Why Agents Should Create A ‘Private’ Company Twitter Account

by Greg Vincent, on 5th October, 2009 • 4 Comments

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Twitter is one of the most powerful marketing tools that a real estate agent can use, and yet it’s surprising to see that there are still only a very small percentage of real estate agents actually using Twitter.

There are lots of ways that Twitter  can help you in the day-to-day running of a real estate agency, but one way is by creating a Private Twitter account.

And the great news is that establishing a ‘Private’ Twitter account takes only a couple of minutes to create & it’s Free.

Twitter is a micro-blogging platform that allows you & your team to post messages up onto the web in real time but with a ‘Private’ account you can decide who sees your tweets.

Rather than sending out a bulk text message to your team, you could send out a Tweet that is broadcast out to anyone who has access to your Private Twitter account.

It could become an important part of your messaging system. You can also upload photos or videos and tweet them privately through the account to any member of your team.

You could also use it for a secured Brain Storming session where you can have people tweeting their thoughts or ideas in real time and all the data from this collection of thoughts remains up their on your ‘Private’ Twitter account to recall whenever you need it.

It will also provide a way that people can tweet their thoughts & ideas well after the Brain Storming session.

All you need to do is decide on a name for the Brain Storming session, say genyre. Then insert a #hashtag in front of the tweets, to make them #genyre & then all of your tweets will be grouped together & can be found very easily on Twitter in the future.

To give you an example of how a ‘Private’ Twitter account works I currently run a couple of ‘Private’ Twitter accounts.

One for the attendees of my Twitter for Real Estate Workshops & the other one is an account based around a marketing strategy that I’ve developed called ‘The Area Monopoly Strategy’.

As a part of launching this concept I decided to create a ‘Private & Strictly Real Estate Agent Only’ Twitter account.

I did this because there are some parts of this strategy that I needed to be able to share with agents exclusively & weren’t for public viewing.

Now, if you are an agent & you’d like to join in then you are most welcome to send through a request for access, but you don’t have to if you don’t want to. This is just a live example of how one of these ‘Private’ Twitter accounts works for me.

Here’s how it works.

To join in go to http://www.Twitter.com/AreaMonopoly and send me a request as seen in the picture below. Then once I’ve confirmed that you’re a real estate agent I’ll manually go in & authorise your access to the account.

Note: To see the Send Request button in the image above you must be logged into your Twitter account.

Now if you don’t have a Twitter account, then this may provide you with a good excuse for why you should go to http://www.Twitter.com & register your Free Twitter account right now.

Once I have approved your request you don’t have to wait for me to send a Tweet. You will be able to go in & read all the previous Tweets that have been sent out via that ‘Private’ Area Monopoly Twitter Account.

I recommend you go into Twitter & set up a ‘Private’ account for your company & give it a go. You’ll be amazed at how simple & effective it can be.

Poor New Zealand. Nobody is quite sure exactly where it is. A favorite joke on tourists in Sydney, my Australian friends tell me, is to convince them that the Sydney Harbor Bridge is actually a bridge to New Zealand (it isn’t, New Zealand is about 1,400 miles away). And the HBO show Flight Of The Conchords has made ignorance of New Zealand a running theme.

But at the very least Google should get it right. But Barry Schwartz has noticed that the top result for a search for Google Ireland on Google itself returns a top result of not Google.ie, but Google.nz. As does a search for Google Egypt.

Neither Ireland nor Egypt are actually New Zealand. It’s in a totally different hemisphere.

SUNCORP has confirmed it has sold its LJ Hooker real estate chain business to Janusz Hooker – the grandson of founder Sir Leslie Hooker – for $67 million.

As flagged by The Australian last month, Mr Hooker will acquire Hooker Corp Ltd, which includes the LJ Hooker real estate franchise business and the LJ Hooker mortgage broking business, for $67m cash and pay $15m for the dividends Suncorp is entitled to from the operating profit for the financial year to date.

Mr Hooker, an Olympic rowing bronze medallist, will step down as th Asian head of US-based private equity firm WP Carey, to take up the executive chairman role for the real estate business.
He said he planned to expand the business throughout Australia and Asia.

The real estaste business, which was purchased by Suncorp in 1989, has been on and off the market for at least a year and was tipped to be targeted by Mortgage Choice.

