Google announced real estate on Google Maps this morning...
In Google Maps type a "city state" and/or a "zip code". Just to the right of the "Search Maps" button,
click "show search options" and select real estate in the drop down...
You can search homes for sale, rentals, and foreclosures. Filter your results by price range, bedrooms, and building square feet. This comes with all the usual Google Map functions like pop-up pictures with links to the listing source.
This will certainly bring a larger audience and exposure to your local real estate market...
Taking our
conversation online
led to opportunity, collaboration, and friendship.
My good friend and co-worker Matt Sweet wrote a blog here on Active
Rain last January about Vyew.com.
We discovered this great web
conferencing application back in September of 2008. Since then
we use it
regularly for meetings of every kind.
We hold marketing meetings and training sessions with our
Ticor Reps across Washington and Oregon. We join in virtually
for presentations and meetings with clients. It's also a great
collaboration tool. Matt and I use it all the time when we're
working on a project and are physically in different locations.
After the post, Matt did a few tweets and included one
to drive some traffic to his new blog entry.
Meri Walker, The Virtual Meeting Coach, happened to see that tweet and
followed the link to Matt's blog. Long story short, she was fascinated
about why a couple of 'title'
guys up in the Pacific Northwest would use
this web app and called Matt.
One thing led to another and soon we were collaborating on a 3
part
web interview with
Meri Walker (theVirtualMeetinCoach),
and her friend Tom
Carroll (RadioNLP)aka:
The Learning Guy. We all had
a wonderful time putting these shows together and learned alot
from each other. Through this project we shared visions of the
future, humanity, technology, and possibility.
Meri Walker, René Fabre
Since then we've realized many more ways to collaborate and
have
enjoyed numerous other people joining in with us who share
their endeavors, their passion, friendship, and business
opportunites.
Vyew.com as I see it is a very efficient way to save time and
money. As a Realtor, it's a great way to conference with out
of town buyers that want a
property presentation.
We met with Meri Walker in Ashland, Oregon 10/21/2009. She spent some
time coaching our sales and marketing staff about
holding virtual meetings. Meri's written a great little book titled, "The Coach's Short List."
It's a wonderful tutorial on how to plan and manage successful
virtual meetings.
None of this would have happened if Matt had decided not to write
his blog about Vyew.com
and follow up with a tweet.
Meri
Walker interviews with Matt Sweet and René Fabre.
René Fabre is well known for his innovative marketing programs. He is a sought after speaker and motivator known for his knowledge, keen interest, and insightful approach to contemporary marketing ideas and technologies. His obvious passion for the subject is well known and contagious. He frequently gives workshops and round table conversations on Internet Marketing, Social Media Marketing, and Lead Generation.
Social Media Marketing SEO and ROI with pictures...
By spending just a couple of extra minutes to tweak your picutres, you'll increase your blogging SEO and ROI.
Most readers will quickly eye scan the pictures on your blog post before reading and they will spend about 70% of their visit time looking at them. Regardless if they read your entire post or not the reader will remember how the picture made them feel longer than the details of what you talked about.
Example... Fall in the Pacific Northwest is one of my favorite times of the year... Well I admit, every season here is my favorite, but for different reasons...
This is from my condo deck in Renton, WA 98055 yesterday around 6:00 PM. In a couple of weeks, when all the leaves have fallen I'll have a great view of the valley below.
Autumn in the Pacific Northwest, Renton WA 98055
I've been running a lot of experiments with pictures lately. I've been exploring the added 'Google Juice' you can create with them. I'm now hosting most of my photo's on Flickr.com and embed the code in my blogs to present them...
I also use the photo as a hyperlink to another location that is mine, or gives the reader added content somewhere else. Google Alerts and StepRep are reporting back to me very quickly that they have found the pictures on Flickr and offer up their descriptions with a link back to the source. Soon after that I get alerts that my blog post has been found and lets me know where, when, and the first couple of sentences of my first paragraph.
Mt. Rainier from Federal Way, WA 98003
In these two picture samples notice that there is a descripiton below the picture, and the hover (or title) text spells out to the search engines what we're looking at and precisely where it is... This is a very important reinforcement of the local where you live and work.
When the search engines crawl this blog post to index it they will find a lot more here than what you see. Search engines do not know what a picture is, other than it is a picture. Yet pictures are very powerful and by using "ALT" text, a good photo "Description" and "Title" (mouse over), "SRC"(link to photo on Flickr) and "Href"(hyperlink) I am working in concert with the search engines to help them index me more dynamically.
It's not just that I wrote about something and here's the link to it. The pictures themselves and the information they carry, (along with the text in your well written blog), are all working together and handing the search engine the information it uses to index and rank your content. The Alerts and StepRep find the pictures via my blog post and as content on Flickr.
This helps to take some of the quess work out of the indexing process by helping it to organize your information relevant to the way people search. It creates synergy for your posting because there are now multiple well defined reference points that reinforce your post. By spending just a couple of extra minutes to tweak your picutres, you'll increase your blogging SEO and ROI.
René Fabre is well known for his innovative marketing programs. He is a sought after speaker and motivator known for his knowledge, keen interest, and insightful approach to contemporary marketing ideas and technologies. His obvious passion for the subject is well known and contagious. He frequently gives workshops and round table conversations on Internet Marketing, Social Media Marketing, and Lead Generation.
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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