Does Google have the perfect Gadget for your Real Estate blog?

By Reggie · January 3, 2008 · 3 Comments 

Over the Holidays I took some time to look closely at Google’s new Gadgets for your blog. I was very surprised to see how many gadgets were out there. These Gadgets are the same offered on the popular iGoogle. I immediately thought about the real estate agent looking to add a bit of flare to their blog by providing relevant data to their geographic area. Many of the Google gadgets allow the blog owner to customize results by zip code.If you are more interested in using Gadgets for your own self promotion, you could always develop your own.

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Adding YouTube Video To Your Next Real Estate PowerPoint

By Reggie · December 16, 2007 · 3 Comments 

The impact of YouTube’s video sharing technology is hard to miss. Not only can you find any video imaginable on YouTube, but real estate professionals are leveraging the free bandwidth and enormous popularity to promote their own commercials, video testimonials, local community footage and lots more. However the need to leverage your video in a listing presentation, kiosk, or window display may arise. So let’s talk about how you embed that video into your next PowerPoint presentation.

This is a very straight forward task and can be achieved using a YouTube Video add-In created by Shyam at skp.MVPS.org. The Add-In works for PowerPoint 97’ to current. Keep in mind however the video is streaming, so you will need a live Internet connection to display the video in your PowerPoint.

THIS EXAMPLE IS FOR POWERPOINT 2007. For other versions of PowerPoint, click here.

To get started, download the YouTube Video Add-In here. Start by unzipping the folder.

1. Open PowerPoint, and click the Office Button.
2. Click PowerPoint Options then select the Add-Ins tab.
3. Click PowerPoint Add-ins from the Manage drop down and click Go.
4. From the Add-Ins windows click Add New.
5. Locate the folder you downloaded and unzipped. Select the Add-In YouTubeVideo2k7.ppa.
6. Choose Enable Macros if prompted.

Congratulations, the YouTube icon should now be added to your toolbar as seen below. To use, simply click the button and follow the simple 4 step process.

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Calling All Mobile Agents: Synchronize Your Google Calendar With Your Blackberry

By NikNik · December 13, 2007 · 6 Comments 

• Share your calendar with teammates and assistants.
• Import activities from Outlook.
• Receive email or mobile text-message reminders for events on your calendar.
• Create a special marketing calendar for each listing, and share it with the homeowner using the “send to a friend” feature.
• Use the invite feature to email special invites for a preview of newly listed homes (Google Calendar keeps track of RSVPs).
• Schedule your “blog posting plan” to keep content ideas flowing and prepared for upcoming posts.

To become even more organized and rid yourself of tardy excuses, simply visit http://m.google.com/sync in your mobile browser to download and install the Google Sync for mobile application. Once installation is complete, click on the Google sync icon and sign in to your Google Account. Now that’s efficient!

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Sidebar "Bling" Cross Promotes Your Online Presence

By Reggie · December 10, 2007 · 11 Comments 

These days real estate professionals are members of social sites, online communities, blogs and more. So how do we deliver a consistent brand and message over so many tools? Also how to we channel interested parties to our other communities? One way is to use a similar sidebar for each application.

Introducing the BLING Widget for Real Estate Agents

Since we have not seen the perfect sidebar bling application for you real estate agents, we developed one for you to use. You will notice in “Step 7″ I instruct you to use the full path to the icons. This is so that you can use this code on real estate networks like Activerain, Facebook and more without making further changes.

Here is an example of the buttons I have created for your use.
(Buttons from left to right: LinkedIn, Facebook, RSS, Activerain, Zolve, MyBlogLog, Google MyMaps, Friendster, Trulia Voices, Zillow and RealTown Real Estate Network.)

DOWNLOAD ZIP FILE OF BUTTONS HERE.

IMPORTANT: If you are adding this to your blog, please make a backup of your template before beginning so you can easily restore things if you need too.

Step 1:
Create a new folder on the root directory of your website or blog and title it “bling”

Step 2:
From the icons I’ve created, choose the specific icons you want to use on your sidebar widget and add them to your newly created folder titled “bling”. (Note: Choose either the .jpg files or the .png files. PNG files have a transparent background.)

Step 3:
Start by opening notepad or your HTML editor. Now you will be adding the code from each step to the blank notepad document. Please add each snippet of code to notepad in the order below. If you are advanced, the complete code is avaliable here.

