It's one of those conversations that leads to an idea. A client asked me if I knew of any listing websites to promote a home near Notre Dame. I didn't. So I came up with one. Months later we have www.CampusHomesOnline.com. With nearly 33,000 listings we are the premier off-campus student housing website. We feature all campus on one site. Nothing compares.

Students can:

Save their searches and receive daily listing updates when new properties become available that match their criteria

Text properties to their friends/family

View mileage to campus

View all campuses around the country in one spot

 

Listings are FREE for a limited time and will then be $29 per listing with subscription packages available. 

 

Two is Better than One!

My|Assistant is growing!  To better serve you, we have added to our Virtual Assistant team! Please join us in welcoming Jennifer Kukla to My|Assistant.

Jennifer has been in marketing and real estate for several years and has a mad passion for design and color.  Painting is her love, and in her free time is pursuing  a Fine Art degree.  Before coming to My Assistant, Jennifer worked alongside some of the best in the business where she honed her desire to help people become more efficient in multiple facets of business. She loves creating new ways to get information out to targeted audiences.  She has a keen eye for detail and uses that to create marketing materials that exemplify each person’s individual worth and/or a company’s collective value.  She is reliable, organized, and upholds a strong ethical value in all things that she does.

Jennifer is now building her clientele and is accepting new clients. We will be working as a team  to best assist our current and new clients!

My|Assistant is  a solid Virtual Assistant company focused on helping your business flourish. We are formed from a strong will to succeed and a determination to make sure our clients do as well. We take our work personally and put every effort forth we can into creating the best possible product and service for our clients.  My|Assistant welcomes the opportunity to help you take steps toward greater success.

Tired of the same old fonts available in your programs? Then check out this fantastic list of cool, high-quality fonts from Smashing Magazine.

Need help installing a new font? You can find a tutorial at Microsoft’s website.

Or, if you prefer a totally custom font of your own handwriting, you can do a YouFont. Simply fill out the template, upload the file and then they create a font based on your own handwriting. It’s $13 – pretty cheap for a custom font! Plus, you don’t pay until you approve the font.

See a font you like but don’t know what font it is? Trying to mimic a corporate font? You can upload a file with the font here and find out what font it is.

Want to stay on top of your favorite blog or news feed but don’t want to keep checking your RSS feed or visiting their website? Not even sure what an RSS feed is? I like to have these posts automatically sent to my inbox so I don’t have to remember to visit any other websites – I’ve got enough to remember.

www.feedmyinbox.com is a service that allows you to enter the URL (web address) of any site and your email address and you will be sent an email on a daily basis when new posts are available. I use this for things like a Craigslist search. Craigslist doesn’t offer email notifications when a new item is for sale that matches my search criteria (say ‘couch’). So I go to Craigslist, do the search for a couch, then copy and paste the URL (http://southbend.craigslist.org/search/sss?query=couch) into www.feedmyinbox.com’s form. I enter my email address and I receive daily emails with new couches for sale on Craigslist. Keeps me from missing anything good. Try it with my website! Enter www.myassistantcan.com into feedmyinbox’s form and stay up to date with me!

Have any questions, please let me know

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You get two choices this month! Template postcards are only .12 each and have no setup fee. Small changes to the back are fine. No minimums! Postcards will print the last week of March for April mailing.

 

 

 

I can't say it enough:

OWN YOUR DOMAIN!
OWN YOUR WEBSITE!

Most people don't realize that when you hire a company to build/design your website, THEY OWN IT.

Why have someone else register your domain and have them own it? What happens if you want to take over the control? Is it easy to do? You better make sure it is.

Why pay a company thousands of dollars to design a website for you only to find out down the road that the content is not yours? The US Copyright office has determined that web designers are considered ‘authors' and even if you collaborate with your designer on content that it is the designer's property! So if you want to switch providers down the road, you might lose your site. They can and will sue you for your content.

Make sure you get it in writing that after payment, ownership if your website is to be transferred to you. Do not sign a contract stating anything else. You paid the money; you keep the website. It's your company brand.

