Picture yourself on a beach, soaking up the sun… or at a real estate conference soaking up new and exciting ways to amp up your business…or amping up your smart-phone in your car to meet your buyers for their neighborhood home tour…there is no question about it: you are a mobile professional.  Whether you have embraced this innovation in the real estate industry, or are just now starting the transition for 2012 now is the time to get your “Mobile Office Tool-Kit” all geared up and ready for all the action next year will bring. As a real estate virtual assistant, I find myself mobile at conferences, and it’s amazing to see how productive we can be using the right tools, the right way.

Let’s talk about the 5 main gadgets you need to run your office from anywhere, AND how to stay organized so that your professionalism and productivity stay on track no matter where you are.

From the desktop to your “Mobile Desk”

photo courtesy MobileGear.com

Laptop/iPad/Tablet

Your computer is where your business lives. From your database, contracts, forms, calendars and email, having access to all of these systems are crucial. Streamline this access by choosing a laptop or tablet that coincides with operating system and programs you use in your office the most. The iPad is an easy favorite, but stick with what you are comfortable with using to avoid technology overload and frustration with compatibility issues.

Smartphone

This may seem to be an obvious choice since most of us already have cell phones that are Smartphones. But, we’re past the point of simply choosing mobile phones based on cell coverage, email access, and cool ringtones. More importantly, the smartphone is becoming our handheld office, as well as our communication link to clients and team members. “Apps” or applications that are now available in the Apple & Android markets have quickly surpassed the Blackberry for having the best tools for mobile communication, GPS, file storage, and even social media marketing, video and photography.

Tip: Organize your mobile workday to mimic your  in-office work-day by choosing apps and best communication practices that works not just for you, but for your clients as well.

Mi-Fi Mobile Internet

While it may seem there is a Starbuck’s on every corner with wi-fi, we don’t always do business this close to our favorite coffee shop. Having your own personal Internet access/wi-fi can sometimes be the deal-saver. Don’t get stuck using insecure, public wi-fi to check email and send out contracts, it’s always better to be safe with that information than sorry. 

USB Power Strip

Portable gizmos and gadgets all use batteries, and those batteries tend to drain quickly with heavy use and certain application we may use. To keep your juices and business flowing a USB Power strip will allow your to charge multiple gadgets at one time, and some come with built-in power stored in the unit just in case you can’t find a power source. Some will charge up to 4-5 gadgets at once so you save time on the road.

Digital Camera or SmartPhone Camera

Property listings, neighborhood scenes, happy clients, community events; every mobile agent should have a digital camera ready and waiting to capture the lifestyle, moments and scenery of their communities, people and listings that they are the expert of. It doesn’t matter if it’s on your smartphone or stand-alone, this is a mobile tool that has shown over and over again, that photos & video attract interest online from potential clients. Maximize the medium adopting frequent use to curate the best of what you offer. Upload photo and video to blogs, Twitter, and Facebook Pages to optimize your online marketing efforts. Take a moment to enjoy the scenery while you’re at it.

Not Just Mobile, but Professional

Being mobile is no longer a lifestyle choice, it’s also about professionalism. Standing out among competitors in any situation that may occur. Organizing yourself for the fast-paced mobile world of real estate prevents delays, and technology stress if you plan well. These are just the basics.

If you would like to know more about working virtually, have some great tips of your own, we’d love for you to share!

I’ve been brainstorming some fresh ideas for real estate social media campaigns, you know the ones that aren’t about listings, or real estate, but the ones that residents in your community might find helpful. These are ideas either for a real estate Facebook Business Page, or even for your blog.

Having a busy family myself, and with the school year coming to an end, my mind always shifts to the things that we will be doing this summer, or should be doing. So while I was jotting some ideas down, I thought I would share what I’ve come up with so far. You may be able to use them, or they might inspire some fresh new ideas too. Feel free to add to the list of what has worked for you. Check back for more too..I’m sure I’ll be adding to the list.

• Publish or link to your City’s Parks and Recreation Summer Activity Guide- Most city website have a community page where they link to downloadable PDF copies of Summer Activities, Camps and other Recreation for the summer. Since most classes have an enrollment its helpful to share this online so your readers can download the info directly from your website and not miss important enrollment deadlines!

• High School Reunions-publish any information on any that might be happening- Alumni prepare a whole year for their high school reunions! If you can give them some notice on when and where they will be happening you are sure to gain some new fans!