Step 4
Copy the code below. Now paste into the notepad document we opened in Step 3. The code we just copied is for the header of our widget. The widget title is”Find Me Online” If you would like to use a different headline, replace those words with your own. You can also update the header and border color by replacing the hexadecimal (6 Digit) color with one from this chart.
<div style=”margin-bottom: 15px; padding: 3px; padding-bottom: 15px; border: 1px outset #0D3F70; background-color: #FFFFFF; width:210px; height:200px;”><div style=”background-color: #0D3F70; border: 3px double #FFFFFF; color: #FFFFFF; padding: 2px 3px 2px 2px; margin-bottom: 5px; font-weight: bold; text-align: center; width:200px;”>Find Me Online</div>

Step 5
Copy the text below. Now paste this code after the code above. We will be editing it as follows:

Replace [Insert URL of Personal Photo] with absolute/full URL to photo. (i.e. http://www.mytechopinion.com/images/reggie.jpg) (Tip: Ideal width is 75 pixels or less)
Replace [Insert Name] with your name
Replace [Insert Company Name] with your company or blog name
Replace [Insert Your Blog or Website URL Here] with your actual URL
<div style=”position:relative; top: 0px; left: 3px; width: 80px; height: 80px; float:left;”><img src=”[Insert Your Blog or Website URL Here]” alt=”Real Estate Technology” width=”75″ height=”72″/></div><div style=”position: relative; top: 0px; left: 3px; width: 130px; height: 80px; float:right;”><strong>[Insert Name]</strong><br />[Insert Company Name]<br /><a href=”[Insert Your Blog or Website URL Here]“>My Blog</a></div>

Step 6
Copy the code below. This is the DIV for the buttons. Please paste to our open notepade file after the previous code.
<div style=”background: #FFFFFF; top: 10px; left: 3px; width: 210px; height:50px; display:block”><!– Insert Buttons to the left of this block–></div></div><span style=”font-size:9px; vertical-align:top;”>Sidebar Bling by <a href=”http://www.mytechopinion.com”>Technology for Real Estate</a></span>

Ok, now you will start to add the buttons for your widget. 4 buttons will fit on each row. If you are using more than 4 buttons, you can add another DIV by preforming Step 6 again. This will create a 2nd row of icons.

Step 7
Earlier you added the buttons for your widget into a newly created folder. Now find the corresponding code from the options below. Then add each desired to your notepad or open editor. Look for “<!–Insert Buttons to the left of this block–>” and paste the button(s) code before it.

LinkedIn
Replace [Insert LinkedIn URL] with the link to your LinkedIn Profile.
<a href="[Insert"><img style="border-style:none" src="[Full" alt="View My Profile on LinkedIn" width="51" height="47" align="left" /></a>

Facebook
Replace [Insert Facebook URL] with the link to your Facebook Profile. Also replace [Full Path to Image] with your full URL to the image.
<a href="[Insert"><img style="border-style:none" src="[Full" alt="Friend Me in Facebook" width="51" height="47" align="left" /></a>

ActiveRain
Replace [Insert Activerain URL] with the link to your Activerain Profile or blog. Also replace [Full Path to Image] with your full URL to the image.
<a href="[Insert"><img style="border-style:none" src="[Full" alt="Read more from me on ActiveRain" width="51" height="47" align="left" /></a>

RSS
Replace [Insert RSS URL] with the link to your RSS feed URL. Also replace [Full Path to Image] with your full URL to the image.
<a href="[Insert"><img style="border-style:none" src="[Full" alt="Add My RSS Feed" width="51" height="47" align="left" /></a>

Zolve
Replace [Insert Zolve URL] with the link to your Zolve profile or blog. Also replace [Full Path to Image] with your full URL to the image.
<a href="[Insert"><img style="border-style:none" src="[Full" alt="View My Profile on LinkedIn" width="51" height="47" align="left" /></a>

MyBlogLog
Replace [Insert ByBlogLog URL] with the link to your MyBlogLog Community. Also replace [Full Path to Image] with your full URL to the image.
<a href="[Insert"><img style="border-style:none" src="[Full" alt="Join My Community on MyBlogLog" width="51" height="47" align="left" /></a>

Friendster
Replace [Insert Friendster URL] with the link to your Friendster URL. Also replace [Full Path to Image] with your full URL to the image.
<a href="[Insert"><img style="border-style:none" src="[Full" alt="Friend Me in Friendster" width="51" height="47" align="left" /></a>

