Twitter Followers – Making it easy for you!

Twitter is an amazing resource for me. Not only do I learn a lot by following very smart people, but I am able to leverage my relationships by asking questions and post content that could be beneficial to my followers.

I don’t have tons of follows, I have decided to grow my list organically. As I post people find me and follow me. Sometime when I get the email I don’t have lots of time to follow through and see if this is someone I would like to follow as well.

This is a post to share a simple program called Topify. It has enable me very quickly to figure out who people are who are following me and whether or not I will be following them.

You can sign up for Topify at www.topify.com.

Plain and simple it saves me time. When someone decides to follow me I am sent an email. The email

• Has buttons to easily follow or block them
• Number of followers
• Number of updates and their engagement level
• Their bio
• Samples of the Tweets

I think topify sends better twitter email notifications. Even better, if  I am reading the email on my Blackberry I can follow back by just replying. I can even reply with a direct message via email. With a click I can either follow, or block.

If you do follow someone Topify sends a confirmation message.

Sign up at Topify. Change the email in your Twitter profile to the one topify gives you and you can take advantage of this easy to use program.

Google Alert Primer

Download now or preview on posterous

googlealertspowerprimer.pdf (126 KB)

Great Ebook on how to use Google Alerts. You know I speak about using them in class all the time. If you thought you knew how to use them, think again. 21 pages on how to use this free tool from Google to manage your on line reputation. Amazing.

Google Alerts Power Primer: 50 Tips, Techniques & Workarounds.

About the Author Adam Green is the CEO of AlertRank.com, an online blog relationship management application. He blogs at AlertRank.com/MrGoogleAlerts. Please feel free to contact Adam with any questions or comments you might have about this eBook. His email address is Adam@AlertRank.com.

• Setting up Google Alerts
• Single Word Search
• Multiple Word Search
• Matching complete words in a URL
• Searching for inbound and outbound links
• Searching for URLS in Blogs

The list goes on . . . Enjoy!

Amy Chorew, The TechByte

Posted via email from Techbyte Talk

Creating a Social Media Policy Phase One

It is 10 o’clock Monday morning – do you know where your company’s reputation is? As sites like LinkedIn, Twitter, and Facebook become intertwined with business uses, real estate companies need to establish guidelines and best practices.

Whether we want to admit it or not, companies are learning that social networking, used properly, can be an effective business tool. We know by experience that having your sales associates involved in the community can enhance your company’s reputation and bring in more business. We are now embracing the concept that our  sales associates can blog, tweet, and participate in forums and social sites and also increase  business — so long as it’s done right.

But how do you monitor the conversation? You need a social media policy that explicitly lays out what is and isn’t permissible, both on the company’s network and outside of it if sales associates presenting themselves as representatives of the company.

If you do decide to take the “easy” way out and just block social networking sites at the company firewall, remember that what people post from home can still affect your company’s reputation.

How to get started
Consider creating a task force with people in your company who understand policy and procedures and others who are responsibly using social media. Together they can create a company platform. As always, before you can develop a policy, you need to define the company’s overall attitude toward social networking.  A well executed social media strategy helps consumers and licensees follow an online dialogue protocol that shows promise of a successful outcome for consumers in real estate transactions. Create a statement that reflects the company’s mission statement and commitment to the consumer.

• Do you know what your agents are doing on the web?
• Do You Know Where Your Agents Are Placing Their Listings and
  What Other Listings They Are Claiming
• Copyright Dos and Don’ts
• Logos and Company Names – Who has the authority to start an
  Online Group using a Registered Trade Name?
• Q & A Platforms –  Are they generating leads in the discussion thread, or are you putting your real estate license at risk?

Social Media Tools To Monitor and Maintain Reputation Management Controls
Educate agents in the correct use of tools to avoid problems and pitfalls and  engage consumers in a fashion that will BUILD and ENHANCE a company’s reputation online.
Remember to always reward responsible interaction on line.  If you can show examples of online fires doused as well as positive examples of building reputation online your sales associates will be better informed.

