RealtyTechBytes.com

8April2012

Who is mentioning you?

Posted by Jerry Kidd under: Cool Freebies; Social Media.

I found a cool way to monitor any mentions of your name, your brand, your clients, your competitors and virtually any keyword you choose.

You can monitor mentions on blogs, websites, videos, news feeds, forums, images,Twitter and Facebook.  You can do this online or you can download desktop clients for Windows, Mac or Linux machines. You can even do it for free!  The free version will limit you to 1,000 mentions per month, but that should be enough for most of us.

This is similar to Google Alerts, Nutshell Mail and Social Mention which I covered in a previous blog post at http://realtytechbytes.com/what-are-they-saying-about-you-2, with one big difference.  This tool has a component called “Anti-Noise Technology” that learns from what you delete so that it can ignore non related search results.  In other words, if you mark a result as being not related to what you want to see, it will ignore similar things that it finds in future searches. Eliminating the “false positives” will greatly speed up the process of monitoring by eliminating things that you don’t want. Like the others, it will send you email alerts when it finds new mentions for your stored searches.

To give it a try, go to https://en.mention.net/ to set up your free account.  Are you using any of these free tools to monitor what is being said about you?  Or are you content to have people talking about you behind your back?

1April2012

Scatter some pictures on your Facebook Timeline Cover

Posted by Jerry Kidd under: Cool Freebies; How to...; Social Media.

The new Timeline for business pages went active on Friday for most Facebook business pages. This change is a pretty radical departure from what was available before, and at first I was inclined to hate it.

But, since Facebook looks like it is going to become the “Borg” (of StarTrek fame), the quote “resistance is futile” led me to find a way to like it. Once I started digging in to the changes, I found that there is a lot to like, not the least of which is the Cover Photo feature. Facebook gives us a huge picture space to tell a story to our fans. The space is 851 x 315 pixels. That covers the entire width of the fan page and is tall enough to really convey a lot of information. But, Facebook giveth and Facebook taketh away…you can’t use the space to overtly market! No calls to action, no links, no “Like my page” … all of which seemed like a natural way to use all of that space.

Determined to find a way to use this valuable space in a way that would not violate the Facebook Terms of Service, I went on the hunt. I found a lot of resources that would help you create a Timeline photo, but none that offered a marketing slant…until I found PicScatter.

At first glance I thought “so what?” But, then when I saw that I could take a photo album and use it to create a collage, the light went on. If you have a listing that you want to put on Facebook hopefully you will have uploaded a ton of pictures for it. Why not use PicScatter to create a collage for that page. Here is an example of what I mean: http://www.facebook.com/3058LiveOakCourt. I used PicScatter to create the cover image from the photos in the album on that page..

The free version uses your Facebook account to login and will allow you to take photos from your personal account, your Facebook Friends or your Likes. For less than $5.00 you can have the pro version which will allow you to remove the branding from the picture that it creates, add your own branding and also to grab pictures from any Facebook fan page! There are 8 different effects that you can apply, you can change the pictures by clicking on them or you can shuffle the whole mess and you can move the pictures around to get just the right look.

I am pretty impressed with this little tool and maybe you will be too!

If you are interested in learning how to use the new Facebook Timeline in your business, there are still a few seats left for my Facebook Timeline class on April 4th. Go here for info and for the registration form: https://www.facebook.com/events/357857867590964/

25March2012

Facebook Timeline Changes and you!

Posted by Jerry Kidd under: How to...; Social Media.

March 30, 2012 is less than a week away as I write this, and by the time you read this it may only be a few days away.  What’s the big deal about March 30th?  If you don’t have a Facebook business page, it’s no big deal at all.  But, if you do have a Facebook business page (AKA Fan page) it’s a very big deal.  That’s the day that Facebook will automatically switch your page from the way it looks now to the new timeline view.  Along with the switch in appearance will come some big changes in the functionality of your page.

You may have noticed the sudden increase of spam emails warning you about this change, too.  What I have noticed is that often times, the emails are providing some incorrect information.  I decided to go to the source to see what Facebook had to say and what I found was a couple of really terrific resources that I want to share with you.

First up is this video which is a replay of a webinar that they held in which a couple of Timeline product managers answer the questions that came in from the live audience during the actual webinar.  Although this will burn about 30 minutes of your life, I strongly suggest that you watch it as it will give you the straight scoop on what is happening and it will also give you insight into why things are being done the way they are.  If you can’t see the video, go here to watch it directly: http://livestre.am/1kgiV

The next resource is a pretty cool walk through in the form of 5 interactive lessons.  These are designed to bring you up to speed on applying the changes to your timeline.  The course will take another 30 minutes of your life, but it does give you a chance to test your knowledge and to apply what you have learned.  It’s baby steps and doesn’t cover everything, but it is worth checking out at: http://www.learnfacebookpages.com/

If you’d like a much more immersive and hands on learning experience, join me at the Bay East Association of REALTORS® on April 4th for a 3 hour, hands on, deep dive into what’s changed, how to apply the changes to your pages and more importantly, how to use Facebook in your real estate business.  Here is a link to the registration details: http://www.RealtyTechBytes.com/FBClass

There are only 20 seats available for this class and some of those are already gone, so if this is something that you want to do, take action now!

I hope that this has been helpful to you as we navigate through yet another Facebook change!  By the way, I’ve made the change both on my business pages and my personal profile.  Click on the picture above to visit my Timeline business page and check it out.