David and Bonnie Lelak here from IHI Home Inspections.  I recently wrote an article titled “Are you advertising here?” In it I talked about how Youtube is one of the highest searched websites out there now.  Most people don’t realize how powerful video is and how much Google loves it and those that do realize it, are not using it to it’s fullest potential.  There are tips and tricks to using Youtube and video just like writing your blog.  I have learned so many and then I just spent last week learning even more.  While I was surfing around on the web I found the following article on how to get started with video.  It gives you some great information. 

Online Videos For Your Real Estate Website or Blog
by Peyman Aleagha
 http://www.realtysoft.com

Just when you think you’re catching up with technology with a website or blog, you find that there is now a requirement for video on your site. 

It’s not a legal requirement, but one of demand from the consumer and your site visitors. Video on the Web has mushroomed, with YouTube alone hosting almost 100 million videos from 3.75 million user channels. Then there is Google Video, Yahoo Video, Vimeo, and a dozen others in the mainstream.

Not just the Internet, but also mobile technology is moving rapidly. Videos are becoming very popular on cell phones as well. The iPhone is changing the way that the cell phone is utilized. And, what percentage of your real estate customers come from out of your area? They need information about the area, attractions, natural beauty, parks, schools and more. But, they also want to SEE what all of this looks like. Photos are great, but video rocks!

Don’t fret, though. The same rapidly advancing technology that makes video a demand item on your site also makes it easy and inexpensive to do. We aren’t just talking about listing videos for virtual tours. We also should have video of all of the area’s features that make it unique and a great place to live and work. What you need is a camcorder and some video editing software,neither of which must be very expensive.

One of the easiest to use video editing software solutions is absolutely free, and it is probably already on your PC if it’s operating with Windows XP. Windows Movie Maker will take your still photos or motion video right from your camera or camcorder, or off your hard drive. You can add voice-over and music, titles and credits, and even fancy transitions between photos or video clips. Other solutions with more capability are all over the Web, and at prices from $39 to hundreds. It’s all up to you and your requirements.

A higher end software product is Camtasia Studio. Many of the training videos you see or purchase are done in this software. The latest version produces videos in all of the common formats, but the default is MPEG 4, which gives you high definition video with smaller file sizes than the other formats. The smaller file size lets the video play through with fewer of those annoying pauses while the download catches up to the playing. This software will also produce an iPod video format directly.

What about a camcorder? You can spend a lot of money, or you can do a very credible job with less than $150 for the high end “The Flip” video camcorder. It’s really easy to use, produces 640 x 480 video, and has one really great feature. It is called the “flip” because a button flips out a USB connector to plug directly into a computer. Even better, the on-board software will send the video up to YouTube directly, bypassing your hard drive if you want. It will even let you add music in the process. Most of our videos are done with the Flip video, it’s fast, fun and easy to use. 

OK, we have a camcorder, and we have editing software. Where do we put our videos?

YouTube — This is the gorilla in the video world. And, it’s free, so very popular. Your videos will get a lot of exposure on YouTube, and you’ll begin to get followers who will subscribe to your “channel” to see your new ones. Once the video is up, you can get “embed” code to place it right into your website or blog.

Google and Yahoo Video — Both of these major players have free video sites as well. Together, they don’t even come close to the plays that YouTube boasts, but they get traffic, so you want to upload your videos there as well.

Vimeo — This is a newer and free service. Vimeo has a nice presentation, and it offers HD quality. They don’t take commercial videos though, so don’t put listing presentations up. They will pull them down. However, if you don’t put promo stuff in your area videos, they should be fine.

Tubemogul — This isn’t a video production service, but a great tool to get your videos uploaded to multiple services at one time and track the views. You start a free Tubemogul account, and give it your logins to services like YouTube, Google, Yahoo and other video sites. Then you upload your video, title and describe it just once, and TubeMogul uploads it to all of the sites at once. It gives you graphs of daily views, and you can even give your listing client a link to keep up with the views of their home videos.

Have fun, don’t spend a lot of money, and make your site visitors happy with video.

