People use the internet more and more for everything these days. We are ordering clothes, books and even groceries now. People are even (gasp) throwing away bills and checks, and just paying everything online with online banking. And more than ever people are getting their news from the internet.

Real estate newsletters have become a very popular form of communication. Emailing newsletters packed with information have found their way into Real Estate agents' daily routines. It is a great way for busy real estate agents to get in touch or stay in touch with their clients.

This is a way for agents and brokers to save the money that they would normally spend on printing out flyers and newsletters and they also can reach a larger audience in less time.

Many Email Marketing applications come with generic flyers, first time home buyers, a congratulations flyer, happy anniversary, etc. but there are also ways to customize these flyers to make them your own, to make them unique to the real estate agents business and clientele. It does not end there; you can have the application send these flyers out automatically on certain days, weekly, biweekly, monthly, etc. Some programs give you the ability to incorporate multi-media within your newsletter such as virtual tours, audio tours, rotating banner ads, and custom template design. There are some programs with which you can get technical if you know html code while others do the hard stuff for you. you put in a picture with contact information and go.

With everything anyone could possibly want or need all on the internet, why wouldn’t real estate agents take advantage of email marketing online?

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It's no secret that houses have not been selling like they did even last year. Is it going to get worse before it gets better?

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According to cnnmoney.com, the housing market is headed for choppy waters.
They have created a nice presentation of the various cities and states where the housing markets has slowed, remained somewhat stagnant or actually moved forward for 2007.
But even those cities are facing what the rest of the country is facing next year or the year after.
Go to cnnmoney.com to find out more information.

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I recently found out that 99% of homebuyers who searched for a home on the Internet found photos to be among the most useful features of the websites.

Personally, I like still digital photos or even a virtual tour. I can then look at a house and imagine it not only as a whole, but actually being there.

Coldwell Banker Real Estate LLC announced that it was getting into the business of selling and renting virtual homes in an Internet-based three-dimensional world called Second Life, further smudging the line between realty reality and virtual realty. They have even come out with a 3-D rendering of a for-sale home in the Second Life virtual world.

Charlie Young, Senior Vice President of Marketing for Coldwell Banker Real Estate, said,
"What makes this so unique is that prospective buyers can literally ‘tour’ this home from the comforts of their home and computer. Prospective buyers can get the most comprehensive view of the home possible short of actually visiting it."

Viewers who come to the site can walk through the rendered home using an animated character known as an avatar.

Visitors who are attracted to the real-world home can set up an appointment with a real-life sales agent or can visit www.coldwellbankervirtualhome.com for more information.

This marketing thrust from Coldwell Banker has drawn mixed reactions. Some industry participants question the need or value of having virtual tours like this while others are thrilled with the fact that someone has established a way to take virtual tours and viewing homes to a new level.

This is one of the best things to hit the web for Realtors as well as people looking to buy a home. This is a way for a realtor to serve their clients like never before.

I have always enjoyed touring houses. To be able to do it from the comfort of my own home like never before is great.

I know that there have been virtual tours of houses before and you might think that this is the same thing, but believe me, it is not!

This is a tour like never before. It’s like a computer game, and you as a client are not limited to what the realtor wants to show you or by the pictures that have been taken. You have full control over where you go in the house, what you view and how long you want to snoop around.

Could this be the next step in real estate where you receive help in the form of your cyber-realtor?

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Is is a shameless marketing ploy? Is it the next generation on the web? Will web 2.0 work for the real estate industry?
The jury may still be out on whether or not web 2.0 O'Reilly is what the Internet is eventually and completely adopting.
Let's take a look at some of the various web sites out there that are considered web 1.0 vs those that are considered web 2.0:

According to Wikipedia, web 2.0 "aims to facilitate collaboration and sharing between users."
Being web 2.0, however, just for the sake of being web 2.0 is not the answer to our business. The answer is using the new web 2.0 ideas effectively with what already works in business.
After all, the business world has not flocked to the virtual because it is cool in and of itself. The business world runs to the internet because that is where the billions of people are. And one thing realtors will always need is people with whom they will work to buy and sell real estate.
It's all about communication. Online, web 2.0 or otherwise, it is all about communicating effectively online or offline.
It is in this way that realtors will gain clients and help them buy and sell properties.

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We have all been listening to the stories of doom and gloom about the state of the real estate and mortgage industries, and there are some sad cases out there. There are pockets of this country that have been hit quite hard. But what about those areas of the country that defy the statistics?
I found an article on Realtytimes.com that tells the whole story. The real estate market is continuing to grow in some areas of our great country, but we don't get to hear that often enough.
Please don't sugarcoat the truth, but please tell me the whole truth. Real estate is still moving forward is some areas, and that gives me hope.

