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for Busy Realtors® There you go again….the seller is waiting impatiently at home for you to present your buyer's offer that you're hurriedly writing up, and you can't remember how to spell "obfuscate" which your buyer insists must be in the offer because….well, who cares why? He just wants to make a point about something…but you can't find the office dictionary. If only you knew how to find basic things like this on the Web. Below you'll find Web site links to data that can be most valuable to you in preparing documents and in your general realty marketing work. You might want to save these below links or make this entire column a "Favorite" in your browser under a folder name called "Shortcuts." Or, make a different and perhaps more useful kind of "favorite" that we'll show you how to make. Meanwhile, here are some useful sites that will save you time and money on the web.
In April, 2001, "Cleveland real estate" was searched for 728 times on www.goto.com. "Los Angeles real estate" was searched for 1604 times. "Detroit real estate" was searched for there 427 times. Even though goto.com is only a fraction the size of Yahoo!, you'll still gain a valid sample indicative of all web searchers. Once you know, you can be sure of what key words to emphasize in your web site and Meta tags. Also, search using your city's name along with other realty terms such as realty, Realtor®, Realtors®, homes, condos, houses, relocation, etc. to see which phrases, in your town, are most often used. Ever notice how eventually, your list of "Favorites" or "Bookmarked" sites gets to be a mile long and it takes forever to locate stuff, even alphabetically? Well, there's an easier way. Just make your own Microsoft Word Favorites page that has all your links. (You can put the e-mail addresses of all your contacts there, too.) After all, the URLs you use most every day you can remember, or else they're handily available in the memory of the browser's location box. The URLs and e-mail addresses that you should type onto the Word doc page would be those that usually elude you because of infrequent use of them. For example, I sometimes wonder if it's Mailstart.com, Webbox.com or Mailbox.com where I go to handle my e-mail when I'm out of town. If I've taken my computer, I pull up the Word doc to tell me the correct URLs I need. If I left my computer home and am checking e-mail in an Internet café or at a hotel or friend's home, I can do one of two things:
Take the time to make your "Favorites" list of URLS and e-mail addresses on a Word or other word processing document and copy it to a disk that you'll take with you on trips. And be sure to save some of the above links and instructions on how to find key data. Next time you're frantically writing an offer and need help, you'll be glad you did. Finding links to local schools Many of your visitors ask about the quality of local education. Now you can have a Web site, or a packet all prepared to mail or e-mail them when they ask. To find the sites from which you can gain such information, go to www.google.com and search for the following terms.
Use "Cut," not "Delete" to avoid ugly data loss When getting rid of text or images always use Cut instead of Delete. Why? Because when you use Cut, the material is saved temporarily on your clipboard and not lost forever as it is with Delete. Thus, if you had eliminated something by mistake, you could always replace or retrieve it by simply locating your curser where it originally had been and hitting Paste. The excised material will appear right where it used to be. Alternatively, you can move it to any other file and by clicking on Paste, the material will appear. At least until you Cut something else—doing so replaces any earlier material stored on the clipboard.
I hope our weekly Marketing Tips have been helping you with your own marketing efforts. Here are some comments from some of our valued clients! "Guess what? I'm getting lots and lots of hits on my website now!! I can't believe how great it's doing. Since you put the instant pop up guest book on my site, I'm getting results. Also, I think the search engines now have me up and running. Thank you so much for your patience and guidance during this process. I know I was getting to be a pain, but with your help you now have a very satisfied customer. Again, thank you for everything Michelle." Beth Suggs "Since we have hit an all time record of about 21 listings, I am very impressed with this new feature and absolutely love the ability to have more control over the marketing on our website. No over web site I've seen compares to the capabilities, format, and overall image of Advanced Access. Well done!" Johnny & Celestina Cuchia Advanced Access |
Bill
Koelzer is a lecturer and Web marketing consultant for realty-related
corporations. He is co-author, with Barbara Cox, Ph.D., of the
Prentice-Hall book, "