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.

Buying land with an iPad and some apps

Yes, we are buying land. Lots of land. One word . . . sustainability. I never thought this city raised New York girl would like to get her hands in dirt, but the transformation is almost complete.

So last week, armed with my boots, sunglasses, husband,  friends and an iPad we went looking. We used a REALTOR, Marty Hayes that  I met in a class, who had just written “farmer” on the back of his card, and I had kept it.

We did lots of walking, and saw lots of property. I ended up using some great apps on my iPad to help us search.  Here they are:

Tour Narrator - Alamode has created a free app for iPhone and iPad that allows you to capture notes, written and audio and take photos of each room if you want. This helped me categorize which properties had what.

I also used the search apps from Trulia, Zillow and Realtor.com All three gave me different experiences. All good. For land, especially large parcels, the Realtor.com app was easier to use. It was also easier to email the info on each property to everyone else in the car so they could look at it.

What was missing? Detailed information on the listings. Sometimes we happened upon a property and all that was on the sign was a phone number. Really? How about a QR code that could lead me to the information? QR codes could have really helped us save time and find out information quickly.

Thanks Marty Hayes for working with us. We will see you soon!

New ePro Course to launch at NAR Convention

In just a few days, the new ePro® will launch in New Orleans at the NAR convention. My business partners, Bill Lublin, Ginger Wilcox, Hal Lublin and myself have been working hard on the course. The National Association of REALTORS® asked us to update the ePro® and it is now ready! It will be a one day live class and the rest can be taken online. Hundreds of pages of content, exercises, case studies, and great check lists will help bring your business and your use of technology to the next level. It is an ABR elective and will be handled under the REBAC umbrella of courses for NAR.

If you believe your company or association would be interested in holding the class, let me know. Contact me on the “Hiring Amy” tab.

For a detailed FAQ, visit this link on our Social Media Marketing Institute website. Great information that will answer all your questions. Click here: “Relaunching ePro®.”

Also visit the REBAC.net site who is facilitating the course. Will I see you in New Orleans?

Using Mobile Technology to Engage your Company

Face it, we have evolved. Those who can remember when computers filled a room (yeah me) are just amazed at how fast mobile technology has grown. According to a report I read back in 2009, tech cycles tend to last 10 years and the mobile cycle has taken over in less than two.


So how does that impact small businesses? We use the tools every day. There are lots of useful apps but how can a company start using these wonders of telecommunication to  better engage their company?

Here are my tips:

No. 1 – These tools are for “just in time messages.” Communicate with your staff and people in the field with short to the point messages. We have kindles, laptops and soon Ipads for reading large amount of data.


No. 2 – How about on the mobile side of your website, you have easy links to reference check lists, for important information, useful for preparing for clients?


No. 3 – Text message (aka SMS systems) reminding people of:

• Learning opportunities
• Meetings
• Webinars
• Updates – emergencies

As far back as 4 years ago, I have shown companies how to set up distributions lists in their email program. Using the “email address” of people’s cell phones, someone at the office can send a mass email to everyone’s cell phones as a text message, instead of their email inbox. Sales people are trained to look for these messages. Very easy to use and implement.


No. 4 - Mobile Directories:

Access to important phone numbers and email addresses like:

• IT personnel
• Managers
• Affiliates

No. 5 – Knowing that we will be reading this information on small screens, here are my 3 tips:

3 screens or fewer and chunk content, so it is easy to read. No images needed, really, don’t get fancy.

So lets bring this home . . .


Use mobile tools to communicate with your company, your team, your associates.

• Make it easy to use.
• Make the information clear and concise.
• Make it easy to access.
• Make it compatible with established systems.

Share with me what you are already doing, I am very interested!!

Register for the CyberConvention Expo

This note is to let you know that I will be a featured speaker presenting “Leverage Your Productivity With These 7 Mobile Tools!”  at the upcoming National Real Estate CyberConvention & Expo,

February 21-27, 2010.

http://recyber.cyberconventions.com/

This is a wonderful on-line convention and you may attend all events — without leaving home! The event  is expected to attract over 10,000 real estate professionals during its seven days (Feb 21-27) and is open to the real estate community worldwide.

This year’s speaker line up, the largest ever, in addition to my talk, includes 50 sessions plus an address by Lawrence Yun, Chief Economist of the National Association of REALTORS who will tell us what’s going to happen!

You can network in the CyberConvention Social Networking Community, check out the latest business building products and services at the Expo — and of course attend my session!

Register for your pass at: http://recyber.cyberconventions.com/