Here is a great read in the REALTOR(R) magazine this month on perfecting your photographs on your listings.
Put an end to boring or unflattering property photos. Here are six quick fixes to common photo challenges.
By Melissa Dittmann Tracey | July 2008
Buyers today want to see photos, and lots of them. But if the snapshots you’re taking of your listings are unflattering, lack detail, or are simply too boring, you could actually be doing a disservice.
To get more eyes on your listings, you’ve got to make sure your photos are showing off properties to their fullest. Photographer Barbara Lane offers photography tips and illustrations for real estate practitioners in her book How to Photograph Interiors When You Barely Know How to Work a Camera (Barbara Lane Photography, 2007). Here’s how she solves the trickiest photo challenges: read more
One of the topics I hit fairly hard in my talk about Social Media Marketing at the last Arizona Real Estate Bloggers Network Gathering was the use of Stumbleupon as a way to introduce people to your blog who don’t already know about it but are interested in the general topic of your blog content.
As an example, if your blog is about Phoenix Real Estate you would be able to introduce it to people who are interested in Real Estate and to people who are interested in Phoenix or live in or around Phoenix Arizona.
If your blog is about a totally different topic, you would be able to show it to people who have indicated that they are interested in that topic.
To see a list of the topics on Stumbleupon that are currently hot and getting a lot of “air time,” you can visit the hot topics page. The larger the the size of the phrase, the more active that topic is. The hot topics list might give you some great ideas to incorporate into your blog posts because it gives you an idea of what most of the people on Stumbleupon are browsing right now or recently.
The Popular Tags List includes Recently Hot Tags as well as Most Popular All Time. Go get some blogging ideas. There are plenty of them there.
Thank you to Candace et. al. for inviting me to join the fun on AZREBN! My name is Rob Gibbs, and I have a blogging problem. There, I said it. I have 4 of my own blogs and now am authoring on this one as well. From what I can tell, I have a different favorite blogging platform than the rest of the authors. I am a TypePad user for 2 of my Blogs, blogger for a 3rd and wordpress for the 4th (and now 5th). My favorite is TypePad. Why? Well, you’ll just have to keep reading my posts to find out!
It’s official.. As of yesterday, the long rumored, Active Rain “outside blogs” have launched. For some, this might be great news, for others, it might just be another decision to have to make. The choice of platforms can be confusing; Wordpress, TypePad, Blogger, Active Rain and many others. Either way, if you are new to blogging, most of us here at AZREBN suggest that you start “somewhere!” Find your style, find your voice and get started.. Make sure blogging is for you. Honestly, it isn’t going to work for everyone. Just like the real estate business, many get started with expectations of instant success only to realize it is work and not as easy as one might think. Active Rain does have a lot of information and is a good place to learn about or learn how to blog.
I am sure there will be much discussion and many questions about the new AR platform. Jay has already raised some good questions and has written a nice post (surprise surprise) about the Active Rain Launch. I also saw that Dustin Luther has given Active Rain’s outside blog’s a look as well.
I am sure there will be people willing to discuss some of your options at upcoming meetings. What ever the choice, we are looking forward to seeing what you have to say in your part of the blog universe. Best of luck and much success to you!
During my session at Meetup #3, I discussed the differences between a blog at Wordpress.com and a Wordpress.org blog. Here I’ll share some of those differences again, for those that missed the session.
To get started, I’ll define the two categories. A Wordpress.com blog is one that appears at Wordpress.com. The blog you create will have a name similar to stevebelt.wordpress.com. Blogs created at Wordpress.com are free to start, though you can upgrade them for a fee, and new bloggers evaluating whether blogging is for them should absolutely consider starting at Wordpress.com. In contrast, a Wordpress.org blog is a blog in which the Wordpress software has been downloaded from Wordpress.org and then subsequently installed on either your own server (which I do), or via hosting provider like GoDaddy, HostGator, DreamHost, etc. Some hosting providers will even install Wordpress for you, so you can skip that step and get right to blogging.
The first consideration I like to make, is that I am blogging for business. The blog is a part of my business. To that end, I want as much control and ownership over my business as I can possibly get. Today, Wordpress.com is as close to free as you can get, and has a fairly liberal policy with regard to what type of blog you can have there. But that’s today. Wordpress.com could change their rules at any time, for any reason. If they did, how would that impact your business? While I doubt Wordpress.com will change its rules any time soon (if ever), it’s not something I’m prepared to bank on, even if the chances are slim.
All of the rest of the differences are functional, rather than philosophical. The first functional difference between a Wordpress.com blog and a hosted Wordpress blog has to do with your theme choices. Wordpress.com has ~100 themes you can choose from. That sounds like a lot, I know. But there are a lot of blogs, and no matter which theme you choose, you are going to be one of 1000’s that share the same look and feel. Heck, I use Chris Pearson’s Cutline 3 on the Phoenix Area Real Estate Blog. That has to be one of the top 10 most popular themes in existence (it’s used right here at AZREBN too), but one day, if I decide to switch, I’ll be free to do so, and not be limited to 99 other choices.
