More about Empire Avenue…

• When you join Empire Avenue, you can connect your Social Networking accounts, and they score activity and engagement in each account, giving you a virtual “share” price
• The connections you make on Empire Avenue create “value-based” relationships – a deeper relationship than simply “following” someone, in a completely less intrusive context than becoming “friends.”
• Every day, you’re on Twitter, talking to friends on Facebook, uploading videos or photos, and writing blog posts. Just for doing that stuff, you’ll earn Eaves – their virtual currency – and they dish out some more virtual cash to your shareholders
• Along the way you’ll have a bit of fun, make new connections, learn about different people, and learn about social networking and the value of your network!

With Mailchimp, you can…

• Build your email list by offering a free report or video to encourage people to sign up, and deliver a follow-up sequence of emails
• Send regular email newsletter to stay in touch with your list
• Automatically broadcast new blog posts to your list. This encourages traffic to your blog, makes it easy to send valuable free information to your list, and helps readers get to know, like and trust you
• Create multiple sub-lists to send different information or follow-up to different groups of people
• Share your email newsletter with your social network, increasing your reach

Walkscore lets you…

• Map an address, and get lots of information – find nearby amenities and find the walkability to local restaurants, banks, schools, groceries, shopping, public transportation and more. You can even easily map a clients’ commute.
• Easily print out a properties Walkscore to give to clients – help make their decision easier
• Add the Walkscore Amenity Map to your site to market what’s nearby a property and show commute times.
• Use the iPhone and iPad apps to give valuable info to clients while you’re at a property
• Help Sellers better market their property – each Walk Score point can be worth up to $3,000 more for a property, or a 40 to 200% price premium when a property is within walking distance of public transportation

Using the Stupeflix Video Maker, you can…

• Pair a series of property photos, stock buyer photos, and property info together with music from YouTube’s  Music Library for a professional-looking Open House video
• Easily add text captions (things like property info, property address, your name & phone number,  client testimonial text, etc.)
• Automatically embed Google Maps into your video, making it easy for prospects to find the property (and without you knowing any code!)
• Get rid of your excuse that you don’t know how to create videos, or don’t have the right software

Ways Realtors® can use EventBrite

• Host Buyer or Seller Informational workshops, and promote them using EventBrite’s social networking tools
• Use EventBrite to manage the sale of tickets and the tracking of attendees to a paid event or fundraiser you are hosting or coordinating
• If you work with a lot of first-time buyers or buyers that are relocating, use EventBrite to set up a “neighborhood social” type event to encourage neighbors to get to know each other
• Let EventBrite manage attendees for office training or workshops, rather than trying to track back-and-forth emails
• Connect with your online network by hosting an offline event, and promote through social media
• Invite past and current clients to a Client Appreciation Event

Important thing to know about Zestimates™

According to Zillow’s website (http://bit.ly/zestimates) their Zestimates estimated market value can vary widely. For example, in Chicago, only 23% of Zestimates are within 5% of the final sales price. So be sure to educate your clients!

How to make Zillow & Trulia work in your favor

• These sites rank very well in the search engines, so fill out your profile completely. Add your listings and Open Houses, and put links to your website, blog, Twitter, LinkedIn & Facebook account on your profile.
• Answer questions in Trulia Voices & Zillow Advice to showcase your local knowledge.
• Request a review from clients that you have developed a relationship with. Many agent profiles don’t have these, so this helps you stand out in a competitive market.
• Take advantage of the different tools these sites offer to create more value for clients. Send clients stats or Local Real Estate Trend Data, and put their informational widgets on your website or blog as a resource for clients.

Ways Realtors® can use bit.ly

• Shortening – as mentioned above, the most basic service of bit.ly is shortening long urls. Take a url like http://www.zillow.com/howto/DataCoverageZestimateAccuracy.htm and turn it into http://bit.ly/e5iZHa making it easier to share on email and social media

• Even better, you can take those shortened urls, and customize them, so the link above is turned into http://bit.ly/zestimates. This makes it easier for you and clients to remember the url, and makes them more trustworthy because people know what to expect when they click on them

• Bit.ly provides great analytics, so you can track exactly how many times your new link is clicked

• The free Pro account even lets you shorten using your own custom domain

• Lots of different ways to utilize this: provide neighborhood info through shortened links on your site, and track which neighborhoods your visitors are most interested in, shorten links to your blog posts and see whether you get more readers from Twitter & Facebook.

Important news about Google Maps & Google Latitude:

•  Starting this month (February), Maps will no longer display real estate  listings

•  Google Latitude (their location-based social media service, similar to Foursquare and Facebook Places) now supports check-in’s at local businesses

What this means for Realtors®:

•If you’ve been adding your listings to Google Maps, you can stop!

•If you’re active in local-based social media already, consider adding Google Latitude.

•Not only is Google the major player for SEO, but Latitude already integrates with Places (their reviews system) and will tie the new check-ins with Google Offers, its Groupon-like local discount service (coming later this year).

•This complete integration by Google will likely be a great way to gain visibility for yourself as an agent, as well as for your properties, by checking in (and encouraging clients to as well)

Important feature of Carbonite include:

•  Completely automatic online backup (set it and forget it) •  Secure file transmission and storage •  Simple file recovery •  Access your files anywhere •

Why Realtors® need Carbonite

• Statistics show that up to 13% of hard drives fail every year, and approximately 2 million laptops are stolen every year
• It’s easy to use, and gives you peace of mind that necessary documents are safe and secure
• Pro version lets you backup all the PCs in your office – great for multi-agent offices
• Access from any computer or smartphone – browse, open & share files on the go

Also available on the go with apps for iPhone, iPad, Android and Blackberry

The first tool is this series is Dropbox. Dropbox is an online storage site, that offers lots of benefits for on-the-go Realtors®.

Some feature of Dropbox include:

• Sync files between multiple computers (and mobile devices), so you always have the most up-to-date version of the file you’re working on.
• Automatic backup of files on your computer
• File sharing
• Take photos and videos and sync them to Dropbox

Ways Realtors® can use Dropbox

• Quickly and easily send important documents to clients, even when you’re out of the office
• Create special folders for clients so they can easily access and sync their documents, without any privacy concerns
• Take photos and videos of new listings, and easily share them with interested buyers
• Sync frequently used office documents (brochures, media, buyer/seller guides) so that all agents have the most recent updated version

Also available on the go with apps for iPhone, iPad, Android and Blackberry