MyMaps
Replace [Insert MyMaps URL] with the link to your custom Google MyMaps page. Also replace [Full Path to Image] with your full URL to the image.
<a href="[Insert"><img style="border-style:none" src="[Full" alt="View MyMaps for Location Info" width="51" height="47" align="left" /></a>

Trulia Voices
Replace [Insert Trulia Voices URL] with the link to your Trulia Voices profile. Also replace [Full Path to Image] with your full URL to the image.
<a href="[Insert"><img style="border-style:none" src="[Full" alt="View My Profile on Trulia Voices" width="51" height="47" align="left" /></a>

Zillow
Replace [Insert Zillow Profile URL] with a link to your profile on Zillow. Also replace [Full Path to Image] with your full URL to the image.
<a href=”[Insert Zillow Profile URL]“><img style=”border-style:none” src=”[Full Path to Image]” alt=”View My Profile on Zillow” width=”51″ height=”47″ align=”left” /></a>

RealTown Real Estate Network
Replace [Insert RealTown Profile URL] with a link to your profile on RealTown Real Estate Network. Also replace [Full Path to Image] with your full URL to the image.
<a href=”[Insert RealTown Profile URL]“><img style=”border-style:none” src=”[Full Path to Image]” alt=”View My Profile on RealTown Real Estate Network” width=”51″ height=”47″ align=”left” /></a>

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Color Generation Technology for your Real Estate Blog

By Reggie · November 9, 2007 · 4 Comments 

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RSS and Pipes are the Future of Real Estate Content

By Reggie · October 21, 2007 · 5 Comments 

Lately I have been hearing a lot of talk about a technology called Yahoo Pipes, and what it can do to streamline RSS feeds. So today we are going to demystify RSS and Pipes for your benefit!

Let’s Talk RSS
To start, you must be noticing it gets harder and harder each day to keep up on all the great content accross the web. You likely know that Really Simple Syndication (RSS) is an easy way to keep up with this ever changing content. Rather than going out to each of your favorite sites one by one to see if they have new and appealing content for you, RSS is designed to bring the content of the sites you subscribe to right to your desktop via a Feed Reader. So rather than individually visiting 25 blogs in a row…simply open your reader and browse all content from one location. Your content comes to you!

Yahoo Pipes Technology Explained
Ok, now that you understand RSS let’s talk about Pipes. The term originally comes from UNIX and means roughly the output from each process is chained together creating a new output. Think of aggregation. You can say that pipes are the natural evolution of the RSS feed. Think about the current state of the blogosphere. Today you write a post on ActiveRain, tomorrow on Zolve, then Trulia and of course there is that guest post you recently did on another blog favorite. Plus this whole time you have been posting on your own blog. So how do you take all this content and mash it up into one feed for your readers? Introducing Yahoo Pipes.

Yahoo Pipes will aggregate and mashup content from around the web using RSS, data sorts, filters and translation. (Did I mention that no programming is required?) So in the example I mentioned above, the pipe you create could be a mashup of all your posts in one place—filtered by your name.

Let’s Build a Pipe
To get started, go to Yahoo Pipes and register for your free account. Once you have logged in, click the “Create a Pipe” button. You’ll notice the canvas appears. Start by simply dragging the module titled “Fetch Feed” from the library pane on the left side onto your working canvas. One by one enter the feeds that you would like to combine. Click the “+” sign to the left of URL to add another feed. Repeat the steps as necessary. Now drag out modules from the library such as “Sort” and “Filter”. Make sure you connect each module by its connecters. Once you have customized your pipe, click the save button and name the feed. Now click properties and give your feed a description and tags. Congratulations! Now save and publish your feed.

See an example of a pipe here. This is a combination of NikNik’s posts here at MyTechOpinion and the HelpMyAgent blog. See tutorials here.

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Center for Realtor Technology Talks Tech

By Reggie · October 17, 2007 · Leave a Comment 

Today over at Inman, Jessica Swesey has interviewed Keith Garner of the Center for Realtor Technology. As you know, the Center for Realtor Technology is a part of the National Association of Realtors. Listen to Keith’s view on real estate technology and a few new technical applications that have become available.

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Cyberhomes PDF Report Aids Real Estate Agents with Local Market Statistics

By Reggie · October 12, 2007 · 2 Comments 

There has been a lot of buzz on the Street about Cyberhomes recent partnership with AOL. If you have not heard, Cyberhomes is now AOL’s exclusive provider of home valuation and listing content. However that’s not what this post is all about. For some time now Cyberhomes has been offering it’s free PDF Report to Real Estate agents and consumers alike. This report is packed with useful statistics for important pricing and buying decisions. For example, the 18 page PDF reports contains zip-code level information such as buy/sell indicator, building starts, rental vacancy, local unemployment, median and average home prices, sales count by price range, local school and neighborhood info, etc. This report can be customized by using the refine value tool. (i.e. custom comps, home upgrades, subject property adjustments.)