Speaking of themes, Wordpress.com will allow you to pay $15/year to customize the CSS of a theme. But that’s the extent of the customization you can do. You cannot change the layout or functionality of the theme, as you don’t have access to the PHP files.
As shown here in my admin panel, hosted Wordpress bloggers can make any change to the theme they want to. I’ve made a reasonable number of changes to Cutline 3. The sidebars are narrower, the whole theme is wider, the header is shorter, and I have a signature area with my shiny bald head in it. Changes like this take some expertise in CSS and PHP, and many of them would not be possible on Wordpress.com.
The other big thing that differentiates a Wordpress.com blog from a hosted Wordpress blog is that you are free to install any number of plugins to power your blog. Plugin needs some definition, I suppose before this makes any sense. A plugin is an additional piece of functionality that you can “plug in” to Wordpress to do something extra for you. An important plugin for you to consider would be one that backs up your blog. I use a plugin aptly called Wordpress Database Backup. Every day this plugin extracts everything from the database that holds all of the posts and configuration for my blog, zips it up, and emails it to me. I have restored from this database, and it does work. If you ever bungle up your blog, you’d be very, very happy to have used this plugin to recover it.
Other important plugins to consider are All in One SEO Pack, Wordpress.com stats, Twitter Tools, Subscribe to Comments, Similar Posts, wp-cache, Share This, MyAvatars, Gravatar, Google XML Sitemaps, Google Analytics for Wordpress, Get Recent Comments, Feed Footer, FeedBurner FeedSmith, and DoFoolow. The names of some of those plugins help you understand what they do. A thorough post on Plugins seems like a good idea for a later topic.
The final differentiator is price. You can successfully blog at Wordpress.com for free. A hosted Wordpress blog is going to cost you at least $7/year for a domain name, plus a hosting account which often costs ~$20/month. Add to that, the hosting account will cause you to learn some minimal hosting skills, like how to FTP files, how to upgrade Wordpress with subsequent versions, how to install and change a theme, and how to install and change plugins.
Oh, and speaking of XML Sitemaps (we were talking about sitemaps, weren’t we?), there was a recent change at Wordpress.com to include as standard functionality a sitemap.xml for your Wordpress.com blog. That’s a good thing. If you want Google to really like your blog, you will want to register your blog with Google via Webmaster Tools and then submit a sitemap. In the past, you didn’t have a way to create a sitemap, and now you do.
And speaking of Google, here’s an interesting factoid. I created the Scottsdale Real Estate Blog during my session. The first post went up right at the end of my session at 10:30am. Google alerted me that this post was indexed at 12:50pm. It took just 2:20 for Google to decide to index a brand new post, from a brand new blog. For grins, I Google’d the title of that post around 3pm on Friday. The post came up #10 in the search index. Today it comes up #1. Honestly that probably has more to do with the number of comments, and the link from my other blog to it. And sure, not many people are searching on “Welcome to the Scottsdale Real Estate Blog”, but the point isn’t so much the rank on a very obscure set of terms, but rather the speed with which the post was indexed at all.
Bill Austin filled the house at the 3rd Arizona Real Estate Bloggers Network Meetup.
If you are new or not sure what Social Media is all about and how to go about implementing this new type of media in your real estate business then this video is a must-see. This video is approximately 50 minutes long and Bill Austin gives you the “Nuts and Bolts” of Social Networking online.
At least I thought it rocked… what a great group of people. I throughly enjoy talking with most of you today. Could have used more time, but then again, I could talk about this stuff for days.
Special thanks to Candace for all she puts into this and our pals at Land America Title for sponsoring!!
Here’s my presentation on “Building Blog Readership”:
AZREBN has been talking up Wordpress Blogs at our last few workshops and so I thought I would share a great opportunity for all our AZREBN members to take advantage of a contest being hosted by ChiQ Montes.
ChiQ Montes is a full time Wordpress Theme Designer, currently living in the Phillipines and just launched www.WPThemeDesigner.com
ChiQ is hosting a contest and invites all bloggers to take a shot at winning a premium licensed theme as a prize! What a deal!
The difference with Premium Themes and Free Wordpress themes is that you will have a unique look and most premium themes cost money and offer customization!
There are 30 Premium Wordpress Designs up for grabs and you can take a look here.
The contest rules are simple, complete the following guidelines and win yourself a WP Premium Theme by ChiQ and sponsors and be sure to stand out in the crowd!
Contest Rules:
Requirement on the Blog Post:
1. Write about this Contest on your blog! You can either inform others or share why you want to join.. anything goes.
If you want to increase your chances of winning and gain additional points:
1 additional entry - Digg/Stumble
1 additional entry - Twitter Post about the contest
1 additional entry - Be on the list of my Top 10 Commentators Box (sidebar)
Here is a great read in the REALTOR(R) magazine this month on perfecting your photographs on your listings.
