As a Realtor your name is your most important asset. It’s all you have and its now officially out of your control and in the hands of the Google Gods.

We no longer have complete control over what people say about us online and the Internet never forgets.

If you think you can simply sue someone to clear your good name… good luck. Freedom of speech is one of the most important amendments of the US Constitution. Heck, it’s even the first one. (Look it up.) How do you think all the tabloids get to say anything they want about Britney? True or not…there’s just too much of it out there for her to defend against via lengthly court proceedings.

Your best option is to do everything you can to take control of the results in the search engines so your prospects don’t find some nasty stuff written about you. Think of it as PR for the web.

Here are a few quick tips to get started:
1. Vanity Optimization: Make sure your real estate site is optimized for your name, not just your target markets.
2. Social Links: Link to all your social network profile, including LinkedIn, Facebook, Zillow, Trulia and of course IncredibleAgents.com.
3. Advertise: Sign up for Google Adwords and start marketing for your own name.
4. Vanity Blogging: Write a blog post with your name in the title. Find something useful to write about yourself, not just vanity blogging.
5. Interview: Find a fellow blogger/realtor to do a positive interview of you for their blog. Make sure they use your name in the blog title and link back to your site, so it gets indexed for your name.

Let’s hope your life isn’t as entertaining as Britney’s and you don’t get Googled as much as she does. Hopefully these are some helpful hints for you to take control of your online reputation and stay out of trouble with all the tabloids…and on Google.

If you’re a Realtor…YOU WANT THIS NOW!!! Even if you don’t agree with the “Zestimate” at least it gives you a price range and information you can use to tell your client while you’re driving around the neighborhood. You could quickly show them what other houses sold in the neighborhood and how long ago as you’re driving. Having that information at your fingertips is groundbreaking.

Once we see more home listings on Zillow and other places we will be able to see asking prices and listing data for listings as we drive by. Revolutionary? I think so. The only thing stopping this from happening right now is access to data.

The potential for GPS & Real Estate is enormous. Just look at what Google maps did for online real estate. GPS and the web will make our lives as Realtors so much easier. Don’t take my word for it. Watch the video and decide for yourself.

The Basic premise: Design first, keep it simple, then develop.

This is a costly lesson to learn if you don’t know it in advance. Never, never, never tell a developer an idea and send them off to develop it for you. They won’t get it right the first time and you’ll be destined to redevelop, redesign and hack around the developer walls they put up. You need to show a developer, not tell them. This is the secret sauce that can save you a ton of time and a lot of money.

The old saying of “Start with the end in mind” is very true when developing a website. Think about it. Why do you build a website? To get users to it. What will they do once they get there? They’ll interact with it. So why not start with that and focus on the “User Interface” first. Go upstream!

User Interface is essentially the look, feel and flow of the website. It’s far cheaper to design the UI first, than to develop first and then design around that.

It’s the reason Estately can develop a great home search experience with only a 2 man team. It’s also the same reason other companies take 8 months to add a relatively small feature to their website and they have a full team of developers, designers and millions of dollars behind them.

Don’t take my word for it. I’ve found an ebook from 37Signals.com that spells this theory out clearly. They’re the ones who basically created Ruby on Rails and a boat load of killer online software applications with only 7 developers. It’s worth the $19 investment to learn how to build websites like the gods.

Also, Seth Godin just touched on this a few days ago as well. Check it out here.

Basics of CSS
Stands for… Cascading Style Sheets (huh?)
Definition: A new feature being added to HTML that gives both Web site developers and users more control over how pages are displayed. With CSS, designers and users can create style sheets that define how different elements, such as headers and links, appear. These style sheets can then be applied to any Web page.
The term cascading derives from the fact that multiple style sheets can be applied to the same Web page. CSS was developed by the W3C. (Source: http://isp.webopedia.com/TERM/C/CSS.html)

My Definition: An advanced version of HTML that allows you to consolidate the look and feel of your entire website into one document. Kind of a HTML 2.0 if you will.

Don’t be overwhelmed. This is actually a very simple concept, despite how much techies like to over complicate it. Let me give you a simple example.

Let’s say I want to use Arial as the font on every page of my website. This is what I would do in the CSS file…

td { font: arial, tahoma, helvetica;} (the additional fonts are backup in case a user doesn’t have Arial on the computer)

When I do this, every piece of text on the site is going to use Arial as the default font. Then one day out of the blue clear sky, I decide to change my font to Times New Roman instead of Arial. Don’t ask me why. Just ’cause I can. All we would need to do is change the code to…

td { font: times new roman, arial, tahoma, helvetica;}

Now the font on every page across the entire site will use the Times New Roman font instead of Arial.

Without CSS, we would of had to go into the HTML of every page and change the font-family to Trebuchet. Which isn’t a fun or easy task. Especially if you have a website with 1000′s of pages. Why create more work for yourself?

Here’s a good demo of how it all works. http://www.w3schools.com/css/demo_default.htm. The html on these pages are all the same, they just use a different style sheet so the fonts, colors and borders change with each selection. You will also be able to view the CSS to get an understanding of the syntax and how it all works.

