The BVAS Connection

Though internet marketing has taken up the forefront of many Realtor marketing plans, many agents still find success by regularly marketing to their prospects and sphere of influence via direct mail marketing. The ultimate goal is to continually stay in front of you past & present clients, prospects, and farm, so that they remember you when it’s time to talk real estate. So what are YOU doing to stay in front of your sphere?

The Fall is a great time for marketing, with many ideas or excuses for you to reach out and touch your prospects. And it is always helpful to send them something of value, that they would appreciate and hold on to. The following are a couple ideas to get you going on your fall marketing.

1. Fall Events Calendar - Send your sphere a postcard containing fun fall events going on in your neighborhood or town. Let them know about the hayrides, pumpkin displays, fall festivals, or costume contests going on in your area. And be sure to attend some of those events to meet your prospects and show them that you are not ALL about real estate ALL of the time.
2. Fall Time Change Reminder - The most popular fall time marketing opportunity is the fall time change reminder. It is a simple thing, but clients appreciate it, and it’s a great excuse to get in front of your contacts.
3. Winterizing Tips - Homeowners appreciate a good home improvement tip. Remind your clients to keep one of their biggest investments, in top shape. Before the sting of winter takes it’s hold, send your clients a few tips on how to winterize their homes and get ready for freezing temperatures.
4. Thanksgiving - Sending Thanksgiving wishes seems almost an obvious choice for fall marketing, but I recommend you do it with twist. Use it as a client appreciation opportunity and work out a discount coupon with a favorite local shop or restaurant (local business love cross promotion). To “give thanks” to your sphere, they can bring the postcard to said local business, and appreciate a discount on you. You may even get extra cards printed for that partnering business to display for you.

Do those get your creative juices flowing? Need to know how to implement something like this? Barber Virtual Assisting Solutions has your answer. Let us coordinate your fall postcard marketing with our custom designs and we arrange the printing and mailing for you too!

Announcing our “Pre-Vacation” Special - Order your Fall Time Change postcard from one of our exclusive designs before the deadline on October 6th, 2008*, and receive 10% off the design fees we normally charge. Contact Megan for more details on this and other postcard marketing opportunities.

*Orders received after October 6th for the fall time change are not guaranteed to be sent out in the proper time. Please act fast!

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© Megan E. Barber, Barber Virtual Assisting Solutions, LLC

Megan Barber is a Real Estate Virtual Assistant, owner of Barber Virtual Assisting Solutions, LLC, and publisher of The REAL Advantage E-Zine. Megan has spent 9+ years doing the “behind-the-scenes” work in the real estate industry assisting agents with their real estate marketing and transaction needs.

In the business world, Realtors are some of the busiest people I know. So many tasks are involved like working directly with clients, marketing their listings and then marketing themselves. Agents make their money by working directly with their clients, eyeball to eyeball. Much of thee “busy work” type of tasks involved in running their real estate business can take away from their bottom line. And if a Real Estate Professional doesn’t have an assistant, they ARE an assistant.

Still wondering what a Virtual Assistant can do to help keep you from burning the candle at both ends. Here are 10 things a VA can do to help:

1. Listing Coordination - You just received a signed listing agreement with a client, and now it is time to deliver on your marketing promises, all of which can be very time consuming. Your VA can handle everything from the moment you sign the contract. This can include entering the data into the MLS, creating flyers, creating and mailing “Just Listed” postcards, arrange print advertising, publish to personal website, Realtor.com, Zillow, Trulia, track showing feedback and much more. All you have to do is send the pictures and the info, and your VA can do the rest.
2. Contact Management - Making sure you stay in touch with your database, keeping them up to date, and keeping track of appointments, birthdays, anniversaries, etc, can be a daunting task. Let your VA manage your contact management, by using such CRM’s as Top Producer or the Wise Agent. The VA will keep your database up to date, make sure action plans and campaigns are being applied appropriately, set up your reminders for events and appointments.
3. Internet Lead Management - Receiving lots of leads from your websites or blogs? Let your VA help you manage your lead intake. They can import them into your CRM, make sure follow-up and drip campaigns are going off without a hitch, and help you stay in touch to convert those leads into clients.
4. Website Maintenance - Have several websites, but never have time to update listings or add fresh content? Let your VA maintain your real estate websites by makeing sure they are optomized for search engines, make sure your listings are updated, and that you have fresh relevant content for your visitors. Most VAs even have the ability to customize and design your sites to set them apart from the rest of the competition.
5. Listing Presentation Preparation - Want to impress potential seller clients? Your VA can create a professional listing presentation for you that will clearly outline your marketing plan and selling process for your sellers, in digital or print format. It can be customized to the the house you aim to list, to really knock their socks off!
6. Transaction Coordination - From the moment you get a sales contract, things can go from zero to crazy in an instant. Your VA can manage your transaction from contact to close and you can rest easy. They will manage all the documents and signatures, schedule inspections, handle the appointments and be main point of contact for your transactions.
7. Custom Marketing Materials Design - Want your flyers, postcards, and presentations to have a professional look, but have no idea of how to make them that way? Hire a VA to custom design your marketing materials with your branding scheme. It help you put your best foot forward and set you above the rest.
8. FSBO & Expired Prospecting - Want to tap into the FSBO and Expired markets? FSBO and Expired prospecting takes some special attention that your VA is well equipped to handle. By the use of certain programs, your VA will be able to harvest the FSBO and Expired leads, start the campaigns, send the letters & emails, etc. With the help of your VA, you will show those propspects that you are the one that can successfully list their homes.
9. Social Networking Assistance - So you have a profile on Facebook, MySpace, Plaxo, ActiveRain, LinkedIn, or other popular social networks, but you can’t keep up with the friend requests and updates. Let your VA screen and manage your friend requests, make sure your latest blog entries get posted, post listing information, and make sure you get “out there” in the social networking world.
10. Marketing Planning - No idea on how to focus your marketing efforts or any idea on what to budget for? Your VA can strategize with you to come up with long term markting plans with many diffferent options to make sure you get enough “touches” and stay in front of your cleints, contacts, and farm.

Now if any of the above options sound like something you would like to unload from your busy schedule, than you should consider delegating these kinds of tasks to a Real Estate Virtual Assistant.

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© Megan E. Barber, Barber Virtual Assisting Solutions, LLC

Megan Barber is a Real Estate Virtual Assistant, owner of Barber Virtual Assisting Solutions, and publisher of The REAL Advantage E-Zine. Megan has spent 9+ years doing the “behind-the-scenes” work in the real estate industry assisting agents with their real estate marketing and transaction needs.

The mobile phone is one tool that most real estate agents cannot live without. It’s a rarity when I find an agent who operates without one. The mobile lifestyle is very much a part of the lives of real estate professionals. And many agents that I know frequently update and upgrade to new phone, always looking for the latest and greatest tech tool. So what is one to do with those old used cell phones?

Recently I joined the mobile web & networking world by upgrading to a Smartphone. My old phone still worked great, but with my wireless company I was “eligible” for a new phone, and I wanted the capability to receive email and search the web. So I took the plunge. But what to do with my old phone?

So after pondering what to do with my old phone, I remembered watching my one of my favorite news programs (Glenn Beck) and they had talked about the Cell Phones for Soldiers program.

Cell Phones for Soldiers is a great non-profit organization formed by two amazing kids, Brittany and Robbie Bergquist, back in April 2004. Their mission with this program is help our soldiers serving overseas from all branches of the military, to call home. Through collection donations and the recycling of used cell phones, they have sent prepaid calling cards to soldiers all over the world.

Each phone is sent to ReCellular (the company involved in the recycling), and they pay Cell Phones for Soldiers, where each donated phone is worth about one hour of talk time for a soldier abroad.

Is is easy for anyone to donate to this great cause. To donate your old cell phones, simply go to their website, www.cellphonesforsoldiers.com and find a local drop off location from their list, or print a pre-paid shipping label right their on the site and mail in your phone to them. Individuals can also help by donating money directly to them. They have really made it so easy for you.

So donate your old mobile phones and help our troops call home.

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© Megan E. Barber, Barber Virtual Assisting Solutions, LLC

Megan Barber is a Real Estate Virtual Assistant, owner of Barber Virtual Assisting Solutions, and publisher of The REAL Advantage E-Zine. Megan has spent 9+ years doing the “behind-the-scenes” work in the real estate industry assisting agents with their real estate marketing and transaction needs.

Attention all bloggers, young and old, newbie and experienced. I stumbled upon a great contest today that you may want to check out.  The prizes are the coolest (at least to geeky bloggers like me) and they would be of tremendous value to whoever wins. Plus,  I think it is impressive that he is using this as a great way way to snag list subscribers, and get great traffic. Kudos to him!

