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The 27th Annual Potomac Day Festival was held on a beautiful Saturday afternoon. The fun-filled day included a wide variety of activities for children and adults. There was a lively parade along the main strip of River Road and Falls Road. Members of organizations proudly handed out gifts and candy to children and shook hands with spectators. In the main market area behind the office of W.C. & A.N. Miller Realtors, tents with tables were set up for local businesses to meet and greet each other as well as the local community. Lively music played all day while food vendors served up their finest. Antique car buffs were able to check out an assortment of vintage vehicles owned by local residents.   Potomac Day was organized by the Potomac Chamber of Commerce and sponsored by the following organizations:   BB&T Potomac Pizza Aggregate Industries Total AV Systems Potomac Promenade Carnival Day Potomac Village Deli The Sergeants Program Sun Control Systems HSU Builders BOWA Builders Shady Grove Adventist Hospital Morgan Stanley Potomac Farm Market Potomac Almanac Mitch & Bills Exxon My Gym-Potomac Hopkins & Porter Construction PNC Bank Sign-A-Rama Potomac Village Shopping Center W.C. & A.N. Miller Realtors Potomac Dentistry Tristram C. Kruger, DDS, MS Andrea Alderdice, Realtor F.O. Day & Co. Sandy Spring National Bank Coreta Osborne, Realtor Potomac Estate Jewelers Tally-Ho Restaurant Toy's Unique, Inc. Potomac Pediatrics Potomac/Bethesda Rotary Club The Washington Group       Normandy Natural Co2 Cleaners Goodman-Gable-Gould Adjusters International PotomacMarket.com

Today, real estate brokers that are interested in growing their business need to take advantage of information technologies. Brokers use technology to build their brands, market and advertise to potential clients, and recruit and train the best agents. Ownership of the IT systems is an important aspect to how and what you can do.

Intenet technologies are critical to operating a business today. Moreover, having a presence on the Internet is a neccessity. What does this mean? And, how does your brokerage stand out from the rest? Brokers need to add valuable information services that compliment their business models. In order to do this, brokers need access to IT systems that support their business objectives. The diagram above illustrates a network architecture design than can provide brokers with a secure and scalable IT infrastructure.

Can you really entrust your Web initiatives to a hosting company a thousand miles away? What else are they doing with your data that you don't know about? Can you implement secure web-based transaction management systems if you don't own the hardware?

Wireless Point. A wireless access point will allow employees to access their network from pervasive devices such as PDAs, cell phones, Pocket PCs, etc. Agents can view information and update data while in the field.

Infrastructure Server. This server will contain the neccesary applications to maintain the system. It serves as a host for a Domain Name System (DNS) server, an email server, and other utilities such as Security Certificates and load balancing.

Application Server. This is the LANs main workhorse. This computer will host the organization's business applications, such as a transaction management system and stratgeic CRM applications for decision support and knowledge manangement. Providing tools such as these will enhance the abilities of the sales staff and streamline operations.

The application server (s) is also host to the organization's WWW sites. A significant benefit of hosting your own web sites is that you will have complete control of the deployment and update cycles. Also, it enables integration of other services that contain sensitive data. For example, a business can provide client access to certain areas of their transaction management system. This can help develop good client relationships and reduce the burden of constant communication between the agent and the client. This aspect frees up time of the agent and fosters greater productivity.

Database Server. This computer contains the databases that store your data. Transactional data, marketing data, property data all is contained within your LAN and is protected by firewalls from outside intruders. By owning the actual data, the brokerage is then free to develop creative business models and leverage their intellectual property.

The Real Estate Web consists of many organizations working together, collaborating and sharing one common purpose. Collaboration takes many shapes and individuals can typically learn from others. 

The roots of collaborating stem from trading, and trading has been around for a very long time indeed. Over the centuries, methods of business communication have evolved and guided civilized societies into more meaningful relationships. The practice of sharing knowledge with other organizations will almost always foster healthy business relationships. However, there are cases where sharing certain information is detrimental to a relationship and care must be taken to avoid the mismanagement of information.

Throughout the real estate web there are many opportunities to create new communication channels between traditionally disconnected entities. Businesses are free to build creative channels that have never existed before. Besides the federal and state laws, there are very few limitations that hinder the process of developing a new communication channel. Moreover, the Internet has empowered both large and small organizations to leverage a common communication platform.

In the real estate web, is there truly a center point? Are real estate brokers at the center?

Expressing clear and concise benefits to prospective clients is a crucial element of capturing new business. The "how" in your communication strategy has a significant impact on whether a customer decides to "trust" you with their business. How are you different from your local competitors?

One way to stand out in the crowd is to empower the client and foster feelings of ownership in the transaction process. By communicating effectively and openly sharing information with clients, you will build upon the initial "trust" that was given to you and move forward with creating a long-term relationship with your clients.

The Internet allows information to be easily shared with others at a very low cost. Web-based transaction management systems that allow home sellers to view where they are in the process will increase their visibility and significantly reduce the number of phone calls requesting status and updates. A simple personalized web page can go a long way. With such systems in place, agents can transform one of their operational tools into a powerful marketing tool that will help them stand out in the crowd!

See: http://activerain.com/blogsview/217000/Real-Estate-Marketing-The

     The goal of a marketing strategy is to provide a blueprint for creating product-specific plans that center around the customers of a target market in order to create desired sales effects. A strategy represents a high-level perspective of product planning, advertising, market analysis, branding and service.

