Jason's Blog

Affordable Mobile Marketing System for Real Estate

Jason LaVanture (www.BlueLaVaMedia.com) — Wed, 25 Nov 2009 10:26:30 -0600

Get Connected & Capture More Leads with BlueLaVaMedia!

The BlueLaVa TxT Connect System is an all new mobile marketing service that uses SMS ("text messaging"). This technology makes property information instantly available on mobile phones and yields lead generation for real estate agents and rental management companies.

"Text messaging" is the fastest growing form of communication and BlueLaVaMedia, Traverse City's Premier Virtual Tour Company is very excited to offer this unique and powerful marketing tool to you at a very low cost. The BlueLaVa TxT Connect mobile marketing / lead capture system is available 24/7 and works by instantly responding to requests for detailed property information from potential buyers.

The Traverse City Real Estate agent simply adds a sign rider with a property identifier and a short code to their yard sign.
The cell phone user sends a text message such as "JBlue" to the short code "43766".
Within seconds the BlueLaVa TxT Connect system delivers detailed property information to their cell phone.
The agent controls the information in the download. It can include prices, features, and direct web links to photos, as well as agent contact information.

Some of the key benefits of the BlueLaVa TxT Connect system include:

• Takes advantage of today's text popularity and smart phone technology
• Easy to use for the prospect - 154 million people in the US text daily, 107% year/year increase, median age 38, in 2007 36% of American Seniors who own a cell phone text
• Easy to setup for the realtor - completely portable from property to property
• Generates leads to your phone and email
• No more empty flyer boxes - disappointing prospects and clients
• Inspires confidence in YOU, shows that you are tech savvy
• BlueLaVaMedia's incredibly low pricing makes this a *** Best Buy ** for your advertising dollar - as low as $2.95 per month, per listing when purchasing our Best Buy 10 property pack!!

Once the cell phone user connects to the BlueLaVa TxT Connect system the callers cell phone number is captured so that the agent may follow-up with a phone call. It's that simple, the agent has a new lead to call. You never got that from your old flyer box now did you? Did I mention that you will never have to fill up a flyer box again?

Are you ready to be one of the first savvy Traverse City Real Estate Agents to offer the most advanced marketing and lead generation technology available? Sign up now by visiting our site below and remember that you get ALL this for TEN of your listings for a mere $29.00 per month! Let's see it cell!

Give the BlueLaVa TxT Connect System a Try Now!
Send Text Message 'JBlue'
To Phone Number '43766'

Traverse City Virtual Tours & Advanced Property Marketing
http://www.BlueLaVaMedia.com
Order a virtual tour today: 877-941-TOUR (8687)

Your Profile Photo is KILLING Your Business!

Jason LaVanture (www.BlueLaVaMedia.com) — Mon, 20 Jul 2009 16:39:51 -0500

Ok, so you are out shopping for insurance for that nice shiny new Ferrari you just bought yourself off that sweet deal from last month (ok... this is a dramatization) and you want to make sure that your investment is in the right hands. You have a choice of two insurance agents in town (it's a small town...What can I say?)

Insurance agent A: You walk in the office and almost scare the poor guy out of the nap he was taking. He moves his feet off the desk, shuffles papers around and sets to writing an insurance proposal. You notice, while he's fumbling with numbers, that his favorite pair of college tennis shoes is peering out from under the front of his desk adorned by frayed fragments of his dirty jeans and it seems that the last time his team baseball shirt saw a washer machine; he was walking past it at the home depot. As he finishes the insurance proposal, he knocks over what's left of his morning coffee, wipes the stains off the document with his hand, wipes his hand on his pants and then gives you the documents for your review. He then excuses himself, muttering something unintelligible as he walks out of the office and says he will be right back.

Insurance agent B: You start to walk into his office and are immediately greeted by a clean cut gentleman wearing a crisp white shirt, blue tie and black Dockers. His black dress shoes look like he spends the majority of his day obsessed with shining them, but from the looks of the neatly hung pictures of current clients & testimonials, you are quite sure he spends his days dedicated to his clients. He invites you to take a seat, asks you a few questions and quickly prints out a professionally prepared document. He then asks you if you would like something to drink and offers to go over your options with you.

Now... take a quick look at your profile picture and see what first impression you are giving to potential clients that are reading your blogs. Are you agent A or B? Does it look like you were fumbling with your phone when the flash suddenly went off? Kids did a drive-by ‘shooting' while you were working in the yard? (Camera shooting that is) You set the camera to delay on the kitchen table and missed the top of your head?

I have actually seen all of the pics that I mention above on profiles here in active rain, and wondered... what are they thinking? Isn't the purpose of a blog to attract more clients? Who in their right mind would entrust their biggest investment to agent A? ... I mean do you really want to project the image of agent A to potential leads?

- RTV Marketing & Team RTV

Visit our Virtual Tour Blog

The Complete Marketing Plan

Jason LaVanture (www.BlueLaVaMedia.com) — Wed, 15 Jul 2009 10:29:43 -0500

In this economy of intense competition, it is easy to get stressed out at the thought of learning new techniques to getting real estate listings and virtual tours out in the public eye. But, there is no need to completely abandon traditional marketing strategies. The best advertising and marketing strategy is to diversify your marketing to reach a larger target audience. In order to do this properly, you must use all available means of marketing to draw potential buyers and sellers to one central place; most favorably, your website.

DIVERSIFY: The efforts of the agent or broker can seem like a monumental chore to undertake, but the benefits far outweigh the effort required in the long run. By diversifying your marketing efforts and funneling leads you can ensure that you are not left without steady business. Using a combination of traditional as well as modern advertising and marketing efforts can pay off for the savvy real estate agent.

LOCAL MEDIA: Many agents who use virtual tours also take out ads in the local paper and include the URL to the virtual tour web site. By using traditional media in the local real estate market area, the realtor can drive targeted traffic to the virtual tour web site, which will feature a variety of homes to choose from as well as virtual tours of the properties. Outlets such as news papers, magazines, local trade publications and free discount magazines are excellent methods of advertising the agent's active virtual tour web site to the world. Once visitors arrive at the agent's site, they can choose from various types of homes and locations to view online and view an interactive virtual tour.

MAKE IT EASY TO REACH YOU: Be sure to include SEVERAL means of contact, regardless of advertising medium. After looking at the virtual tour some users might opt to call the realtor directly for a personal showing. So be sure to leave your phone number in an easily accessible and prominent area on your online AND print media advertisement.

DISTRIBUTE FLYERS: Print-out fliers and brochures that advertise your single property website, your business and the online virtual tour. These fliers and signs can be printed and distributed locally.

