What is it about Twitter, or Facebook, or MySpace, that draws people to them? Is it something that’s fun? Does it help you connect with people? What makes people want to be a part of social networks?

My wife recently said to me that “Signing up for Facebook is like volunteering to be stalked.” An interesting perspective but I think she’s right. One thing social networking sites do is allows us to watch our friends as they go through their day. We can see how relationships start or end, what people do while they’re at work, or maybe what exciting events they have planned for the weekend.

According to Nielsen online, a company that monitors Internet traffic, social networking and blogging has become more popular than checking e-mail. “During December 2008, there were 242 million unique visitors to so-called member communities and 236 million to email sites around the world.” Source: www.telegraph.co.uk

I get more e-mails in my inbox everyday about status updates than I do actual business e-mails anymore. My friend Aaron recently told me that he doesn’t know peoples’ e-mail addresses anymore, as long as he has them as a contact on Facebook or MySpace, he can get a message to them.

In all reality, social networks have become the best and most reliable form of communication on the Internet.

So, Have you tweeted today?

Now more than ever, people are turning to the Internet for their information.  Why should the real estate industry be any different?  People want to be able to find a new home without ever having to leave their current one.  Do you have the tools available to make your online presence known?

Here are some helpful tips to get your listings, and yourself seen on the Internet:

Have a Virtual Tour of every home - Virtual Tours are a huge part of the home buying experience now-a-days.  Being able to see the inside and outside of a home lets me know if I want to waste the time touring it.

Get a website - Have some place on the Internet where people can get in touch with you and can also see more of your properties.  Start up a blog and post your ideas about what’s happening in the real estate world.  Updated and dynamic content are going to keep people coming back to your site.

Advertise your site - Put your website address on your business cards, put it on your yard signs.  Most traffic to websites comes from seeing the website address on some type of advertising.  Whether that be a billboard, a for sale sign, a bus stop bench.  Get your website address out there so people know it exists.

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) - This is a project that you have to constantly be working on and keeping an eye on.  Many people find their homes by searching through a search engine.  Search Engine Optimization, helps to get your site at the top of the search engines.  I would recommend reading my friend Ben Kaeding’s blog for some good information on SEO.

Understanding the needs of your market is an essential part of any business.  Knowing where your next client is going to be looking, don’t you want to be there ready and available with the perfect home?

While many people attending the recent Real Estate Connect conference in San Fransisco went home and instantly started Blogging, I have been busy implementing every little nuance of many different topics. Several people have written about being on overload… Brian Boero from 1000Watt Consulting gave a great review. Although I am sure being a presenter, he was more inundated than the average spectator. It was still an information smorgasbord! Brian was very good, check out his video at www.inmannews.com.

Impressive content was my first thought in reviewing the conference program, but I wanted to reserve full judgment until after attending some of the sessions. Topics and titles can be deceptive; many times not reflecting what the speaker actually talks about! Craig Newmark the Founder of www.craigslist.org  was one of my favorites. I hadn’t heard him speak before. He is educated, informative, rather funny and appears to be humble. As a small business owner I am constantly studying the markets, trends and technology associated with the many industries we deliver product to. I value what other successful people have to say and appreciated the diversity in the panelists.

My respect goes out to Brad Inman, who I met and had the pleasure of speaking with casually. He orchestrated a conference well worth the money spent to send several people and even more importantly worth my time! The sessions were relevant to future expectations and  packed with visionary people.  They were certainly eclectic enough to satisfy most entrepreneurs as well as the 10% of movers and shakers in any given industry, especially Real Estate!

In analyzing the crowd, I was amazed that the several thousand people who attended, were the ones who tilled the soil, planted the seeds and left spreading the news. Which in essence had watered the ideas and brought them to the masses! What a difference a few people can make to create change!

Eric sits down with interviewer Mike Walsh to answer tough real estate market related questions.  Eric says the the average consumer today is more educated and he considers technology one of the biggest factors changing the market today.

Too Much Text on your home page can be distracting and unattractive. Most readers will scan your website and pick words that grab their attention or are relevant to them. Most people generally will not read the actual content of your website at all. You should carefully place an appropriate amount of pertinent content on your homepage relating to your business, product or industry.

