vFlyer Active Rain Blog

vFlyer Marketing 5.0: New Mobile Flyer Format, Mailing Lists, and More

vFlyer Blog (vFlyer Inc.) — Fri, 22 Feb 2013 08:54:09 -0800

Today, we’re excited to unveil vFlyer Marketing 5.0, the latest version of our award-winning marketing service. We made a conscious decision to focus on expanding our listing marketing features and capabilities in 2013 and this release is the first step in that effort. With it, vFlyer users can more effectively promote their listings across multiple channels, including their own websites. Here’s the lowdown on what’s included in the new version:

1. New Mobile Format and Branding Capabilities
We’ve long offered mobile landing pages for all flyers, but we’re psyched to introduce a new and improved mobile format that’s better optimized for today’s smartphones. The new format displays a toolbar at the top and bottom with buttons to call or email the listing agent or share the listing via social media. The photos from the flyer are shown below that; viewers can flip through them simply by swiping their finger. And all the text from the flyer is displayed on the main listing page, rather than on separate pages as before.

Even better, vFlyer users can now create their own custom mobile themes in the Theme Editor, and business subscribers can upload a branded mobile header image to display on their mobile listings. As more and more consumers access the Web primarily through their phones, having well-branded mobile content becomes essential.

2. Mailing List Support
By popular demand, we now support the creation and storage of mailing lists. Business subscribers can add a group of email addresses to their account and email their flyers to that list with a single click. Visit our help center for instructions on creating a mailing list.

3. Better Listing Integration and Slideshow Display in vFlyer Sites
vFlyer Sites users now have multiple ways to display their listings on their website: in a gallery format, a slideshow, a mini-listings module, and a comprehensive search module among others. Having this array of listing integration options means that you can make your listings the focus of your website rather than an afterthought. With this release, we’ve also improved the layout of images and the loading of photo slideshows on listing detail pages.

4. Facebook Registration and Login
We now support Facebook Connect, enabling people to register for vFlyer and log in to their accounts through Facebook. This not only makes it easier to sign up, it also makes sharing listings on Facebook easier, since you’re logged into Facebook already when you log in to your vFlyer account.

Together with the addition of new syndication partners Trovit, PennySaverUSA, Lovely, and REALTOR.com, the features we introduced in this release will help vFlyer users market their listings more widely and effectively than ever before. And we’re not finished–look for more listing marketing features and capabilities in the coming months.

Thanks to all of our users for your questions, comments, and feature requests. Your feedback helps us continue to improve vFlyer, so keep it coming!

Building a Website Just Got Three Steps Easier

vFlyer Blog (vFlyer Inc.) — Fri, 07 Dec 2012 08:38:32 -0800

Sometimes “fast and easy” just isn’t fast and easy enough. That’s the conclusion we reached about the Site Wizard, which guides vFlyer Sites users through the process of creating a website. Whereas before it comprised four steps (five, if you include the final review of the information entered and the theme selected), the Site Wizard (shown below) is now a whopping one–yes, ONE–step. When you create a site now, you simply enter your site name, choose your business category, choose a theme, and BAM! You’ve built your website in under a minute.

Just as before, you can easily change the site name or choose a different theme after you’ve created the site. You can also swap out the stock images associated with your theme with your own pictures, or choose a different photo from our stock image library.

We hope the svelte new Site Wizard makes it easier for you to create a website. Of course, if you have questions, you can always check our help center or contact our support team by email, phone, or live chat.

vFlyer Sites 2.0 is here. Faster, more powerful, and free.

vFlyer Blog (vFlyer Inc.) — Thu, 02 Aug 2012 14:26:39 -0700

After months of design and development (and many gallons of coffee), I'm pleased to announce the launch of vFlyer Sites 2.0, the first major upgrade to the website service we launched one year ago. With Sites 2.0, we completely rebuilt the service from the ground up. We redesigned the user interface, making it more efficient and intuitive; added new core functionality, including an undo/redo feature and advanced page templates; streamlined processes to improve load time and reduce latency; and notably, we introduced a free plan, Sites Personal, that allows users to publish a free website.

The new design includes an editing toolbar that's displayed when you mouse over a module, with easy access icons for editing, adding, and removing content. There's also a new toolbar for adding a page, changing page settings, and editing the site theme. In addition to the undo/redo button I mentioned above, we also now allow users to add unique content to a page rather than using the content from the page template; this gives you all the benefits of page templates (uniformity, ease of making changes across the site) with added flexibility.

As for the new free plan, it will allow users to publish a site with up to 10 pages and a personalized vsites.com URL. We're still offering our premium Sites subscription plans, which allow for more pages, more storage, and the use of a custom domain name. Sites subscriptions start at just $7/month when bundled with a vFlyer Marketing subscription.

vFlyer Sites 2.0 is a major step toward our goal of helping more people build and manage their own websites. In talking with vFlyer users over the years, I found that a surprising number of them a) didn't know how to update their websites and thus relied on a webmaster to do that, b) built their own site using a website builder but still didn't know how to update it or just didn't like it enough to put time into updating it, or c) simply didn't have a website. In many cases, their vFlyer listings were the only online content that they themselves kept current.

The fact is, most website builders out there focus solely on the creation of the site and neglect the ongoing management of it. Making updates to the site is often difficult and confusing, and in many cases, the changes you make are immediately pushed to the live site; rather than being a convenience, this makes it impossible to experiment and try different things on the site without the world seeing it. Our focus with vFlyer Sites is the full life cycle of the website. This means fast, easy site creation, but also simple, point-and-click procedures for adding and editing content, templates that facilitate uniform changes across the site, and a preview environment that lets you make changes and view them without affecting the live site.

With the improvements of vFlyer Sites 2.0 and the addition of the free Sites Personal plan, we're psyched that many more people will be able to create and manage their own websites. We're also excited about the fact that a lot of site creators so far already had a main website that they continued to use, but created auxiliary sites for their listings or other aspects of their businesses using vFlyer Sites. It's gratifying to see more and more people taking charge of their own websites, and vFlyer is thrilled to be a part of it.