If you would like to check out the Cyberhomes PDF report, simply visit Cyberhomes and search a property. Once you see the neighborhood mashup, click the link titled Detail Page on the balloon. Make any refinements first, and then click PDF Report.

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A Touch of Mapping Technology for your Prelisting Package

By Reggie · September 5, 2007 · 5 Comments 

Are you using your past real estate sales to effectively market yourself in your prelisting and listing presentations? I have a cool mapping technology that will help you create a dramatic visual representation of your past successes. Microsoft Streets and Trips is a powerful software for creating mashups of your sold properties. It’s actually easier than you might think. Purchase Microsoft Streets and Trips 2008 here.

Start by gathering a list of the real estate you have sold over your career. Get the list into Excel, keeping the street name, city, state and zip in separate columns. (If you have sold homes more than once, you can create two separate lists and color the icons a different color.)

Now to import the real estate sales, start by opening Microsoft Streets and Trips.

1. On the menu bar, click Data and then Import Data Wizard.
2. Next you need to assign each column from the excel file to a part of the address.
3. Select from the Data Type pull down to choose.
4. Once you’re done, click Finish.

If everything went according to plans you will now have the sold real estate all plotted on the screen in front of you. To finalize you may want to change the icons. Go back to the menu bar and select Data and then click Data Set Properties. In the middle of the new window you can change the Symbol or create a custom one. Now simply move the map to a region you would like to highlight and zoom in accordingly. You are now ready to print.

TIP: Print the map out on glossy paper for maximum appeal.

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Email Newsletters for Real Estate Agents

By NikNik · August 29, 2007 · 4 Comments 

Real estate newsletters are a very popular form of communication. Email newsletters can be a great alternative for busy real estate agents who want to try another marketing medium, save on printing costs and reach a larger audience. Brand yourself as the local expert and offer community information. Include your latest listings and inform your clients with real estate industry news. A concise newsletter with several small informative snippets is the way to go! In addition, you can direct your subscribers back to your website and blog, as well as capture new leads. But before you can do all this, make sure you have collected, and continue to collect, email addresses and update your contact database regularly. There are a variety of online marketing websites that can help you take it from there. Try these similar, yet different marketing solutions on for size:

1. Constant Contact
   Choose from a variety of professionally designed newsletter templates. You’ll need to insert pictures, contact info AND your own industry articles. Cost is based on your email list size. So the range spans from $15 a month for a list 0-500, all the way to $225 for lists up to 25,000! You can also create unlimited surveys and invite participation from your email list or website visitors.
2. iContact
   iContact is an email marketing service that provides you with the ability to design a template, insert your content, send, and track email newsletters, RSS feeds, surveys, and autoresponders. Pricing starts at $9.95 per month for 500 contacts to $699 a month for up to 100,000 contacts!
3. MyNewlsetterBuilder
   MyNewsletterBuilder gives you the ability to incorporate multi-media within your newsletter: virtual tours, audio tours, rotating banner ads, and custom template design. Free 60 day trial. Offers additional services: website design, RSS Feeds Setup, SEO, and more!
4. EmailFusion
   If you have even less time to create content and you don’t mind spending a bit more, EmailFusion may be the answer for you. Besides having some amazing looking email campaigns, they offer professional pre-written content for your newsletter. And for those of us who prefer original content, you still have the ability to insert your own content. With EmailFusion, you can easily manage your subscribers and receive real time reports with detailed analytics. Pricing on their packages range from $39.95/month to $139/month, all include a $99 one time set-up fee.
5. Zookoda
   Great solution for real estate bloggers! Promote your blog and your brand! With Zookoda, you can send a daily, weekly, or monthly summary of your blog content. You can also manage your subscribers and enhance your blog with custom a subscription form. For those of you that know a little HMTL, use their Zootags to customize your newsletter. (Format your picture, logo, etc.) Oh, and did I mention it’s FREE! (BTW-We use it and we like it!)
6. Create your own with a Publisher template!
   This is a great option if you have an assistant or work in a team. And FREE! Create you own Publisher template and have your assistant fill in the local and community info, featured listings, etc. Bloggers, just copy and paste your blog content into your newsletter template. Send your email newsletter right from Publisher (File>Send Email>Send this page as message) and access your Outlook database! And for those of you that are using Publisher 2007, you can take advantage of their new email merge feature. Once you have set up a template, it’s just about plug and play!