USE UNIQUE ATTENTION GETTING MARKETING: Using unique marketing tools such as RTV's PanoRider(tm), emailable HitStats(tm), or even just using a professional photographer service for those dramatic night-time shots can help you stand apart from the crowd. Using these marketing tools not only makes your properties stand apart from the rest, but also says incredible things about your marketing strategy to prospective sellers.

TV and RADIO: The local effort to drive traffic to the realtor's site should include any manner of traditional advertising the realtor can afford to incorporate into his or her ongoing advertising and marketing strategy, even radio and television if the prospective URL isn't too difficult to remember.

OPTIMIZE, OPTIMIZE, OPTIMIZE: Once the virtual tour and the supporting web presence have been established and advertised locally, it is important to concentrate on web site marketing and optimization online. Optimizing your website, your blog and even your virtual tours maximizes your overall traffic and potential leads by allowing search engines to properly index your website and listings. RTV offers free SEO, Blogging, Social Networking, Social Back Linking training by way of our Social Ignition Course too all providers of our technology.

SOCIAL NETWORK: Getting the word out about your website and your virtual tours may seem like a daunting task, but if taken step-by-step, will prove to be quite easy. The trick is to get your network set-up and to get yourself into a routine that is easy for you.

Need help setting up your social network? Check out our 12 week workshop as announced in our last RTV Newsletter. Simply log into your TMS and click on the Social Ignition Course to sign up. Free to ALL RTV providers. A Sure-Fire Way to Beat the Economy!

RTV Marketing

Jason LaVanture

http://www.RealTourVision.com

Playing the Google Game With Social Ignition

Jason LaVanture (www.BlueLaVaMedia.com) — Mon, 13 Jul 2009 13:14:51 -0500

Are you ready to completely dominate the search engines? Would you like to be the #1 ranking virtual tour company or real estate site in your market? If you answered yes to either of those questions then you are ready for the all NEW RTV SOCIAL IGNITION SYSTEM! We have been very busy testing this system out over the past twelve weeks with BlueLaVaMedia and we are now officially ready to release it to any Full Service or In House provider of RTV technology!

Over the last year while Jim Blue has been in and out of several hundred homes here in Northern Michigan, I have been busy working on something truly unique, that is so powerful, and yet incredibly easy to learn. In fact, every time I show someone what I am about to show you they always wonder why they have not been doing it all along.

I must admit that I used to plug my ears anytime someone mentioned Digg, Delicious, Furl, Facebook, Technorati, Backflip, or Twitter to me. But that was before I realized the sheer potential for literally ANYONE...in ANY business...anywhere in the World to maximize their online exposure. So yes, this does mean YOU!

Like you, I used to hear these new buzz phrases and ignore them.

I used to see little symbols like popping up all over the web and, yes, I simply looked the other way. Do you remember when email was the same way? Back when you could still run your business without a website? Times are quickly changing and once again you need to do the same.

Don't worry because once you learn a few of the basics this will be just as easy for you to do as it is to send an email. I promise! If you would like to find out how you can start to leverage the power of social networking and bookmarking I highly encourage you log into your virtual tour manager RIGHT NOW and sign up per the instructions of our July Newsletter. The course is a 12 week course that you will be able to take from the comfort of your home via the web.

The only thing that our program will require of you is a bit of your time and willingness to make some small changes in the way your conduct business online.

Are you ready for Social Ignition?

Sign up now by logging into your virtual tour management system and find the instructions in our latest E-Newsletter! Once you sign up for our free social networking, blogging, SEO, and back link building course you will receive one email every week for the next 12 weeks. This FREE course is open to all RTV dealers!

Why pay for training like this when RTV gives it to your for FREE

If you're an Inner Circle member you can log into our marketing center and download ALL 12 weeks right away and won't have to wait for them. Why would you want all 12 weeks at once? Because you can do just what Jim and Jason over at BlueLaVaMedia did and that's build an opt in email list incredibly fast! Simply let your current prospects and customers know that you now offer a free course that will teach them how to better use social media sites, build up back links to their site, and teach them the basics of blogging. This is working so well that the Traverse Area Association of Realtors has even asked team BlueLaVa to speak in August to a group of agents on the basics of the course.

Not using aweber yet? Well sign up now at http://www.aweber.com and you can drop our ready to go course in and setup a form on your site! This is a tested and very easy weekly course jam packed with SEO tips, social networking tips, and blogging tips. What a great way to be more than just a virtual tour provider or just an average real estate professional in your local market.

Either way know this: You will NEVER have to pay for this material because we have it all right here for you for FREE! To sign up now join the RTV network or if you are an existing provider of our technology simply login and read our latest newsletter for detailed instructions.

Watch this video below and see Social Ignition first hand:

Thanks and good luck out there!
RTV Marketing
http://www.realtourvision.com
Property Marketing That Works!

Marketing with Mini Cd's

Jason LaVanture (www.BlueLaVaMedia.com) — Fri, 10 Jul 2009 12:15:03 -0500

Business card sized CD's have been around since the late 90's, but just recently they have become a tremendously popular marketing tool for several RTV virtual tour companies. Business card CDs make great promotional tools for trade shows and especially as hand outs for sales and marketing use. These miniature sized CD's hold many advantages over traditional virtual tour marketing tools such as paper business cards, printed brochures and flyers, standard CD's and even DVD's.

Brochures and catalogs are common marketing tools because they are immediate. You can quickly get information about a company's products and services by browsing the printed material. However, because they are so common, those brochures and catalogs sometimes get tossed in the trash with little more than a quick visual browsing. The business card CD is still a novelty of sorts, and therefore attracts more attention and interest. The smaller size makes them easy to carry, hand out, and store as virtual tour marketing tools. The novelty of their size and their visual appeal gives them an advantage over printed material.

The RTV Inner Circle Marketing team is making it easy for you to implement business card CD's as a sales tool for your virtual tour business and for increasing the listing exposure for listings by creating several marketing CD templates. These template projects were created with a program called AutoRun Max Business 2.0 and can be downloaded in the Presentation Section of Inner Circle Marketing. The CD templates contain a wide variety of Inner Circle materials including interactive virtual tour samples, automated slide show presentations, music, and PDF brochures/info packs.

Inner-Circle members can download and customize these amazing presentation templates starting TODAY!

- RTV Marketing & Team RTV

Visit our Virtual Tour Blog

Goodbye to Google Ranking

Jason LaVanture (www.BlueLaVaMedia.com) — Fri, 10 Jul 2009 12:13:38 -0500

The days of Googling your keywords to measure the effectiveness of your SEO strategy are coming to an end. According to Bruce Clay of PubCon, there are big changes in ranking. In the name of Top Shelp Organic SEO, Google is tuning into the specific behaviors of individual users to serve up more customized results.

What this means to the end-user is better results and less spam.

What does this mean to SEO professionals?

Well, for the good ones it means more business. For those that have been concentrating on ranking without any reference to traffic, bounce rates and conversions it means a serious reality check.