Time to Upgrade That Old Website

vFlyer Blog (vFlyer Inc.) — Fri, 08 Jun 2012 11:43:39 -0700

Let’s be honest: a lot of the websites out there today are in dire need of a makeover. This isn’t the Wayback Machine I’m talking about — I mean actual, live websites, in 2012, that look like they haven’t been touched since Bill Clinton was president.

For many businesses that had the good sense to set up a website five, six, even ten years ago, they haven’t had the time or ability to maintain it since then, and consequently, the site looks woefully outdated now. And since having a website that looks great and provides up-to-date information is more important than ever, there’s no better time than now to chuck that clunky old website and replace it with a shiny new one, which can be easily done using vFlyer Sites.

Before you embark on redoing your website, though, there are a few important things to consider:

1. You don’t need to completely finish the new site before taking it live.
Building a website can be done in stages, and by not waiting to launch the new site until it’s 100% finished (which, in truth, a website never is), you’ll be able to get it out there relatively quickly. Decide on a look that you like and set up your homepage and any other essential pages, then publish the site. For non-essential pages, you can always post a “Coming Soon” notice on them and add content later.

2. If you’re using the same domain name on the new site, keep as much of the structure and page names of the old site in place.
If you’ve had a website for a few years, that means the site and the individual pages on it are most likely indexed in Google. To maintain SEO continuity, it’s a good idea to keep as many of the same pages and page URLs as you can on the new site as the old one. vFlyer Sites gives you full control over both page names and page URLs.

You can use the URL settings feature to match your new page URLs with the old ones.

3. Promote your new website
Let the world know that you have a killer new website! Share a link on Facebook, Twitter, Google+, and any other social media sites you’re on. If you have a blog, promote it there as well.

4. Before your old site is taken down, take a screenshot of it.
Years from now, it could be fun to look back at your old site and have a good laugh.

If you have other questions about replacing your current website with a new one from vFlyer Sites, feel free to email or call us and we can assist you.

A Good Ol’ vFlyer Custom Themes Bonanza

vFlyer Blog (vFlyer Inc.) — Fri, 18 May 2012 08:32:31 -0700

It’s been a while since we featured a vFlyer custom branded theme on our blog, so to make up for lost time, I’m featuring four–yes, four–great custom themes created by some of our users in real estate.

First up: Ann Samuelson, Independent Broker at Atwater Real Estate in Astoria, OR. Ann’s custom theme is just awesome. She’s taken the branding from her website and turned it into a very nice header image with her name, company, and “Earth Advantage Broker” logo on it. The lighter colors of the rest of the theme are a nice contrast to the header and really make the header stand out.

Next is Bart Moyers of Thornton, CO, whose custom theme also uses the wonderful branding from his website in the Western-themed header. Bart manages to show several different photos of Colorado outdoor scenes in his header and arranges them really nicely, immediately establishing who he is and what he’s about in a relatively small space.

Next, we move east to the Sunshine State, where Ellen Windheim of The Summit Realty Team has created a lovely custom theme. It matches the look of Summit’s beautifully-branded website, The Real Estate Orange, complete with the orange gradient background. It’s a great example of connecting one’s branding to the location (they grow a lot of oranges in Florida, in case you didn’t know).

Finally, Elizabeth Jorgensen of the Treehouse Group in Tempe, AZ uses a sleek, elegant custom theme (created by one of vFlyer’s designers) for her flyers. Like the others, this theme matches the Treehouse Group’s fantastic website. If there’s a pattern to be drawn from these four custom themes, it’s that when you have a great-looking website, you can easily take the design of the site and use it to create a great-looking vFlyer theme to match.

If you’ve created a custom theme that you’re especially proud of, let us know! And if you haven’t already done so, visit our website to create branded real estate listings.

vSites All-Star: Joann Welch

vFlyer Blog (vFlyer Inc.) — Wed, 29 Feb 2012 07:48:35 -0800

Success in real estate depends on many things, but perhaps none more than genuinely liking and caring about people. A real estate agent is entrusted with guiding people through one of the biggest transactions of their lives, so this personal quality is essential to doing the job well. No other real estate agent I’ve encountered conveys a genuine love of people more than Joann Welch, our vSites All-Star for February. In talking to Joann, you immediately sense her enthusiasm for what she does (or just enthusiasm, period). Others have taken notice too: Joann was featured last month on the Century 21 blog and will be among a handful of panelists at the Century 21 Global Conference this weekend.

Joann has built a lovely, unique website with vSites that takes advantage of a wide range of vSites features, including audio, Twitter integration, and a custom header. The vFlyer team has been admiring Joann’s site for several months now and we’re thrilled to be showcasing it on our ActiveRain blog!

Joann was kind enough to speak with me this week about real estate, what her website means to her, and why she decided to use vSites to build it.

How long have you been working in real estate?

About 11 years. I started in the mortgage industry which gave me a wonderful foundation for being a real estate agent. Through that experience, I gained insight about real estate transactions from A to Z, and that’s helped me a lot as an agent. It’s important to have as much knowledge about the process as possible when representing clients.

What do you like most about being a real estate agent?

I love meeting people, building a client base, and forming friendships. That’s the result of 99.9% of my transactions. I just love people!

How did you learn about vSites?

I’ve been a happy vFlyer customer for about 4 years now. I learned about vSites from an email I got after it was launched. I had been contemplating building a website for a while but didn’t feel comfortable with any of the companies I’d found. I didn’t feel that I would get the support I needed from them. I’d gotten great support from vFlyer from the beginning, so I knew vSites would be the right fit for me.

Your website has a very distinct, modern look. Did you envision it before you started building it or did you figure out how you wanted it to look as you created it?

This is what’s great about having the support that vFlyer offers. I knew what I wanted my website to look like but not how to get there. When I called and emailed vFlyer and gave the team an idea about who I was and what I wanted, I got the help I needed to turn my vision into reality.

Why is it important for your business that you have a quality website?

It reflects your personality and the kind of business that you represent. I feel that my website shows who I am as a person and what I’m offering my potential clients. More and more people are finding me online through Facebook, Twitter, and other websites, and having both my website and flyers to connect all of them is huge.

What’s your favorite vSites feature?