     While the details of each marketing environment vary in regards to demographics, geography, product, etc., there are four standard components that need to be organized into a comprehensive marketing effort. They are known as the 4 P's (Product, Price, Place, Promotion).

     The illustration above visually outlines these four components. The main purpose of any marketing effort is to achieve sales. It is important to emphasis that advertising is only one aspect of the marketing process and is an integral element in the Promotion processes.

• Product - products and/or services, quality, service & support, packaging, etc.
• Price - discounts, leasing options, seasonal sales, rebates, a balance between your cost and value to potential customers.
• Place - internet, cell phone, distribution channels
• Promotion - advertising, MLS, trade shows, press releases, community newspapers, Internet blog

     As mentioned, to be effective, these 4 P's should be centered around a target audience and serve as the guide for all communications with customers.

Designing a web-based technology infrastructure that readily supports operational, tactical and strategic initiatives is a challenging task. There are many aspects to consider: hardware, software, LAN design, Internet connectivity, third-party services, etc. Moreover, in order to efficiently support a vast array of business needs from these applications, stable and robust software architecture must be created.     The first step is creating a project plan which outlines the time, cost and scope of the project. It is helpful to think of setting up an IT environment in terms of a project because there is a set of well-defined project tasks and activities that serve as a guideline for the planning and implementation phases of a project. If an IT environment does not already exist, then you could think of the project plan as a business plan as well. One thing to note is that the overall purpose of the project plan is to outline and govern the successful outcome of the project. Technical details including the software architecture information and technical design are not included in the project plan. This information and the tasks related to it are only highlighted in the project plan, typically in the project Work Breakdown Structure (WBS). In regards to technical information, a separate document called a Systems Architecture Document will contain the architecture design and related technical details.

    The key benefits of creating these documents are found in the information that is contained within them. It is not the document, but the information within it. By thinking about the issues and challenges of the project, you can articulate project phases and plan for cost, schedules, resource availability, risk management, and other project management activities to ensure that the project progresses successfully.

    From within your organization and externally, you are responsible for assembling knowledgeable experts in data management, web application development, business intelligence and project management to start to think about the project and gathering information. Writing a project plan is a very important step geared towards building a winning project team! Below are brief definitions of the three most significant aspects of a winning project plan:

Project scope - the project scope outlines all of the work that has to be done in order to create a product. The project scope only deals with the required work to complete the project. The language of the project scope must be clear and focused. It must covey exactly what must be completed in order for the project to be successful. A scope statement establishes a common vision among the project stakeholders and is used as a baseline for making all future project decisions.

Product scope - this is a description of the features and attributes of the product that the project is based on and will be created. For example, a web-based intranet system for managing a real estate brokerage would be a product.

Work breakdown structure (WBS) - this is a collection of project components that outline all of the project's deliverables. The main purpose of the WBS is to organize and define the tasks specified in the project scope. The WBS consists of a series of one ore more diagrams. A reference tool called a work breakdown structure dictionary explains the WBS components in detail. It includes assigned resources and time and billing estimates for each component.

     Many business owners and professionals work hard at trying to understand how the Internet works so that they might be able to utilize it for generating business. SEO is an acronym for "search engine optimization". What does this mean? Which search engine is optimized? What is really optimized? The purpose of this blog is to answer these questions and help business owners increase their understanding of how SEO can fit into their Internet marketing strategies or ecommerce activities.

     From a technical perspective, SEO describes the activity of designing the web pages of a website with techniques and recommendations provided by search engine companies. These specifications are published to inform the public about various rules that search engine software take into consideration when performing a search on the Internet. An important thing to be aware of is that it is the search engine software performing the search, not the user. Users enter keywords and send directions to the software to execute a search. This may seem like a basic point, but is important for understanding that although the user behavior is the same for every search engine, the algorithms that are used in a search engine application vary from company to company. The algorithms used in Google.com's search engine, for example, are different than the ones used on Microsoft's MSN.com search engine. Each company has its own special recipe that is proprietary to their organization. The competitive nature of the search engine business makes it difficult to "optimize" web pages to the fullest extent for all the existing search engines. The most important thing here, I feel, is to acknowledge that these recipes are directly tied to the performance and user satisfaction of the search engine and they are constantly being updated and modified. The end result is that maintaining SEO-friendly web pages for a particular group of search engines becomes a time-consuming process.

     There are many ways to look at SEO from a business perspective. First and foremost, SEO is a marketing buzzword for search engine companies. It is a fundamental tool for their marketing strategy and corresponds directly to their advertising revenues. Traditionally, the activity of searching the Internet was limited to scholars, scientists and researchers. In the early 90's the World Wide Web was created and things changed. The first users of today's search engine giant, Google.com, were programmers and other technical folk. They enjoyed the simplicity of the homepage design and search engine interface, which is still the same after a decade, and the absence of any advertisements. Are there really no advertisements on Goolge.com? In the most basic sense, Google.com search results have evolved into advertisements. And to optimize your website for this "free" advertising is what SEO is all about.

     As mentioned, SEO is a time-consuming process and that translates into costs. Whether you are doing the web page design yourself, or paying someone to do it, there is a cost. Moreover, what works well for one search engine, typically will not translate into the same results with another. So, it is important to identify target search engines and focus SEO efforts on that limited set.