Consider hiring a social media director for your association or your company.

Brokers and agents need to learn how to use tools to MONITOR their online presence.
Google or Yahoo Alerts. Set up alerts  based on your companies name, principals names, etc. These alerts will send you an email every time one of your search words is found by the search engines.

http://www.google.com/alerts
http://alerts.yahoo.com/

Twitter Search
http://search.twitter.com
http://tweetbeep.com

StepRep
http://myfrontsteps.com
Yelp
http://www.yelp.com

Here are some other reputation management tools to look at. They charge a fee but will do the time consuming work for you.
Privacy Gurus
http://www.privacygurus.com/firm.php
Quality Service Certified
http://www.qualityservice.org
Incredible Agents
http://www.incredibleagents.com
Real Estate Ratingz
http://www.realestateratingz.com

Link of the Week Post

It is Friday Link of the Week!

I love research! Matthew Ferrara, the CEO of Matthew Ferrara & Co., my friend and colleague always seems to find amazing statistics. Because we are focusing on best practices on the web for marketing properties we always looking for information that proves that what we teach is right on!

What Realtors spend money on advertising

This graph is in on article on VHT’s web site titled “Experienced Agents Spend more Money on Advertising”

Great article, here are some of the highlights:

• Agents spend an average of $600 per listing.
• Many are confused by the myriad of sources of what to spend their money on.
• Some STILL spend money on newspapers, and 20% think the medium is effective.
• 90% of respondents said they used brochures for marketing their listing; 88.8% used postcards; and 83.3% used newspapers. Some 41.1% stated that they purchased TV ads.
• Many find on line advertising very effective for promoting property. BUT they said they still have a hard time convincing sellers that newspapers ads DO NOT work.
• Onlne advertising’s top three slots according to this article were Realtor.com; Craigslist and Google were the top national sites.
• Many agents wish there was one stop distribution mechanism. Wonder why they haven’t heard of Nls.point2.com, Listhub.com, or Realestateshows.com?

Basics on Google Search and SEO

More and more of my students have been asking me to explain search engine optimization in a “REALTOR” friendly language, so here it is, courtesy of my webmaster at WhiteWhaleDesigns.

Google is responsible for over %70 of all search engine traffic to web sites.Google uses automated software to read, analyze, compare and rank you web pages. That automated software looks at code and text, not the same as a human. Graphics and design do not matter.

NOTE: Don’t forget about text! don’t only use Flash.

The most relevant and most important web pages are listed in descending order.

• Relevant = how well a web page matches a specific word search
• Important = quality and quantity of links that point to your page from other web sites

To be listed on Google at all you will have to be linked to by another website that Google has gone to. Google’s automated software (Googlebot) crawls through your site. The more popular your site the more crawling that happens. Google visits more of fast movin and changing sites such as blogs and news sites.

Top things Google looks for for page ranking.

1. Keywords in links, both from your page and especially pages pointing to you. The more on other sites that point to you the better.
2. Keywords used in the Title (<TITLE>) of your web page
3. keywords used in the headings (<H1>, <H2>) of your page.
4. The PageRank of your pages which is in turn dependent on the number of links to your site.
5. Web pages that contain at least 200 words of relevant content. The more the better.
6. How often the content on your site is updated. You should update your site once a month if possible.
7. How fast you are obtaining new links (links to you from other sites)
8. How old the site is and the links going to it. Google likes old sites.
9. 
   

To make it simple get as many keywords on your pages, get as many links to your site that contain the keywords you wish to utilize and don’t do anything that looks “excessive”, “spammy” or “unnatural” to Google to get all these things.

Start with keywords you want to use.

Some sites to use: http://www.keyworddiscovery.com/ http://www.wordtracker.com/

Also analyze your website traffic. Your web host may have an analyzer already for you. If not you should be able to get the raw traffic logs and use software to analyze it.

Next post – Google Adwords