LJ Hooker operates 700 real estate franchises in Australia and the Asia-Pacific.

Suncorp said a one-off accounting profit of $50m before tax will be reported in Suncorp’s financial results for the half year for to 31 December 2009.

Mr Hooker’s grandfather, Leslie Hooker, founded LJ Hooker in 1928, opening the first office in Sydney’s Maroubra.

As well as being Australia’s second-largest commercial agency, LJ Hooker is one of the oldest.

The family sold out of the company in the late 1970s before the company went into liquidation after the property crash of the late 1980s under the ownership of George Herscu. It was purchased by Suncorp in 1989.

Despite the West Australian boom ending almost two years ago, some agents and agencies in this state are still living with a boom time mindset and are resisting the need to adapt to the needs of a new market and a new era in property and finance.

The past year has been a very challenging one in this industry, but we had the First Home Owners boost firing up the market. We are now facing a whole new range of challenges and those agents who cannot shake that boom time mentality are going to find survival very difficult and in turn find it very hard to deliver for their clients.

In WA, the most critical issue facing agents is plummeting listing stock. There is going to be a whole new level of competition in the market place and agents are going to have to fight for listings.

Agents should already be proactive in seeking listings. Often agents are only ever focused on the immediate and the ‘sale’, this is a serious mistake. Their focus should shift more heavily to an emphasis on business development, concentrating on that first part of the cycle and their role should involve aggressive and proactive measures to attract more sellers. This is the perennial challenge all real estate principals face through all phases of the property cycle.

The fact is competition will increase as fewer properties become available, creating a whole new playing field for agents. It will be the agent who thinks strategically who will score the new listings. Roll up your sleeves and sell yourself, or you are simply going to be left behind

In my opinion this situation will see some agents leave the industry, because if you are accustomed to easier times, these conditions will feel very difficult. What is interesting is the fact I’m seeing a high level of employment enquiries from people outside the industry who are looking to enter. We usually only work with experienced agents but we are starting to see a real opportunity in hiring inexperienced agents. The thing is these new agents haven’t been spoilt by the boom or practices that belong in another era. They’re fresh and ready to meet the demands of the new market, as opposed to some existing agents who will stick with old comfortable approaches and wonder why business is so difficult. Of course, we are also always on the look out for established agents who have the ability to shift with the market.

The way forward for agents is to rebrand themselves, they need to become seller managers, not sales agents. Sure the sale is a big part of what we do but the cycle begins with attracting listings and this needs time, energy and resources. At Realmark we promote this internally by building on the thing agents find easiest – the sale – and automating work flows in a way that automatically draws more and better sellers and listings to them.

There are two types of sellers; ones who are ready to sell today and others that will sell in the future. Too often the attention is on the immediacy of the seller for today, not on building long term working relationships with potential clients. Our business begins with the seller and many agents are just not putting enough effort into connecting with them in a meaningful and distinctive way over time.

As originally posted on Sold. The Magazine for Real Estate Professionals.

HOUSES are being mortgaged without their owners’ knowledge, as audacious identity thieves pocket the money and leave the home owners in debt.

Police are urging lenders to tighten their security checks to avoid more homes being mortgaged by cyber-crims who steal identity details to take out loans against paid-off houses.

Australia’s longest-serving fraud investigator, NSW Police Detective Superintendent Col Dyson, said the convenience of online and telephone credit applications exposed home owners to the risk strangers could use their house as collateral, The Australian reports.

"If someone owns their house outright, and no one ever checks the title, it’s relatively easy for a criminal group, if they get enough personal financial information, to acquire a loan against the house, using the house as security and keeping the proceeds," he said after addressing an identity crime symposium on the Gold Coast yesterday.

"(The incidence) is growing. With mortgage fraud, the returns are quite lucrative.

"They can get $1 million if they have the audacity to do it."

Superintendent Dyson said that in NSW alone, police were investigating more than 100 cases of false mortgages taken out against commercial properties and houses. Victims became aware only when a bank wrote to them demanding they make an overdue repayment.

 DO you know more? Email us below.

Superintendent Dyson said banks should impose more stringent identity checks, but home owners needed to safeguard personal information such as birth dates, income and mothers’ maiden names.

