I held the Blackberry Storm....Finally

Hello again everyone,

I wouldn't call myself an impatient person all the time. Only when there is something new I want. Like the Blackberry Storm. I have literally been bugging the poor Verizon people weekly to find out any information I can about the release date of the storm. When I ask "When does the storm come out?" I always get the answer "They don't tell us that".

Well today was a little different. I am currently in Orlando FL at the NAR convention 2008 and I ran into the big Verizon Wireless booth. When I asked the young lady behind the booth when the storm was being released she said......."They don't tell us that!" AHHH! It drives me crazy. I then went to another area of the NAR expo and found the actual Blackberry booth. I figured where better to get the information I need than from the source.

I approached another young lady at the Blackberry booth and asked her the same question. As she began to mutter the words "They don't" I had to stop her and tell her my story. She gave me a sad look and handed me some pamphlets about the storm hoping to make me feel better. At this point I knew I had to pull out the big guns to get the info I needed. I started to ask her all kinds of technical questions about the storm like processor speeds, EVDO rev, storage capacity, OS capabilities etc. and finally she leaned over and whispered "There's one here if you want to play with it."

HOLY COW! There's a storm at the convention and she is willing to let me play with it. FINALLY!! I obviously agreed so she took me behind a curtain behind the booth and handed me a real fully functional Blackberry Storm. I was in heaven. The phone is everything they said it will be.

She asked me not to take any pictures or videos of the phone because it was not even supposed to be at the NAR convention much less activated and turned on. So I did the reasonable thing and recorded a short video while she wasn't looking. Below is a very short clip of me holding the final blackberry storm. I hope you enjoy it and from what I can tell this phone is going to take things up a notch.



Thanks,
Matt Rains
Real Estate Technology Online

SEO Series | Part 1 Keywords

We're going to get into our new series about SEO (Search Engine Optimization). The video above is a brief summary from our live show last Sunday night (www.realestatetechnologyonline.com/live).

Before you ever get in front of a computer or meet with a web developer you have to grab a pen and paper to ask yourself a question.

Question 1 - What do I want my website to be found for? or What will people be searching for when they find my website?

That question will lead you into the first step of your SEO plan; "Keywords". Search engines work by using what is called "robots" to search through the text and links of your web page to find certain repetitive keywords. After robots search your site they use your "keywords" to associate what your site is about to what people are looking for from the search engine.

Take your pad and pen and start to write down words or phrases that you want your site associated with. These phrases can be "real estate agents Denver" or "relocation specialist Denver " really whatever you want to associate yourself with.

Now that you have your certain keywords/key phrases you'll want to make sure these key terms are maximized by using the Google Adwords Tool. This tool will show you how to tune your key terms to get the most out of them.

Once you get to the tool type in your first key term such as "real estate agents in Denver". My results show that on average 110 people search for that specific key term each month. Now looking further down at those results I can see that the search term "Denver real estate agent" is searched for on average of 40,500 times each month or "Denver real estate" is searched for on average 165,000 times each month. So just using that one tool I have tuned my key phrase to appeal to 165,000 people instead of only 110. That's a huge difference.

We'll that's it for part one of SEO. Get settled down and find out what keywords / key phrases will work best for your site and maybe next we'll actually start on the website.

Have a great day,
Matt Rains
Real Estate Technology Online

The SMS widget was a success!

Hello again everyone,

I'm here with my friend caffeine and we are very excited about how the text messaging widget has done in the "real estate industry". It has been 4 days and we've had around 200 agents implement this widget into their website/blog. I really give all the credit to my three favorite websites/people (in no order).

-MyTechOpinion.com
-Agent Genius
-The Jeff Turner

Now that the widget craziness is over I can get back to my blog series about agent websites and can start the new series about SEO (search engine optimization). If you want the widget click here.

p.s. - I swear the text message in the video was not planned and if you were wondering about the greatest and most potent energy drink on the planet that was featured in my blog it was the Rockstar - Blue. (be careful with it)

Matt Rains
Real Estate Technology Online

Get text messages from your website!!

