That’s right, I said Free. Absolutely Free! Not the “Free when you sign up to some crazy plan” kind of free, the genuine real thing. Everyone loves Free! Here’s a list of ten tech things that you can do to improve your business without taking a penny out of your pocket!
1. Improve your skills with the latest industry information
Check out some of the great free Tech articles and tips from the following Real Estate Agent info sites.
http://www.realtor.org/technology
http://realtytimes.com/rtpages/technologyadvice.htm
http://realtytimes.com/rtpages/marketingadvice.htm
2. Upgrade your online listing photo quality
When listings flow to RealEstateOne.com and Realtor.come from the MLS the quality of your listing images can often times be degraded by resizing and compression and appear grainy, pixilated, blurry and dark. Loading correctly sized, first generation jpeg images directly up to RealEstateOne.net and the Realtor.com Control Panel can dramatically improve the overall quality of your listings making them more attractive to buyers and getting you kudos from your sellers!
If you need assistance resizing images check out the new PDF and Video tutorials available in the Digital Photography folder located in the Technology section of the RealEstaeOne.net Downloads Site
3. Take a free class
Check out the Real Estate One academy’s web site www.RealEstateOneAcademy.com for a list of upcoming classes. You can register for them right on the site and they are all free.
4. Start a Free Blog
A Blog (a contraction of the term “Web log“) is a Web site, usually maintained by an individual, with regular entries of commentary, descriptions of events, or other material such as graphics or video. Entries are commonly displayed in reverse-chronological order. “Blog” can also be used as a verb, meaning to maintain or add content to a blog.
Blogging is a great way to establish yourself as an expert in your field. Launch a free Blog to help define a niche market or create a Blog for the subdivision that you farm. There is a ton of information available online to help you to get started. Check out the Real Estate Blog writing articles and tips on Realty Times, Realtor.org and the Real Estate Tomato. Start a free Blog on http://wordpress.com or http://www.blogger.com/start or any of the zillion other free blog sites available online today.
5. Set up a simple contact management system using Microsoft Outlook
I tell agents all the time, get your hands on as many email addresses that you possibly can. I don’t mean buy, borrow or steal them. I mean real bona fide hand shake email addresses. Addresses of family and friends, past customers, internet leads. Enter them as Contacts in Outlook and schedule recurring tasks or appointments that will notify you when it is time to send them something or to contact them. If the money is just not in the budget right now to purchase a full featured email drip marketing program like Sharper Agent, then just create your own.
6. Print screen shots of your web marketing for your listing presentation
If you hold down the Alt key and the Print Scrn key on your keyboard at the same time, you can capture what ever is on your computer screen at anytime. Then just paste the captured image into a new document in a photo editing program like Irfanview, Photostudio, Photshop etc. and crop the image and save it as a jpeg. You can print these images and include them in your next Listing Presentation. Your web site, your listings on REO.com, Realtor.com, listing stats, and any other online marketing that distinguishes you from the competition will all be more effective when they can be shown visually instead of just talked about.
7. Check out what other successful agents are doing online across the country
Allen Hainge is a national technology speaker/trainer that runs a very successful real estate web site and is the author of a fantastic online email technology newsletter that is available for Free. You can check out his site and sign up for his free newsletter at http://www.afhseminars.com/index.htm
One of the best parts of his site, in my opinion, can be found under titled section titled The Cyberstars (http://www.afhseminars.com/cyber.htm ). Here you will find a huge list of all of his master online agents that he calls his Cyberstars and under each and every one of their names is a link to their websites and or Blogs. This is a great place to browse through and gather ideas from some of the most successful online agents in the industry.
8. Send out an email to your sphere
If you already have all of your contacts organized and sorted into groups. Send out a Just Listed or Just Sold email. Attach a link to the listing on your website or the link to your virtual tour. Create a newsletter or announce your new Blog site. Stay in contact with your contacts! This can be the source of almost 50 to 60% of an agents business. Cultivate it and watch it grow!
9. Update your WebSite
How many of you are still trying to sell Real Estate with the same canned generic text that came with your template website. Go in and update your site. Add a main headline that tells users what they can do on your site instead of the generic “Welcome to my homepage”. Add some new Favorite Site links, or some updated Testimonials.
Do you still have the photo place holder on your Website Home page instead of a photo of yourself? Is your photo grainy or the incorrect size. Is it 25 years old? Maybe it’s time to get an updated image. Send it to me and I’ll correctly resize it and post it for you, it just doesn’t get any easier than that. J
10. Join a Social Network
Refer to my last Tech tip for the details on social networking. I just had to add it to this list because it’s absolutely free! You can find it and all of my other Tech tips on my absolutely free Blog site located at;
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