"Criminals can acquire that information by stealing mail, or by stealing bank statements from garbage bins," he said.

"People should really be careful what they tell people in (online) chat rooms because they really don’t know who they’re dealing with."

Superintendent Dyson said all the offenders were "complete strangers", who had managed to glean enough personal details from their victims to obtain a loan.

"The owner is under no jeopardy of losing the house, because it is an invalid contract," he said. "There certainly should be an independent process of verifying that the owner of the house is the person making the application.

"A simple knock on the front door can sometimes save a lot of heartache and loss of money."

Read more in The Australian.

 In depth: Read our top business and money stories

 Updates:Check the latest share market movements

 Blog: Follow our news.com.au/business Twitter blog

 Email: money@news.com.au

Good Investment Opportunities in Every Market

September 15, 2009

With strong signs that the real estate market is picking up again, particularly in Australia and New Zealand, many investors are wondering whether they may already have missed the boat. True, interest rates remain at an all-time low and sellers who have to move have had to reduce their asking prices to get a sale, but all is not lost – yet.

There are still good investment opportunities in every market, however, one area in Australia that currently offers excellent opportunities is Tasmania. Asking prices remain low, rental demand continues to soar; it is now actually cheaper to buy than to rent in many Tasmanian suburbs, such as New Norfolk, Derwent Park, Strahan, Railton, Shorewell Park, Campbell Town and Rocherlea.

Tasmania also has the highest percentage of affordable homes for first-home owners in proximity to a capital city, with 11 areas, including Kingston Beach and Moonah, falling into this category.

Many real estate investors are also beginning to investigate opportunities in overseas countries as well, and as we are a participant in RELOHomeSearch.com, a global home listings website, this gives investors access to literally millions of listings in over 30 countries. With our membership in Leading Real Estate Companies of the World, we can put you in touch with the very best real estate people in those global markets.

If you’re thinking of taking advantage of the current affordability of investment property in your market, in Tasmania or anywhere else in the World, talk to Harcourts now!

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Posted in Uncategorized |

One of the basic cornerstones of business is that it has to grow if it is to survive. We’ve all heard the saying – a business is never stationery – you’re either going forward, or you’re going backwards. In the real estate business, it’s no different.

At Harcourts, we recognise this. Not only that, but we have made it our business to drive growth as a matter of priority. It should therefore come as no surprise that Harcourts is Australia’s fastest growing real estate group. Founded in New Zealand in 1888, the operation grew there until it reached the stage where international expansion became feasible. In 1997 the first Harcourts office opened in Australia. Growth continued unabated and there are now over 600 offices in Australia, New Zealand, China, South Africa, Singapore, Zambia, Indonesia and Fiji.

Growth has important benefits for everyone involved with the group, including ultimately and most importantly, our clients. Continued growth leads to increased brand recognition. The bigger a company gets, the more it is recognised and therefore the more business it does.  This creates more listing opportunities for our people. These are quickly turned into sales as eager buyers visit our high profile agencies around the nation, go online to our web 2.0 websites, and obtain our high profile property marketing material and publications – Bluebook and Luxury Portfolio Collection. As a larger organisation, we have more resource available to ensure our people have the very best training and education, technology, marketing and support which means that our clients receive the very best real estate service in the marketplace, because we have the very best people with the very best tools and resources.

More and more clients choose to deal with us safe in the knowledge that they are dealing with a professional, reputable business that will best help them achieve their objectives in real estate as well as provide a range of additional service through our mortgage arm, conveyancing arm and property management team.

Evidence of the success of this focus is the growth of our international business, which has continued to flourish despite the global financial crisis.

10 Important Tips to Optimize WordPress for Search Engines

By Ayaz Malik on October 12, 2009

WordPress Seo Tips

There is a wide concept in publisher’s mind that using wordpress means getting maximum traffic from search engines because wordpress is a very good CMS which hardly requires Search Engine Optimization (SEO). Well this concept is not as correct as it sounds. WordPress also requires some optimization to get max out of search engines. For this purpose i made a list of 10 Important Changes which should be a part of your wordpress blog.

