Browsing made easy for Tablet Toters

One of  the richest experiences I have had with my iPad is browsing news sites, articles, blogs and of course social media sites. There are now some really great apps to help you make sense of all the information you like to browse. Here are some of my favorites along with some specific browsing apps you may find useful.

Zite Personalized Magazine. Their tagline is “the personalized iPad magazine that gets smarter as you use it.”

You can download Zite for free. Choose from hundreds of topics you’re interested in or start with the plain-vanilla version of the magazine. You can even pull in your Twitter or Google Feed. You rate every story with thumbs up and down and you can request more of the same. This helps Zite do something pretty amazing. Zite learns from what you read everyday. It watches what kind of stories, how long you stay on them and how detailed the articles are. It then suggests more of the same. Brilliant.

Flipboard is also a social digital magazine. It is pretty sexy with its pages that turn. You can input your Facebook and Twitter so all of your content is in one place. Named Apple’s 2010 iPad App of the Year it is a unique way to read new articles, view photos, and other media.

For Android, check out Pulse. This app takes your favorite websites and transforms them into a colorful and interactive mosaic. Sharing a story via Facebook, Twitter and email is as easy as two taps. (Also available for iPad)

Also check out  News360. A news aggregate,  News360 for Android aggregates more than 1500 different news sources around the web to bring you news stories in a concise and useful stream. There is also background information and dossiers about all the companies, people and locations that make the news, and you can create feeds based on your specific interests.

NEED TO READ IT LATER?

Instapaper – One of my favorites. Simply use the bookmark tool and you can save articles and web page to reach later either on your ipad, smarphone and other devices.

Evernote – Pretty popular bookmarking site allows you to save  . . . anything and tag it so you can find it later. Also free!

Storify – What is it? According to the website: “ Storify is a way to tell stories using social media such as Tweets, photos and videos. You search multiple social networks from one place, and then drag individual elements into your story. You can re-order the elements and also add text to give context to your readers.”

Who is The Agent of Tomorrow? – Inman Connect 2012

A great overview of today’s agent and who they are . . . what they want, how they work. The video says it all.

Editorial Calendars

Here are some great resources for editorial calendars and some good ideas for how to implement:

This is for blogging, but read the post, some great inspiration on what and when to post:

Savvy Marketer

Demand Metric offers another one here:

Blogging Editorial Calendar by Socialologist

One with information on the editorial process Click here

2012 Online Marketing Plan – Do you have one?

The New Year brings opportunity. You have a new business plan and goal,  and hopefully a new marketing plan that includes new technology to help your business. Here are some of the tools that stood the test the year and now are part of our marketing plan.  So here it goes:

SEO:

• Review your On-Page Optimization and make sure it’s all complete – a free tool to try is www.websitegrader.com
• Think about keywords that you need to have exposure on. Use Google keyword tracker to find other terms you may not of thought of.
• Have a content strategy in place – through blog posts, articles and text that needs to be on your site

Site:

General Marketing:

• Review follow up emails – when someone contacts you are you sending a message that will help engage them as clients?
• Google analytics  - are installed and configured?
• Check site for broken links (and fix them!)
• Update photos and content – throw out old content.
• Plan to review web stats regularly

Blog:

• Create a plan to post regularly, check out this post we did on this
• Check to see if your plugins are updated and you have some that help with SEO.
• Don’t forget to use Keywords/Tagging/Categorizing on posts

Facebook:

• What are your goals – put them in writing
• What type of followers do you want
• Create buzz
• Set up a strong personal profile
• Set up Fan Page with custom look. Make sure you have a special tabe that offers them something when theclick
• Make sure your FB badge is placed on your website
• Include your FB Page info in your email signature. (Try Wisestamp)
• Create an action plan to:
• Network and engage friends/fans
• Increase Fans and promote page
• Keep content updated

LinkedIn:

• Make sure your profile is set up and complete
• Request endorsements
• Participate in Questions and discussions
• Connect your profile to your other social media accounts

Twitter:

• Make sure your custom background done and compelling
• What are your goals – put them in writing
• What type of followers do you want
• Create buzz
• Montior your tweets to see if your getting reactions. I use Hootsuite (paid version) to monitor retweets of my posts.

Other social media sites:

• Find other relevant industry social media sites
• Google Plus
• Youtube
• Yelp and Google Places
• Flickr
• Trulia, Zillow
• Other?
• Create your profile and create action plan to participate

Video

• Consider a video strategy for 2012
• Create a list of videos you need to create
• Hire or put a plan to learn how to,  in place

This is just the beginning. Remember if you need help with this, find out about  our coaching programs at The Tech Byte.

Do you have a Social Media Business Card?

As we create more and more profiles online, a social media card may be a good solution. Our personal information was once manageable. Today we are overwhelmed by our online information. Every day more profiles, more contacts, more content, creating new problems for consumers and businesses.

What’s a social media business card ? It is a mini website or a virtual card that will hold all your social network identities just like in a business card so you can hand it over, or share the link to anyone. Its a fairly simple concept, where you just need to give some details,  like your social media identities, a quick bio and picture and these sites  auto generate the card for you.

If you have asked yourself the following questions a social media card site is for you.

• How can we make money not spend money?
• How can we help clients with social media?
• How can we  drive people to our official Facebook Page?
• How can we increase our client base?

A Personal Profile Website or Social Media Business Card is all about you and your listings. It organizes your bio, your social network profiles, your content and your contact information via a single, easy to remember Website address.

One of my favorites is published by a company called Agency Logic. Their product is called Follr.com. They have a special product just for the real estate industry.  Follr is a personal profile website organizing the chaos. It offers a simple to fill out format and the website has several tabs. They include:

• A personal “home page” to anchor information
• Your resume and digital personal brand
• Content and contact information
• Biography, video and professional summary
• Connecting to official marketing channels
• All your listings

For real estate, Follr offers to use of  Rlty.Me for Real Estate Agents and Rlty.us for Brokerages or Teams.

Here is a great example.  rlty.me/HeidiGolff

The best news is that is is FREE. Check it out at