At the end of the day, this is a change for the better. More individualized search results means higher conversion rates for companies that have a well built website. This does not mean that SEO is no longer important; it actually makes it more important! Tracking your marketing efforts will definitely require more diligence.

Q: What should you do?

A: Nothing that you should not have already been doing.

The most important part of a website is the ends result; attracting more leads and increasing business. To get there you have to attract website visitors, keep them interested in your website long enough to stay past the first page and finally get them to convert. By convert, I mean to get them to perform a specific action like sign up for a newsletter or request additional information. Conversions vary by website. A conversion for you may be a request for information about one of your listings while a conversion for amazon.com could be the sale of a bestselling novel.

I, for one, think this is a great lead by Google. It forces website owners and SEO professionals to take a closer look of what traffic is actually DOING when it gets to your website. It puts the emphasis on website content, navigation and functionality.

Sending people to your website and getting XXXXX visitors is one thing, conversion rates are a completely different (and more important) aspect. I mean, you can send all the traffic (paid or otherwise) in the world to a dilapidated home, but if they never get out of the car and go inside... it's not going to sell.

It's time to get your website to do what it's supposed to: SELL!

Go Google!

RTV Marketing
http://www.realtourvision.com/image

RTV offers full service national virtual tours

866-947-8687 Order a virtual tour today!

_____________________________________________________________

My comment...so you don't have to dig for it. ;)

Wow gang, so many comments and so little time to address all of them here. First off, I would like to say that this is a blog that my marketing department for http://www.realtourvision.com released at the end of last year. If you watch Bruce’s entire video he states that we will see these changes begin to take hold in the first six months of 2009 so this was a perfect time to push this out there again. This is indeed old news but it is happening right now I can assure you that. For the last ten years I have been actively working side by side with my SEO team to make sure both RTV and our national network of virtual tour photographers websites rank well.

To see this change firsthand, you can run a test on your own. It is quite simple to perform. For the next week google your business or real estate website using what I call you “Geo Key-Words” such as ‘Traverse City Real Estate’ or ‘Traverse City Virtual Tours’. If you continually run this search, and click on your site (not necessarily on the PPC ads you might be running) you will see that your results begin to change after a few days or so.

Your site will begin rising to the top of the SERPS. Is your site ranking better? The answer is yes and no. Yes, your site will be ranking better on YOUR computer and yours alone. You will quickly see that a clearing of your private data, cookies and temp files instantly returns your search to your actual google positioning. I try to clear out my temp files at least every day so I can run clean searches and view actual results. You should make habit of doing this too if you take an interest in your sites true google positioning.

At the end of the day, the people who don’t clear out their private data often, will certainly have unnatural search results. What can you do? Do what you have been doing all along and run a light PPC ad campaign, build strong back links to your site (this brings the spiders and the google juice), make sure that the architecture of your site is laid out properly, optimize EACH page of your site for a new keyword, and drive traffic and people to your site by blogging. Finally you should run tools on your site for fine tuning such as http://www.websitegrader.com.

Blog often on sites that give back link power. Active rain no loger does this unless you purchase a rain maker account. Take advantage of using social bookmarking sites. Big site linking to smaller site is good. Install the google toolbar if you don't already have it.

Google juice is now split by both traffic and spiders so you want BOTH coming to your site. The key with traffic is to get them to stay on your site and that is where the term bounce rate comes in. Your bounce rate increases when people come to your site and are not satisfied by their search results so the simply hit the back button. That is a bounce.

If you’re not already running google analytics on your site DO THIS NOW! This will show you your bounce rate and you can start working on it from there. The lower the number the better. My local RTV dealership for the Traverse City Market has a 50% bounce rate which I am pretty happy with. It does not sound good that 50% of my visitors are leaving but a lot of that comes from the thousands of back links that I have established out there. See what your bounce rate is and try to lower it by using some of Bruce’s subtle suggestions.

For example, at http://www.bluelavamedia.com we push nearly all of our virtual tour listings onto craigslist. I also include a small ad on this craigslist posting that goes to a special page on my site. This page educates the home shopper on the value of using online property marketing tools that work such as interactive virtual tours, single property websites, top notch photography and so on. You can’t get to this page unless you come in directly from one of these craigslist ads that I have posted. Here is a link to one of my pages off of craigslist:

http://www.bluelavamedia.com/traverse-virtual-tours.html

You can see that I have video on this page. I use the video to keep people on the page longer and get them to dive into my site more thus reducing bounce rate. Make sense? Finally, YES, content is still king but also you must make sure that the content is relevant to your website. Do you need to have videos all over your site? I don’t think, so but it does not hurt to have a few here and there. Video testimonials are great and so are power point presentations. You can turn all of your power points into video very easily using Tech Smith’s software found here: http://www.camtasia.com

Finally, at RTV we offer free photography, blogging, social networking, and social bookmarking training courses for both real estate professionals and full service virtual tour providers who use our virtual tour system. Check it out and we would love to talk to you more about your property marketing program. Thanks everyone!

Jason LaVanture

Vice President / Founder

RTV, INC

http://www.realtourvision.com

Getting Indexed properly by Google

Jason LaVanture (www.BlueLaVaMedia.com) — Fri, 10 Jul 2009 12:12:30 -0500

No matter what type of information your website presents, it is important to get your website properly indexed by Google. While there are many other search engines on the web, Google holds the lead for searches at 71.86% as of October 2008 (Source: Hitwise).

To get properly indexed, you have to take into consideration two main methods used by Google to index the internet; crawling and indexing.

The Googlebot is a robot used by Google to crawl the internet and find new and updated pages to index. There are two crawler versions used by Google; the Freshbot and the Deepbot. The Freshbot only looks for fresh content, while the Deepbot uses links within your site to index more pages and content.

When the Freshbot or Deepbot finds a new page or updated content on a page, it will then pass that information to the indexer which sorts through the content for indexing by Google. The Google indexer then analyzes the pages, sifts through the content and uses relevant keywords within the page content to index the page in Google's massive database.

So how do you get your pages ready for proper indexing by Google? Create good relevant content with...

Marketing Tips for Twitter

Jason LaVanture (www.BlueLaVaMedia.com) — Fri, 10 Jul 2009 12:11:22 -0500

If you have been looking for a way to quickly fill your social network with like-minded individuals, look no further than twitter. With small 140 character updates, you can grow your social network like never before possible.

Here are some neat applications and websites to help you get started using twitter to its full potential.

Using tools such as www.twellow.com you can search for people with similar interests and start following them. While you are there, be sure to setup your twellow account and add links to your other social networks.

If you don't want to use your cell phone to send and receive tweets, you can use a desktop application such as twhirl or tweetdeck.