I like the fact that I’m not limited to just one picture — I can upload multiple pictures anywhere on the site. I also like that I could easily add a widget for my properties. Overall, it’s just really easy to work with and, of course, I love that I can get immediate support when I need it.

Do you have any advice for someone thinking about building a website for his or her business?

I think you want to be an individual. You want to connect with your clients in any way possible. Show who you are and what makes you unique in your line of business. Most important, find a service like vSites with a support team that will walk you through things and help you when you need it.

New vSites Themes!

vFlyer Blog (vFlyer Inc.) — Wed, 15 Feb 2012 11:51:07 -0800

When we launched vSites last summer, we included 120 different theme options with it, giving users a huge set of choices in the look of their website. I’m excited to announce that we introduced our first set of 14 new themes last week, bringing the total number of theme options to a whopping 134. The new themes, while having different color palates, textures, and site menu placement (not to mention splash images), all share a clean, streamlined look and feel that should appeal to many site creators.

One nice touch of all the new themes is the shadow effect below the splash image, which provides depth and movement to the page.

Keep in mind that you can switch your site theme and edit your theme to make your site look just how you want it to. We’ve seen a lot of great sites now in which the site creators have used the theme editing capabilities to give their sites a totally unique look!

The Year That Was: 2011 vFlyer Recap

vFlyer Blog (vFlyer Inc.) — Fri, 30 Dec 2011 12:50:36 -0800

To say that 2011 was an eventful year would be an understatement. And while it’s tempting to try to sum up all the momentous changes and events in national and international politics, the economy, and technology, among other things, I’m sure there are plenty of others doing that just fine. So in this end-of-year recap I’ll stick to vFlyer, which also had an eventful, mostly fun, often hectic, and ultimately successful 2011.

The big event for us this past year was the launch of vSites, our website builder and hosting service, now all of four months old. In development for over a year, vSites is the second major service offering that vFlyer has introduced, after vMarketing, our classified ads service. In addition to being an easy-to-use yet powerful website service, vSites also means that vFlyer now offers a far more comprehensive marketing service to our users. Rather than using multiple applications for website building, hosting, Craigslist content, listing syndication, and email marketing (among other things), you can now do all of this in one place: your vFlyer account.

In addition to vSites, we introduced the social media toolbar and secondary contact to vMarketing at the beginning of the year and new Craigslist layouts and preview capabilities at the end. We added affiliate and reseller programs, giving even more rewards to people who promote and resell vFlyer services.

It was a good year for us, and we’re looking forward to an even better 2012. We plan to build out the vSites capabilities further and making it even easier for people to create a website. We plan to make flyers even more social, allowing for easier sharing, posting, and tweeting of them. And we’re looking forward to hearing from you all what improvements you want to see and working them into our product roadmap.

So thanks to all vFlyer users this year for your flyers, your websites, and all your great feedback. In particular, we’d like to thank a handful of users who provided especially helpful comments and insights to us this year:

Marcos Avila
Mike Catania
Dennis Favilla
Anthony Gilbert
Laura Pyle Gillott
Eugene Gruzin
James Hronek
Larry Johnson
Joshua Kinney
Greg Markov
Jay Nuss
Doug Parry
Joe Pedersen
Weston Pugh
Vatt Saycocie
Diane Schatz
Betty Simmons
Joann Welch

A big thanks to all of you. Best wishes for a happy new year!

Free vSites Account, Faster Image Loading, and Other Updates

vFlyer Blog (vFlyer Inc.) — Thu, 29 Dec 2011 11:10:49 -0800

We had our final deployment of 2011 last night and introduced some changes to our website, new features, and bug fixes. Here’s a rundown of the biggest changes:

1. Create a free vSites account
On the vSites pricing page, we added an option to create a free account and build a website for free. Users who sign up for a free account get access to all vSites features and can add and edit their site content as much as they want. It’s only when they’re ready to publish the site and take it live that they’ll need to upgrade to a paid subscription.

2. Faster image loading from the Image Library
We sped up the time it takes for images to load in a user’s Image Library, so it will take less time for vSites users to select pictures from their Image Library than before.

3. Special characters removed
In some cases, when users copied and pasted text into the Flyer Editor, they were getting ï»¿ at the end of the text. Now, those pesky special characters won’t be a problem anymore.

4. SEO settings issue fixed
Before, there was a discrepancy when a page’s search engine optimization settings were updated from the Control Panel or the Site Editor. Now the settings can be updated from either location.

5. Repeating modules problem fixed
In some cases, modules that a user added to a site were repeated. This should no longer be an issue.

6. Like Us on Facebook!
We added a Facebook Like widget to the vMarketing account homepage, making it even easier for users to “Like” us on Facebook. It’s a great way to keep up with vFlyer news, learn about promotions we’re running, and share your feedback with us. As of this morning, we were at 960 likes. Help us get to 1,000 before 2012!

Thanks to all of our users whose feedback helped us make these improvements. We’ll be posting an end-of-year recap later in the week, so keep an eye out for it!

Join us for a FREE webinar tomorrow - "Creating a Social Website"

vFlyer Blog (vFlyer Inc.) — Wed, 30 Nov 2011 12:22:59 -0800

Do you have a website? Do you use Facebook, Twitter, or other social networks? For those of you who answered yes to both questions, you've probably kept the two separate from each other up to this point. We want to show you why it's essential to bring them together.

vFlyer is hosting a FREE webinar, "Creating a Social Website," tomorrow at 1pm PST/4pm EST. We're thrilled to have Charity Hisle, social media consultant and founder of Socially Engaged Marketing, as our guest trainer. In her business, Charity works with apartment communities and small businesses to help them tap the marketing value of social media. She's also an enlightening and entertaining presenter who consistently provides useful insights and examples in her trainings. I hope you'll join us for her presentation tomorrow!

