RealtyTechBytes.com » Cool Freebies

Social Networking Secret Weapon

Jerry Kidd — Mon, 19 Jul 2010 02:00:01 +0000

I have to confess. I have a secret weapon that allows me to stay on top of my Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn networks.

If you’ve got more than a few friends on these networks, keeping up with everyone’s activities can be pretty time consuming, but keep up you must. Otherwise, what is the point of social networking if you don’t keep in touch?

I am pretty mobile most of the time, so I heavily rely on the iPhone Apps for Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn. They are great for doing some in depth things in each of those networks, but what I rely on most are the emails from Nutshell Mail that come at 8 AM, Noon and 4 PM, a schedule that I set up. You can have the emails come hourly if you want, but this schedule works for me.

Nutshell Mail follows all of my accounts and whenever any of my friends, followers or contacts posts something, it gets added to the next scheduled email alert that I receive. I can choose whose info gets passed along to me via groups, contact lists, Twitter lists and also by the individual.

Here is a video from Nutshell Mail that will give you an overview:

NutshellMail: Simplify Your Online Social Life from David Lyman on Vimeo.

The level of customization available is pretty thorough and by spending little time on your initial set-up, you’ll have a tool that allows you to do what I do, and that is speed through hundreds of updates every day to find the ones that I really want to act upon.

They also support Ning and MySpace in addition to Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn. Did I mention that it is free?

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Based on a work at www.Realtytechbytes.com. Did you know that I have arranged for readers of my blog to receive licensed software for free? And that there is something new everyday? Click on the link to go to the blog and look for Give Away of the day in the sidebar.

Social Networking Secret Weapon

Get new clients using social tools ~ Part Two

Jerry Kidd — Mon, 03 May 2010 02:00:35 +0000

Last week I talked about your need to have a prospecting plan that brings you the customers that you want to work with, instead of always having to work with whoever shows up! Wouldn’t it be nice if we always had a steady stream of prospective clients moving towards us as we move towards them? Well, wouldn’t it?

Why is it important to have clients that we like? Because life is too short to put up with people that grind our souls. You know who they are…you’ve even had a few in the past. You may even be working with one now.

Time to get off of that bus, now. Fire the turkeys and look for the eagles.

Here’s how I suggest that you go about it. First, let’s start with the premise that in order for people to want to do a transaction with you (assuming that they have choices) they have to TRUST you. They have to trust that you are the right person for the job, that you have their best interests at heart and that you will help them get to the goal they are seeking.

In order for people to trust you, they have to LIKE you. I can hear some of you say that you have trusted people that you didn’t like. Really? Really trusted? Maybe so, but for most of us, trust comes from liking.

In order to like you, people have to get to KNOW you. How do we do that in everyday, face to face life? By finding them, meeting them and interacting with them. By sharing things about our lives and being interested in their lives. And over time this leads to liking … or not. Liking leads to to trust and trust, for us, leads to transactions.

The good news that I bring you today is that the new social tools make all of this a reality and do it in a way that hits everyone of last weeks points.

Here are the social tools platforms that I think a REALTOR® should consider adopting:

Have a website or a blog. The blog is preferred over a website because it gives you the ability to update it with current information, showcase current listings and past transactions, solicit feedback, have private areas for clients where you can provide information relative to a transaction and more. You could do that on a website, but you’d be contacting or paying a webmaster every time you wanted to make a change. You’d also miss out on the fact that blogs generally rank higher in search engines than do static web sites, the fact that a blog can be totally free or trivially inexpensive, the fact that blogs can be subscribed to and the fact that blogs can foster community by eliciting comments and feedback. On the downside, you have to continually “feed” a blog…it needs fresh content to remain relevant and to keep people interested.

Have a presence on Facebook. Facebook has two faces. It has the personal profile and it also offers a business the opportunity to create a business (fan) page. The personal profile is where you can connect with family and friends, to share items of personal interest and to reconnect with people that you may have drifted away from. The business or fan page is where you connect with customers and potential customers. It operates much like a personal profile page in that it has a “wall” where you can post things that spark conversation and where others can contribute to the conversation. You can do so much more with a Facebook business page. Things like share listings, showcase past sales, describe your services, show videos and photos and much, much more. Think of your business page as your blog or website inside of facebook.

Build out your LinkedIn profile. LinkedIn started out as a place for headhunters and job seekers to connect with each other and has grown from there to be a place where professional people congregate. If you imagine Facebook personal profiles to be a backyard barbecue, then you can imagine LinkedIn to be a Chamber of Commerce Mixer. LinkedIn gives you the perfect venue to showcase your past accomplishments (think very detailed resume), as well as a place to search out people that you’d like to meet…like the HR Director of that company who is moving people in and out of your market area.