Check out The Blog Boost Giveaway at Miguel Alvarez’s Marketing Factor.

On the blog earlier in the week I started the conversation about the social networking tool, Twitter and a few tips for the beginner. Twitter can be a great real estate marketing tool and is easy and fun. Today I have more tweet tips about applications to make Twitter easier to use and integrate it with all blog and other social networking platforms. There are hundreds of Twitter apps out there, but here are some choices that are popular with myself and many of my colleagues.

Don’t want to have to go to twitter.com each time to send and receive your tweets? Some applications that make posting easier:

• Twhirl - This is a free download that allows you to use Twitter from your desktop. Receive notification of new messages.
• Tweetdeck - Thought still in beta, it is another desktop application for Twitter use. It also includes some organization functionality that allows one keep track of twitter threads a little easier.
• OutTwit - This application allows you to tweet and follow right from your Outlook.
• TwitBin - For Firefox users, with TwitBin you can use twitter right in your Firefox internet browser.
• Twitter2Go - Check and update Twitter from your Palm, Blackberry, or practically any mobile phone or pda device. No download required.

Want to announce a new blog post, pictures, etc, to your twitter followers? Check out these apps:

• TwitterFeed - This application takes the feed from any of your blogs, (Blogger, Active Rain, etc), or anything with an RSS feeds, and it will periodically check for updates and post them for you.
• Twitter Tools - A Wordpress plugin that automatically notifies twitter of new blog posts.
• Twit Pic - A great tool to share your photos on Twitter.

Want to search tweets for keywords, be alerted when someone is talking about you, or follow conversations easier? Use these apps:

• Quotably - Want to find the original tweet that sparked a twitter conversation? Use this app by inputing the twitter name to help you find the thread of conversation.
• TweetScan - This app is a real time Twitter search to search for keywords, find replies and you can sign up for email alerts.
• TweetBeep - It’s like Google Alerts for twitter. Find out who’s twittering about you, your business, comany, services, etc.

A Few more fun Twitter apps:

• TweetBurner - Allows you to track the links you share or links shared by others and what happens to them.
• Tweet Clouds - Make word a cloud of a public twitter stream.
• StrawPoll - Create your own straw polls to gather opinions of your twitter friends, or settle a long standing debate.
• Tweet Ahead - Schedule your tweets ahead of time to be posted later.
• Post Like a Pirate - Have a little fun and turn your twitter post into “pirate speak” <– LOVE IT (I’ve got a great story about pirate speak)

As I had said, there are 100’s of Twitter apps out there and new ones are popping up all the time. To view a great list of several apps available, check out this cool site, Twitter Fan Wiki.

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© Megan E. Barber, Barber Virtual Assisting Solutions, LLC

Megan Barber is a Real Estate Virtual Assistant, owner of Barber Virtual Assisting Solutions, and publisher of The REAL Advantage E-Zine. Megan has spent 9+ years doing the “behind-the-scenes” work in the real estate industry assisting agents with their real estate marketing and transaction needs.

The 1990’s and early 2000’s saw the power of the internet and how it made a huge impact on the way people do real estate.  The majority of home buyers no longer relied only on browsing the Sunday paper classifieds or sign drive-bys to find their next home. The web has made real estate information easily available to consumers, and now, 80% of home buyers are starting their home search on the internet.

Now with the dawn of mobile web, there’s a new way in reaching buyers. They are no longer changed to their desks behind their computers. They can be reached anywhere at any time, and real estate information is at their fingertips within a single text message.

So here are some ways that consumers can access mobile real estate searches, and some things real estate professionals to get in front of them.

Trulia Mobile - The other day, popular real estate search engine, Trulia, announced it’s launch of Trulia Mobile. Consumers can now browse real estate information on Trulia via their iPhones, Mobile phones, and even certain GPS devices. Users can browse for listings and open houses in their immediate location in an instant.

Products available for real estate professionals to utilize mobile phone marketing:

Utopria - Along with their “MediaPod” multi-media real estate information portals portals, Utopria brings a product that takes the property flyer and single property website to the mobile platform. Buyers can immediately get property information standing at the curb of the property for sale they are interested in in a nice multi-media package.

Gumiyo -With Gumiyo, agents can covert drive-by browsers into real leads by providing them instant information on the listings they are interested in. By utilizing their “Go Code” in all marketing including sign riders, flyers, print ads, etc, buyers get on-the-spot access to an agent’s listings. Prospects are given the option to get in contact with the agent immediately via email, text message or live phone call.