You can use an application like www.friendorfollow.com to make sure that you are following those that are following you and see who is not following you back.

Using www.tweetlater.com you can automate your twitter account to auto-follow new followers and send a follow-up DM (direct message) to thank them for following you. If you are careful (DON'T use follow-ups for self-promotion or even worse to try to sell anything) you can use follow-ups to invite others to connect to you on other social networks.

As a twitter beginner, you may have many questions. Here are a few articles to help you get started in the right direction.

In the article 10 Easy Steps for Twitter Beginners Darren Rowse offers a simple and informative answer to the question, "What do I do with twitter?"

In 35 Twitter Tips form 35 Twitter Users, you can find a collection of advice to get you started.

In Twitter Tips for new users, Paul Walsh lays out some candid advice for getting started.

RTV Marketing

http://www.realtourvision.com/image

Order a virtual tour today! 866-947-8687

Virtual Tour Blog

What the heck is Anchor Text?

Jason LaVanture (www.BlueLaVaMedia.com) — Fri, 10 Jul 2009 12:09:53 -0500

Rently, one of our RTV virtual tour providers sent me an email asking me how to use anchor text in their AR profile and blog.

So what is up with anchor text? Why is it so important?

Anchor text tells robots and search engines what the web page you are linking to is about. It also helps with what is called relevancy. Relevancy, as far as SEO is concerned, is basically a measure of how related content on one web page is to another web page. And it is important. So without getting too complicated, if you have a real estate blog linking to your real estate website, you want to use anchor text to tell search engines to go to your site while at the same time telling them a little about the content of the site. That is how you get indexed properly in Google.

Anchor text is sort of like a little directional road sign on the internet. “Virtual Tours in XYZ city over here” or “Real estate in ABC County over there”.

There are a few more factors involved, like making sure that you are using the anchor text as web page keywords, in the description and in the content of the webpage to which you are linking. That is all part of optimizing your site for search engines. But, I won’t get into that here. RTV Inner-Circle members can check out our SEO guide for more information.

RTV Marketing

http://www.realtourvision.com

RTV offers full service virtual tours world wide

Traverse City Home Tour Exposure | BlueLaVaMedia

Jason LaVanture (www.BlueLaVaMedia.com) — Tue, 28 Apr 2009 18:49:30 -0500

Our new 2009 Exposure Engine is now including our E-Flyer and Smart Phone Tour. The E-Flyer is an HTML email-ready flyer that our customers can easily send out to prospects anytime they wish. You can preview a sample E-Flyer Traverse City Real Estate Flyer. The new Smart Phone tour allows real estate agents and local business owners to carry with them at all times their virtual tour on their cell phones for an on-demand preview. See our new Smart Phone tour TC Cell Phone Tours.

Our virtual tour and listing exposure is so far ahead of our competition that you will be amazed at the traffic you're getting when your weekly hit reports come in. We even send hot leads your way as your listings generate questions and comments from interested parties!! The Exposure Engine allows real estate agents and local business owners to do what they do best and that is list homes, sell homes, and conduct everyday business while not getting their hands dirty with the online promotion of their listings and products. That's where we come in.

BlueLaVaMedia

Traverse City Home Tours

Order a Virtual Tour - 231-946-1360

8 Tips for Basic Do-It-Yourself SEO

Jason LaVanture (www.BlueLaVaMedia.com) — Wed, 22 Apr 2009 09:32:00 -0500

Via Cheryl Waller National Marketing Manager (RTV, Inc.):

•1.       Meta Title
Create your title using keywords and your farming area. Do NOT use ‘Home Page', ‘Index Page', or just your name in the title of your webpage. Use different titles on different pages to increase your exposure in the search engines for different search phrases. Keep this UNDER 70 characters in length.

•2.       Meta Keywords
Use your key words in your web page title, in the description and throughout the content of the page. Do NOT use the same keywords for every single page on your site. Target each page to different keywords to maximize internet exposure. Keep your keywords UNDER 10 per page to better target your message.

•3.       Meta Description
Use your description to tell humans and robots what your webpage is about. Search engines normally use your Meta description under the title of your site in search engine results. Like keywords and titles, your description should be different for each page on your website. Limit your description to 150 characters or less.

•4.       Content
Your content should closely describe the title, keywords and description. Stay on topic and don't overuse your keywords. Search engines now use what is called semantic indexing, so you do not have to repeat yourself over and over to get indexed properly for your intended topic.

•5.       Anchor text linking
Whether you are linking to internal pages on your site or pages outside of your site, be sure to use anchor text to let search engines know what the linked page is about.

•6.       Internal Linking
Make sure that you are opening internal links in the same browser using anchor text. Opening a new window for every page on your website just annoys viewers and detracts from a professional image on your website. Also, limit your use of images as links and try to use anchor text navigation as much as possible on your site.

•7.       Website Organization
Organize your website into specific topics and dedicate one page per topic. Don't try to explain several topics on one page. Your home page should describe a little about you and your business and act as a ‘link portal' to information on other pages of your site. Do not overwhelm viewers with EVERYTHING about you, your business and your website on the home page.

•8.       Website Navigation
Website navigation should be simple and easy on the eyes. If you have a lot of pages on your website then group them into categories and provide one heading for every 4-5 page links in your left navigation. This helps viewers quickly understand the content available on your site. If you list too many links in one list, viewer's eyes will strain, people will feel overwhelmed and you will lose visitors.

Also check out: How to Create an AWESOME Email Signature

-Cheryl

Cheryl Waller
National Marketing Manager
RTV, Inc.
(866) 947-8687
http://www.realtourvision.com

PS - if you like the tips... sign up for our RTV eNews or connect to me on your favorite social network. My username is cherylwaller (all one word) on all of my networks.

TAAR Home Buyers and Sellers EXPO

Jason LaVanture (www.BlueLaVaMedia.com) — Sun, 05 Apr 2009 19:13:04 -0500

Over the last two years, Jason and I have attended the Home Buyers and Sellers “How To” Expo sponsored by the Traverse Area Association of REALTORS. The event has provided us each year with an excellent opportunity to showcase our powerful property marketing tools and interactive 360 virtual tours to the many visitors in attendance.

The shows work very well for us in two truly unique ways that no other shows in the past have been able to offer. Because the general public attends the show we are able to get our message out to them as well as to other members of the real estate community. For us, this is truly a win-win event. Each year has resulted in a direct increase in business in our customer base and of course has generated business for us.

Thanks to the wonderful staff at TAAR everything runs perfectly for us each year. The layout is great, the catered lunch is delicious and who can complain about having that wonderful view right on the bay. Most importantly we always seem to have a great time at the show and this year we even took a bit of time at the end of the show to do a virtual tour of the event which can be seen here:
http://rtvpix.com/BU-3308-R5TLM7-01

Thank you to all of you who work so hard to provide us with this super event.