• Video interview a local teacher from a school in your community for some great summer education ideas for kids of all ages- You know ALL those ideas and flyers you get from teachers when school lets out to make sure our kids’ minds are kept busy during the summer? Why not highlight a teacher in your community and do a fun interview about those ideas, and on how they plan to spend THEIR summer? What a great way for the kids in the community to get a glimpse of their teacher on camera!

• Stage Your Home-Just for Fun!- Create a video How To with your favorite home stager on how to “Create the Look” of a staged home just for fun-Do you work with a home stager from time and time, or perhaps with all your listings? Share some of that great secret sauce with your readers and give them some staging tips just for fun. Not only will this be a fun project for the summer for some residents, but perhaps it will entice those same people to come to your Open Homes.

• Link or write a post, or video your local Farmer’s Market if you have one.- Does your community have a Farmer’s Market or Movies in the Park, or any kind of seasonal event that’s fun for the whole community? Let your readers know all about it, and have a photo contest for the best photo from the event.

If you have some more ideas that you’d like to share, I would love to hear them!

As one of the most innovative and exciting real estate conferences in the country, RETechSouth will be the stage where I am excited to announce my first national speaking engagement.

I can’t possibly explain how honored and excited I am to be a part of what will surely be the highlight of my year. Here is a peek at why: “RETSO provides a full conference experience with the perfect mix of Talent, Excitement, Fun, Peer-to-Peer learning, and Networking activities. By receiving larger doses of knowledge, attendees learn to use existing resources better and will catch a glimpse of what’s on the horizon. Focused knowledge is delivered in multiple sessions of rapid fire content via Camps, Labs, Keynotes, Panel Discussions, Workshops, and Learning Games.” Wow!

I am beyond honored to be among it’s list of speakers; some of the best minds, thought leaders, mentors and friends I have had in my years of real estate. I will be co-presenting “To Infinity and Beyond: Creating a Virtual Team” with my east-coast colleague Patty Keller of AnotherME Virtual Assistants at RETechSouth at the Gwinnett Center in Atlanta on March 31 & April 1, 2011. I am so excited to speak about something I am so passionate about; helping agents and brokers build successful businesses by delegating, utilizing virtual and mobile technology, and ways to leverage virtual assistance to streamline systems and increase productivity. This presentation will be a guide to organizing and implementing new technologies to create and grow a virtual real estate business model, a hot topic in today’s economic landscape.

If you are a real estate professional I encourage you to come to RETech South if you can. Join me and hundreds of others as we have amazing conversations, share our learning and plant the seeds for more growth in our businesses. The fun, the excitement and the anticipation is building!

Just a quick little blog post to let you know I happened to stumble across this WordPress plug-in that creates an interactive Editorial Calendar for your blog posts! Schedule, create and publish from 1-5 weeks out and see it all on your calendar. There is a great screen-cast below to see how it works.

This can be used as an efficient way to keep track of those great real estate blog post ideas, add in and schedule other users blog posts (for multi-author blogs), and be able to see the status of each blog post for up to 5 weeks out on the calendar…very cool! You can also download the plug-in from the WordPress plug-in Directory.

As you know I’m all about streamlining and automating as many tasks as you can; this is one little great tool to help you do that. Check it out!

The WordPress Editorial Calendar Screen Cast from Zack Grossbart on Vimeo.

Whether you are new to blogging, are ready to upgrade from WordPress.com, to .org, or are moving an old website to the WordPress platform, it can be intimidating and overwhelming to find and choose a theme, even for the best “do-it-your-selfers!” With so many choices and considerations, a little preparation can mean the difference between a successful launch of your online hub, or a conundrum of issues and problems that take time to manage.

As a real estate virtual assistant, I’ve learned a lot by trial and error on my own site, before I started delving into supporting agents with their transition to WordPress. I thought it might be helpful to put together my Beginner’s WordPress for Real Estate Preparation List, specifically for real estate in mind, that can serve to help you in your quest for being a WordPress pro. By organizing a simple list to consider you can weed out the NO’s and be on your way to having a killer real estate WordPress website/blog! So here goes:

#1  Will your WordPress theme serve as your website, your blog or both?

Choose a theme that has the main structure in place of what you need.  Look at the menu navigation options..Home Page, About, Services, as well as a Blog page. Will they be integrated? If so, choose a theme that already has a blog, and website already built-in.

#2 Is this site for your personal business, or for your team or multiple authors?

If you plan on using  your site as a business site consider the look and feel that would best represent a structure that suits your branding, or your need for multi-users. Perhaps you’d like a theme that offers a specific design structure to highlight multiple authors and their own about pages? If that is the plan stay away from themes that are too limited in what they provide.

