Great Tools For Getting Your Message Up On the Web

By Allen Hainge · August 22, 2008

In the “olden days,” we spent thousands of dollars just producing one multimedia piece for our business.  If we wanted a video, we went to a specialist and paid the money for the product…lots of money.  If we wanted a multimedia presentation, for example, there were a number of real estate vendors who would do it for us….for a hefty price.

Today, the situation has changed thanks to some dynamic, valuable and free tools on the Web.  Here are a couple that I find useful.

Issuu.com is a free site for posting “books,” newsletters and more.  I just posted a “book” there for the first time, and it looks great…and cost me nothing!  The process was simple:  I built a PowerPoint presentation, saved it as a pdf file using a free pdf program, PDF995, and uploaded it to Issuu at no cost.

I can see a lot of ways to use Issuu presentations to build your business: listing presentations, buyer presentations, area/neighborhood tours, multiple page flyers for your listings….and much, much more.  You can imbed the presentation’s link on your Web site or in your blog or you can simply send the link to prospects.  It presents your message in a professional way, it puts it where today’s consumer goes for his or her information…and it does so at no cost.

Of course, we have YouTube, where we can upload videos (listing presentations, house tours, bpo’s, neighborhood tours, etc.) for free.  As for taking the videos, we now have easy-to-use, inexpensive digital cameras like my favorite, the FlipVideo.  No need to spend thousands of dollars to get a video up on the Web anymore!

The important point for your business, of course, is whether or not you are using tools like those mentioned here and others.  Today’s customers and clients go first to the Web for information: you must be there.

To get a better idea of what these free resources can do, visit them and do a search for “real estate.”  See what top agents are doing and get ideas from their efforts.

Of course, the main thing you have to do, in my opinion, is to learn to use these tools (they aren’t hard!) and start using them to build your business.  Time to get to the top using today’s technology!

It’s a beautiful day here on the lake in Reston…hope it’s a beautiful day wherever you are, too!