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What will we see next? Can Google and other mapping companies top themselves after they complete taking shots of every single street in our country?

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According to their own site, "Digg is a place for people to discover and share content from anywhere on the web." That, in a nutshell, is what Digg does. And there are a whole lot of companies that do the same thing, as I mentioned in Pt 1 of this post.

Another site that does a good job of explaining how stuff works said the following:


The huge Digg community is made up of users who play different, often overlapping roles. There are submitters who post news stories that they find in blogs, professional news sites and random postings around the Web. These stories land in the Digg queue. There are casual reviewers who look for interesting stuff in the queue and "Digg it" -- meaning they click a button to let Digg.com know they think it's cool. Once an article gets enough Diggs (and meets a bunch of other secret requirements), it's promoted to the homepage. There are truly dedicated reviewers who spend hours every day combing the queue to actively promote good stories and report bad stories (which will eventually get removed with enough reports against them). These people really drive what ends up on the homepage and therefore what gets thousands and thousands of people clicking through to read the story, sometimes crashing unsuspecting Web servers. Small Web sites and home servers can get crippled when 400 visitors a day suddenly turns into 5,000 in two hours. Even at HowStuffWorks, where our servers can handle the traffic, we can easily tell when we've been Dugg. When our stats show an increase over normal traffic of thousands of clicks per hour to a single article, we check the news-compilation frontrunners -- Slashdot, Fark and Digg -- to see who's got it.

And finally there are the Digg readers, who make up the majority of Digg users and reap the benefits of the willing Digg army that promotes the best stories to front page. In return, the readers keep Digg in ad revenue and give the submitters and the Diggers something to do.

Digg is the number one social bookmarking site right now, and last time I checked their Alexa rankings, they were at 89. Being closest to 1 is good, and they are way way up there. For comparison, pepsi.com ranks 36,467.

Digg helps build traffic for your site when you submit your posts. You add relevant keywords and key phrases so that when Digg.com users are searching, they will run across your site. Readers will like your article and "Digg" it. According to JohnTP's website (a site with lots of good blogging info), it can take around 50 diggs to get to the coveted front page.

And that is just one of the myriad of ways to get help from using Digg.com. Just be careful to not abuse the Digg system. Being listed as a splog (spam blog) can be distrastrous. Keep it on the up-and-up and you'll be fine.

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The real estate business never sleeps. All the more reason why blogs within the real estate world have proliferated. Realtors never sleep.
Here is a short list of blogs within the real estate industry that are worth a look-see:

• http://blog.sellsiusrealestate.com


• http://www.futureofrealestatemarketing.com


• http://blog.inman.com


• http://www.raincityguide.com


• http://www.bloodhoundrealty.com/BloodhoundBlog


• http://www.terabitz.com


• http://www.360digest.com

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How things change. When the buyer or the seller has the upper-hand, they make the rules.




We want to welcome our resident cartoonist, Alan Staney, to the blog team. Welcome aboard, Alan. And great work!

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Social bookmarking websites let you save bookmarks online and tag and/or categorize them with keywords. The difference between local, or even remote, bookmarking (protopage Google, etc) is that with social bookmarking websites, it is a community of shared bookmarks within common categories or themes. These sites store and organize bookmarks and interesting articles and posts. The content is created by, and added to, by thousands of members; thus creating the community and changing the designation to social bookmarking.
A blog called Blog Marketing Tactics has provided a comprehensive list of social bookmarking websites. But beware. Not all are equal. Some stand above the crowd. A short list is Digg, Del.icio.us and Reddit.
They all do it just a bit differently, so choose which one works the best for you.
Next time I will go into more detail, using a few choice social bookmarking websites as well as how to use these to promote your business.

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I have realized that we have slogans, billboards, jingles, and any other type of marketing device thrown in our faces every single day. I mean not only do we have commercials, the newspaper, signs all over the street, but now companies are marketing their products through televisions right outside their store fronts. Marketing agency MJM has created interactive multi-media walls. With this state of the art technology all you have to do is move your hands over a panel containing sensors; this will in turn change the picture and audio of the television-like screen. Many real estate agencies or brokerages are taking advantage of this new technology and using it as on street marketing. Just say that you were walking around an outside mall or shopping center and there is an agency located there. All they have to do is set up this screen behind their glass storefront to market their properties. Whether they are open or not, you can go up and view the properties by simply touching the screen and the correct controls with your hands.
This could really be the next step in marketing. Much as the Internet has empowered homebuyers, this too would allow clients and prospects to search listings at their leisure. Effective real estate marketing has been said to involve using all methods of media, such as print ads, TV and radio. Now real estate companies can be reached even when you are not in front of any of these other avenues of marketing.

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