PS. If you would like to attend our FREE TAAR social networking online webinar please click below:

http://www.bluelavamedia.com/socialignition

Jason LaVanture and Jim Blue
BlueLaVaMedia
Traverse Area Virtual Tours
www.BlueLaVaMedia.com
Toll Free: 877-941-TOUR (8687)
Your Property Marketing Experts!

Cell Phone Tours | E-Flyer | Local Virtual Tour Portal Submission

Jason LaVanture (www.BlueLaVaMedia.com) — Sun, 29 Mar 2009 17:25:53 -0500

BlueLaVaMedia is proud to announce our new 2009 Exposure Engine. The new 2009 Exposure Engine now only $20.00 ($5.00 more than our 2008 product) comes fully loaded with our all new Smart Phone virtual tour an E-Flyer (email ready listing flyer), and blog distribution to www.TourGrandTraverse.com. First off, let’s talk about the Exposure Engine in itself.

The Exposure Engine by BlueLaVaMedia allows real estate agents and local business owners to do what they do best and that is list homes, sell homes, and conduct everyday business while not getting their hands dirty with the online promotion of their listings and products. That is where we come in. The sheer purpose of the Exposure Engine is to generate more traffic to the online virtual tour which, simply put, is an extension of the agents or business owners existing website in the form of a virtual tour.

Virtual tours in nature are quite viral. In fact, I personally know of very few virtual tours where the number of tour hits from email don’t over shadow the number of hits from other sites like Realtor.com, the local MLS and others. Simply put; virtual tours, once opened, are aggressively sent from person to person via email and the Internet.

Over the course of our first year in business the BlueLaVaMedia Exposure Engine was our #2 highest sold product next to our interactive 360 virtual tours. In fact with over 200 virtual tours completed in our first year of business we sold 130 Exposure Engines. It only makes sense then that we would reinvest our time and energy into making our existing Exposure Engine more robust. Our Exposure Engine keeps the virtual tour listing refreshed on Craigslist, pushes the virtual tour to YouTube, and also pushes to popular sites such as Google, Trulia, Zillow as well as to many others.

Aside from its ability to mass syndicate a 360 virtual tour, the Exposure Engine also builds many back links to the virtual tour. In the end, this means that our virtual tours start building natural rank on Realtor® name, and listing address. That’s right…when you google any of our customer names or the addresses of their listings you are more than likely to see their virtual tours popping up organically in the search engine results pages aka SERPS. Try it if you don't believe me!!!

Let’s discuss briefly the updates made to our new 2009 Exposure Engine. First off, we are now including an E-Flyer with the purchase of our Exposure Engine. The E-Flyer is an HTML email-ready flyer that our customers can easily send out to prospects anytime they wish. You can preview a sample BlueLaVaMedia E-Flyer HERE.

Secondly, and by popular demand, we are also creating a SMART PHONE virtual tour that is sent to every customer upon completion. The new Smart Phone tour allows real estate agents and local business owners to carry with them at all times their virtual tour on their cell phones for on demand preview. See our new Smart Phone tour HERE.

Finally, we are very proud to introduce our all new local Northern Michigan real estate and virtual tour portal, www.TourGrandTraverse.com. Every new virtual tour completed by BlueLaVaMedia gets published to our Blog which allows home shoppers and internet visitors to preview our entire virtual tour inventory. Visitors and local real estate agents alike can also take advantage of our new virtual tour feed which will automatically email out any new virtual tour postings daily.To subscribe to our virtual tour feed click HERE.

Jim and I are very pleased with your ongoing support and will continue to enhance our property marketing offerings. Are you photographing your own virtual tours? Are you using another virtual tour service that is not adapting to the power of web 2.0 and social networking? Are able to tell your customers that you are sending in a professional virtual tour photographer to showcase their home online? If not, perhaps it is time that you give the BlueLaVaMedia team a try! Sell Smarter...Sell Faster with team BlueLaVa!

Team BlueLaVa
Traverse City Virtual Tours
www.BlueLaVaMedia.com
Order Property Marketing Services Today! 877-941-8687

FREE TAAR Social Networking Training Event

Jason LaVanture (www.BlueLaVaMedia.com) — Tue, 24 Mar 2009 22:54:54 -0500

Over the last year while Jim has been in and out of several hundred homes here in Northern Michigan, I have been busy working on something truly unique, that is so powerful, and yet incredibly easy to learn. In fact, every time I show someone they always wonder why they have not been doing it all along.

I must admit that I used to plug my ears anytime someone mentioned Digg, Delicious, Furl, Technorati, Backflip, or Twitter to me. But that was before I realized the sheer potential for literally ANYONE...in ANY business...anywhere in the World to maximize their online exposure. So yes, this does mean YOU!

Like you I used to hear these new buzz phrases and ignore them. I used to see little symbols popping up all over the web and, yes, I simply looked the other way. Do you remember when email was the same way? Back when you could still run your business without a website? Times are quickly changing and once again real estate agents must do the same.

Don't worry because once you learn a few of the basics this will be just as easy for you to do as it is to send an email. I promise! If you are a member of TAAR and would like to find out how you can start to leverage the power of social networking and bookmarking I highly encourage you to attend the BlueLaVaMedia Social Ignition Webinar next month.

The webinar is absolutely FREE to all TAAR members. Yes I said FREE. The only thing that my program will require of you is a bit of your time and willingness to make some small changes in the way you conduct business online.

Are you ready for Social Ignition? Stop by our website www.BlueLaVaMedia.com/socialignition and sign up for this event! ONLY 100 SEATS AVAILABLE!!!

Once you're pre-registered just keep an eye out for our next BlueLaVaMedia newsletter which will contain our activation link and webinar schedule.

See you at at the show!!

BlueLaVaMedia
Traverse City Virtual Tours
www.BlueLaVaMedia.com
Take your business to the next level today: 877-941-TOUR (8687)

Traverse Virtual Tour News

Jason LaVanture (www.BlueLaVaMedia.com) — Sat, 31 Jan 2009 16:35:44 -0600

We are very pleased to announce many new features on our virtual home tours here in TC. You can read all about BlueLaVaMedia in the our latest Traverse City virtual tour newsletter for January 2009.

We now import your Traverse virtual tours directly into the most popular social bookmarking sites which helps promote further syndication of your listings online. You will also be very pleased to know that our new virtual tour links (SpiderLinks(tm)) are search engine friendly and get indexed by all search engine spiders!

As a final note please keep your eye out for our new Social Networking Workshop that will be open to all TAAR members. This will be a free service provided by Jason LaVanture of BlueLaVaMedia. Take some time to read more about these new features and upcoming events in our newsletter found here: Traverse Virtual Tour News.

Enjoy the weekend!!!

