In light of the new Nevada hands-free cell phone law, we decided to bring to you the mother of all hands-free phone apps. Vlingo considers themselves “the future of virtual assistants.” We agree. This app, available for all smart phones, turns your phone into the perfect driving companion. It will read your text messages out loud, take voice commands, even dictate an email. Best of all: it’s FREE.
You’ve seen this red marker before. If you own a Google friendly Android, it may even be a pre-installed app on your phone. What is it? It’s the 21st centuries answer to the antiquated phone book. Make your business be known, make it a Google Place. It’s easy. Go to google places and follow the easy steps up setting up your business listing. Then Google will mail you confirmation (to make sure you’re real). Once you get the postcard in the mail, finish the validation process and you have a Google Maps friendly place of business. Oh and did we mention it’s FREE?
Video is free and largely, an untapped market. Why not stand out from your competition?
YouTube has 3 billion visitors a day and a large part of those visitors use it as their default search engine for information. Want to know how to knit or change the oil in your car? There’s a step by step video to teach you how. Why not be where you know there’s a largely untapped audience. Be one of the first to record a video on staging your home or walk through your new listing. There are thousands of ways to implement video into your business plan.
What are you waiting for?
What does the Women’s Council’s new mobile app mean for you and your real estate business?It means the entire membership directory is conveniently available on your mobile device. It means free education tools, videos, how-to articles and more, right at your fingertips. You can even update your contact information and your Member Expertise Profile on the fly!
If you are a chapter officer, you can also access the Chapter Management Center—all the functionality without being tied to your desk! Rosters, reports, even labels!
Download Women’s Council’s FREE mobile app for:
If you have a website or even just a blog, you need to be on WordPress. Their dashboard , the back-end of your website/blog – what you see when you log in, is the most user-friendly while at the same time virtually impossible to seriously mess up. The learning curve is small compared to other sites and WordPress has many, many blogs with helpful step by step instructions for troubleshooting almost any problem. Finally, it’s free.
Basically, it’s REALTOR(R) proof.
Check out wordpress.com for blogs or wordpress.org for websites.
Really, the video says it all…
QR Codes are the wave of the future. We see them on business cards, billboards, even cereal boxes. Most recently, they are making their way into the real estate world. Not only were they very prominent at the NAR convention in New Orleans, but they have even made their way to yard signs.
For a great article on the best uses for QR Codes, click here.
Even if you’re not ready to create your own, we recommend downloading a Code Reader App for your smartphone. Below are a few recommendations.
– Blackberry: Scanlife or certainteed
– iPhone: mobiletag
– Android: QuickMark
Updating your member expertise profile
Author: Joel Comm
Book Description from Amazon
Get the business leader’s guide to using Twitter to gain competitive advantage.
Since 2006, forward-thinking companies like Apple, JetBlue, Whole Foods, and GM have discovered the instant benefits of leveraging the social media phenomenon known as Twitter to reach consumers directly, build their brand, and increase sales. Twitter is at the leading edge of the social media movement, allowing members to connect with one another in real-time via short text messages–called “tweets”–that can be received either via the Twitter site or by e-mail, instant messenger, or cell phone. Many companies have started building entire teams within their organization dedicated solely to responding to tweets from consumers about their brand. And this is just the beginning. In Twitter Power 2.0, Internet marketing and Web innovation expert Joel Comm shows businesses and marketers how to integrate Twitter into their existing marketing strategies to build a loyal following among Twitter members, expand awareness for their product or service, and even handle negative publicity due to angry or disappointed consumers. The book also presents case studies of companies on the forefront of the Twitter movement, to help you develop your own social networking strategies. Twitter Power is the result of extensive testing and participation in the social networking community and is a must-have for any business that wants to keep up with the social media movement. Twitter Power features a foreword by Tony Robbins.
What I thought of the book.
I am a big fan of non fiction books that are easily laid out, so much so that I can read a chapter a week and not feel like I forgot all I read the week before. My favorite part of this book was the 30 day action plan. This is perfect for any person new to Twitter asking themselves ‘where do I start?’. In fact the entire book is just as advertised, a step by step plan to dominate Twitter. The only thing it doesn’t do it the work for you.
Purchase the book from Amazon.com
Because networking is an important part of my business, I find myself going to a lot of conventions, summits, and classes. I also find myself taking a lot of notes and then doing virtually nothing with them when I get home. However about two weeks ago, I went to a summit hosted by the Women’s Council of REALTORS(R). This summit was all about technology and finding new ways to use that technology in our businesses and chapters. While I was there, I discovered some of the coolest websites. As a result, I created a list of all the things I found cool and interesting that I wanted to incorporate into my life.
Today I crossed one item off my list. While in a session taught by Sara Bonert from Zillow, I discovered the most amazing website, Screenr. Screenr is a website that allows the user to create screencasts and post them on sites like Twitter and Youtube. This is probably the coolest website ever. It was super simple to use, all I had to do was click the record button, align the box to the part of my computer I wanted to show, and start talking. When it was done, I created a caption, hit publish, and the website did the work for me. *A word of caution, once I created my screencast, I could not edit my caption so watch those typos.
Here’s my finished product.
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