Go Pro Systems

Recently when we asked a web designer we know why she was thinking about a career switch, she said that many web designers were doing this because programs like WordPress made it possible for people to design their own websites without hiring people like her.

WordPress was at first just a site people used to set up blogs but with time the software has evolved. If you are very web savvy or have a friend who is, you can use WordPress to create a professional looking website that will look like you spent a lot of money to have it designed.

It is fine to use the latest version of the WordPress software, but if you really want to make your site stand out, you will want to spend a little extra to upgrade it with plug-ins. Here are some plug-ins that work well for people who work in real estate:

Altos Toolbar

This connects your site to local markets and you can pull up charts and information to post on your website. It also lets people sign up to get e-mails with market information.

Backup Buddy

This will back up your website and ease the transition to a new server if you need to move to a new host.

Events Calendar

This can help you keep people informed about upcoming events, like open houses, and even incorporates Google Maps.

Meet Your Commenters

Are you curious about your followers? With this plug-in, you will be able get more information on them. You can see info on your followers' websites and social network profiles right in your WordPress dashboard.

WordPress Touch Pro

This plug-in turns your WordPress site into a mobile site for a number of mobile devices including the iPhone, Blackberry Storm and Android phones. This way you can be on the go and still get notified when someone comments on your site. If you need to, you can respond while your away from the office without having to wait until you are at your desk.

Depending on who you ask, on what day, blogging is either old-fashioned since we now have things like Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter or it is much more viable way to promote your business than having website with content that stays in place.

More often than not, the people who say that blogging is dead are very tech savvy and started blogging when it was still new. Now that blogging has become part of the norm and is a established online communication medium, it is no longer cutting edge, so they want to abandon it.

Now, what is very old-fashioned is having a website and/or blog that you cannot maintain yourself. Gone are the days when you absolutely had to call on a programmer to maintain your website. If you have hired someone to help you with this, that is fine, but it should be on a user-friendly platform that allows you to make quick changes if you need to.

Another reason that a static website is old-fashioned is that it will not generate the kind of web traffic and search engine optimization (SEO) results that you need to stay competitive. Why is everyone so keen to blog and use Twitter, etc? Well, 1. They want to open up dialogue and be in conversation with current and prospective clients. 2. They want the constantly updated content that blogs and micro-blogging provide to make them stand out to the search engines.

Have you not started a blog? Or, did you start one and let it fall by the wayside? If so, it is time for you to get it going again. Remember that a blog does not have any rules. If you do not have the time or inclination to post content to your blog, get some help.   Your blog can consist entirely of pictures and descriptions of the properties you want to sell. You can put up links to articles you think would interest your clients. Write up your real estate success stories. You can use voice-recognitions software to "speak" your blog.

At Go Pro Systems, we believe in taking advantage of all the ways technology can help us work better. Our automated campaign system will make lead conversion easier than ever and our lead generation tools incorporate a digital 800 number call capture technology that is second to none,

Success in real estate today involves a combination of real-time, in-person effort while throwing some technology and automated tools in the mix. You may find that you need to do all of the things you used to such as attending networking events, making phone calls, sending out postcards and holiday greetings and taking out ads in addition to maintaining an online presence. Since this is the case, you will want to find ways to execute all of your marketing efforts in the most efficient manner possible.

We have already mentioned that Twitter is a very useful tool for real estate professionals. By creating and exchanging brief 140-character messages, you can spread the word about your business and gather useful information.

With the appearance of a micro-blogging tool like Twitter, there are, of course, tools to help you use this marketing tool better. There are even some that are geared specifically for real estate. One of these is Tweetlister. Tweetlister is a subscription-based tool that was created especially for real estate professionals. It is to be used exclusively for Real Estate and is monitored so that people who try to post spam or listings that are not real will find themselves blocked from the service. As far as legitimate listings go, you can post residential, commercial and vacation properties that you want to sell or lease.

Using this service, you can input listings yourself or have them automatically sent from your MLS listings. You can also schedule posts ahead of time and send these posts to more than one Twitter account. It also allows you to fill out a profile with a bio and photo

and have a landing page. Tweetlister gives you a breakdown of who has clicked on your listings. While you may not want to send the same listings every day, you can use Tweetlister to set up periodic posts of the same listings, removing that periodic update when the property has been sold.

Not only will a tool like Tweetlister help you reach your goal of getting properties sold, it will also assist with boosting the search engine ranking of your website or blog if you include links to your other online forums in your posts.

A recent story in the New York Times (Manhattan Was the Dream; Jersey City Fit the Budget) illustrates the notion that some-times a client just isn't ready. The article details how one woman spent years searching for a home to buy, even when she actually was not quite ready to buy one. She enjoyed looking at open houses, frustrated her daughter and tried to tie up loose ends that would make it possible for her to buy a home. What she wanted was beyond her budget and she found "deal breakers" for the homes that were within her means. Seeing beyond her dismay at whatever drawbacks she found, the woman admits that she just was not ready to buy and that it takes her a long time to make a decision.

