February 24th, 2009 — photos, tips or tricks
Photo compliments of Rawhead.
Some time ago, I came across some pictures on flickr that were pretty cool miniatures. The photos were of real life scenes only to be made to look like miniature cities or people. Of course you could just run around and take a bunch of pictures of model railroad stations that avid train hobbyist have created. This effect lets your imagination run wild. It’s called Tilt Shift photography. Normally done with an expensive lens, but can be mimicked with Photoshop or other digital manipulation software.
I got lost in the Flickr group that is dedicated to this effect. I am no where near the quality that some of these artist/photographers possess. Anyways, here are some of the photos that I created and at the bottom of this post is the video on how I create the fake tilt shift photos.
Harpers Ferry Train Station
WVU Football Miniatures.
Hope it makes sense to you. If not, you know how to reach me.
December 19th, 2008 — Techno Mumbo Jumbo, tips or tricks
You know you are sitting around knocking out some documents on Word. It’s the end of the day and you finish up, save them and then email them off to the world or at least people that need them. You jump in the car and head home. Turn up the radio and roll down the windows…free at last!!! That’s when the phone rings…”Bob, that file you sent me…I can’t open it and I need it now!!!“ Damn it! Back to the office.
We are just going through an upgrade to Office 2007 and not everyone is fortunate to have the made the transition or purchased the upgrade for their home computers yet. Microsoft did not make Office 2007 backwards compatible. What? They make the default settings on Word 2007 so that anyone with an older version of Word cannot open the files. That has become very annoying. So, I have created a little video for you using Jing (great free product) I need to work on my casting voice, but you will get the point I hope. This fix not only works for Word but also Excel. If you make these changes on Word and Excel, you could be at Happy Hour by now.
Changing Save Defaults for Word 2007
Have a great weekend.
December 10th, 2008 — Techno Mumbo Jumbo, tips or tricks
I found this on RISmedia and thought it would be good to forward on to you and have you start thinking about your web presence. One quick note about using “Real Estate” as a keyword, this is a most definitely a key search term but everyone is trying to achieve high rankings on their sites. Some people pay big dollars for that search term. But you have to ask yourself, do buyers and sellers REALLY search for “My town Real Estate” or is that just an ego search term for us in the industry? If you go for the smaller more local issues that surround your market, you will have a better chance at reaching out to the public. Sometimes it’s not just about “Real Estate” when building relationships with buyers and sellers. This is called the Long Tail. You start going for the smaller marketing terms in your area but you stand out as the expert in that area. I think we call it a Niche market. I can bet you, no I guarantee you that buyers and sellers are looking for more specific answers about the “real estate” in the area; shopping, schools, events, lifestyles, and the buying and selling process. They are looking for a lifestyle that matches theirs, not just “real estate.” I would think that knowing the area is more important that knowing that the house has 4 bedrooms and 2.5 baths. Yes the house is critical, but what they get out of the area is very important.
Ask Dave Ringold, an agent in my office, what just five sentences and one picture did this weekend. Or better yet, just search “Fire on Bennett road Mt Airy“ It’s not real estate but he just got his name out in front of plenty (200+ hits) concerned people in the area. It’s just that simple. I have been hounding him forever to start a blog of his own, but he used our office blog as a starting point.
Can you guarantee your current market plan will get your name in front of that many people that quick? Also ask him how much it cost him while you are at it? Will he get direct business from it? Not directly, but it did put his name out in front of plenty of readers (concerned about his market area.) Isn’t that marketing? Why do you put your faces on Shopping Carts, postcards, newspaper ads?
Everyone is looking for a silver bullet in this market, that silver bullet is WORK. Marketing campaigns take time and effort, but mostly consistently and they don’t have to be expensive. Every “Real Estate Expert marketer” tells you that as they sell you the latest and greatest product for hundreds of dollars. And everyone buys into it out of desperation. Stop spending useless money on get rich quick scams! They tell you that because they want you to consistently buy their product and keep them rich for the long term. Phone calls are FREE, most of the internet training that I can offer you is FREE, and emails are FREE. Note cards and holiday cards are inexpensive. Newspaper ads are expensive and ineffective. Dave Stevens sent out a YouTube video last night that made me think of this one. A vision of Students Today. (Mike Wesch has plenty of thought provoking experiments with his students called Digital Ethnography and check out his other videos as they are just as intriguing.) This is our future homeowner and they are graduating soon.
