I recently attended a training held by Connecting Neighbors, a fantastic marketing program designed to position you as the Neighborhood Expert.

As you may know, only 7% of a neighborhood turns over in any given year. A Connecting Neighbors Website focuses on community involvement and is designed to appeal to the other 93% percent of homeowners not currently involved in a real estate transaction. Your Website becomes a hub of activity with subtle but consistent branding. Then, when the homeowner is ready to buy or sell, you--as the Neighborhood Expert--are the person that automatically comes to mind.

Connecting Neighbors Websites can have over 20 pages of content, including the following very popular pages:

- Free Classified Ads (statistically their most visited page);
- Community Calendar; and
- Local Merchants (this page allows for paid advertising, a great opportunity for you to have an additional income stream).

Members of your community can post items to the Website after submissions go through the approval process. Connecting Neighbors has staff that read every single submission to the Website. Approvals usually take around 24 hours.

In addition to the Website, the Connecting Neighbors program includes a monthly e-newsletter with content that is very appealing to your subscribers. Their statistics show it has a less than a 1% unsubscribe rate - amazing!

When you sign up with Connecting Neighbors, you are matched with a Neighborhood Marketing Coach. They will assist you with getting the word out to neighborhood residents about your site and helping it to become the online place to be in your community.

All in all, I was very impressed with the program and feel it would be a great tool in a real estate pro's marketing arsenal.

Date: Monday, May 5, 2008
Time: 2-3 p.m., EST

Increase your marketability and gain more real estate agent clients by becoming a Connecting Neighbors trained Virtual Assistant!

Connecting Neighbors is the country's leading provider of online neighborhood marketing programs for real estate professionals, with more than 14,000 neighborhoods nationwide. The Connecting Neighbors Program provides real estate professionals an exclusive opportunity to brand themselves as the Neighborhood Expert of their communities 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, all while building the relationships crucial to their business.

The Connecting Neighbors Program includes:

-A Neighborhood Website, full of valuable content including community news, free classified ads, pictures and more.
-A Neighborhood Newsletter, featuring neighborhood-specific information, emailed to residents each month.
-A personal Neighborhood Marketing Coach assigned to help announce and promote the program to neighborhood residents.
-Quickshow multimedia presentations to engage and welcome residents to their Neighborhood Website.
-MLS data integration (where available) to constantly provide up-to-date real estate information.
-Relationship Manager feature for Members to manage all of their communications with prospects!

Through this one-hour training, you will get a detailed overview of the program and learn how to update, market and manage the Connecting Neighbors Neighborhood Websites. Take advantage of this opportunity to learn about this industry-leading program, and become even more valuable to those agents you serve!

You must pre-register at http://www.revaprofessionals.com/ for this FREE training session. Call-in details will be provided to registrants. You must have access to the Internet to view the demo site we will be asked to view while on the call.

A "certified" logo will be provided to attendees for placement on your websites.

Sixty-nine percent of what, you ask?

According to the National Association of REALTORS® 2007 REALTOR®Technology Survey, 69% of REALTORS® would like to use a transaction management system, but haven't made the move to do so.

What are some reasons to use a transaction management system (TMS)?

A TMS allows you 24/7 access to transaction files using any web-enabled computer, allowing you more time away from the office.

A TMS allows for accountability and an audit trail. You can invite users for certain parts of the transaction, and block others. Changes are tracked by user so there is no question as to who changed what and when.

A TMS allows for automatic reminders on critical events that take place during a transaction (inspections, appraisals, etc.), making sure nothing falls through the cracks.

A TMS allows you the option of archiving the entire transaction to a cd after closing (and makes a great closing gift).

A TMS allows you to have an edge up on the competition.

There are trained transaction coordinators ready and willing to handle your transaction management system for you.  They can help you decide which particular transaction management system would be suitable for your needs and take care of managing the process and interacting with the dozen or so parties to a typical real estate transaction.

According to a study by Clareity Consulting, the average agent spends 19 hours of their time processing a transaction on their own. Using salary figures provided by NAR®, this equates to $575.51 per transaction for an agent handling it on their own. The average cost of transaction management using a transaction coordinator is much, much less. Even when you add in the cost of the online transaction management program, you will come out way ahead, and with far few headaches!

So what are you waiting for - take yourself out of the 69% and put yourself in the 81% -- the percentage of respondents who, according to the NAR® survey, are satisfied or very satisfied with their transaction management system.