What's your purpose with Twitter use? Are you looking to expand your network and hopefully gain some new business? It should be. You should be finding new people to follow and hope they follow you back. If you are using Twitter to gain a 'following' then you need to consider expanding your branding to your Twitter background. When people are searching for new people to follow they may come arcross your profile. What your profile says about you will result in a follow or having them pass you up. You'll need to create a file (I used Publisher) and save it as a photo to then upload to Twitter. I'd be glad to help you create one if you need help.

I can't get the time to log in to Facebook throughout the day but I want to know what my friends are up to. Logging in at the end of the day requires me to browse through perhaps 100 updates. I get lost. I get behind.

Well what did I find today?

Facebook provides an RSS  feed for your friend statuses. This allows you to see all updates to Facebook without having to log in or keep Facebook open.

Log in to Facebook.
Click on ‘Friends'.
In the left-hand column you will find a ‘Subscribe to this feed' option.
Click on the link and you will be taken to the feed page.
Click on the subscription link and voila, you've got a feed.

 

 

Now how do you view your feed?

There are several ways but probably the easiest will be through Internet Explorer. You know how to access your favorites? That's how you get your feeds as well. Click on your little Favorites star and then click on the orange ‘Feeds' icon. That will display the feeds you are subscribed to. Click on the Facebook Status Feed and you will be taken to the list of all updates.

 

Lists make me happy. I like planning out goals I want to accomplish and things I want to do. Problem is, I'm addicted to lists. They are everywhere. And I can't find them. So, a lot of good they do me now, huh? Alas, the internet has come to my rescue! There are wonderful list-making, task prioritizing lists out there to help a list addict like me.

Ta Da Lists lets me keep track of all of my lists and prioritize them. An extra special feature for me is the ability to check off tasks and not have them disappear. One of the most fulfilling aspects for me of keeping lists is crossing them off. I feel a huge sense of accomplishment.

Cozi.com is a family calendar management tool that you can share with all members of your family. You can assign family members to tasks and set email reminders. Cozi also has a built-in list organizer but it isn't one that I felt especially fond of because I couldn't rename my lists. Probably one of the most unique aspects of Cozi is the ability to create a family journal. Had a really great family day? Want to jot down a particularly funny memory? Write it in your journal and everyone can save that memory for years to come.
Oh, did I mention both of these services are free? Take a few minutes to check them out and see if they might work for you.

     

I went to my local grocery store for square orange cheese crackers. In particular I was looking for Cheese Nips because they were on insane sale.

Cracker isle. Found the Cheez-Its but where are the Cheese Nips????? Can't find them anywhere. But they're on sale. They must be around.

Cruise down the isle to the granola snack bars. Lo and Behold - there are the Cheese Nips. Why here???

This immediately gets my attention. Why in the world would Nabisco choose to put their square cheese cracker so far away from the other square cheese cracker? Why would they choose to put their cracker where the other crackers are not?

Now, this was like five days ago and I can't let it go. Something is significant here. Today, I think I figured it out.

Location, Location, Location!

You've heard it said before in real estate but it really is the best thing to consider in much of marketing, listings and otherwise. I don't like Cheese Nips as well as I like Cheez-Its. My guess is that most people agree with me or at least they recognize the red Cheez-Its box much faster than they recognize the orange Cheese Nips box. My guess is that Nabisco purposefully moved their product out of their competition's reach. Move it where there is no competition besides granola bars. The guilty indulgence may get the best of some people and they'll reach for the cheese crackers instead of the granola bars.

That's my theory.

What does it mean to you?

This can be applied to both listing marketing and agent marketing. If you can't get a house sold, what is the first thing you recommend to the seller? Price reduction. If you can't beat the competition, move away from it. Move away in price. Set yourself up with new competition. Sit next to a granola bar.

Same goes for agent marketing. Get out of Homes & Lifestyles and put yourself where the saturation is much more in your favor of getting seen. Where is that you say? Right now, it's in people. It's in social media. It's in getting yourself out there where the people are. It's about walking your neighborhood and talking to your neighbors. Ask for a referral. If you don't have the guts, get some. (psssst....you're in sales).Don't be afraid to move out of the cracker isle. (No, I didn't just call you a cracker). Hang out with some granola bars and you might find yourself with better exposure. At the very least, someone might start talking about you on some blog.