1. Use a sitemap generator and generate XML sitemaps like twice a week.

2. Use an Ideal Robot.txt File which do the following:

Points to the sitemap in first line.
Disallow unnecessary pages, folders so search engines get to your content instead of wasting time and getting less important stuff.
Here is a sample : http://www.designzzz.com/robots.txt

3. Using rel=”nofollow” Attribute in outgoing or less important links.

This Attribute tells the search engine bots not to follow the specific link or do not share that page’s Rank with this link. This is a very important tip , you can control your site’s SEO and Page rank by just using proper nofollow attributes. Here is a post i wrote earlier which can show you how to control your page rank and seo by using nofollow. Ok, the Less Important links includes links like Read more.. , Click here etc. This can be done by editing the template files easily.
Some plugins which we use in Wordpess blogs requires a must nofollow and we never thought about that.  Here is a very cool example. You are using the easy retweet plugin and Retweet buttons are shown on start of every post even on your homepage. Lets say you have 10 posts blocks on your homepage and have 10 retweet buttons on it link to twitter.com !!! that means there are ten outgoing links, you are sharing your site’s page rank and getting lesser visibility in search engine. it can be nofollow from its settings.

4. Proper URL and Title Structure

It is the most important part which we neglect while publishing a post. Lets take a simple example. I am about ot publish a post lets say.
10 Awesome Graphics Designs and Digital Artworks  the URL would be :

www.yoursite.com/category/10-awesome-graphics-designs-and-digital-artworks
Seems pretty much alright, right? Well..here u miss about 30% of your visibility!!
A simple reason using STOP WORDS in title and URL are the worst idea u can think up of. !! AND is a stop word. About the url why make it so long using extra stuff in it like the word 10 , and etc. Trust me no one will search for your content in search engines with these words 10 graphics design.  If they look for that they will search graphics designs etc.
So get rid of 10 , and from your URL. Here is how they should be:

• Title: 10 Awesome Graphics Designs n Digital Artworks

• URL: www.yoursite.com/category/awesome-graphics-designs-digital-artworks/

Makes sense? well i don’t even use the category name in the URL structure to make it smaller and more powerful!

5. Using Keywords and Meta Description:

Ok, i have noticed that most of the bloggers use very tiny keywords. Well, guys small get a habit of using long tail keywords,because with them u get traffic for life time. Lets take the example of that above title post. keywords/tags which bloggers normally select are: graphics, design, digital, artworks. Why don’t you spice them up a bit to get even more traffic?  If i would do it , I would use these keywords:

Graphics, Design, Digital Artworks, Graphic Designs, Digital Graphics.

I actually spread the same keywords with order and words variation!!

About meta description keep it below 160 characters and add your keywords in it as well as possible like each keyword should be mentioned at least once.

6. Automatic SEO Plugin for WordPress

Well, I have used several plugins to test which one is good and the only plugin which satisfied me is Headspace2 SEO. I Recommend it.

7. On post page title of post should be written in Heading 1 (H1). and its very important to use your keywords in h2, h3 and h4 if possible.

8. Title and ALT Attribute in Links:

Ok, this is an important part which none of us actually look at. Title and alt attributes in links plays an important role in telling search bots that what this link or image is about.
Title and alt attributes are written like this if you are unaware of it:

• <a href=”link…” title=”keyword name or what it is about”>Keyword</a>

• <img src=”path to image” alt=”what image is about” />

My site gets 10% of its traffic from Google image search!! Because I use proper alt attribute.
Consider this example!! Like the graphics design post we discussed above. Your post consists of 10 Images. That means not much text to get good ranking and visibility in search engines. So why not use alt attribute in an optimized way!! in 10 images add alt tags with picture name + keyword/tag.

For example, the image name is abcd. i will add the alt attribute as alt=”abcd design” or abcd graphics etc.  That means in 10 places on your page’s source code your keywords are used! I think you get my point.