Get It Here!

Have a great day,
Matt Rains
Real Estate Technology Online

Your Agent Website Series | Part Three

"What in the world should I put on my website?" I get this question a lot and the first thing I always ask back is "What do you want your website to do for you?". Amazingly this always has a way of puzzling real estate agents. They never seem to sit down and think what their website should so for them.

The first thing I think a website should do for you is generate leads. Generating leads is how you make your money so of course that should be priority one and maybe even the only priority. After that realization we then have to figure out do we want buyers, sellers or a little bit of both? Right now I am in a buyers market like most of the country so I have tuned my website to be more friendly to buyers, but still work well with sellers if needed.

By tuning my website I mean I have made it easier to acquire buyers over sellers. I did this by giving buyers the number one thing they want most - A PROPERTY SEARCH - this is they key to generating traffic to your site. You have to have a way for buyers and even sellers to search the current market. Now since I have that taken care of my next priority would be to pre-qualify these new buyers. This is done with a giant button that says "Get Pre-Qualified Here" and when the potential buyer fills out that short form there info is sent to my preferred lenders and the process begins.

Now for sellers I can provide and quick "Find out what your home is worth form" that will set me up to do a market analysis for them and hopefully lead into a listing if I want it. For the most part I am currently not trying to take on any new listings but I will if they present themselves.

Some quick features you may want to add are Videos, Text Messaging and a fun/open description about yourself. These things can add a lot to your site.

I'll go over more in the video above but for now just remember to make your siute fun and useful while keeping it simple.

-Matt Rains
Real Estate Technology Online

Your Agent Website Series | Part Two

During this series we are going to talk about many different aspects of your agent website and since we have already covered domain names in the last post we now have to decide what type of site we want? I know your thinking "Well, I want the "web" kind of site".

There are a couple of different types of websites available for you. First you can host the site yourself and control every tiny aspect from creation to editing and so on. The method does have its ups and downs just like all of them. The benefit of hosting & building your own site yourself is the level of customization is limited only by your experience and skill. The downfall of hosting and building your own site if you are not experienced can be greater. It is by far the hardest to get up and running, you must know at least basic html to start and maintain and it takes much more time to keep up to date.

The second method of obtaining a website is buying pre-built. This option is great because you don't need to know HTML, you usually just pick a custom template to get started and you get to choose your own custom color scheme. The downfalls are you have to rely on tech support if there are any problems and it is not as customizable as a custom built page. This is most likely the best option for the average real estate professional that doesn't want to spend the time to try and build their own site.

The third option to obtaining a page is using a free pre-configured site given to you by your brokerage or board or Realtors. This is not my favorite option because it is always so generic and they all look the same. All the sites have a large header on top of some generic picture then on the left it has a "frame" style menu with a picture of the agent. These pages give you control over nothing, they look just like everyone elses, you gain minimal lead generation and there is no WOW! factor. I do use these pages whenever given to me just to have a picture, description and my name on the web but I would never run my business from one.

So it boils down to this... If you are good with web based programming or know someone who is then by all means have a custom site built that is like none other. If you want to get on the web quick with a semi-original page then go with pre-built and if you just don't care and want to just see your picture on the web run your business from the free broker page.

Now the last question. What pre-built website company do I recommend? I am going to leave this up to you the reader to recommend companies in the comments section for everyone to see. Just tell the company name, website and a brief description/experience so we can check them out.

Have a great day,
Matt Rains
Real Estate Technology Online

Your Agent Website Series | Part One

The first part of our series on agent websites covers a very simple procedure on how to purchase a domain name since naturally this is the first step in owning your own website. If you are already a domain name buying pro you can have a hall pass and check back in tomorrow for the next part of our Agent Website series (you will not want to miss that one).

So the first step in the longest & most important journey you'll ever take in your career begins with purchasing a $10/year domain name. I know it's so cheap, that's because everything else from here out is so expensive (j/k).

I always recommend GoDaddy.com for domain name purchases because they own around 80% of all domain registrations around the world and I never have to worry about them going out of business and losing my domain names. The one thing I will say about GoDaddy.com that I don't like is they try and sometimes succeed to up-sell agents on things they don't need.