#3 What is the budget for your site? Will you need a designer to customize it?

Let’s face it. Your site will need some level of customization. Your theme should reflect your branding, your colors, have a style that represents you.  How much will it take to turn your theme into the site it needs to be? Will you need special designer graphics, buttons, call to action items? Headers and images? What is already built-in, and what isn’t? This can help you decide what theme to choose. If the features of the theme allows you many options and “skins” you may only be a few steps away from having everything packaged just right, at little or no outside cost. (P.S. for choosing a website color palette, I love using www.colourlovers.com )

#4 Pick a theme based on your structure of content, and one that showcases your best attributes.

Do you use Video, Photos, as well as content?  Do you want to showcase your listings? Blog Posts? When thinking about how you are going to add content on your pages and in your posts, its helpful to use a theme that has easy ways to highlight those things. For example: the AgentPress Theme showcases listings beautifully, while this theme highlights your blog content mainly. Just know that are are some themes that may have more than what you need..and less. Finding a theme that has that balance is good.

#5 Is your theme widget ready? How much can you fit on the theme before it gets too cluttered? Create your widget Wish-list.

Create your wish list of widgets & Plug-ins. Check to see how many widgets the theme can support comfortably. Some themes already have built-in sidebar placement for email subscriptions, RSS sign-up, and Google Analytics. But if you are adding in IDX searches, Market Stats, Mortgage Calculators, Testimonials, Trulia and Zillow Widgets, over-crowding can become a problem! Choosing a theme with 3 columns or 2 columns can easily be overlooked if you don’t know what to look for.

#6 How social is your theme? Is there a place for all your social networking icons?

This MAY sound like a sidebar, widget issue, BUT now there are some really nice themes with Social Networking icons already built in, saving you the design trouble of adding them in yourself. Consider your WordPress savvy-ness, and you may opt for a theme that has your Social Sites and Twitter stream built right in.

#7 Is the Theme search engine friendly?

Unless you are familiar with with HTML and CSS it may be difficult for you to evaluate the SEO capabilities of a theme. Typically, FREE themes come in such a variety, that its best to choose a premium themes that offers built-in search engine optimization, clean coding, and fields in your posting area that allow for optimizing of titles, tags and descriptions. Having these in your theme helps your site organically and allows for easier time management when posting those hyper-local, keyword-rich posts.

#8  Your theme should help you stay organized and user-friendly!

Consider your Categories and Sub-Categories of content. Should this be built-in to your Menu Navigation or just in the sidebar? If you are a heavy blogger with lots of subjects, community info etc., think about how this is to be organized in your theme. I am partial to themes that have drop down menus in the navigation so that I can categorize pages and posts in a way that are user-friendly to site visitors. Nothing can steer away a site visitor more quickly that be overwhelmed at information that is not organized in a  way that is easy to find and browse through.

#8 Does your IDX provider have WordPress friendly integration and/or Plug-ins?

When you are choosing a theme, consider items that might need to be integrated in a way that takes some technical expertise. Assuming you will be adding IDX feeds to your website/blog its important to know if your IDX provider allows integration to WordPress in a way that you can understand, or if you are going to have to hire a web designer to do it. IDX providers like IDX Broker and Diverse Solutions offer plug-ins that make this integration easier.

#9 Is Technical Support available?

Be careful when choosing themes. There are many designers and developers that have themes that are advertised, but have since gone out of business, or do not have technical support available for help. When working on your site yourself, it only takes the smallest character of wrong code, and a whole site can be out of whack or unable to view in all browsers, or any number of things. Having technical support, allows you to have a professional to walk you through it, and keep your site in tip top shape should anything go wrong. (no guarantees of course) Developers like Brian Gardner with Studiopress actually has a forum of tutorials, and a place to ask questions and get help with Studiopress theme related issues. He and his developers and designers are quick to help out and answer questions.

#10 Will you manage your website/blog, or will someone else be doing that?

If you are comfortable with the back-end of website platforms and blog formatting, then you are a do-it-your-selfer! If you are a blogger/writer etc, you could still be overwhelmed with managing your content. Before choosing a difficult theme, that needs a lot of customizing, specially formatted posts, etc. consider your theme for its user-friendliness to YOU. Can you manage it, or will this be a site that only someone else can manage for you? Consider what, when, & how you will continue building your work in progress. Pick a theme that can grow with you, not weigh you down.

Adopting WordPress as your main content management system is a fun and exciting venture!  Being prepared with your wants and needs is a little like house-hunting. Having the information to make your search easier can save you frustration and bring you all the excitement, bells and whistles to make your blog or website the best on the block!