When she finally found a place she liked after having various family members visit and give their stamp of approval, a close cousin who describes himself as "impulsive," rented out his a place and bought in the same building. The cousin obviously did not need a lot of time to make his decision.

The story does not say a lot about what role a real estate professional played in all the years that the woman was house hunting. However, we know that dealing with clients who need to gather a lot of information before making a decision requires a good deal of patience. In the story above, keeping in touch with the woman who was on a constant house hunt might have also meant getting business from her cousin who bought in the same building. It pays to keep in touch.

At GoPro Systems we also know that a large part of a successful real estate business involves being in communication with friends, associates and former clients. If working with a certain client does not lead to a sale the first time, that does not mean that there is no hope for the future.

We can help assure that you can keep in touch with prospective clients while working with current clients. The automated campaign system from GoPro Systems will make lead conversion easier than ever. You and your business will constantly be in front of all your prospects.

A tantalizing new wireless technology innovation being introduced by Intel that allows you to transfer laptop displays to TV could have fascinating applications for the real estate industry. Just beginning to appear on upscale, heavy-duty laptops offered by Toshiba, Sony and Dell, Intel Wireless Display appears to be another coffin nail presaging the end of television as we know it today. But beyond the ability to revolutionize consumer television viewing habits, Wireless Display offers intriguing marketing opportunities for real estate agents and brokers.

The Intel Wireless Display allows users to transfer to a television screen whatever they display on their laptop. The system comes with a small wireless adapter about the size of a thin paperback. You place the adapter in your entertainment center and connect it directly to your television via a digital HDMI cable or you can connect it to a digital receiver that is already connected to the television. When you activate the Intel software on your PC, it connects to the wireless receiver and your TV will display whatever is on your laptop. You may need to make a minor manual resolution adjustment to your PC signal to produce a clear, crisp image. Intel's wireless signal has ample range to carry between rooms without line-of-sight and includes audio transmission so you both see and hear transmitted material.

This revolutionary technology is just out of the box and currently only runs on fairly powerful laptop. However, expect Intel Wireless Display to become standard fare on at least the highest end laptops within a few tech generations. The current incarnation exhibits a slight delay between typing something on your laptop and seeing the display on your television, but it shouldn't take Intel long to perfect that minor glitch.

The ease of including this PC-to-TV feature in wireless, take-anywhere technology offers exciting marketing opportunities for real estate professionals. Intel Wireless Display makes it a snap to create seminars, video how-to demonstrations, produce virtual home tours and a host of other possible marketing applications and give them big screen display at your office, open houses, meetings and seminars or community events.

Autoresponders are pre-written emails that are saved online, then sent out automatically when a potential client signs onto your Facebook fan page or registers to access specific information on your website or logs a comment on your blog. By pre-writing a series of unique responses that answer commonly asked questions about your business or respond to common requests for real estate information, real estate agents and brokers can effectively increase customer contact with a minimum of effort. Autoresponders also allow you to disseminate important information quickly and easily to a large group of contacts. If done effectively, autoresponders can build quality customer relations, turning leads into sales, while allowing you to manage your time and your business more efficiently.

Autoresponders can include short articles or tip lists on buying or selling a house, improving your credit score, purchasing a lease option house, preparing for an open house, closing paperwork checklists, finding a mortgage, how to schedule an appointment to view a house, how to handle a home inspection, etc. By sending helpful, informational emails in response to queries from website and Facebook visitors, you begin to lay the groundwork for a future relationship. When these people are ready to buy or sell a home, they're apt to remember your helpfulness and turn to you first. Every time you provide potential clients with a piece of useful information, you're building trust and establishing yourself as a real estate expert in the local market area.

Autoresponders are also an effective way to walk clients through the real estate selling or buying process. Sending out an autoresponder message to clients that anticipates their questions as they reach each new step in the buy or sell process makes them better prepared clients and decreases the need for direct contact. At the same time, and most importantly, with minimal effort you are able to reassure real estate clients that you are personally guiding their every step. Astute use of autoresponders allows you to develop a more "hands-on" relationship with real estate clients without actually being time-intensive.

Be sure you always provide an unsubscribe link in autoresponder emails. While you don't want potential clients to exercise this option, you do need to provide it. Some people find receiving unrequested emails irritating, and there's no reason to alienate a potential client at this early stage of your relationship.

Everybody is talking about branding. Developing your own unique real estate brand is a way to create instant client recognition and set yourself apart from your competitors. Social networking has made brand development easier, faster and incredibly more affordable than every before. Savvy realtors and real estate brokers now use social network platforms to create a viable and recognizable brand in weeks and months instead of years and decades. Of course, the advantage of owning a recognizable real estate brand is increased lead and client generation.