9. Avail WordPress ping facility to get max exposure and inbound links

Here is a list you might consider putting in your ping section in admin>settings>Writing:

http://blogsearch.google.com/ping/RPC2http://1470.net/api/ping
http://api.feedster.com/ping
http://api.moreover.com/RPC2
http://api.moreover.com/ping
http://api.my.yahoo.com/RPC2
http://api.my.yahoo.com/rss/ping
http://bblog.com/ping.php
http://bitacoras.net/ping
http://blog.goo.ne.jp/XMLRPC
http://blogdb.jp/xmlrpc
http://blogmatcher.com/u.php
http://bulkfeeds.net/rpc
http://coreblog.org/ping/
http://mod-pubsub.org/kn_apps/blogchatt
http://www.lasermemory.com/lsrpc/
http://ping.amagle.com/
http://ping.bitacoras.com
http://ping.blo.gs/
http://ping.bloggers.jp/rpc/
http://ping.cocolog-nifty.com/xmlrpc
http://ping.blogmura.jp/rpc/
http://ping.exblog.jp/xmlrpc
http://ping.feedburner.com
http://ping.myblog.jp
http://ping.rootblog.com/rpc.php
http://ping.syndic8.com/xmlrpc.php
http://ping.weblogalot.com/rpc.php
http://ping.weblogs.se/
http://pingoat.com/goat/RPC2
http://rcs.datashed.net/RPC2/
http://rpc.blogbuzzmachine.com/RPC2
http://rpc.blogrolling.com/pinger/
http://rpc.icerocket.com:10080/
http://rpc.newsgator.com/
http://rpc.pingomatic.com
http://rpc.technorati.com/rpc/ping
http://rpc.weblogs.com/RPC2
http://topicexchange.com/RPC2
http://trackback.bakeinu.jp/bakeping.php
http://www.a2b.cc/setloc/bp.a2b
http://www.bitacoles.net/ping.php
http://www.blogdigger.com/RPC2
http://www.blogoole.com/ping/
http://www.blogoon.net/ping/
http://www.blogpeople.net/servlet/weblogUpdates
http://www.blogroots.com/tb_populi.blog?id=1
http://www.blogshares.com/rpc.php
http://www.blogsnow.com/ping
http://www.blogstreet.com/xrbin/xmlrpc.cgi
http://www.mod-pubsub.org/kn_apps/blogchatter/ping.php
http://www.newsisfree.com/RPCCloud
http://www.newsisfree.com/xmlrpctest.php
http://www.popdex.com/addsite.php
http://www.snipsnap.org/RPC2
http://www.weblogues.com/RPC/
http://xmlrpc.blogg.de
http://xping.pubsub.com/ping/

10. This might sound odd!! No follow Home Page !!

See this post for proper info about no-following homepage and why is it important.

Hope this helps! Maybe you have some more tips you would like to add? Feel free to write them in comments! Thanks and enjoy!

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Posted in WordPress | Tagged search engine optimization, seo, WordPress, wordpress optimization, wordpress seo

Imagine if you bought a few terraces in Paddington in the mid 70s? You’d have had amazing returns on your investment within the first 10 years and astronomical returns by now.  So it’s always a good idea when buying a property to ask yourself, where’s the next Paddington? What areas and suburbs are likely to outperform the market?  I think you can research this a few different ways.

The first is what I call my Vespa tour.  In essence, I get on my Vespa on a Sunday morning and ride around areas I think may fit the profile of the next Paddington. I find these by starting with areas I know are in hot demand right now (Annandale, Surry Hills, Manly, etc) and then find adjoining pockets, villages and suburbs that haven’t quite hit the radar yet.  I use Google Maps to help me spot a few of these but usually by jumping on the Vespa and spending a few hours and several cappuccinos later I have unearthed a few gems. I write about these areas from time to time on my blog.

Another good indicator is to see where people are starting to concentrate on when it comes to online research.  This tells you ahead of the curve where the weight of money is looking to house itself, literally. So I’ve compiled a list below of the Top 20 Most Searched Suburbs on our web site over the past 90 days. Check them out & see what you can spot.

1. HUNTERS HILL
2. LANE COVE
3. PADDINGTON
4. LEICHHARDT
5. CREMORNE
6. MANLY
7. NEUTRAL BAY
8. ANNANDALE
9. TERRIGAL
10. ROZELLE
11. SURRY HILLS
12. RANDWICK
13. KILLARA
14. COOGEE
15. GLADESVILLE
16. MARRICKVILLE
17. MOSMAN
18. NAREMBURN
19. BONDI BEACH
20. ARTARMON