Start using Twitter. Twitter offers you the opportunity to have short conversations with many people in a very compact period of time. There are tools available that allow you find and connect with people based on demographic criteria that you choose. You may wish to find people in a zip code, or community. Perhaps you’d like to find people who are talking about moving or buying or selling a home. Twitter gives you that ability.

Right about now, some people start squirming over the issue of privacy. Rather than go into that here, go read what my good friend, and social media maven, Ginger Wilcox has to say about privacy. While you are there, sign up for her updates and you may even want to register for the webinar that she and Amy Chorew are putting on about privacy issues.

The next thing that comes up is time. Where do I get the time to do all of this? I’d like to trivialize this, but the truth is that you will have to expend some time. But, instead of dismissing these tools because of time constraints, why not take a good hard and honest look at how you allocate your prospecting time now. What is working for you? What is not working for you? Take the things that are working and continue with them. But stop doing that which isn’t working and start looking for ways to fold these tools into whatever you are currently doing that is producing results.

And if after you have honestly evaluated your time expenditures and find that you really aren’t consistently prospecting for new business, why not start now? The social tools that I outlined here can all be used, or you can select the ones that resonate for you. Anyone one of them can fulfill the criteria that I laid out last week. If you can do them all, I believe that you will be able to be selective about the clients you work with sooner rather than later.

If you need help in setting these up, strategizing how to utilize them, or just need some help in getting your business up and running (or back on it’s feet), feel free to contact me. It’s what I do these days!

Get new clients using social tools ~ Part One

Jerry Kidd — Mon, 26 Apr 2010 02:00:13 +0000

I have long held the belief that in order for me to be happy in my business life, that I really need to work with people that I like and to avoid those people who seem to make it their mission in life to grind down my soul.

I discovered that working for other people as an employee makes it difficult to avoid the people I don’t like. After all, if I become an employee, then my employer gets to dictate who I work with. When I became an employee in the real estate business, I soon discovered that I needed to be a manager, in part because I could then hire the people that I wanted to work with or at least compartmentalize the ones that I didn’t like.

As an independent contractor though, this process can be very easy…or extremely difficult. The choice is yours. The path to easy lies in a solid, effective plan for prospecting for the type of client that you want. Such a plan needs a few components:

It needs to be actionable
It needs to be realistic
It needs to be done with reasonable frequency (Everyday!)
It needs to be effective
It needs to be enjoyable
It needs to be inexpensive or free (Especially if you are starting out)

If you can implement such a plan, finding the right people to work with can be an easy and enjoyable process. If you don’t have a plan, then you get to work with whoever shows up wanting to work with you! And that will bring you turkeys as well as eagles!

So much for your side of the story. But what is it like for the prospect trying to choose someone to “hire”?

If they are looking for a REALTOR®, they can look at magazine and newspaper ads, they can ask friends for a recommendation, they can visit open houses, they can rely on past transactions, they can visit web sites or they can use social tools.

Although all of the above methods work, the one that I believe benefits both the REALTOR® and the consumer is the social tools method. And here is why:

For the REALTOR®, the social tools method covers every one of the requirements of a good prospecting plan (see above).

But the consumer also benefits if the REALTOR® has done a good job of filling out their social graph. (More on that next week).

The consumer can interact with the REALTOR® long before they are ready to transact. That interaction will give them the time to study the REALTOR’s® past performance, response time, marketing plans, resources and other tools that a REALTOR® uses to practice their craft.

You as a REALTOR® also get to examine the potential client as they interact with you! You can spot a turkey a mile off by using the social tools to look at them as well! Over time, birds of a feather will flock together!

So what are the social tools I recommend using? That will be next week’s topic. If you want to be sure to not miss that post, go ahead and look at the top right of the sidebar on my blog and subscribe via email. (or click here) Or use your RSS reader to subscribe by clicking here.

And in the meantime, be sure to let me know what your thoughts are; am I on track or way off base?

Microsoft feels your pain and wants to help

Jerry Kidd — Mon, 19 Apr 2010 02:00:56 +0000

I learned about a new Microsoft Beta program the other day that promises to make life a bit easier for users of Windows 7, Vista and XP. It’s called “Microsoft Fixit Center”. It’s a small download that you obtain from http://fixitcenter.support.microsoft.com/Portal/ and install.