Team BlueLaVa
Http://www.BlueLaVaMedia.com

It's the Camera I Swear!!!

Jason LaVanture (www.BlueLaVaMedia.com) — Thu, 29 Jan 2009 19:39:24 -0600

Here is some information for all you Canon SLR users out there. I have been shooting interactive virtual tours here at BlueLaVaMedia for a little over a year now using a Canon 20D camera with a 17-85mm 4.5-5.6 EFS IS Canon lens. I also use a Canon 550 flash on a bracket attached to the RTV Rotator and use the flash for all my images.

This allows me to easily balance the exposure in the rooms with the ambient light through the window, as many of the homes here in Northern Michigan have great views. We are now approaching our one year anniversary here at BlueLaVaMedia and I have created well over 200 Traverse City virtual tours. We are continually expanding our client base and so far everyone that we work with has been extremely satisfied with the quality of our virtual tours. Exposure is good, white balance is not a problem, the tours are very sharp and RTV continually adds more and more features to the system giving Jason and I something new to talk about nearly every month.

Overall in my humble opinion the tours look just great! As we all know in our industry virtual tour quality is extremely important. Many online shoppers will form their first impression of a property, the seller, business owner or a listing agent from the tour. At least that is what my friends all tell me when I tell them what I do now.

Anyway, all was well and good in my world except…when I photographed a property that had very white or light colored walls. In this type of home I would definitely have a problem with a dark vertical banding where the images were stitched together. It was time to do some trouble shooting. It was not an exposure inconsistency issue as my overall exposures were dead on. I then decided that since I was using flash that it must be related to that.

I tried two different types of flash diffusers as well as bounced the flash off the ceiling where applicable. My flash also has a built in wide angle panel that spreads the light wider then my lens. Nothing was working and I was getting frustrated as I still had light fall off at the image corners. I then tried some spins without flash and still experienced the problem. I tried closing the lens down more, to the “sweet spot” and still light fall off! Ok so what next??

I tried a newer 580 flash (I have a good relationship with my local dealer so I was lucky enough to borrow it.) I also have a Canon 30D and I tried that, still the problem persisted. At this point I figured it had to be the lens, so I tried an inexpensive Sigma 18-55 lens. (Borrowed that too) and it seemed to help the problem. It was however still noticeable. What’s a photographer to do????

Well not to long ago I was reading my favorite monthly publication Outdoor Photography and looked over the initial test report on the new Canon 50D. What to my wandering eyes should appear than the addition of a lens peripheral illumination setting to correct light fall off at image edges. All of that testing for not. It was a problem that Cannon has had all along and they have now presumably fixed it.

I haven’t had a chance to borrow one of those yet though. (Don’t know if my Canon dealer likes me THAT much) I still love my Canon system and have quite a few other lenses so I am not about to change. I still use the Sigma because the problem seems a little less pronounced with that lens (I have no idea why) and I have become pretty darn proficient and fast at using Photoshop’s dodging tool to blend the issue when necessary.

In the meantime I am saving my pennies for that 50D or maybe even the (by then) 60D camera. Well in closing I hope some of you Canon users will find all this helpful and save some time by realizing it’s just the nature of the beast or should I say, the Canon sensor!

Good luck out there!

Jim Blue BlueLaVaMedia
TC Virtual Tours
www.BlueLaVaMedia.com
Order a virtual tour today! 877-941-TOUR (8687)

New Social Bookmarking of Virtual Tours

Jason LaVanture (www.BlueLaVaMedia.com) — Fri, 02 Jan 2009 11:08:54 -0600

BlueLaVaMedia, producer of Traverse City Virtual Tours is very pleased to announce the release of our brand new Social Networking Utility that is now integrated right into our virtual tour window!

This newest addition to our already robust virtual tour will allow anyone to quickly add their favorite virtual tours to popular social bookmarking sites such as FaceBook, MySpace, Digg, LinkedIn, Twitter, Delicious, FriendFeed, Furl, Backflip, Reddit, StumbleUpon, Technorati, Mixx, and Bebo. As many already know BlueLaVaMedia currently has a well established distribution tool called our Exposure Engine which sends real estate virtual tours to 98 real estate portal sites and now also converts virtual tours to a video format for enhanced video distribution.

See more samples of Traverse City Real Estate Videos

We are very excited to have this unique social bookmarking distribution tool in place and accompanying our already extreme virtual tour exposure. Typically tours sent through our Exposure Engine receive thirty to fifty percent more traffic than those not sent. This new tool is sure to elevate that number since literally anyone on the web can instantly share our tours across social networking sites. We know that now more than ever, real estate agents and business owners alike need powerful marketing tools like this to remain competitive.

This latest enhancement gives our customers a competitive edge and the kind of visibility they need in this aggressive market. Furthermore, we are planning on holding FREE extended education classes for any of our customers that would like to learn more about getting the most out of their online virtual tours via a webinar / phone session sometime soon in 2009. The webinar will teach local real estate agents the importance of social networking and some of BlueLaVa's secret SEO tips that will place them ahead of their competitors in the rankings on google and other major search engines.

Read more about Social Bookmarking BlueLaVaMedia Virtual Tours Below:

Social Bookmarking Virtual Tours

Happy New Year Everyone!!

Jason LaVanture
Traverse Virtual Tours
www.BlueLaVaMedia.com
Order a virtual tour today! 877-941-TOUR (8687)

Virtual Tour Blog

Traverse City Real Estate Videos

Jason LaVanture (www.BlueLaVaMedia.com) — Sat, 29 Nov 2008 15:25:59 -0600

BlueLaVaMedia.com is very pleased to announce our brand new video virtual tour made specifically for syndication to popular websites such as YouTube, Facebook, Google video, AOL Video, MySpace, social networking sites and more!

These new features are now included with the purchase of any BlueLaVaMedia Exposure Engine. Pushing real estate listings and local business virtual tours to these heavily populated sites not only brings more traffic back to our interactive 360 virtual tours but it also help local real estate agents come up more in the search engines as well as rank better naturally. The longer our videos stay online the more they begin to rise to the top of the search engines thus making it easier and easier for people to locate the real estate agent or local business they are searching for.

The traffic generated from our Exposure Engine is simply amazing to say the least! All customers of BlueLaVaMedia who have purchased an interactive 360 virtual tour from us with an Exposure Engine as an add on will soon find their new video virtual tour on our YouTube channel located here:

Traverse City Real Estate

From our YouTube channel our customer can not only view their video tours but they are also able to instantly add them directly to their own MySpace, Facebook, Mixx and Stumbleupon accounts for further syndication. The possibilities are limitless! Listings inventory is at an all time high right now. Make sure your doing all that you can so that your listings are reaching the eyes of the limited number of buyers in the market.

Read more in our Traverse City Virtual Tour News and stay tuned for more exciting updates from Team BlueLaVa!

