Denver was the site of Real Estate Word Camp this week, hosted by Todd Carpenter.  It was an interesting day of hard core WordPress topics mixed with blogging techniques and other related sessions.

New gizmos continue to be developed daily. Sometimes there’s hardly enough time to learn one before another comes along and out-dates it.

IDX searches are a good example.  Some have so many bells and whistles on them, I can barely figure out how to use them.  Now considering my experience, what can one expect the consumer to do?  We assume our consumers know how to work things.  We assume they know our real estate lingo and can easily figure out how to use the many ways to find a home.

Reality is they don’t.  All they want is simple, solid search features that deliver good results.  Instead they get to muddle through the multitude of bells and whistles to find a house.  No wonder they go from site to site looking for houses.

REWC had lots of new ideas, I love the possibilities and find myself  jumping for the shiny new toy.  But then common sense wins out when I ask, “who does this shiny new toy serve? Will it benefit the consumer, or me?”

The answer to this question must be in alignment.  If it benefits the consumer, it too will benefit me.

Consumer first.

Always.

REWC – Real Estate Word Camp is a post from: Kristalks

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Social Media sites continue to proliferate and we social  networkers collect new urls like shoes.  When it comes time to list all the places we can be found on the internet, it’s about as difficult as finding the left shoe that broke loose from the rack!

Having a single composite of all the domains is necessary and wise.  Who knows where your friend is looking for you.  Will they locate you?  The difference between being found and not is up to you.

You’ve taken the time to be present on the web, you’ve carefully crafted a social media plan but now it needs to be consolidated.

I’ve had a domain of my own name for many years.  Initially I purchased it just because I feared someone else would.  It sat parked at GoDaddy for many ages!  This past year I put it into service as a doorway to the many places I can be found on the web.  I used a simple free WordPress template to create it.  Have a look, here.  Looking at it now it looks, well boring!  No, I’ll keep it, but instead of driving traffic there I’ve decided to use card.ly.com instead.

Card.ly is a free service if you are satisfied with the basic.  Even when you upgrade it won’t break the bank.

Getting Set Up

The most difficult part will be remembering all of your user names.  Card.ly helps you to remember with a list of available networks.  I found just looking at the list helped me remember if I had an account there or not.  Lucky for me I use RoboForm so once I went looking it was easy to find my username and password.  (hint, get RoboForm if you have more than two passwords!)

Once you list all your networks, you get to write a blurb about yourself.  When completed, you browse through the rather large gallery to find a “skin” that suites your taste.  Pick one, save it and you have a  very nice looking card.ly!

Spreading the Word

The  next activity is to share your success by tweeting about it and/or embedding a widget on your website.  You can see my Card.ly widget on the right sidebar.

What’s the cost?

Card.ly is a free service if you are satisfied with the basic.  Even when you upgrade it won’t break the bank.  I didn’t think I would spend the $25 to upgrade, but after reading the difference, I certainly will be purchasing the
“Premium Version.”   The extra features are very attractive, look for yourself:

• no advertisng! Yeah!
• use my own domain
• the <nofollow> tags become <dofollow> very important!
• increased RSS streams.  Ok I know I have too many blogs!  It’s a passion what can I say?

So look over this fun service and see if you find configuring it as easy as I did.

I’m going to use my own domain and link to it from my Twitter profile.  Now assuming anyone is interested they can find out about me and where to find me in cyberspace.

What will you do with it?

Connecting Your Social Media Dots is a post from: Kristalks

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The daily deluge of things we must do never seems to end.  Now with adding social media to the mix we find ourselves doing the fun stuff and ignoring the things we don’t like to do.

Social media takes on a life of it’s own. We want to be social and certainly feel a need to keep up with our online friends, but is this our top priority?

Maybe, but probably not.

What runs me off the tracks is the constant barrage of emails landing in my inbox.  Just the meer sight of them causes me to respond, more rapidly than necessary. Next thing you know I look up at the clock and the minutes have passed through my lifestream, never to be recaptured.

Yet, my pile of paperwork continues to grow. Yikes!

My solution to this problem has been to create file folders in my outlook and rules. My email rules sent the fun and fabulous social networking email directly to the file.  Out of sight, out of mind while I chug away at my money tasks.

Later in the day, I browse the files, attend to the important and let the rest wait until I get around to it!

Controlling my time is an issue I deal with daily.  I have to make a conscience decision to prioritize my work.

If I don’t control it, it will control me.

Social media has become a way of life for many, it’s fun and a great way to expand your ambient awareness, but if it doesn’t pay the mortgage, it shouldn’t be a top priority.

Keeping Your Priorities Straight is a post from: Kristalks

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Bloggers who like to keep thing simple, yet work on their posts over a  period of time will like this program.

It’s a free download from Microsoft, all you need is a Hotmail or Live I.D.

Download the software and activate it.  You will need to know your password and login code for your blog.  Once that is configured, all you need to do is write a post!

From Windows Live Writer you can add photos, hyperlinks, tags, maps, videos, photo albums and neatly format your post.

If you like to do different things with your photos, I guarantee you will get excited about the many options for formatting a photo!  Look at how I was able to turn my Duck Family Photo into a Polaroid-type shot.

When you are ready, one click and the post is sent to your blog!  Windows Live Writer can be used for posting to multiple blogs too.

Windows Live Writer is Pretty Cool! is a post from: Kristalks

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RSS Feeds are the best time savers for anyone who wants to keep up on the latest posts from favorite blogs.  I know I find myself getting behind or worse yet forgetting to visit some really terrific blogs, just because time seems to pass so quickly.

Every blog has a feed, or if they don’t they should!  It doesn’t make much sense to write fresh content and then not provide a way for your readers to actually read it at their leisure!

So when you want to consolidate look for and subscribe to a blog’s feed by finding an icon with this symbol on it.  My Denver Real Estate site has custom RSS Icons (see example on right). But even with it being custom it still has the universal orange dot with broadcasting waves on it.  You will see this symbol in all sizes and colors, just know it is an RSS subscription link.

What do you do with it?

There are many ways you can collect RSS Feeds, some have a fee and are very sophisticated in that you can make categories for your different types of feeds.  Then there is my old favorite the Google Reader which is free and very simple to use.  The only issues I have with it, is once again remembering to visit it!

Lately I’ve decided to build my RSS List in my Outlook mail client.  Considering my daily routine, much of which is spent reviewing and answering my email, this is the perfect place for me to gather RSS Feeds.

Watch the Screencast for a quick demo.

How To Add An RSS Feed to Your Outlook Email is a post from: Kristalks

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