The same theory works for every element of design for your website. Everything from background images, font colors, borders, buttons and even rollover images. There are some really tricky things you can do with CSS. There’s actually a way to create an entire website layout with only 1 image and one css file. It’s called a “CSS Sprite”. Basically you consolidate every image for your website and put it on one single graphic. Then you call that graphic as a background image in CSS and position it to show the desired image in the location you want. This is getting a bit complicated, so I’ll save that for another day.

The point is that you can do so much with CSS that it eliminates an unbelievable amount of work for those of us who use it properly. Changing an entire website by only changing one file is one of the best kept secrets on the web.

If you’d like to learn more, I encourage you to take a look at the CSS tutorials at http://www.w3schools.com/css/default.asp. They have just about everything you’re going to need to get started with CSS.

Disclaimer: Some elements of CSS have been simplified to explain it’s basic principals.

1. Campaign
2. Templates
3. Email Content.

Campaigns:
The Campaign itself is basically defined as your list of emails that are organized in chronological order. Typically, each client is assigned to only one campaign as to not confuse the client. Campaigns are targeted to a specific type of client. You might have one that is setup for your past clients, buyer leads, seller leads, buyers looking for homes in a specific city, etc. You can get as specific or as general as you want. It all depends on how much work you’re willing to put into setting up your campaigns. It all starts with campaigns, then you can start to add emails and templates.

Templates:
A Template is the actual layout of the email. Usually, I will start out with a “Text Only” template that only uses the basic content of the email without any layout. It makes the email feel more personal and not so promotional. Those emails are usually the most effective, but you should set them up with some HTML template emails as well. “HTML templates” are used to make your drip campaigns look professional with graphics and colors. These are the e-mails you see with head shots, colored fonts, and theme graphics integrate into the content of the email.

Emails:
Now emails are very basic. They are the actual content/words of the emails you send. Even though it’s a simple concept, it’s the most important part of a drip campaign. Your message is what drives the success of your entire campaign. Truthfully, your email message is everything; it’s the part that will drive your response rate through the roof.

Most drip campaign systems will have one script that ties it all together and sends your emails out on schedule. Some software will allow you to schedule your emails to go out on the exact hour you choose. Most servers do this by using something that’s called a “Chron Job”. A “Chron Job” tells the server to run your script at a certain time frequency. You can set it up to run the script every minute, every hour, every day, once a week or once a month. It’s completely up to you. Most “Chron Jobs” are set up to send your emails out every hour or every 15 minutes.

Drip Campaigns are becoming less and less useful as more and more agents begin to use them. Email has become a difficult way to communicate because of the amount of email we all receive. A new concept to the drip campaign is adding “Actions” to your campaign. An “Action” is something like…”Make followup call on the 12th day from signup” or “send a personalized email” or “Set client up on drip listings campaign.” These are simply personalized action reminders that get set up in your calendar instead of letting your email system do the work for you. When it comes to converting your clients and leads into dollars, phone calls and personalized service will always trump a simple email drip campaign.

The overall goal of a Drip Campaign is to get your clients and leads to take action today or to remember you when they are ready to take action in the future. It’s a simple tool to allow you to stay in front of your clients and convert them into dollars without putting in to much effort. Think of drip campaigns as an automation tool that allows you to stay in front of your clients while you’re on vacation. The goal is to set it up correctly so you can forget it later.

If you’re looking for a new drip campaign there are many providers out there. Someday, we’ll explore who the best drip campaigns providers are for real estate…but we’ll leave that topic for another day.

In case you were wondering, this is huge news. Google maps has been very difficult to implement on you website in the past. If you wanted Google maps on your website before you needed to get the Google Maps API, hire a techie, get some data and mash it all together. You can now create a map in your “My Maps” area of your Google account, copy and paste some code onto your website and you’re ready to go. Now, you can do everything you needed without the help of a techie.

It makes me wonder why they didn’t do this before. It’s what we’ve all been waiting for. Pat Kitano from Transparent RE (who already wrote about this topic) and I were looking for this about a month ago and now we don’t have to wait any longer. I guess it was only a matter of time.

Anyways, let’s take a quick look at this. On the Official Google Maps blog they give us 3 basic directions.
1. Find a map to use.
2. Click “Link to this page” in the top right-hand corner. Copy the text that you see in the second box.
3. Paste that code onto your blog or website. (It looks like they are using an “IFRAME” in order to make it work. )

Here’s a quick map I threw together of where all us Geeks at the GeekEstate Blog are located. Note that iFrames do not work within wordpress posts (otherwise I would have embedded it into this post).

View Larger Map

Overall, this seems like an easy solution to a long awaited desire. The usage of the “IFRAME” is very simple and it really isn’t that technical. At least they’ve now made it easier for those who don’t know how to work with Iframe’s.