Site of the Week by Treetop Sales Corporation

vFlyer Blog (vFlyer Inc.) — Fri, 09 Sep 2011 11:19:32 -0700

Hello and happy Friday everybody! This week’s featured site is an ode to the beauty of simplicity. Anthony Gilbert of Treetop Sales Corporation is a longtime vFlyer user who saw vSites—our new website builder—as “a natural move forward.” Let’s have a look at today’s site:

Treetop Sales is a manufactured homes dealer hailing from Kissimmee, Florida. Naturally, the website focuses on the homes available for sale today. Whereas last week’s featured site employed an inline frame to reference a listing inventory hosted elsewhere, Anthony, who already has all of his homes on vMarketing, made good use of the Listings Module in his website. The Listings Module automatically draws flyers from your vMarketing account and seamlessly displays them on your website. Click the thumbnail image for a property that appeals to you, and a listings detail page appears—complete with Flash slide show, contact form, and all the listing details.

One of the reasons we love this site is that Anthony has put lots of effort into each of his vMarketing listings—especially when it comes to the listing photos. The result is a website with a ton of rich, high-quality content, much of it imported from the corresponding vMarketing account.

Rounding out the site are a concise About Us page, a Services page highlighting the buyer and seller services Treetop offers, and a Contact page with an embedded Google Map. In the left-hand column, and displaying on all site pages, are a nice pair of client testimonials and Treetop’s hours of operation. The header and footer, also appearing on each page, hold key facts like company name, slogan, address, and phone number. In case you were wondering, this site uses the “Winsett - Beachfront” theme.

All in all, it’s a squeaky-clean, elegant site that shows off the power and simplicity of the vSites platform as well as the listings and services of a fantastic small business.

Announcing vSites, the new vFlyer website builder!

vFlyer Blog (vFlyer Inc.) — Fri, 19 Aug 2011 10:04:25 -0700

I’m thrilled to announce the launch of vSites, our new website builder! This is vFlyer’s second major service offering since we began in 2005 and has been in the works for close to two years. We’re so excited to introduce vSites to the world and help more people and companies market themselves online.

vSites began with a simple idea: most websites are dead. Many businesses haven’t had the time, money, or know-how to properly maintain theirs — assuming they have one in the first place — so their websites just sit, growing increasingly obsolete and less valuable. When websites are static and unchanging, their capacity for engaging visitors and fostering business growth is severely diminished.

vSites solves this problem by making it incredibly easy for businesses not only to create a website, but to continually update it, keeping the content fresh and better engaging potential customers. It also gives businesses that don’t yet have a website a fast, simple platform on which to build one.

Here are some of the primary features of vSites:

Fast, easy website setup with the Site Wizard
Category-specific text and images to give you a head start on building your site
More than a hundred different themes to choose from
Easy integration of Twitter, Facebook, and other social media content
Real-time import of your vFlyer listings into your website

The other part of the launch of vSites is the rebranding of our existing listings service (which to this point has been called vFlyer, also the name of our company) as vMarketing. It’s the same service with the same features and prices, just a new and (we think) snazzier name. We’ll explain the relationship between vSites and vMarketing in another blog post very soon.

If you have questions or comments about vSites, please let us know!

Custom Theme of the Week by eGreen Realty

vFlyer Blog (vFlyer Inc.) — Fri, 17 Jun 2011 12:35:22 -0700

Everybody seems to be going green these days, and vFlyer users are no exception. In the past we’ve featured a green car company, and today we have a custom theme from the self-proclaimed first ever eco-friendly real estate and property management firm: eGreen Realty.

This has to be one of my all-time favorite custom themes, thanks to the sharp header image and the very lively background. The header image comes straight from eGreen’s excellent website, cleanly displaying the company brand and logo on a light page background. The rest of the theme is simple black-on-white, with a touch of dark green accents for the title sections.

The background image looks like the type of pattern you might find on the walls of grandma’s house, but the fresh colors lend a modern feel to the whole affair. And as with any good advertisement, this flyer is chock-full of professional photographs showing off the property in its best light.

Speaking of the listing photos, can anybody spot the famous movie character voiced by Tom Hanks in this flyer? He appears in three of the images, and he’s wearing a hat. View the full flyer, and all of its photos, here.

Thanks to eGreen Realty for a top-notch custom theme!

The Facebook Page: Why Engagement is so Important

vFlyer Blog (vFlyer Inc.) — Thu, 26 May 2011 13:12:35 -0700

Today I’d like to share an excellent video on the benefits of a Facebook Page. Originally posted on the MLSapp blog, we found the video reposted on Geekestate, and thought you all might enjoy:

Jimmy’s emphasis on engaging your existing followers being more important than attracting new ones is excellent, and something we can probably all improve upon. Once you do get your page up and running, vFlyer can help drive traffic there. The new social media toolbar allows you to link up to four social media accounts, including Facebook, to all of your flyers and Account Profile, ensuring all interested parties find their way to your Facebook Page.

New features: Secondary Contact and Social Media Toolbar

vFlyer Blog (vFlyer Inc.) — Thu, 17 Mar 2011 12:55:27 -0700

I’m very excited to announce vFlyer’s first major service update of 2011. In response to demand from our users—and in an effort to better support the needs of the industries we serve—we’ve introduced two new features: a second contact and a social media toolbar.

When it comes to capturing leads, two contacts are better than one. Nobody likes getting sent to voicemail; now, with two phone numbers, email addresses and faces on each flyer, prospects are twice as likely to reach a live person. Co-listing agents, we heard you! You can now feature both agents equally across your vFlyer account. In addition to name and number, include your email address, profile photo, and member association logo—all the details you need to share with potential clients.

The second component of this update is the all-new social media toolbar. As you rainers are already aware, social media has become fundamental to successful online marketing. At vFlyer we’re committed to empowering users in this new space, and the social media toolbar does just that. Show off your social media savvy with recognizable icons linking directly to your various profiles, and automatically displayed across your vFlyer account. Drive traffic to your ActiveRain blog, convert visitors into fans, and let your clients and prospects get to know you a little better.

This is just the first of a series of enhancements coming to the vFlyer service in 2011, and we hope you agents especially will find these tools useful. Many thanks to our fantastic users who continue to come up with great ways to improve our service. Let us know what you think!

Sharing Documents using the Cloud

vFlyer Blog (vFlyer Inc.) — Thu, 24 Feb 2011 13:41:37 -0800

Today I'd like to show you how to upload documents to Google Docs and publish them on the web. Let’s say you have a PDF for a rental or loan application that you’d like to share with prospects. By publishing the document online, instead of faxing, mailing, or paper-airplaning the document to your prospects, you can simply share a link and let them print it out themselves.