SEO. I have a love/hate relationship with SEO. I can’t seem to get enough, and yet it’s always changing.

As more and more real estate professionals turn to using WordPress as their real estate website and/or blog, and have more control over their content, their interest in learning and analyzing their Search Engine Optimization practices is central to their success online.

And as many of us scour the web for information and articles to keep us up to date on the latest SEO tips and must haves it’s always nice to find information that is clear, is about real estate SEO, and also differentiates between myth and reality. Today (via Facebook) I saw Tribus Real Estate’s  Eric Stegemann’s latest  blog the Top Ten List of Search Engine Optimization for Realtors.

The “back to basics” proven real estate SEO tips are there, as well as expanding upon the WordPress specific tips like perma-links and writing content for long-tail searches.

I also asked Eric what his thoughts were on indexable IDX solutions, and opened up a Laura “Can of Worms”   Check out what Eric had to say, and hopefully my line of questioning will spur him to his next blog post! Thanks Eric!

Today I had the pleasure of presenting a webinar for the Active Rain University titled, “Tips and Tools for Managing Your Real Estate Business Virtually”. With over 200 attendees registered its quite apparent that this is one hot real estate topic!  As a real estate virtual assistant I was able to share some of the best tools for setting up a Virtual Real Estate Office, and wanted to make sure I added the presentation here to share with you as requested.

I wanted to thank Brad Andersohn of Active Rain for asking me to participate and to the discussion. We covered some pretty relevant topics in today’s technology driven real estate market, and added in some thoughts on organizing and defining your online business systems so that working away from your desk is streamlined and efficient.

In the presentation below you will find information on:

* Defining the Needs for your Real Estate Business Systems
* Streamlining and Automating your Systems for Higher Productivity
* What Does it Mean to Work in the Cloud?
* Tools and Technology that are full of Mobile Features and Cloud Integration
* Leveraging online and offline support with a Virtual Assistant

Enjoy!

Have you thought about using WordPress as your main real estate website or blog? Are you concerned about not having the lead capture forms and automated contact management system built in? Well, I might have a solution for you!

I recently moved my real estate virtual assistant website from a standard site, and jumped in and got my own WordPress blog/website combo. I don’t have the need for as many lead capture points on my site, but I decided that I DID need to do a better job at collecting visitor information, needs, wants, and I wanted a way to streamline the process, build my relationships, as well as build in some email marketing capabilities which I hope to add into my action plans as well. I’m no web designer/guru and I didn’t want to spend a ton more money on another CRM solution.

In looking over my options I quickly made the realization that there aren’t an outstanding number of real estate CRM systems that are quite equipped to handle many of the things traditional real estate websites do, it takes some extra additions. For example the challenges might be:

1. Adding lead capture forms to your blog that include What’s Your Home’s Value, Dream Home Finder, Market Stat Reports, or your Company newsletter/new listing alerts
2. Converting seller/buyer leads from your website to add to Top Producer or Outlook (requires manual input)
3. Based on contact type you have to input the contact info to your drip campaign, e-newsletter etc.

Before you know it, you are managing multiple accounts for your website and blog etc. That is not streamlining! So, here is the most affordable solution I have found so far, and will be adding it to my online business management systems. By using the user-friendly system Batchbook I can create a customizable CRM powerhouse for my business.

For $9.95 per month I have the ability to:

• Create customizable lead capture forms that AUTOMATICALLY are added to my contact management list for that form. (no need to add it to another system).
• Automatically create and send email marketing campaigns through my Mail Chimp account (Mail Chimp is free up to 5000 emails a month, with upgradable accounts).
• Track communications of my contacts and create TO DO lists.
• Import and Export my Outlook and Gmail contacts.
• Enter information such as Twitter usernames, Twitter feeds, blog feeds and LinkedIn profile URLs (plus many others!) on a contact record.
• Log emails, phone call notes, or any other communications with your contacts.
• Use a list to easily generate mailing labels, export, or back up your data or create customized, printable reports from your contact data. Use these reports to generate call lists, add to presentations or to take notes when you’re traveling, in the field, or working off-line.
• Super-Tag your contact types so you can easily sort them by birthday month, anniversary, buyer, seller, past client etc.
• Have your emails delivered to your mobile iphone, Blackberry or smartphone with the email forwarding so you never miss an email from a lead.

If you are thinking about your current CRM system, or need something to enhance your WordPress blog or website, (or another web platform) and need a great way to streamline, I definitely recommend taking a look at Batchbook. (and check out my sleek capture form below as an example..its easier than adding a widget!)