The other day one of my colleagues at the GeekEstate Blog, Michael Price, wrote a post about myths in the Lead Generation business and “Daffy Duck” leads. Call them what you want, Daffy Duck, Mickey Mouse, Fred Flintstone; they’re all the same and they just did you the biggest favor by filtering them self out of your lead system. If a lead says their name is Daffy Duck, you know that you’ll be wasting your time if you call that lead. They’ve completely filtered themselves out from your day. It should take you no more than 3 seconds to delete that lead and move onto the next one that gives you their real information. Believe it or not, millions of dollars in real estate commissions are made with these same types of leads. Entire families eat off these leads and if you’re just going to throw them away…send them over to me because I know a whole lot of hungry Realtors who will take them all day long.

Many of us in the real estate industry seem to be hung up on the quality of a lead. Don’t get me wrong, quality does matter when we’re talking about acquisition price and ROI, however even low quality of leads can be turned into gold. The key to all leads is not how you get them or where you get them, but what you do to convert them into clients. If you get a lead who says their name is “Daffy Duck”, delete it and move on. If you get one that says “I need to sell my house tomorrow”, call it and email it ASAP. It’s that simple. You’ll be throwing money away and hurting your business if you give up on any type of lead.

To me, this subject is really very basic. Leads are built off the numbers game. Let’s look at it this way…If you get 1 lead, you’re going to have to convert 100% of your leads in order to make any money. If you get 10 leads, you’ll have to convert 10% in order to make any money. If you get 100 leads, you’ll have to convert 1% in order to make any money. The higher the number of leads you receive, the faster you’ll see a return on your investment and the easier it will become to make a profit with your marketing dollars. This is nothing new, but I keep hearing others preach about how you should focus on quality instead of quantity. To be honest, quality is a relative term and it’s 100% out of your control who gives you the proper contact info and eventually buys a home with you. Quantity is king when it comes to real estate leads. Building a system to generate and convert all lead types is what you need to be focusing your efforts on.

The truth is that every agent who wants to be successful on the Internet should be doing everything they can to capture as many leads as possible. That includes blogging, marketing their website, buying leads and yes (Gasp!) even blocking access to the MLS to get leads. Settling for this “Holy Grail” lead just doesn’t make any sense. Why would you limit yourself to “Holy Grail” leads when there’s just as much money or more in other lead types? If you simply want to blog at the beach and wait for leads to call you, then do it. But don’t forget about the rest of your lead sources. When it comes to leads, volume is your friend. You can’t build a business around “Holy Grail” leads.

A critical factor that affects the eventual conversion rate of a lead is how many times it’s been distributed. It’s really simple math. Out of any pool of leads, there are only a few that will actually convert into clients and if it’s distributed multiple times then your chances of closing the lead goes down significantly. However, consumers want a response from someone and distributing a lead multiple times is the best way to guarantee that. In other words, exclusive leads are good for the Realtor but bad for the consumer. Nearly 50% of all real estate leads never hear from an agent at all.

As a lead generator and Realtor for several years, I have been on a quest to find that “Holy Grail” of real estate leads. Recently, we’ve actually been converting leads for agents and then transferring them directly to their cell phone. If the lead answers a few questions correctly over the phone they immediately get transferred to our agent. This is the most valuable and highest quality Internet lead I can possibly think of, yet we still hear complaints about quality. In my book, quality will always be a relative term. If you expect 100% of your leads to convert, I suggest you stay away from the Internet.

Needless to say, I’m putting my hat in the QUANTITY ring. I’ll leave QUALITY up to the gods.

I thought I would give everyone some general rules of thumb for what they can expect from those “Daffy Duck” leads that Mike was talking about.

• 70-80% will give you a valid email address.
• 50-60% will give you a valid phone number.
• 25% will turn into a conversation. ***
• *2-4% will actually convert into a client. ***

***Your conversation and client rate are most affected by your conversion system.

Example: I know a Realtor who has 1500 “Daffy Duck” leads in his pipeline and has over 250 of them actively saving favorites and logging into his website at least once every 14 days. He’s currently sold more this year than he has any other year of being in business and who knows how many more are going to convert into buyers this year. I found this remarkable considering the current state of the market.

TIP: The number one way to convert a lead is to call & email them within the first hour of registration. The sooner the better. 70% of leads work with the first agent they talk to.

Something for everyone to chew on…100% of your leads will not buy a home from you. People will waste your time…accept it, move on and realize you’d be extremely lucky if you convert 5% of your leads into buyers. Filter out the bad leads and Focus on the good leads. If you do that, you’ll be well on your way to building a successful real estate business.

Here are a few of the items I hope to be covering on Geek Estate.

1. API’s, Widgets and more.
2. Video tips, tricks and simplicity.
3. Search Engine Optimization tips. (there are no tricks)
4. Online Reputation Management.
5. Blogs, blogs, blogs.
6. HTML tips & quirks.
7. Web Hosting basics.
8. Listing Syndication & Distribution.
9. New tech products.
10. Anything geeky that can affect online real estate.

Technology is often difficult to understand and even more difficult to simplify, so I hope we don’t get too techie on you. If we do, feel free to straighten us out in the comment section and we’ll do our best to clarify.