Here’s how to do it:

1. Sign in to your Google account and select “Documents” from the fancy new Google account toolbar at the top of your page.

2. Beneath the Google Docs logo, beside the “Create New” button, you’ll find an option for “Upload...”

3. Select the type of file you’ll be uploading -- text (documents, presentations, spreadsheets) or image (PDFs, scanned documents) -- and select the file from your hard drive. If you’ve got the file on your desktop, just drag and drop it into the upload area. Then press “Start Upload”.

4. Once the file has finished, click the link to go “back to Google Docs”, and you’ll find the document in your list. Open the document, and make sure everything looks as it should. Now you’re ready to publish.

5. Click the “Share” button in the upper-right hand corner. You’ll see the default permissions setting is “Private”. Click the “Change” link and set the permissions to “Public on the Web”. Click “Save”.

6. You will be provided with a link to your new published document. Share this link online, or if you're using vFlyer, add this link to your flyer. Then move on to the next item on your list.

Twitter Basics

vFlyer Blog (vFlyer Inc.) — Wed, 02 Feb 2011 11:50:31 -0800

If you're reading this post, chances are you're already a pro on Twitter. But maybe not - Twitter is often the last frontier for agents looking to get active online, and for good reason - it doesn't make a whole lot of intuitive sense. Skeptics often ask "Who cares what you just had for breakfast?", or "I don't want to hear about the contents of your grocery cart at Trader Joe's". But as most of you know, Twitter is so much more. Twitter offers a medium to connect with people that is simpler, more straightforward, and often more fun than it's big cousin Facebook. We created the following "Video Short" to help skeptics and beginners get the hang of Twitter and, hopefully, have some fun growing their internet presence. Among other things the video covers following, @mentions, hashtags, and Twitter etiquette.

If you have an idea for a video short, please let us know in the comments below. Thanks and happy tweeting!

Video - Adding a "Listings" tab to your Facebook Page

vFlyer Blog (vFlyer Inc.) — Thu, 27 Jan 2011 12:53:08 -0800

Today I'd like to share with you a quick video that demonstrates how to add a "Listings" tab to your Facebook Page. In our last post, we discussed upcoming changes to the Facebook Page, and while things will soon look very different, applications on your Page will still be supported.

This is the second in a new series of "video shorts" we'll be producing on various web marketing tips and tricks. There's also one on adding widgets to your Blogger blog. If there's a topic you'd like to see covered in a short tutorial video, let us know and we'll gladly add it to the queue.

Here Comes the New Facebok Page

vFlyer Blog (vFlyer Inc.) — Fri, 21 Jan 2011 13:43:59 -0800

Today I spotted the first live version of Facebook’s new Page. Although there’s no official word yet from Facebook, the new layout matches the recently updated Facebook Profile, and confirms that what we saw a few weeks ago was indeed a sneak peek of the real deal.

The new Page is so similar to a Profile that I initially mistook Stylehouse Realty’s Facebook Page for a Profile. As I thought about what an interesting marketing strategy this is, I saw that Stylehouse had no friends, just “Likes”, and I knew that I was viewing the new Page.

Across the top of the page, instead of tabs, you’ll find options for “Post”, “Question”, “Photo”, “Link”, and “Video” - the same tabs shown on a Profile, with the addition of “Question”. This may spell the end of custom landing tabs (displayed to viewers who don’t yet “like” your page), although there’s nothing in the new design to indicate that this function won’t be supported.

Tabs are now found on the left-hand side, in a column beneath the profile photo - default tabs like “Wall” and “Info”, plus custom tabs like the vFlyer Listings application. This arrangement may lead many pages to trim down their super-tall profile photos in favor of a smaller image, so those custom tabs aren’t pushed downwards and out of sight.

Below Tabs, we find the “Friends Like This” and “People Like This” boxes drastically abbreviated. Instead of seeing the smiling faces of folks who like the page, a simple “970 people like this” is displayed, along with the number of “check-ins” for the page. It seems Facebook is encouraging the integration of “Places” with Pages - if your Page address matches that of your Places Page, merge the two and display check-ins on your Page.

Overall, I think user interaction with the Page is greatly encouraged, mostly by creating an experience that mirrors that of your friends’ Profiles, and adding the enticing "Question" module. I think we’ll see more wall posting and link sharing from fans to brands. The Places integration may stimulate more interaction as well, though for many businesses this might seem frivolous. Cleaner, slicker, and by some accounts, looking real good on mobile devices, the new Facebook Page is headed your way soon.

Blogging Advice from the Phoenix Real Estate Guy

vFlyer Blog (vFlyer Inc.) — Tue, 11 Jan 2011 14:05:23 -0800

Last Friday I listened in to Active Rain’s live broadcast of a conversation with Jay Thompson, better known as the Phoenix Real Estate Guy. I’ve been a fan of Jay’s blog for a couple of months now, and really enjoyed the “computer-side chat”.

He and Bob Stewart discuss Jay’s award-winning blog-turned-brokerage. Below are some of my favorite quotes (I paraphrase):

"Real Estate is a personal business - people pick agents because they like them. Use your blog to let people know who you are, learn about you, and decide whether or not they like you."

"You’ve got to have a really good home search on your blog. If you don’t have it, you’re missing out."

Asked why he thinks Inman picked him as one of the 100 most influential leaders of the real estate community: "It all boils down to internet presence- I am all over the internet - it’s hard to miss me online. Inman recognizes that."

Also, "I don’t often say completely stupid things."

One of my favorite bits: "Real estate is emotional. Selling a home or buying a home is one of the most emotional things people will ever do."

Some advice for bloggers: "Blogging and social media is hard work - it’s not some magic pill that will make you successful - it’s a (lot) of work. The most important thing is being consistent, and it takes time. Start your blog today, don’t expect your phone to ring tomorrow."

"Write something every 2-3 days for 6 months to a year before you can expect results."