You are able to read more about our Traverse City Real Estate Videos

Happy Thanksgiving everyone.

Jim and Jason
Traverse City Virtual Tours
Order a virtual tour 231-946-1360

Glen Lake Boat Service

Jason LaVanture (www.BlueLaVaMedia.com) — Sat, 08 Nov 2008 00:56:31 -0600

BlueLaVaMedia is proud to annouce our latest virtual tour. Miller Marine a Glen Lake Boat Service has recently hired on the services of BlueLaVaMedia to showcase their dry dock and boat storage facility. Miller Marine has been in operation since May of 2007. Miller Marine is a fully insured dry dock boat repair and storage facility. Andy Miller, owner of Miller Marine, is a fully certified factory technician. Please take a moment to view this virtual tour of thier brand new facility here: Glen Arbor Boat Storage

Enjoy the virtual tour!!

Best

Jason

www.BlueLaVaMedia.com

Glen Arbor Virtual Tours

Traverse City Insurance Documentation Virtual Tour Service

Jason LaVanture (www.BlueLaVaMedia.com) — Mon, 20 Oct 2008 21:27:43 -0500

BlueLaVaMedia proudly announces the Insurance Documentation Virtual Tour Service! Did you know that when making an insurance claim a photo is worth as much as an actual receipt to your insurance company? For the last ten years I have been hearing our virtual tour providers around the world show growing interest with the concept of the “home inventory tour”. To date only a few have actually put a program like this together.

Now we are very pleased to announce that after many meetings with Traverse City insurance companies BlueLaVaMedia has officially launched our Insurance Virtual Tours. You can read more about this exciting new addition to our tour offering by visiting our home inventory virtual tour page found here: Traverse City Insurance Virtual Tours

“As we get closer and closer to the winter here in Northern Michigan it will be more important than ever to diversify as much as possible. Summer was great and filled with a good amount of real estate tours and commercial / business virtual tours. With this new addition to our product offering I plan on staying busy all Winter long especially with the incredible feedback that I have been getting from the insurance companies and adjusters. Basically as long as Jason keep coming up with these new income streams for our product I don’t see things slowing down that much!” said Jim Blue, manager and virtual tour coordinator of BlueLaVaMedia.

Each Home Inventory Tours Includes:
Up to 30 Rooms featured of your choice
Both 360 panoramic and still images
One full year of secure tour hosting
2 Virtual tour CD's for off site storage
Insurance company contact information

BlueLaVaMedia is nearing our 200th virtual tour produced since our launch in May of 2008 and it is our goal to hit just over 300 before our one year anniversary. We plan on launching one more virtual tour type here in the near future so be sure to check back with us often!

PS. Did you happen to check out our virtual tour testimonials?

BlueLaVaMedia
Traverse City Insurance Documentation Service
www.BlueLaVaMedia.com
Order a Home or Business Inventory Tour Today!

The Virtual Tour Sticker

Jason LaVanture (www.BlueLaVaMedia.com) — Tue, 14 Oct 2008 22:25:41 -0500

BlueLaVaMedia producer of Traverse City Virtual Tours is proud to announce our Tour Sticker marketing blast which is the latest addition to our virtual tour marketing program. What is a tour sticker you say? You should ask Susan Hintz a Traverse City real estate agent about the tour sticker.

Back in the day tour stickers were SO popular that Susan would get in trouble if she forgot to leave one behind on the listing sign. In fact, back in early days, Real Tour Vision actually sold virtual tour stickers by the hundreds to virtual tour providers all over the world who then turned around and placed these little vinyl stickers onto the real estate yard signs of every home that received an interactive 360 virtual tour.

What happened to the tour sticker? Well that is a very good questions to ask indeed. First of all RTV stopped selling tour stickers because they were not branding the dealers as much as they were RTV. When RTV stopped selling the stickers new virtual tour providers did not know of their existence. At that time we had no marketing department so the tour sticker simply disappeared from existence altogether only to be remembered by few. While the tour sticker has been lost in RTV past it has certainly not been forgotten and by golly Jim and I are fired up to bring it back!

Here is how the little virtual tour sticker worked back in the day and can still work for you and your virtual tour company today:

First you will want to download the new non branded virtual tour sticker from the RTV site that found here (or make your own):

Real Tour Vision Icons

As a side note there are some pretty nice images on that site that you can use for your virtual tour company like I have done here:

Traverse City Virtual Tour Linking

Next give Bill Modzel (or your favorite screen printer person) a call from Modzel Screen printing and design. Traverse City Screen Printing

Just tell Bill that you would like the same virtual tour sticker printed out that Jason at BlueLaVaMedia had made and he will hook you up with a very sleek vinyl sticker that measures about five inches by five inches. The stickers do cost a bit to produce but you will have the honor of telling your customers that the stickers will not fade in the sun, bake on in the heat or flake off in the bitter winter cold. In fact the stickers easily peel off years after being in place without destroying the real estate listing sign.

Next you will want to announce to ALL of your real estate virtual tour customers that after completing each virtual tour you will be placing an attractive virtual tour sticker onto the listing sign. You will find that some real estate agents will want to place these stickers on themselves while others will be fine with you placing the sticker on yourself. Just use your best judgment and don’t cover up any letters or images!

To date Jim and I have yet to find a single customer that refused the placement of our sticker. Can you guess why this is the case? Of course you can!! It’s because virtual tours are a sense of great pride for home sellers AND the real estate agents who use them. The more tour stickers that start showing up all around your town…the more people start asking about using virtual tours to sell their homes faster. That my friends is secret of the tour sticker. It works great for you AND your customers. Now go get some and happy sticking to you all!

Jason LaVanture
Traverse City Virtual Tours
www.BlueLaVaMedia.com
Order a Virtual Tour! 877-941-8687 (TOUR)

Say no to Fisheye

Jason LaVanture (www.BlueLaVaMedia.com) — Sun, 28 Sep 2008 20:03:09 -0500

Sometimes local real estate agents ask us why we here at BlueLavaMedia use still image photography for our traverse virtual tours. Many real estate professionals haven't done virtual tours in a long time and only remember the old 'fish-eye' technology from years back. Just the thought of virtual tours turn them off on the whole idea of using virtual tours!

I thought it would be great to share why 'fish-eye' is not a preferred way of capturing virtual home tours.

1. You can't use the camera's flash. - This is the biggest reason by far. No flash makes dark halls look like caves and windows are almost always blown out whiteness. Why would you utilize a technology that prohibits your ability to utilize a primary feature of a camera?

2. You can’t print the images. Virtual tour images should be able to be used with print as well as in the 360 virtual tour. That is impossible with fish-eye technology as two images that are taken during the process each represent one hemisphere of the scene and don't print without distortion.