Once installed, you login with your Windows Live ID. After you log in you can run a series of diagnostics on your computer. (If you don’t have a Windows Live ID, the program will offer to set you up with one. It’s free and is required in order to run the program)

Just having a program that could identify problems with your computer would be nice enough, but this goes a step further…it offers to fix anything that it finds that is wrong!

As you may know, I am certified by Microsoft and CompTIA in the art of diagnosing and repairing PCs, so I approached this product with both a skeptical eye as well as my “Oh boy, this is wonderful” eye.

I gave it a workout on my VMWare Virtual XP Pro machine that runs on my Apple iMac. Since this is a pretty recent installation of XP Pro and it has been running flawlessly, I didn’t expect the program to find anything, but it did find one small issue with printing that I didn’t realize that I had. The repair option looked harmless and so I let it run. Within seconds it was done and the problem was solved.

Next, I went to my office where I have an older Compaq that used to run Vista, but now is running a clean install of Windows 7 Home Premium (I completely removed Vista before installing Windows 7 six months ago). I downloaded the software, installed it and logged in. The log in showed my Virtual PC which was a nice touch. A subsequent log out and log back in showed both machines.

One big difference was immediately apparent, there were many more diagnostics available under Windows 7 then there were under XP. I take that as a sign that Microsoft is moving away from XP.

My experience was substantially the same on this machine. It found some issues that I allowed it to fix, but it also found some issues that it couldn’t fix. They were mostly driver related (This machine was originally set up for Vista not Windows 7) and it wanted me to go to 3^rd party web sites for the fix.

So, my conclusion and advice is that you go get this free product from Microsoft and run it if you are experiencing problems with your Windows 7, Vista or XP computer. This is a beta program, so that means that we can look for improvements over time…or it might mean that it could be abandoned by Microsoft and disappear.

Better go get it now…it might just save you a long call to tech support.

Free tool to put your listings on Facebook

Jerry Kidd — Mon, 12 Apr 2010 02:00:55 +0000

I got an interesting email from Realtor.com the other day. Nothing unusual about getting an email from them, there always seems to be one from them trying to get me to come to a seminar or buy one of their products.

Most times I simply delete them without opening it, but this time the subject line intrigued me. Here it is: “Notice: your listings are now “shared” on major social networking sites…”

So, I opened it. Here is what it looks like: (Click on the photo to enlarge it).

Imagine my surprise to find that Realtor.com has some very useful and FREE tools here.

Although the PDF and the video are useful tools, the most useful item here (In my opinion) is the little widget that puts your listings onto your Facebook profile. Wow!

Go here to see one in action: http://www.facebook.com/DianeGilfether Scroll down past Diane’s list of friends to see the widget.

Clicking on a listing in the widget takes you to the property listing on Realtor.com where all of your pictures and virtual tours are located. Sweet!

So, how do you get one? Simple just go here: http://www.facebook.com/realestatemarketer and become a fan. Then scroll down the page and on the left below the pictures of their fans you will see “Featured Downloads”, keep scrolling down and you’ll see “Install the Free See My Listings”. Just click on the orange “Install Now” button. Select your MLS, add in your NRDS number, your City and State, your DRE number and then update. Follow the directions to finish the installation.

Of course if you have no listings nothing will show up, but if you are carrying listings, this is a pretty sweet tool to help you market your listings!

What do you think?

It’s (not) the most wonderful time of the year!

Jerry Kidd — Mon, 08 Mar 2010 03:00:21 +0000

With apologies to Andy Williams and the song “It’s a most wonderful time of the year”, because this surely is not the most wonderful time of the year! Here in the US, it’s tax season, with the April 15th deadline for filing income taxes looming large on the horizon, many of us are going through our annual stress test. Normally I just waltz over to computer, click a few buttons and produce a printout that I give to my accountant and I am done.

All of that changed this year because I changed status from being an employee to starting my own business. This occurred at the beginning of November and with all I have had on my plate, I just overlooked keeping the entries up in my accounting program. Up until today, the last time I made an entry was in the beginning of October. When I logged in today to have it download all my transactions from my checking account, all of the transactions from October and November were no longer available from my bank! That meant that I had to hand enter 60 days of wild spending!

Part of my problem was that making the switch from employee to business owner means that I now get to file a Schedule C in addition to my normal Schedule A. What expenses go where? Can I deduct this? What about that? Does it go on C or A? Yikes! I think I need to see an accountant!