In the olden days before the advent of Facebook and Twitter, brand development used to move at a snail's pace. Real estate agents and brokers were forced to rely on pricey magazine and newspaper ads, yellow page spreads, billboards, radio spots, property signage and thousands of handouts and mailings. It was tough enough - and wildly expensive -- to saturate your local market; realtors didn't even consider trying to create a national identity. The expense of branding beyond your immediate neighborhood far outweighed any potential gain. Minimal, if any, regional or national presence was achieved by association with one of the national real estate franchises that did dabble in national advertising.

Then came the Internet and a whole new world opened up. Real estate agents were able to connect with potential home buyers and sellers online and create a personal identity. Website logos, slogans, mission statements and blogs were all interconnected and branded with the realtor's unique personality and vision, initiating the creation of personal brands. The national and global reach of the Internet made it easy and affordable for a local agent to extend his reach beyond his local zip code.

The advent of MySpace, which led to the more fluid and less formal Facebook, and the progression of Instant Messaging (IM) to Twitter have allowed tech-savvy realtors to create unique personal brands in ever-shorter time frames. The instant and constant access made possible by today's social networking platforms not only keeps your brand in front of potential clients continuously, ensuring progression from lead generation to client to sale; it recreates the personal realtor-client relationship that was lost in the anonymity of web communication. Twitter use on new generation smart phones in particular allows real estate professionals to promote their brand and build important personal connections with home buyers and home sellers that generate sales.

Electronic connectivity is quickly becoming reality. The iPhone, Droid and other competing smart phones now allow realtors and real estate brokers to monitor real estate leads from their Facebook page, email virtual tours of listings that may be of interest, Twitter the latest mortgage rate updates and listing prices, phone a real estate prospect to set up a house tour, even turn on the lights before arriving at the home with a hot prospect. Rather than being unusual, in just two to three years, this type of interconnectivity is expected to become the norm. Savvy real estate agents and brokers are getting on board now and learning to use new technologies to their advantage.

Sony Dash is the newest device to hit the technology market. Unlike smart phones which are designed to be interactive portable personal communication/information devices, Sony Dash is a personal Internet viewer that doesn't require any interaction. Marketed as a dashboard for your life, Dash is being heralded as a personalized vision of television's next incarnation. Designed to sit on a desk top or kitchen counter, Dash keeps you connected without any effort on your part. Set it up wherever you are - the patio, bathroom, bedroom, office, coffee shop, anywhere!

Dash has a 7-inch diagonal screen, is somewhat smaller than a notebook and weighs just over a pound. Set it down wherever is handy and Dash serves up a continual stream of web information programmed to your personal specifications. News, weather, traffic, Face book updates, television programs, new real estate listings, Twitter streams, Netflix movies, You Tube videos - you program Dash to stream the personally-selected information that is important to you.

With broadband Internet and wireless network connectivity, Dash can run in the background of your life, alerting you to client questions posted on your Face book fan page or to Twittered requests or incoming emails, allowing you to respond to your real estate clients' needs immediately. Dash is the newest way to stay on top of your real estate business and build the solid customer relationships that lead to sales.

Twitter can be a great tool for real estate agents to have in their online arsenal, if they know how to use it correctly. Twitter is a micro-blogging platform, so think of your Twitter account as an abbreviated blog. You can also use Twitter to promote your real estate business, build your brand and generate leads, much in the same way you use your blog.

While we have heard stories of people who mentioned that a home was for sale in a tweet and found a buyer, we want to caution you that this will not happen for everyone. Part of what you can do on Twitter is work on building relationships with the clients you already have and try to attract more. Some real estate professionals open up their Twitter accounts to the public, while others only allow certain people to see their tweets. No matter what, you want the people who connect with you via Twitter to say positive things about you online and offline.

Use Twitter to:

Share information
Of course you can tweet about your own blog posts and articles, open houses and new listings, but you may want to go beyond that. You can also tweet links to articles about real estate trends and about happenings in the areas where you sell homes.

Some real estate agents have found that using social media tools like Twitter not only helps them reach out directly to clients, it also gets them some media attention too. If you are hoping to become a go-to real estate expert, then you can use Twitter as one of the ways you establish your platform.

Make friends with people who are (or want to be) in your area
While there are bragging rights to be had for getting a record number of followers, you would to well to follow some influential people too. Keeping up with the locals may give you insight that you otherwise may not have had.

You can also use Twitter to search for terms related to real estate like "want to move to City Y" or "house hunting in City X." While you may not want to exhaust a lot of time this way, you could connect with possible clients.

The tech savvy people at Go Pro Systems want to connect with you on Twitter. Join today and follow @GoProSystems.