If you don't own a domain or haven't actually purchased a domain yourself all you need to do is watch the second video above for a step by step tutorial on how to buy a domain name from GoDaddy.com.

Here are a few tips on some domain names:
- always buy www.yourname.com, .net, .org, etc.
- choose keywords you want to be recognized by (your location, homes, real estate, etc.)
- if the domain name you want is taken use GoDaddy's tips to choose one that is available
- Just remember Domain Names are the new "Net Estate" buy as many as you can!

Hope step one gets the ball rolling. I can't wait for step two.

Have a great day,
Matt Rains
Real Estate Technology Online

Going Green with Technology | It's Easy!

I have tried and tried to wait for someone to do this post because I just didn't want to. I didn't want to fall into this whole "Go Green" movement but it has been brought to my attention that it just has to be done.

I am going to briefly talk about how to make your real estate career "greener" using free technology available to everyone.

First we have to go over communication. Some people like to have face to face meetings and therefore will not use their cell phone to talk with you. Instead of driving 20-30 minutes to meet them just download Skype and have a video conference with them and that way no one has to waste any gas driving to a meeting point.

The next "green" thing agents can improve on is the time spent driving around showing houses. I really think it is silly to drive all over the place showing 20 different houses when we have the types of technology available to us were we can do all of this from home. Take Google street view for example, this mapping technology allows my clients to literally walk down the street or around the neighborhood of a home they may be interested in. They can evaluate the neighborhood without ever leaving their computer. Then when a client does find a home and location they are interested in I should be able to call the listing agent and have a full interior video sent to me by e-mail so my clients can do a "video-tour" of the home before we set out and waste more gas.

I am trying to keep this short but I guess what I am trying to say is agents need to use the tools that are readily available to them so they can save time and money while also being "green".

Any Questions? Contact me at info@retechblog.com

-Real Estate Technology Online

Good-bye Blog, Hello Vlog!

Click here for the Vlog

So you've just started your first Blog and your off to a good start with quality content and a few visitors. Then you walk into the office one morning and you over hear someone talking about their "Vlog".

First thing you might think is "oh, what an idiot. They must be referring to their Blog.". Then after some more in-depth listening your start to realize what they are talking about is indeed a "Vlog" which stands for Video Log.

Well this makes perfect sense, it's the evolution of communication. When we first started this whole web 2.0 endeavor we were and are still using blogs (web logs) which are a written form of communication much like a book or magazine, then we went into the next frontier with "Podcasts" which are like radio broadcasts based solely around voice communication and now we have reached the final frontier with Vlogs (video logs) which are video transmissions much like television or movies.

Just like they have said time and time again "TV killed the Radio star" so I know you just got the whole "blog" thing working for you, but it's time to move forward and start Vlogging.

If you wan't to see a well executed example of vlogging visit Ian Watt at www.IanWatt.ca

Great to see you again and look forward to seeing you again soon.

-Real Estate Technology Online

Leave Breadcrumbs...

There are a lot of agents wondering why no one ever visits their blog. It may be because you never tell anyone where it is. The key to a successful blog or even a website is letting people know where it is and how they can find it. I have always found a simple signature at the end of any of my posts is a great way to leave a trail back to my blog.

A perfect example of this uses Trulia Voices. Let's say I am in Trulia Voices and I am talking with other agents about the current market in my area. After each of my responses or "posts" I leave a simple signature telling everyone my name, location, e-mail and blog address, like the sample below.

Matt Rains
Miami, FL
Info@RETechBlog.com
www.RETechBlog.com

Now when other agents or even potential clients view Trulia Voices they will see what I wrote and how to find more. This is a simple tool that can increase your web activity ten fold. After a few months of leaving your signature all over the web you are guaranteed to see an increase in traffic to your site.

Just remember to keep your input clear and direct. You want the people viewing your posts to really understand you are the leader in your market and they should contact you for further direction.

-Real Estate Technology Online