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

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

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

So here’s a little test for you – what things do you to market the properties that you list? Can you think of them all? Do you do them every single time, for every single property? If not, you could probably use something to help streamline the process and make it more consistent.

I’ve created a simple New Listing Marketing Checklist, and I wanted to pass it along to you! It’s an easy way to ensure that you do every task, every time.

The nice benefit of this checklist is that you don’t miss a few tasks here and there, it’s easy to do a bit of marketing for a property each day even if you only have 5 minutes, and it’s a great item to include in your updates to clients.

I’ve included most of the popular real estate listing and social media sites, but if you’re interested in having the original Word file to edit and add some of your own, let me know in the comments!

I recommend to the agents I coach that they don’t just put it in writing, but put as much care into the presentation and design of it as they would a flyer or newsletter. Just the fact that you take the time to do that shows sellers that this is an important piece to you, and you take the marketing of their property very seriously.

Then, no matter what other information you choose to include, I recommend you include the following 2 items:

Your standards for communication - That is one of the most common complaints that people make about their agent – “I never heard from them, and had no idea what was going on with my property.” So write that into your marketing plan. How do you communicate, and how often? What can they expect from you? Will you follow up once a week by phone, regardless of whether there was activity or not? Or, will you email them regularly, but only call if feedback or answers are needed from them? Every client (and agent) is different, so whatever way you work is okay, but with that written into your marketing plan, you’ll usually attract clients that are better fitted to you. So if you make phone calls every week, but they’re really busy and don’t want that much contact, it’s not a good fit, and you’ll know that from the start.

Your standards for accountability – different agents have different ways of marketing a property, so it can be confusing on the sellers end if they’re not even sure what you’re doing for them. By providing them a list of most of the precise tasks you’ll be doing in order to sell their property (open house, posting their listing on certain websites, etc.), they can see the impressive amount of work you’ll be doing on their behalf and feel confident in their choice of you as their agent. Plus, it often means that less follow-up is required on your part, since they can often see a lot of the work being done. So it can save you time, while improving the client experience.

Finally, think about updating the plan every 30 days or so, and sending it to them. This allows you the flexibility to adjust the plan if needed. Plus, you can include past items as completed, crossed off or with a checkmark, to remind them of the work that’s already been done. This helps cement their confidence in you during the process, even if the property hasn’t sold yet.

You work hard for your clients, and adding these items to your marketing plan helps to show them that! Plus, it makes it easy to set them up for referrals, because they’ll know exactly what their friends and family can expect while working with you.

With the right applications, a real estate agent in the field can be just as productive as one in the office. You have the ability to network and communicate with clients, fax documents, look up listings, find local area resources, calculate mortgage payments, and even shoot video!

If you have an iPhone, their app store is currently the biggest out there, and offers lots of apps to make doing business on the go easier and more convenient, so check out this list. These are just a small group of what’s available, but this list alone could probably save you hours of time versus running back and forth to your office!

Realtor.com – Search over 4 million homes with this app from REALTOR.com. Find property details, pricing, photos, open house information and more on homes for sale.

Home Buying Power – Determine how much house your client can afford by plugging in desired payment or income percentage, down payment, loan term and interest rate information to calculate buying power.

Dictionary of Real Estate Terms – Convenient and user-friendly reference tool for real estate professionals and consumers on the go.

Mortgage Calculator – Helpful tool for making quick calculations such as monthly rates, loan options and adjustments for down payments, insurance and taxes.

Zillow – Get access to the popular search site that many real estate clients are using.

Yelp – Search for places to eat, drink, shop, relax. Become an expert of your neighborhood.

Walk Score – Calculates the “walkability” of any location and shows you a map of nearby amenities; helps clients find walkable neighborhoods.

LoopNet – Get access to commercial listings around the country.

Documents To Go – Create, view and edit Microsoft Word, Excel and PowerPoint files from your smartphone.

Mobile Phax – Use the camera on your iPhone to take a photo of a letter-sized document and then send as a PDF to any email address.

Vlingo – Send a text message, call a friend, search the Web or update your Facebook or Twitter status using voice commands.

Qik Live– Shoot and share live video from your phone and send to a client.

Smarter Agent – Search homes for sale or recent sold, and apartments for rent.

Expensify – Import expenses and receipts and submit paperless expense reports from your phone.

Foursquare - Foursquare on your phone gives you & your friends new ways of exploring your city.

There are also lots of apps for Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, and instant messaging – giving you lots of ways to quickly and easily connect and network with your clients.

Credits: Originally published by Stephanie Sievers, Illinois Realtor Magazine