Free advertising that works! is a post from: The Atlanta Home Inspector's Wife Marketing Site

As part of the Atlanta home inspectors team, I go around to different real estate offices and I was speaking to an agent the other day who is having a wonderful career.  She is closing sales and generating new business and leads like crazy.  Things are definately rocking and rolling right along for her.  I was nearly floored when she that she just does not have time to follow-up on all these leads.  But then, if you’re a business that is generating leads on a regular basis then we all suffer from this problem at one time or another, right?

Can you imagine how much business is slipping through your fingers because you don’t have time or simply don’t have a system in place to keep in touch or follow-up?  Does this sound like you?

Needless to say, if you did realize the importance and the business you could be missing then perhaps we should talk…

What I would like to know is do you have a marketing plan in place, a place where you can see your plan layed out, a system in place for lead generation, follow-up and keep in touch? Do you use an easy to use email system that keeps you in front of your clients?  Do you do this consistantly?  Is it part of your marketing plan?  And do you feel that you don’t have time or that these tasks are taking up time from other tasks you could be doing?  How much of this have you automated?

For more information on any of these systems, how they can help you get ahead of your competition, or perhaps how to implement them into your small business practices, contact me or let’s get together and start making plans now to be extremely busy in 2010. 

Call me today at 404-788-2580 and let’s talk! I look forward to helping you any way I can!

Are you generating leads and then not following up? is a post from: The Atlanta Home Inspector's Wife Marketing Site

Are you feeling creative and able to write several post in one day but don’t want them all published one right after the other.  Watch the following video and find out how to delay your post a few days or even a year.   

Need customized help, contact me today and let’s get started on your next marketing project.  Need to know how to start a blog, I can help!  Need to learn how to use social networking to build your business, I can help!  Want to get started on Facebook, I can help! 

Call 404-788-2580 to set up an appoointment today!

How to edit the publishing date on your blog post is a post from: The Atlanta Home Inspector's Wife Marketing Site

I ran across the following information over at Prep (Positive Real Estate Professionals) which is a site that I have been using now for quite a while to help drive traffic and create link backs to my own sites.   I was impressed with the job that these guys do already, but after reading this, I’m blown away!  So here’s the information:

when we were discussing putting a blog together for the Arkansas Realtors® Association (ARA), one question popped up from time to time — “Why don’t we host the blog ourselves?”

Some thought was given to hosting a blog on our ARA site, but we tried that once and it didn’t go over to well for want of traffic. That, folks, was the primary reason for making the decision to go with Positive Real Estate Professionals (PREP) — a growing real estate community that has spent the past few months helping people who make a living through real estate (agents, mortgage bankers, etc.) set up blogs and drive traffic to them.

Our little ARA blog opened about halfway through Monday and I feel compelled to share some traffic counts. From Monday through Friday, 1,866 unique visitors visited The Arkansas Realtor and we’ve recorded an average bounce rate of 18.98 percent.

Let me explain what all that means. The unique visitors count represents individual visits. If someone visited the site 30 times in the same day, only one visit would be recorded. So, 1,866 indviduals have made it to our blog over the past few days. That’s impressive and that 18.98 percent bounce rate is outstanding.

A high bounce rate, see, would mean that people are looking at the blog then quickly moving on to something else. If you have a low bounce rate, that means that people are sticking around and reading the content posted. A bounce rate below 40 percent is considered fantastic, I’m told, and this blog whips the socks off of that. Hopefully, that will continue.

What PREP has done for us is not only drive traffic to our site through social networking, but help get traffic that is meaningful. The PREP folks have found ways to get people here who can use the information we post. We don’t have to worry about promoting articles through Digg, Reddit, Facebook, Twitter, etc. because the folks at PREP take care of that for us.

Of course, I am impressed at how excited our ARA members are about the blog and know that a lot of them have visited, too. The support from Arkansas Realtors is always appreciated and, in fact, we at the ARA wouldn’t be pursuing this project if we didn’t think it would benefit our members.

So are you ready to get started driving traffic to your own listings and your own website, then follow this link

http://positiverealestateprofessionals.com/membership-request-form-bonnie-lelak/ 

And get started today! 