So, in order to mend my evil ways I have been on the hunt for something that is aimed at small businesses like mine. Something that will automatically help me with my Schedule C reporting, my Profit and Loss, and oh yeah, something that will calculate my Estimated Tax payments and remind me to send them in!

Lucky for me, I found Outright.com! It’s designed especially for the small business owner.

From their website, the following paragraphs really caught my eye:

“Automated bookkeeping software for entrepreneurs & bookkeepers. Track income and expenses from credit cards, invoices, receipts, or even merchant accounts.”

And then this one: “Know right now what you can deduct come tax time. Stay on top of tax deadlines, manage W-9s, file 1099s, and automate your Schedule C; avoid costly fines and late fees from the IRS.”

So, I signed up. The first thing I had it do was to import my business checking account info from Wells Fargo. It was smart enough to only import the 2010 transactions (Obviously, I have turned over a new leaf and will be on top of things for this year!). Next I had it import my PayPal account. And finally, my business credit card. Once I had all of the expenses in the program, I went through each item and made edits to show the purpose of the expense, and also what line item on a Schedule C it belongs in. I can also add my income items to see an instant P&L graph.

There is more to it, but this is all that I have worked with so far, so I’ll close. But, not before telling you that it is absolutely free! Again from their website “Outright is free, simple bookkeeping and will remain so. We do plan to charge a nominal fee for innovative services yet to come.”

Drop everything and go check it out! And, if you know of some other free software or websites that are designed for the sole proprietor or small business person, please do leave a comment and share the love with us all!

Let Google help you grow your business

Jerry Kidd — Mon, 22 Feb 2010 03:00:15 +0000

Lest you think that I am Google’s payroll (I am not, but that’s not a bad idea!) I want to tell you about a page that Google has just for you, the Real Estate Professional.

You NEED to click on this link: Google Tools for Real Estate Professionals now and read every word and follow the instructions that it contains.

Here is what Google has to say:

Here’s why it pays to use Google to connect to home buyers and sellers:

Google can help generate real estate referrals and leads.

Google has more real estate searches than other search engines combined, and more unique visitors than all real estate specific web sites.

Google is the most-used search engine for researching and purchasing real estate information and services.

The Google Network reaches over 80% of U.S. Internet users.

Because I think that it is so important that you do so, I am going to keep this very short. Take the time that you normally spend reading RealtyTechBytes and go read Google Tools for Real Estate Professionals instead. You can thank me later!

About the Author: Jerry is a 23 year veteran of the real estate industry and has done it all from listing and selling, to managing single and multiple offices. He has been the IT Director for a major SF Bay Area company, and has also been the Training Director for another major SF Bay Area company. In addition to writing this blog, Jerry is the Principal of Jerry Kidd Training and Consulting, specializing in showing real estate professionals how to utilize today’s exciting social tools to create and nurture relationships with home buyers and sellers. Visit http://www.JerryKidd.com to learn more about the training and consulting services offered.

My impression of MacWorld 2010 (and a deal for you!)

Jerry Kidd — Sat, 13 Feb 2010 22:47:53 +0000

I went to MacWorld 2010 in San Francisco on Thursday. This being the first year that Apple wasn’t going to be present, I wanted to see if the show would be better or worse that what I saw last year.

Being a relatively new convert to Macs (and an iPhone user since July 2008) I don’t have a lot of experience with the show. I did attend last year and was planning on attending in 2006 until a health issue derailed those plans. So, I really only have the one year to compare with this year’s show.

As my friend and uber Mac geek Ira Serkes puts it: “It was iPhoneWorld, not MacWorld”.

And I would have to agree.

There were tons of displays on iPhone apps and accessories. And tons of booths selling massage, chairs, luggage, clothing, bling and a myriad of things that made me go “hmmm”.

But, precious little software or hardware that was specific to either my iMac or my MacBook Pro.

There was one ray of sunshine, however. VMWare had a booth there and I stopped in to see them. I was having an issue with the VMWare upgrade that I did on my MacBook Pro and was hoping that they could shed some light on the issue. While I was waiting to speak with Amitabh Chakrabarty (The guy who knew the answer for me) I was asked about my usage of VMWare Fusion and was subsequently videotaped giving my answer (Maybe I will finally get discovered by Hollywood!).

After the taping and after the Q&A with Amitabh, I was offered a mystery coupon good for 5%, 10%, 50% or 100% off the purchase of VMWare Fusion 3. You simply go to their online store, place an order and then put the code in at checkout to see what discount you will get. Or, you can opt for a guaranteed 15% discount.