"You don’t have to blog your brains out every day at the computer. Block out some time - take 2 hours on a Sunday afternoon, write a couple of posts, and schedule them to post (automatically) - maybe on Tuesday and Thursday."

"In today’s market, you should be prospecting 2 hours a day. I spend those 2 hours on my blog. Apply yourself consistently, and understand it’s going to take time and work."

"If you hate doing something, bottom line is you won’t be doing it for long, so find something you like and do that." (Applied to your blog - people respond when they sense you care about what you’re writing)

"Write how you speak - imagine yourself talking to a client, and write out that conversation."

"The more you do it, the better you get, the easier it gets."

Jay surveyed his readers last year, and he was blown away to find: "readers liked most the posts that had nothing to do with real estate."

And finally: "Colt McCoy is a freakin’ winner - that kid has been a winner since he played peewee football." (Jay is a from Austin, and a fan of the Texas Longhorns)

Active Rain has weekly computer-side chats like these. You can listen to the entire conversation here: http://www.blogtalkradio.com/activebob/2011/01/07/rain-radio-computerside-chat-with-phoenix-real-estate-guy-jay-thompson

2010 vFlyer Recap

vFlyer Blog (vFlyer Inc.) — Thu, 30 Dec 2010 13:45:04 -0800

The end of every year brings countless end-of-year memorials, top ten lists, and other efforts to capture another chapter of our collective existence. Not that there’s anything wrong with this; the closing of the annum is a good time for us, as individuals and organizations, to reflect on the highs and lows, the changes big and small, and our continued, sometimes fitful improvement over the last twelve months. So with that, I offer some vFlyer highlights of 2010:

We opened the year with a complete redesign of our website. The new design not only freshened our look but also made navigation of the site easier and brought out some features that had been somewhat hidden before. And we closed the year with a new blog design that matches the look and feel of our website and makes it easier to share posts.

As Facebook continued its growth in 2010, we introduced a vFlyer Listing App for Facebook Pages. vFlyer business subscribers can now install a listings tab on their Facebook Page that displays all the active listings from their vFlyer account in real time.

vFlyer Agency Edition users got a boost this year with the addition of the Agency Dashboard, which brings together data from all sub-accounts into one location. Agency users can now see the number of active listings across all sub-accounts, how well each sub-account is being utilized, and can download a weekly report of sub-account activity.

Following the new mobile listing formats we implemented in 2009, we introduced an iPad format this past year. The new iPad format does not use Flash (a format not supported on the iPad or iPhone), giving iPad users an optimized view of any vFlyer listing.

And finally, we had a lot of fun together! I’m fortunate to work with a team of creative, funny, supportive individuals at vFlyer, and while we were busily working to improve our service and support our users, we also managed to have a great time.

We have big plans for 2011. We’re already in the process of developing a new service that we expect to launch in the next few months (more on this to come), and we’ll continue to enhance our existing service with new marketing tools and features. A big thank you to all of our wonderful users for making vFlyer what it is and giving us such helpful feedback. We look forward to hearing from you and seeing your beautiful flyers in 2011!

Telling the Story of a Home - An Interview with Chrystal Scanlon

vFlyer Blog (vFlyer Inc.) — Thu, 16 Dec 2010 11:09:13 -0800

Today I’m very excited to feature an interview I had with Chrystal Scanlon, a photographer who fills vFlyer landing pages with some of the best home photos you’ll ever see. Chrystal is the owner of Chicks that Shoot, and provides real estate photos for Huff Rentals, a longtime client of vFlyer. Since I first stumbled upon Chrystal’s work, I’ve been dying to learn more; I finally got the chance when she graciously agreed to an interview. We discussed, among other things, photography and the role it plays in real estate.

Where are you from, and how did you get into photography?

I am from Cincinnati, Ohio and I fell in love with photography during the winter of 2004. Something in the air just whispered in my ear... telling me to go take pictures.

Have you had professional art schooling? Photography training?

Yes, I gained my Associates from Antonelli College, Cincinnati, Ohio, which was the best decision I have made yet! Learning about something you love everyday is amazing. I highly recommend it to everyone.

I studied art in school, and always took questions about the earning potential afforded by an art degree. Did you ever encounter this sort of skepticism?

Definitely, and I do think that most are not rewarded enough for their talents and imaginations. I also think that most artists do not have a choice either because we’re usually not in it for the money. It’s the love and passion that drives us to create more. So I would tell them its not money I’m after… I want to love what I am going to be doing for the rest of my life… and so should you.

We at vFlyer know you through Huff Rentals; how did you find Huff, or how did they find you?

I have been photographing for HUFF’s Rental Division Managers, Brian Herron and Meghan Ferguson, for over 5 years now. Our relationship originated through property photography and has continued to grow over the years. When they joined HUFF and their Rental Division was created, they knew how important photography was to marketing any property, whether for rent or for sale.

What makes a good photo? How does this apply to home photography?

Tough question, but I think I would have to say emotion; and applying emotion to property photography is also very tough. I try to do this by reflecting the style of the home in my photos. Whether it’s more country or city or even industrial, I think there is always a feeling that a home gives and it’s what I try to convey within my photographs.

Home staging - what works for you? Do it yourself or hire a professional?

I get asked this a lot and I feel that it should always be left to the professionals. I can honestly say that I have never seen a staged home that did not look amazing. However, I think the most important thing to having your home ready to be photographed is to have it well organized and clutter free. These pictures are your homes first impression and we all know how important that first impression is.

Walk me through a house photo shoot.

A typical day for me starts around 9 and never ends... No, but seriously I start around 9, and as I am arriving to a location I take notice of the community that surrounds the property. I like to think of shooting a home as if I am telling its story. What it looks like when you are pulling into the driveway, eating in your kitchen looking out that bay window, or chillin’ in your man-cave watching Monday Night Football with the guys. It’s important to me to showcase the character of a home. Within 30 minutes I can photograph an average property (under 4,000 sq) with 30+ images being taken.

Talk a bit about your production tools. Cameras, lenses, and lights.

I am a Mac and Nikon user and I do my best to photograph only the elements that I want in the final picture. Rarely do I Photoshop an image. I prefer to use Adobe’s Lightroom, as it is much more productive for me since I can be editing several hundred photographs a day. On location I use my camera (Nikon D300), tripod (Manfrotto), and flash (SB800).