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Kyte Offers Online TV Technology for your Real Estate Business

By Reggie · August 25, 2007 · 4 Comments 

Video has been reshaping the Internet, and it’s no different for your real estate business. Think back to your listings online, what do consumers want? Enhanced content…right? They want multiple photos, home tours and now video. So the same could be said for real estate information on your website. A text-based story would work, but imagine an article with video and photo support. Could you prove your point better? Could you also brand yourself better? I believe so!

Introducing Kyte.tv; their technology will allow you to create your own FREE real estate TV channel and broadcast it to the world. Your TV channel can include still photos, slide shows, video, music, voice and instant polls to help enhance your online presence and in turn, provide you a competitive edge in your real estate business. You may choose to include videos outlining industry trends, steps towards home ownership, the selling and buying process, real estate investment, or even showcase local attractions & hotspots. Of course you would also include video tours and photos of your listed homes for maximum appeal. Why not also invite colleagues such as your preferred lender to talk on evaluating loans, and improving credit. The ideas are limitless.

Once your TV channel is built, Kyte will allow you to embed it on your website, blog or even Facebook. Then every time you update your TV channel using the KTYE.tv interface, your website and blog will be updated simultaneously. Kyte has also integrated chat technology, allowing your audience to leave comments promoting your website community.

If you are interested in leveraging the latest in Internet TV technology for your real estate business don’t wait; create your own channel today!

A few other companies providing similar TV channel technology:

1. SplashCast
2. Vidiac
3. Panjea

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11 Powerful Excel Formulas to Clean Your Real Estate Database

By Reggie · August 17, 2007 · 7 Comments 

Have you ever had the need to reformat a column of data in Excel? Possibly changing how the names read for a mailing list, or reformatting an address. If so you know that the right formulas can save you a great amount of time and frustration. I have 11 powerful excel formulas that will surely help out. Bring the power of Excel’s technology to your desktop.

1. To extract the first name of a cell: type the following formula in B1 (Results: John)
   =LEFT(A1,FIND(” “,A1))
   

2. To extract all of the text after the first word: type the following formula in B2 (Results: L. Smith)
   =MID(A2,FIND(” “,A2,1)+1,LEN(A2))
3. To extract the last word in a cell: type the following formula in B3 (Results: Smith)
   =RIGHT(A3,FIND(” “,A3))
   
4. To change the cell to all lowercase: type the following formula in B4 (Results: john smith)
   =LOWER(A4)
   
5. To change the cell to title case: type the following formula in B5 type the following formula (Results: John Smith)
   =PROPER(A5)
   
6. Change the cell to upper case: type the following formula in B6 (Results: JOHN SMITH)
   =UPPER(A6)
   
7. Takes everything to the left of the comma: type the following formula in B1 (Results: Anytown)
   =LEFT(A1,FIND(”,”,A1)-1)
8. Takes two characters after the comma. A perfect formula to extract state from the cell: type the following formula in C1 (Results: CA)
   =MID(A1,FIND(”,”,A1)+2,2)
9. Take the last 5 characters of the cell. If you have zip +4 change the 5 to 10: In cell D1 type the following formula (Results: 99999)
   =RIGHT(A1,5)



10. This formula will join two cells with a space in between: In cell C1 type the following formula (Results: John Smith)
    =A1&” “&B1
    
11. Say you have first owner name and second owner name in the next column. You may only have second owner names for half of the list. With the standard concatenate function, you will have an “&” after each name whether or not there was a 2nd owner name. With my formula it will only add the “&” if there is a 2nd owner name. So this works conditionally checking for text in the 2nd cell. : In cell C1 type the following formula (Results: John & Amy)
    =MID(IF(ISTEXT(A2),”"&A2,”")&IF(ISTEXT(B2),” & “&B2,”"),1,100)

To use the formula to populate the entire column you will need to use the “Fill” command. For that see the following graphic:

Once you have finished cleaning and scrubbing your data, you still have one more thing to do. You need to keep the column of data you just created, but remove the formula that was used to generate it.

Begin by highlighting the column of data you just created… column “B”. Right mouse click on the column heading and choose “Copy”. Then right click on the same column heading “B” and select “Paste Special” then select “As Values” and click “OK”.

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