Over 50% of mobile phone users have mobile web access. Get in front of those buyers and bring in those leads.

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© Megan E. Barber, Barber Virtual Assisting Solutions, LLC

Megan Barber is a Real Estate Virtual Assistant, owner of Barber Virtual Assisting Solutions, and publisher of The REAL Advantage E-Zine. Megan has spent 9+ years doing the “behind-the-scenes” work in the real estate industry assisting agents with their real estate marketing and transaction needs.

Since social networking for the real estate industry has become heavily woven into the internet marketing fabric, many new and unique opportunities have cropped up. This week, my focus is on the fun micro-blogging tool, Twitter, and some great ways to use it for real estate. And I am probably the last one in my industry who hasn’t yet blogged about it. So here I go.

In case you are scratching your head and wondering what in the world Twitter is, let me tell you. From Wikipedia,

Twitter is a free social networking and micro-blogging service that allows its users to send and read other users’ updates (otherwise known as tweets), which are text-based posts of up to 140 characters in length.

140 Characters is what you get to quickly tell people what you are doing, what is going on with your business and what is going on in your life.

So why should the real estate professional care? Twitter is fast becoming a popular social networking tool, and a growing number of users in the real estate industry are starting to use Twitter to their advantage. Real estate is all about relationship building, and what better way to build a great repoire with your clients, colleagues, and online prospects, on a regular basis by telling them what you are doing, announce important neighborhood news, share articles you find interesting, and build your reputation as an expert.

And Twitter is completely free and super easy to set up.

In future posts I will be covering ways to use it for real estate, draw leads and market to your internet prospects. For now, here are a few tips for beginners that want to successfully get started with Twitter.

1. Create & Update Your Profile - Make sure to put in a url to your website and let the world know what you do your profile. I personally do not follow those that do not fill out profile information. i like to know who I’m following and what they do.
2. Meet people - Start with following or inviting people that you know. Then branch out and ad people in your community and colleagues in the business.
3. Promote Your Twitter Profile - People will only now you to find and follow you if they know you’re there. When you join Twitter, you get a unique url that you can promote anywhere to direct people to you. Or, generate a badge (or widget) in Twitter to use on you other social network and blogging spaces like Facebook, Myspace, Blogger or TypePad, etc.
4. Contribute Interesting Info - Do not be one-dimensional and only use twitter as shameless self promotion, or to only market your listings. People will want to follow you if you have something interesting to say, not a constant commercial.
5. Humanize Yourself - Don’t look like just a real estate robot. Grab people with things like what you are currently doing, even if it is reading a book or eating lunch. People like to see a glimpse into real people’s lives. But still keep it professional. You don’t need to air ALL your personal dirty laundry.
6. Be Choosy About Following - You do not have to follow everybody that follows you. You could end up spending a lot of time sifting through your tweets so follow those that you think are interesting. There are twitter spammers about so beware.
7. Don’t Over-Tweet - One way to get blocked or ignored by fellow tweeters is by tweeting way too much. It’s annoying and can look “spammy” to some. Minute by minute accounts of what you are doing are not necessary.
8. The Lingo -

• Follow - Way to receive messages from people
• Followers - People who get messages from you
• Tweets - Twitter messages

Coming up later, specific tips on Twitter for real estate and ways to market and use it to your advantage.

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© Megan E. Barber, Barber Virtual Assisting Solutions, LLC

Megan Barber is a Real Estate Virtual Assistant, owner of Barber Virtual Assisting Solutions, and publisher of The REAL Advantage E-Zine. Megan has spent 9+ years doing the “behind-the-scenes” work in the real estate industry assisting agents with their real estate marketing and transaction needs.

I am always talking about the importance of social networking and blogging, and some cool news was announced last week from Active Rain: Active Rain Launches Outside Blogs.

The awesome people over at ActiveRain had made blogging for real estate professionals that much easier by offering Outside Blogging.  Some of the coolest features about their outside blogging includes:

• The ability to host outside blog on it’s own domain (that you must own)
• You can totally customize the blog to fit your branding and marketing materials
• Can be setup in minutes
• No need for AR users to learn a new blogging platform - it is all within ActiveRain
• Great SEO benefits from ActiveRain
• With the click of a button, agents can syndicate those same posts to AR, Localism and the outside blog all at once!