3. You’re locked into full 360’s only. - With fish-eye technology you are required to do a full 360 image. As you know in real estate this is not always desirable. Our 12 shot system gives the photographer the freedom to do partial pans of any size to maximize the attractiveness of the location.

4. Heavy on distortion. - Just before IPIX filed bankruptcy there was a very large group of people that thought all virtual tours were the fish bowl looking tours and did not use them for that reason. Some people still think all virtual tours look like that and it is up to the virtual tour photographer to educate the agent or homeowner on the advantages and benefits of cylindrical technology.

5. Poor white balance and focus. - Because you're taking less images for an entire room when using fish-eye it is very difficult to achieve great shots. As you stand in a living room it is most likely that you will pass by a window with sunlight shining through, pass across some form of other light that is down a hall, and often pass across areas that are darker than the rest. Typically in any given home as you turn around in a complete 360 you are certain to see a minimum of several exposure settings and a couple of white balance settings that you would need camera adjustments in order to achieve a perfect photo. Remember, when using a fish-eye lens you cannot use the cameras on board flash system. Taking only two fisheye shots per scene means you cannot get the proper balance that you need to get a vibrant photo. More often than not this leaves you with things out of focus, improper white balance in areas of the shot and areas of improper exposure throughout the pano.

We want our clients to have the best virtual tour possible. Using a fish-eye lens would not give them that, so we choose to use RTV technology with their 12 photo system.

Team BlueLaVa
www.BlueLaVaMedia.com
Home of the Exposure Engine
Traverse City Virtual Tours
Order a virtual tour- 877-941-TOUR

Property Marketing Firm Releases Agent Listing Packet

Jason LaVanture (www.BlueLaVaMedia.com) — Wed, 03 Sep 2008 18:10:53 -0500

BlueLaVaMedia is very pleased to announce today the release of our Agent Listing Packet. The information packet is an informational piece that can be used by all BlueLaVaMedia real estate customers to help with a more seamless listing presentation.

Our listing information packet can easily customized by our customers then finalized into a PDF file for print or email distribution. The pack reviews the powerful marketing tools that all BlueLaVaMedia customers are currently utilizing and explains their benefits to the prospective home seller looking for an agent to list with.

Our information packet contains information on our powerful marketing tools utilized by the agent including:

High end listing photography
360 Interactive Virtual Tours
Listing syndication and distribution
Single property websites
Weekly hit reporting
Unique listing flyer creation
Virtual tour discs
Floor plans and more!

The information packet also has plenty of room for the real estate agent to customize and include some personal information such and credentials and listing history. BlueLaVaMedia is very pleased to be able to go outside of the realm of simply creating 360 virtual tours here in Traverse City.

Home sellers and agents alike need more education on the powerful marketing tools that we offer and when our real estate agent customers can explain the benefits of these tools to their prospects everyone wins!

See Agent Listing InfoPack Here

We are very excited to announce our professionally voice real estate agent listing presentation very soon so stay tuned and good luck out there!

BlueLaVaMedia
Michigan Virtual Tours
www.BlueLaVaMedia.com
Order a 360 Virtual Tour 231-946-1360

101 Traverse City Virtual Tours

Jason LaVanture (www.BlueLaVaMedia.com) — Mon, 28 Jul 2008 19:34:41 -0500

BlueLaVaMedia, property marketing firm and producer of Traverse City virtual tours is very proud to announce the coming and going of 100 Virtual Tours. As soon as the snow melted at the end of April up here in Traverse City it was as if a gun went off. Jim Blue, manager and virtual tour coordinator of BlueLaVaMedia, literally went from making cold calls and working on practice virtual tours to receiving phone calls and being behind on completing “Real Tours”.

These are certainly great problems to have in such a unique market. In my personal experience of bringing new virtual tour providers on all over the world, I know that a lot of people think that property marketing is falling by the wayside due to the gas and real estate crisis. Fortunately for us virtual tour providers out there it is exactly the opposite. It is now more important than ever to properly market homes via the Internet and give home shoppers the online experience they desire.

Sure there are those who have stopped spending money on marketing but there are STILL and will always be those who want to stretch their dollars out and work smarter. Now approaching August and reaching nearly 50 tours a month we attribute our instant success in this market due to the fact that we have outstanding virtual tour technology, top notch customer service, great looking marketing pieces and of course very competitive pricing for our products.

Here is a compliment that we recently received from one of our customers:

“I do nearly all of my advertising via the Internet. My sellers love the virtual tours, and they love being able to send the link to family and friends or being able to direct them to the single property website. It seems to be a source of pride for them. I’m waiting for my first call from a prospective seller who has noticed the PanoRider Custom Round and wants the same level of service for themselves! My sellers enjoy receiving the website hits too. It’s an easy way for me to “stay in touch” when there maybe hasn’t been as much activity on their homes. It helps them stay loyal and confident in the market. I appreciate your level of customer service and the quality product you produce.” Andrea Galloup - Traverse City Real Estate

It’s great compliments like this from forward thinking real estate agents that help us over here at BlueLaVaMedia realize we are making a difference in the way people buy and sell their homes. A big thank you to our wives and girlfriends who allow Jim and I to continue to be workaholics, to the Real Tour Vision development staff for giving us an amazing product to sell, to the marketing staff for making us look our best in the field, and to the dispatch and support team for keeping us going out there. Good luck everyone and we will see you all at the big 500!

Best,

Team BlueLaVa
BlueLaVaMedia
Home of the Exposure Engine
Traverse City Virtual Tours
Order a virtual tour- 877-941-TOUR

TC Virtual Tour Company Expands

Jason LaVanture (www.BlueLaVaMedia.com) — Sun, 13 Jul 2008 15:13:23 -0500

Team BlueLaVa is proud to announce an addition to the BlueLaVaMedia Team. Bruce D, age 32 will be taking on the role of regional sales manager and will be responsible for additional BlueLaVa Tours in the Northern Michigan market. Bruce will be filling in an existing gap at BlueLaVaMedia and will be making use of the RTV Inner-Circle marketing pieces that are being created to market directly to businesses such as hotels, golf courses, campgrounds, B&B’s, restaurants and so forth.

With BlueLaVa’s Traverse City real estate virtual tour load reaching nearly forty tours a month and growing, having a full time dedicated person out there selling business tours will be a wonderful asset to the company. Bruce comes to BlueLaVaMedia as a well seasoned B2B sales representative and has well established relationships the real estate, health care, hospitality and lodging industries. Bruce has been a professional sales rep now for more than ten years and is very excited to help businesses throughout Northern Michigan display their properties online by way of an interactive 360 virtual tour.

Team BlueLaVa
BlueLaVaMedia
Northern Michigan Virtual Tours
www.BlueLaVaMedia.com
Order an Interactive Virtual Tour Today! 877-941-8687