- 85+% of the buyers/sellers start on the internet
- 3% actually find their home in the newspaper or print.
Where do you spend most of your marketing money? If you are successful at old traditional marketing like print and park benches, just imagine how successful you will be by going after the 85%?
Just food for thought…I don’t want you to change your ways or anything. : )
We have our Business Planning Meeting on January 28, 2008. I plan on doing a piece on free marketing. Contact me if you would like to be in attendance.
Have a great day.
Bob
March 15th, 2008 — tips or tricks
I just noticed a new feature on MRIS. (Metropolitan Regional Information Systems) I’m not sure how long this upgrade has been there, but I find it a nice addition. You have the ability to add a customized header and footer to your emailed property list. This adds some eye candy to the page. Before there was only a blue bar across the top and it said compliments of Billy Bob Real Estate agent.
All you have to do is log in to your Matrix MLS and click on “My Matrix” and on the far right will be a tab labeled “Settings.”
You will see the area in which you make the changes for the Headings/Footers. Select the background that appeals to you, update your contact information that you want displayed and you are all done.
Anytime you send listings to clients, manually or automatic, your page will have your contact information at the top embedded in the new graphic.
You can click on the images for a full size view.
Have a great day.
February 26th, 2008 — Blogging, Techno Mumbo Jumbo, wordpress
OK you learned how to create a Wordpress.org blog using bluehost on Agentgenius’ blog. Benn did a fine job at explaining it. If you haven’t started yet, here’s a couple pre-requisites to this tutorial.
- You need a bluehoust account.
CLICK HERE TO SIGNUP FOR BLUEHOST.COM NOW.
(yeah, I get a referral, but come on you’re getting this info free)
- Created a subdomain and installed Wordpress on it. (Use Agentgenius tut if not done yet)
- A fresh pot of coffee. (or a six pack of your favorite beverage)
For the purpose of this Tutorial… I created “Subdomain.bob-carney.net” and installed wordpress on it. By doing this first, I can create a beautiful layout and get some links and information on it prior to launching it to the public. Maybe you want to test a couple variations and have a group review them. Just create another subdomain and install your blog platform on it. (Wordpress is by far the easiest, but its not the only open source software; nucleus and b2evolution) By the end of this tutorial, I will have www.gb4h.com as the assigned domain. You will still always be able to access the blog by typing http://subdomain.bob-carney.net.
On your Bluehost cPanel, your domain menu is where you will create your Subdomain and your Addon domain. The Addon Domain is where you going to click for this tutorial.
This next step takes place on your Domain registrar. For my domain GB4H.com it is registered at Godaddy. This next graphic is the Nameserver section. I changed them prior to make the changes on Bluehost, if you don’t do this first, you will be asked to enter your EPP code. This will need to be requested from your registrar. Godaddy has a link that you click to email to you. It’s much easier in my opinion to just change the Nameservers first.
Here’s your next step in the Addon menu. A key note here…DO NOT PUT “www” in front of your domain. In a sense you are creating another subdomain…in actuality, the “www” is a subdomain of your domain. (another note; if your domain is registered with Bluehost, use the drop down from top selection)
This is where Bluehost will link your previously created subdomain. (My subdomain is called “Subdomain”, I know creative!)
OK now, GB4H.com is assigned to Subdomain.bob-carney.net. They are one and the same anything that you do in cPanel to files will reflect in the other one.
OK, off to our wordpress site. Open a browser and type in your new domain. At this point when I type GB4H.com in the URL field, it takes me to my wordpress site, but the URL immediately changes to http://subdomain.bob-carney.net.
Sign in and head over to the Options tab. You will see the below fields with “http://subdomain.bob-carney.net” in both fields. This is what is telling the page URL what the blog domain is. So change the bottom one. You can change the top one too. I don’t see any problems if it remains as is.
OK now you’re done. You have just set up your blog. Like I said early this is great when you are creating a new site and don’t want the domain to show it off yet. Maybe you have the domain already on another blog…like wordpress.com (the free web-based wordpress blog)
One final tip before you go...since the site is new. Make this last change so you don’t lose any SEO opportunities. While you are in the options section. Go over to “Permalinks” and make the following change.
By selection the option with the title, you will enhance your SEO by including the title of your post URL. Google likes that. The later you do this in your blog, you will have to make changes to your .htaccess file (whole different post)
Well there you have it. Peace out.
Thanks to Josette Skilling for inspiring this post.