ActiveRain couldn’t have made it any easier for agents new to blogging, and agents in ActiveRain that want more exposure.

So calling all agents- if you are still trying to figure out how to start blogging and haven’t yet jumped into the rain, get started today!

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© Megan E. Barber, Barber Virtual Assisting Solutions, LLC

Megan Barber is a Real Estate Virtual Assistant, owner of Barber Virtual Assisting Solutions, and publisher of The REAL Advantage E-Zine. Megan has spent 9+ years doing the “behind-the-scenes” work in the real estate industry assisting agents with their real estate marketing and transaction needs.

Las Vegas real estate agent, and friend to many in the real estate community has been diagnosed with Guillian-Barre Syndrome and is in the ICU at University Medical Center in Las Vegas. It is a very rare neurological condition that causes paralysis and muscle weakness. The good news is that it is usually a temporary condition with a 95% full recovery rate, but the recovery and rehab can be a very long process.

Guillian-Barre Syndrome (GBS) is something that me and my husband’s family is all too familiar with.  In the beginning of last March 2007, my Father-in-law noticed some tingling and numbness starting in his hands and feet. That tingling and numbness traveled up is limbs and withing 5 days, he went from walking normally, to barely being able to crawl on the ground unable to walk.  He was then diagnosed with GBS and hospitalized for weeks. He spent about 2 months in hospitals/rehab facilities, and then spent many months more in physical therapy and undergoing 2 more treatments until they found something that worked. It was a very difficult recovery process not only for him, but it tool a great toll on my mother-in-law.

Like Charles Richey, my father-in-law is self employed and was unable to work for many months. Unlike Charles, my father-in-law was fortunate enough to have health insurance to help cover the incredibly high medical bills. This is where Mr. Richey and his wife really need our help. He not only will be out of work for several months to come (as well as his Realtor wife who will need to be at his side), they do not have medical insurance. There is a fundraising effort set up for Charles and his wife to be able to help them cover costs, and the need is high. You can go here: http://www.ibsteam.net/blog/blogging/charles-richey-fundraise to find more information about donation, and a way to add a button to your websites, blogs, etc to request donations.

There is a light at the end of the GBS tunnel. The good news with my father-in-law is by last August, they had found a treatment that helped reverse his GBS. And in October he was able to take their yearly vacation to Cancun, walking mostly though sometimes using a wheelchair. And today, my Father-in-law is almost completely recovered and back to his regular jogging and humorous self.

My thoughts and prayers go out to the Richey family.

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© Megan E. Barber, Barber Virtual Assisting Solutions, LLC

Megan Barber is a Real Estate Virtual Assistant, owner of Barber Virtual Assisting Solutions, and publisher of The REAL Advantage E-Zine. Megan has spent 9+ years doing the “behind-the-scenes” work in the real estate industry assisting agents with their real estate marketing and transaction needs.

This great articlefrom SitePro news popped up in my inbox today and it got me thinking…

Over the last year I’ve wondered what was the value of LinkedIn or Facebook for my business. Why was it generating all this buzz in my industry and others?  I joined both networks ages ago, but just wasn’t sure what the point of it was, other than to connect socially with friends and family on Facebook, or connect with my peers in my industry on LinkedIn. I understood the value of social networking to a degree, but these sites seemed to limited to me, not quite as valuable as something like Active Rain where I can blog and market directly to my audience (REALTORS).

Well it looks like I underestimated them. I am finding with more participation and more activity, I am actually getting noticed and have received viable leads from both places.  Goes to show me that I should never rule out the power of these social networking sites and the possibilities they can bring.

Real Estate professionals especially should not underestimate the value of places such as LinkedIn and Facebook. ANYONE can potentially be your client, and what a way to reach consumers, market to them, and show them your knowledge & experience.  Places like Facebook are no longer just for the kids anymore. Business and marketing is making up a big chunk of what is going on Facebook now.

For the blog behind the book, I’m On LinkedIn — Now What?, here are some good tips on how to utilize LinkedIn to work for you : http://imonlinkedinnowwhat.com/

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© Megan E. Barber, Barber Virtual Assisting Solutions, LLC

Megan Barber is a Real Estate Virtual Assistant, owner of Barber Virtual Assisting Solutions, and publisher of The REAL Advantage E-Zine. Megan has spent 9+ years doing the “behind-the-scenes” work in the real estate industry assisting agents with their real estate marketing and transaction needs.