Not Saying What Your Site Offers is also a common mistake and one that is easily avoided. You should give your visitors a good reason to get deeper into your site. If you know who your target audience is, make sure you are giving them what they want! Don’t lose your audience by using industry jargon or being too graphics heavy.

Too Many Graphics within the content body, navigation or sidebars of your site (especially animations) can detract from the overall appearance of your website. Plus, text on your graphics can not be indexed by the Search engines.

Links, Links, Links! Where do I go next? Ever felt that way when shopping on line or surfing the web? Providing Too Many Navigation Links on your website can cause confusion.

So remember, keep your navigation simple, your content precise and your animated graphics to a minimum. If you have a Just Snooping.com Website and you have questions on how to improve your existing website, please contact our Customer Service Department at (509) 926-7665.

First, a little background on some important changes to how the search engines work.Search engines like Google and Yahoo have made huge changes in the way they index content on the Internet over the last few years. Many old school web designers and IT professionals have not kept up on the changes in Internet marketing techniques and have been providing incorrect information to their customers and employers. I know this because I still regularly hear that adding meta-tag keywords to a web page are not only mandatory but the best way to get your website in the search engines. This is absolutely not correct.

In fact, I have a property for sale right now that I created a High-Def Virtual Tour for, and within a couple of days it was on the first page of search engine results. Here’s how I did it.

First, I opted in to Just Snooping.com’s Virtual Tour Export Options and made sure the tour was added to Realtor.com and my local MLS. I then took a few extra moments to submit my tour link to the three top search engines manually. Finally I added comments to each of the photos on my tour. The entire process took me less than 15 minutes.

I have to admit that I was a bit surprised that, in a down market like we are in today, my Virtual Tour soon showed up on the first page of the Search Engines. As of right now, my Virtual Tour is the third result on the first page search results for homes in my city. (View the Google results here.)

A large part of my success in the search engines is due to the fact that Just Snooping.com’s developers do an amazing job designing the code behind the Virtual Tours. The code is optimized to be friendly to search engines, unlike many other Virtual Tour product that search engines can’t index. Search engines love content, so by adding captions to my photos, I gave the engines more content to index. (And by the way, there are no keyword tags in the source code.).

If I can do it with my busy schedule, so can you. Just take a few extra moments to add comments to your photos, and submit to the search engines. Our system makes it easy to automate the export all your tours to a number of top real-estate search sites. And it only takes a few minute to submit to other search engines manually. Try to think of any other sites you could post a link to your virtual tour, such as Craigslist or personal websites and blogs. This is called Back Linking and it’s one of the most powerful mechanisms you can use to increase your online presence and search engine ranking. To help you get started I have included the free submission links for the largest search engines, below.

1. Google http://www.google.com/intl/en/submit_content.html
2. Yahoo http://search.yahoo.com/info/submit.html
3. MSN http://search.msn.com/docs/submit.aspx

It honestly amazes me when I hear complaints from customers that they aren’t placed well in the search engines …Yet the first time I follow the suggestions and use the built-in tools in Just Snooping.com’s system (which we have been freely providing for years) I have success like this. I don’t have any advantage at all. If anything, that fact that I do not spend my days marketing myself or my services should have put me at a huge disadvantage. Nonetheless, my Virtual Tour is raked above many, many others within just a few short weeks of listing my property for sale.

Are you doing all that you can to market your personal website and Virtual Tours? If you are a Just Snooping.com customer and need assistance or advice, our Customer Service Technicians are very knowledgeable and willing to help. We have extended our hours of operation and provide multiple methods by which you can communicate with us, such as Live Online Chat, e-mail or by phone Monday through Friday 6:30a.m. – 6:00 p.m. PST.

You should also consider taking advantage of other resources and products provided by Just Snooping.com, such as our Agent Website Packages if you don’t already have a powerful online presence. Lastly, check out the Marketing Tips document we’ve published, which clearly defines Search Engine Optimization techniques to help you become more productive in your Internet marketing efforts.