How about post-production?

It’s important to me to be a better photographer than to rely on an editing program to correct something that perhaps I could have done in the field. So when I edit photos I mostly am just color correcting and adjusting the exposure. Time is very important to me and as we all know in the world of real estate… everything needed to be finished yesterday.

Recently we’ve seen more and more HDR images in house flyers. Can you briefly explain what HDR imaging is?

HDR stands for High Dynamic Range. It’s where you shoot multiple exposures of the same scene and blend them together to capture the greatest of detail within the highlights and shadows of your image. I think we are seeing more HDRs because it is different, vivid and new. They are a fantastic addition to any listing. HDRs can be very dramatic and eye catching.

If I’m a real estate agent and a very amateur photographer, what advice would you give me?

This is also a very common topic that I get asked by agents, sellers and real estate agencies on a daily basis. My answer like before is ‘leave it to the professionals’. In an article by Gar Benedick in RIS Media, he states:

“The photograph is almost always the first element in any ad that connects with the buyer. It is the handshake, the first impression, the thing that cuts through the visual clutter to capture the buyer’s attention. Everything in the marketing campaign to sell your home relies on the quantity and quality of the photographs of your home. Photographs are needed for the MLS listing on the Web and in print, a website, brochures, flyers, photoboards, newspaper ads, possible magazine articles, real estate preview guides, blogs, etc. Many times, buyers will decide if they will visit a home, and agents will decide if they will show a property based on the strength (or weaknesses) of the photos accompanying a listing. Quality photos can and do make a difference, a big difference.”

Your work at darkchrystal.com is very beautiful. Tell me a little about one of the portfolios displayed there.

If I had to pick one it would have to be the one that is closest to my heart. The Larry Fink Scholarship from LOOK3: The Festival of the Photograph is my most rewarding portfolio. The knowledge, memories, inspiration and friends that I made from that workshop has had the most impact on me not only as a photographer but simply as a person. The LOOK3 workshop offers a week-long intensive opportunity to work and learn with guidance from Magnum, National Geographic and many other of the world’s best photographers. Finished off with a weekend full of exhibitions & talks of photographs from across the globe, these images fill the streets, trees, and windows of the Charlottesville outdoor Mall. Spectacular.

If you look inside that portfolio you will find my LOOK3 experience and the strangers I met. Most of the images I photographed were shot on 120 Medium format black & white film; with a camera and chemicals that I borrowed from school and had to be developed in the bathroom of the home that I was staying in.

Anything else for our readers?

I would like to share a famous quote by Siddhartha Gautama, Buddha that I absolutely love and try to live by: “your work is to discover your world and then with all your heart give yourself to it.”

Hear hear! Many thanks to Chrystal for taking the time to talk with us and share some of her secrets. As always, we're proud to see vFlyer used to showcase such good stuff.

Custom Theme of the Week by Debe Maxwell

vFlyer Blog (vFlyer Inc.) — Tue, 14 Dec 2010 11:31:17 -0800

Every week we highlight a custom theme from one of our fabulous users, and if it comes from the world of real estate, we'll bring it over here to activerain. This week’s custom theme is from Debe Maxwell, the leading Realtor in Charlotte, North Carolina, and a familiar face to many of you I'm sure. Debe has built a business and reputation based on excellent customer service. In fact, her post on this very topic was read and enjoyed by members of the vFlyer CSR team. Debe's custom theme is just one piece of her internet marketing arsenal. In addition to a richly developed website and a well-read blog on Activerain, Debe manages a Facebook page and a lively Twitter account. Debe uses vFlyer for listing syndication and for the single-property websites generated for each of her flyers.

This theme prominently features Debe’s logo and slogan, plus credentials and contact information. The simple dark grey and white color scheme is elegantly accented with a light green - all together, a very cohesive and appealing theme. With more than 30 properties listed at any given time, plus maintenance of the aforementioned social networks and sites, Debe is a very busy person (she works 18 hours a day, 7 days a week!). We’re happy to be a part of all this activity, and to see our marketing tools being put through their paces.

What Syndication Can Do for You

vFlyer Blog (vFlyer Inc.) — Tue, 07 Dec 2010 14:35:16 -0800

These days, broad exposure online is crucial to the modern business. But with so many different websites to promote your business on, building a presence on each one would be a very time-consuming and tedious process. Where are the most important places to promote oneself online, and how can you get your content there in the most efficient manner? One way to quickly gain broad exposure is through syndication, or the automatic distribution of a listing to multiple websites. vFlyer is one of a number of online services that automatically submits listings to online marketplaces and classifieds sites. In this post, we’ll break down the various sites to which we syndicate and give you an idea of the exposure our platform can yield.

vFlyer partner site traffic in millions of viewers each month:*

1. Google Maps 35.8

2. Indeed 12.6

3. Yahoo! Real Estate 6.4

4. Zillow 5.1

5. Trulia 4.1

6. Simply Hired 4.0

7. Oodle 3.9

8. eBay Classifieds 3.7

9. Backpage 2.8

10. AOL Real Estate 1.4

11. FrontDoor 1.4

12. OLX 1.2

13. Vast 0.9

14. HotPads 0.9

15. Geebo 0.25

16. Cyberhomes 0.12

17. Jobalot 0.11

*Traffic data from Compete.com. Compete compiles data from a panel of over 2 million consumers - read about their methodology here.

You might be asking yourself, why are vFlyer listings showing up on Google Maps? About a year ago, real estate and rental listings submitted to Google Base were integrated into Google Maps as part of the retiring of Google Base’s search interface. So while vFlyer continues to send a data feed to Google Base, housing listings now appear on Google Maps. There’s even a separate real estate search option in Maps that allows you to find real estate and rentals in a particular area.

Second on the list with a whopping 12 million unique views per month is the job site Indeed, a job “aggregator” site that, unlike some large job boards (e.g., Monster.com), has recently enjoyed tremendous growth. An emphasis on search engine optimization has allowed Indeed to capture a huge amount of traffic straight from Google, and for vFlyer users looking to hire, this is good news... indeed.