Want traffic, need traffic, don’t know where to start? is a post from: The Atlanta Home Inspector's Wife Marketing Site

I help teach an open lab every week here in the Canton area and this Thursday I met a wonderful lady, with a wealth of information to share.  Kathy Drewien.  While browsing around her site I found this information on what to do “When Your Mom wants to be your Friend on facebook”  and it lead me to another post which gave you some great step by step instructions on how to set up your friends list and why so go visit “How to Friend Mom” and set up your list today. 

Need help getting it setup or understanding it give me a call.

Facebook – great information on how to use list is a post from: The Atlanta Home Inspector's Wife Marketing Site

As the Atlanta home inspectors wife, I have been blogging and marketing for over two years and I know how much time I have spent trying to learn how to do the simplest things when marketing online.  I put together this video that is not that great, but gives you a quick glance at how to do a link in a blog post. 

Check back often to learn more about linking, blogging and online marketing.  Call me or check out my services page for information on how you can get one on one personalized help today. 

The Atlanta home inspectors wife shares how to do a link is a post from: The Atlanta Home Inspector's Wife Marketing Site

As the Atlanta Home Inspectors wife I love learning about the latest technology, tho YouTube is not new or even remotely new.  As our primary marketing person, I look for different ways to market our business without it costing us an arm and a leg, and in today’s market, we all need cheap.  One of the best ways that I have found is to do our own YouTube Videos.  I found the following press release just the other day that confirms my ideas that YouTube is huge.  YouTube is now one of the largest places being searched on the Internet.  Are your clients able to find you there?

 Press Release

“Are you advertising here? If not… You should be!” says the Atlanta home inspectors wife is a post from: The Atlanta Home Inspector's Wife Marketing Site

I wanted to post this out there for all who wish to know about it.  This is a Free  Tech Lab  that has amazing information and helpers available  to do hands on help at every session.  Sponsored by the Women’s Council of Realtors Cherokee Chapter.  I know for a fact that they have a video class coming up in the next few weeks, that will not be free as a matter of fact you need to be a member of WCR to attend.  This video class will take you from the beginning stages of doing a video to the final stages and will be worth CEU’s for Realtors.

So Join us for L.A.B…..”Leading Agents Beyond” tech training on the latest software that helps REALTORS maximize their productivity and success!! HANDS ON…bring your laptop!

DATES/LOCATIONS:
Cherokee Association Training Center
1600 River Park Blvd., Ste 104
Woodstock, GA 30188
Thursdays 11am-1pm
3/26, 4/2, 4/23, 5/7, 5/21

Outfront Education Training Ctr.
2205 Riverstone Blvd Ste 107
Canton, GA 30114
Tuesdays 9-11am
3/24, 4/14, 4/28, 5/12, 5/26

Shawn Graves-WCR Education Chair is the main contact person and coordinator for these classes and has shared a ton of valuable information all ready.   This is a great time for all of us to learn LOTS!!!
I know this morning Shawn went over several things in FMLS including how to pull special reports, how to locate several items in GAMLSPRO and he has a wealth of information to share every time.  I was happy to share with several people different things about Facebook, Twitter, and blogging.  Are you there getting your share, don’t get left behind, just because there isn’t a charge don’t think these labs are not of value.  Several people are already taking advantage of these free labs, don’t miss out! Put it on your calendar!

Women’s Council of Realtors Tech Labs are FREE and Open to all is a post from: The Atlanta Home Inspector's Wife Marketing Site

As the Atlanta home inspectors wife, I was constantly searching on the interent and through websites for information on how to build our Atlanta Home Inspection website and how to be found on Google.  Below is a great article by Shayne Harris that explains some great tips on how to drive traffic your way.

Home Inspectors Wife shares “7 Steps to Driving Prospects to Your Website” is a post from: The Atlanta Home Inspector's Wife Marketing Site

As the Atlanta Home Inspectors wife I do a lot of research online and I love ActiveRain for valuable information.  One of my friends, Michael Thorton, wrote a great article  about  an application called Nearby Tweets.  From the best I can tell it looks like a pretty cool application that you can find the local folks with.  I’m planning on going over myself and checking it out.   You should also head over to Michael’s blog as you never know what you are going to find there.  He shares some amazing pictures and some thought provoking messages. 

There is always great information to be found is a post from: The Atlanta Home Inspector's Wife Marketing Site