Since I already have a license for all three of my Macs, the coupon wasn’t worth anything to me. But, then I thought of you! I asked him for some coupons to give away on my blog and he gave me three.

So, here is the offer, On Monday (2-15-10) I’ll pick three people who leave a comment on this post and tell me why I should give them the coupon to receive one of the coupons. I’ll base my decision on the quality of your comment. In other words, a one line “I want one” comment is simply not going to cut it!

Since the coupons expire on February 19th, you’ll have to get on this right away! The retail price of VMWare Fusion is $79.99, so depending on the level of discount you end up with, this could be worth $3.99, $7.99, $39.99 or $79.99. Or you could take the guaranteed 15% discount, in which case the coupon is worth $11.99.

Not a bad deal for a few minutes of typing is it?

backupify your social content

Jerry Kidd — Mon, 25 Jan 2010 03:00:37 +0000

I had a minor disaster at my casa last week in which I lost all access to a VMWare Fusion Windows XP machine. Fortunately it was quickly resolved by using a backup. That started me thinking about what I have that is NOT backed up.

All of my computers use backup drives that are physically connected to my computer. They run continuous backups and are available to move my data to another machine if I need to do so. Or, they can be used to restore missing or corrupt data.

I also use MozyHome as another way to back up data. So in theory I am covered, right?

Not so quick. What about my social sites like Twitter and Facebook? It turns out that I have not been backing those up. What if my account at either site got trashed or even worse, cancelled? How could I recover my friends lists or pictures or the content that I have posted?

To put that in perspective, at Twitter I am following over 4500 people and over 4300 are following me. Trying to restore those lists without having a back up file would be impossible. The same holds true for my Facebook account where I have over 600 friends, many Notes, a few pictures and so on.

In my research to solve this problem I ran across a service that I am using and thought that you might like to know about it too.

This is a cloud based backup service that will use your login information to go to your Twitter, Google Docs, WordPress, GMail, Facebook, Zoho, Delicious, Flickr, Basecamp or Photobucket accounts and perform daily or weekly backups of your data.

The service acts as backup program and does not actually store your data on their servers. Instead, the data is stored on the Amazon S3 Web Services Cloud, which in my opinion was a really smart move on their part. To understand why I say this, click here to read more about Amazon S3 web services.

You can also download your data to your local computer once it has been backed up. This now gives you 3 copies of your data. The original is on Twitter, Facebook, etc. But, you also have a copy on the S3 cloud and the one on your hard drive. The chance of all three failing at once are very, very small.

Finally, until January 31st, you can get an account for free. Hmmm, sounds like a good deal to me. Better click on the backupify logo in this post or just click http://www.backupify.com and sign up.

Measy BounceBack Essentials

Jerry Kidd — Mon, 18 Jan 2010 03:00:25 +0000

Ok, now that was a weird title for this post wasn’t it?

I thought I’d combine the names of the two products I want to tell you about and make a title out of it. It either caused you to open the post right away because you were curious, or caused you to pass (in which case you aren’t reading this!).

We’ll start with BounceBack Essentials. This is an inexpensive backup solution for you. Hopefully you are all using some form of backup already. You could be using an online backup, or a portable hard drive, you could be backing up to a remote computer, you could be copying files to a USB stick or even burning CDs. With all the back up solutions that are available, why would you be interested in yet another one?

All of those solutions are great and they all have a place where they shine. But, none of those solutions will get you up and running immediately once a disaster occurs. BounceBack Essentials is a $29.00 software program for Windows (A Mac version is available for $39.00) that uses an external hard drive to make an exact duplicate of your computer on the external drive. The major selling point, in my opinion, is that BounceBack Essentials makes that external drive bootable! This means that if your main drive fails, you simply choose to boot from the backup drive and continue working! You can choose to restore your system immediately or at a future, more convenient time.

Watch a short YouTube video which explains the process, and then click on any of the links above to learn more:

The next thing I want to tell you about is Measy.

Measy is a website that can help you make decisions about buying HDTVs, digital cameras, DSLR Cameras, netbooks and SmartPhones! It does this by asking you to work you way through an interview that asks you questions about your preferences and expected use of the device you are researching.

They then display a ranked list of devices that they believe will fulfill you needs. Each of your criteria is explained and backed up by research that they have done on the web by using product reviews.

So, rather than be baffled by the plethora of choices that confront you when you are shopping for a gadget, check out Measy to see what the experts have to say!

Since this is a beta site, expect changes to come in the future. You can sign up for notification emails from them when they add new categories.

Oh, by the way, this one is free!