Getting back to real estate, let’s have a look at the top five real estate-specific sites on the list. Yahoo! Real Estate comes in first with 6.4 million viewers, Zillow is second with 5.1 million, Trulia third with 4.1 million, AOL Real Estate fourth with 1.4 million, and FrontDoor fifth with 1.4 million.

With the exception of AOL Real Estate, all of these sites show overall growth in the year 2010, with Trulia up 1.17 million unique views per month, and Yahoo! Real Estate up 1.16 million compared to this month last year. These are companies that, despite a poor housing market, have continued to gain traffic by improving their portals and enabling online consumers with more information. With Yahoo! Real Estate and Zillow recently teaming up, Yahoo! Real Estate has gotten a nice boost in listings, and Zillow has become an absolute must for syndication. Combined, traffic on these two sites challenges Realtor.com, the longtime leader in the space. Let’s now take a look at some of the broader online marketplaces and classifieds sites to which vFlyer syndicates: Oodle, with 3.9 million unique views per month, eBay Classifieds (3.7 million), Backpage (2.8 million), OLX (1.2 million), and Vast (0.9 million).

Check out eBay Classifieds (shown in red), with a stratospheric jump of over 3.6 million monthly visits in the past year. As many vFlyer users will recall, this site used to be known as Kijiji. While the name remains in Canada, Kijiji USA was rebranded as eBay Classifieds at the end of March. This seems to have been an effective move by eBay (note the difference between March and April), and with a parent site (eBay.com) ranked #22 worldwide by Alexa, there’s reason to believe eBay Classifieds will continue to grow in the near future. To put this all in perspective, let’s look at Craigslist. With nearly 60 million visitors last month, Craigslist is the undisputed king of classifieds sites. This should come as no surprise to most of you, but the magnitude of difference between traffic on a top real estate site like Trulia and Craigslist is quite staggering. Just for fun, let’s throw in Facebook and Twitter as well.

These are three of the top 10 sites in the US (according to Alexa): Facebook at #1, Twitter at #9, and Craigslist at #10. To answer the question I posed earlier, these are now the most important places to establish oneself online. But let’s not discount the other classifieds sites we reviewed. Diligent Craigslist posting and staying on top of the social media game take a big chunk out of one’s marketing resources (read: time). Syndication is the proverbial low-hanging fruit of online marketing. While these sites alone may not generate the number of leads you might get from posting regularly to Craigslist, they still account for a huge amount of online traffic; having your listings syndicated to them by vFlyer allows you to "pluck the fruit", and leaves you time to focus on building your audience through Facebook, Twitter, and your blog. I'll finish with another question: what role does listing syndication play in your online marketing? And are there any other classifieds sites that you’d like vFlyer to syndicate to? (Sorry, Craigslist is not an option.)

Theming Like a Pro - free tools for compelling custom themes

vFlyer Blog (vFlyer Inc.) — Fri, 12 Nov 2010 14:40:35 -0800

Custom themes are what set your listing apart from the competition. With the vFlyer Theme Editor, you can create dynamic and beautiful custom themes quickly and easily. We have an in-house design team that produces lovely themes for our clients, but vFlyer has always been about doing it yourself. To that end, here are some resources to help you create your own stunner theme.

Let’s face it - only so much design goes into a custom theme. Most of the visual design is confined to the 754 x 82 pixel branded header. So it’s important to not only make this image as compelling as possible, but to choose colors that support this header and unify your flyer’s content.

Here are some tools for building beautiful branded headers.

Fireshot

Fireshot is a free add-on for Mozilla Firefox or Internet Explorer. Fireshot allows you to take screenshots and instantly edit them within your browser. The best feature here is the cropping capability; select the piece of the screenshot you wish to save and edit its dimensions, all in a single process. Use Fireshot to capture a header image and crop it to the appropriate size. Save the image file to your computer, then add to it with other tools.

Pixlr

Pixlr is a free web-based image editor. If you don’t have access to Photoshop (the undisputed and very expensive king of image editors), try Pixlr - an application that opens right in your browser. With layers, shapes, brushes, and other powerful tools, Pixlr is a great free alternative to Photoshop.

Picnik

Picnik is a powerful online image enhancer with a very functional free version. Picnik’s broad selection of dynamic fonts are perfect for adding text to your branded header. Crop and resize your image, add filters, textures, and frames. Then in the “create” mode you’ll find some wild and exciting fonts to give your header a distinctive look. If you have something simple in mind, Picnik can make it elegant.

Once you have a header image that you love, build the rest of your theme around this image. The following tools will help you choose the right colors for your theme.

Colorcop

Colorcop is the indispensable tool for unifying your theme. vFlyer’s default color swatch has 63 different colors to choose from, but if you want a different color - maybe from your website - use Colorcop. Simply drag the color picker over any color displayed on your computer screen, and Colorcop generates the corresponding 6-digit color code. Copy and paste this code into the color swatch for any section of the vFlyer Theme Editor, and press “Apply”.

Color Scheme Designer

Create a beautiful color palette for your theme with Color Scheme Designer. Some folks have an uncanny sense of color - they know just which colors go well together and which ones don’t. For the rest of us, color scheme designer is a great free tool that allows you to create a dynamite color palette with a few simple clicks. Pick a main color, and a whole bunch of complimentary and contrasting colors are automatically generated, complete with 6-digit hex codes. Be sure to hit the “adjust scheme” tab to adjust color saturation.

Color Hunter

Color Hunter is another fun tool that generates sweet color palettes based on images. Upload your own image, or choose from stock photos to find some really fresh color sets.

Background Images

Custom background images can add some real flair to a custom theme. When choosing a background image, look for something that is big enough to fill the entire width of the background, or small enough to “tile” in an appealing fashion. GR Sites offers thousands of background images organized by color, each one designed to seamlessly tile. There are some really ugly ducks here, but plenty of appealing and unique background options as well.

Custom themes can be a fun, creative way to make your listings stand out. As the holiday season approaches, we hope you’ll try out some of these tools to make your themes appropriately festive. As always, send ‘em our way when you’re done - we’d love to see!