels or 1,000,000,000 pixels to create a single image.
A digital camera with this kind of capability can produce an images that can be much larger than 50+ feet wide without losing any picture quality. To put the detail this camera can capture in perspective it would take a video wall of 10,000 HD television's to capture as much detail as one single image from a GIGA PIXEL camera. If you want to play with the amazing detail of these new giga pixel images download Google Earth 4.2 and check the featured content layer. Here is a quick video of a picture taken from a rooftop in Harlem that can clearly depict a persons face from nearly 20 miles away.
So you have a friend that just lost EVERYTHING because their computer crashed. Well that's no big surprise considering the probability of a hard drive crash is 100%. This statistic surprises a lot of people but in reality if everyone knew how often this happens backups would be priority number one.
If you stop and think about it your hard drive is nothing more than a high tech record player. Inside its small metal case it houses some magnesium disks that store data and an arm much like on a record player that reads and writes that data. Having such a primitive design makes failure inevitable because the smallest particle of dust can crash a hard drive and I know the inside of most computers is a dust heaven.
So what do we do now that we know our hard drives are going to crash?? Well thankfully there are many ways to backup everything on your system and they have gotten pretty cheap. We have recently setup a few of our machines in the office to have automatic backups using some Symantec Software and Western Digital External Hard Drives. To do this yourself we need two things. First thing is a Symantec software called Norton Ghost 12.0, this is the software we are going to use to automatically backup our systems. The second thing we need is a Western Digital External Hard Drive. I choose Western Digital because of their outstanding reliability and fair price. When purchasing your external hard drive try and stay above 250GB depending on how much you are backing up. I recommend this product. After installing Norton Ghost, you need to set it to automatically backup your system while you sleep.
To do this press "Run or Manage Backups" under the tasks menu. When you do this you will see the "Easy Setup" window open. From here you can click each of the links highlighted in blue to change these options. The first two sections are "Back Up my Computer" and "Back Up My Documents". The backup computer section shows that it will back up your entire main hard drive at whatever time is scheduled and the My documents section shows it will backup your My Documents folder. I recommend changing the schedule time for both to 1am or 2am while your sleeping so it does not conflict with work. The last area to change is the Backup Destination. We want to point the backup destination to your new external hard drive. This way everynight while you sleep your computer will automatically backup all of your files to your new hard drive. Now go ahead and press ok and run a backup to make sure everything is setup correctly. The final step is to give your self a big pat on the back for saving your business in the future.
Just for your knowledge below is a video of a hard drive running with a clear cover so you can see exactly how fast the hard drive in your computer really spins.
Finally the embedding feature for Google Maps has gone live as of Aug 21, 2007. Clicking the "link to this page" option on the top right of the map will give you an embed code like in the video below to place into any blog or Web site that supports it. There's also an advanced option set to change the size from small, medium, large, or custom.
Take a look at the Google Map I embedded below of Las Vegas. My map is the same as the map on google and I can zoom in and out and even move the map around inside it's window. Notice that there is a button called "Get Directions : to here" so when another agent or client clicks that button it then prompts them to give the starting address and shows them full written directions and a map to get to your listing. Feel free to try it below.
If you are one of the many real estate professionals that does not currently own your own website or even your own web space this tip is for you.
In the real estate profession it is getting more and more important for you to own a domain name. A domain name is simply the name that comes after www. and before .com. It is even more important for you to own www.yourname.com, now I understand that there are some people with very common names like "John Smith" and your ship has already sailed. For others buying your domain name even if you do not plan on using it right now needs to be priority number one.
There are really no excuses not to buy a domain because right now from GoDaddy.com they are less than $10 for an entire year. Just remember that because you don't want a website right now doesn't mean that you will not want one next year. So be prepared and own yourname.com.
Also, go ahead and buy every smart witty clever domain name you can think of because someday there going to be worth big $$money$$
Domain Buying Tips
-Buy your domain name without hosting if your don't want a website right now -Buy your domains .com .net .info & .org -Buy your name in all forms (ex. MatthewRains.com & MattRains.com) -If your name is taken use "online" or "web" on the end (ex. MattRainsWeb.com) -Go ahead and buy creative names so you can sell them later. -Have Fun!!
At RealEstateTechnologyOnline.com we hope to teach agents how to use the internet to market themselves and their properties. We hope this blog gives you hints and tips to get started.
Disclaimer: ActiveRain Corp. does not necessarily endorse the real estate agents, loan officers and brokers listed on this site. These real estate profiles, blogs and blog entries are provided here as a courtesy to our visitors to help them make an informed decision when buying or selling a house. ActiveRain Corp. takes no responsibility for the content in these profiles, that are written by the members of this community.
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