The BVAS Connection

What is the ROI of Pinterest?

Megan E. Barber — Wed, 01 Feb 2012 23:17:42 +0000

Facepalm - Image via Wikipedia

“How do I leverage Pinterest for my real estate business?”

The title of this post, as well as the above question is starting to get asked a lot around the real estate marketing circles and social networks I follow. And I must tell you, it makes me cringe to hear it. Many agents are joining this relatively new network, looking increase their marketing reach and hoping it’s the holy grail of lead generation. Frankly I think they are missing the point and purpose of Pinterest, and may be sorely disappointed in the lack of “ROI”.

Just what is Pinterest, some of you may you be asking? Pinterest is an new-ish social network where users can Pin images, putting together a visual collection of things they love, their interests and inspiration, etc., on pin boards users create in their accounts. These pin boards can be related to anything from food to crafts, fashion to home decor. The possibilities are endless.

Personally, I LOVE Pinterest. For me it is a great source of creative inspiration, craft and DIY project ideas, home decor ideas, recipe ideas, and a place that I can daydream by pining images of my dream home or dream vacation spots. For me Pinterest is fun and and inspirational.

Where I believe that people are really going wrong, especially those that want to “leverage Pinterest for their business,” is that marketing and self promotion is not in the spirit of what Pinterest was designed for. Just simply look at #3 on their list of the Pinterest etiquette guidelines:

Avoid Self Promotion

Pinterest is designed to curate and share things you love. If there is a photo or project you’re proud of, pin away! However, try not to use Pinterest purely as a tool for self-promotion.

When embarking on any new social networks, Pinterest or otherwise, my advice is to first explore it and really observe. Get an idea of what this community really is about. Observe how other users are utilizing the network. Then go have fun with it. On Pinterest, you may find that you can create new connections and meet like minded people you never knew before. But don’t have high expectations that it will be a magical source of lead generation.

If you are looking into to Pinterest purely as a way to promote yourselves, your listings and generate your business, then frankly I think you should move along. Pinterest is not exactly the place for you, and I think you will find very little ROI, if that is your main goal. Your time may be best spent elsewhere.

There are certainly ways to use Pinterest and relate it to your real estate business, and you can do so without shameless self promotion. Coming up in a follow-up post, I will show you come creative ways to use Pinterest as it relates to real estate, and show you some examples of those in the real estate industry who are doing it right. Stay tuned!

And if you want to follow me on Pinterest, find me here. You will see that I am definitely not all business all the time.

The Ultimate Guide to Mastering Pinterest for Marketing (hubspot.com)
What Is Pinterest and Why Is Everyone Talking About It? (accesscomptech.wordpress.com)

Megan E. Barber is a Real Estate Virtual Assistant, and owner of Barber Virtual Assisting Solutions. With over 10 years of experience working within the real estate industry, Megan and her team Virtual Assistants provide top notch real estate support services such as marketing, lead follow-up, social media, WordPress websites, and more. Megan E Barber is also the creator and author of The BVAS Connection and VA Mommy.

Happy Holidays from Megan at BVAS! {Video}

Megan E. Barber — Tue, 20 Dec 2011 13:01:22 +0000

Here is a special holiday message from me!

May your days be merry and bright!

Facebook Timeline: A Quick How-To

Megan E. Barber — Mon, 19 Dec 2011 12:01:56 +0000

You may have heard about the new Facebook profile interface, the Facebook Timeline. (If you haven’t yet Check out this complete guide from Mashable) It is quite a radical change to the overall look and function the Facebook profile that they started previewing to users back in September. Now they are rolling it out for everyone to have access too, and should become the default profile setting for all users in a upcoming months.

Want to go ahead and change and play around with the new Facebook Timeline now? They’ve made it easy! Here is now:
(tips courtesy of Mashable)

Login & Click - Log out of your Facebook account, then go to this About Timeline page.
Get Timeline - At the bottom right of the page, click on “Get Timeline.” If you like what you see and don’t want to edit anything, publish it right away by scrolling back to the top of that page and click “Publish Now” and you’re done. If you’d like to edit, go to the next step.
Scroll Down and Edit - Scroll down on your timeline and edit or remove any items you don’t want shown. Do that by holding your cursor over the upper right of an item you want to edit, and then click on the icon that looks like a pencil — it will have a label that reads Edit or Remove.
Make Changes - From the resulting drop-down list, you can change the date of the item, add a location, hide it from the timeline, delete the post altogether, or report it/mark it as spam.
Highlight and Expand your favorite posts - If you’d like to “feature” any of your posts, click on the star icon to the left of that pencil icon. Then that item will be expanded all the way across the page, made larger for all your friends to see. Cool huh?
Publish Now – Or wait until Dec 22nd - Once you’re satisfied with all of your edits, either scroll back to the top of your Timeline and click “Publish Now,” or do nothing and it’ll be automatically published on December 22, 2011.

Rich Real Estate Agent, Poor Real Estate Agent

Megan E. Barber — Sat, 12 Nov 2011 00:30:53 +0000

via activerain.com

What separates Rich Real Estate Agents from the Poor Real Estate Agents? Check out this awesome infographic and survey from Active Rain. Lots of striking information in this, definitely worth checking out.

Posted via email from megbarberva’s posterous

One Year Ago I Ditched Outlook for Gmail

Megan E. Barber — Fri, 11 Nov 2011 13:05:38 +0000

One year ago today, I made the decision to ditch Microsoft Outlook and move everything over to Gmail. And I have never looked back!

Why did I do it? Outlook at the time was continually locking up, crashing my PC and I was completely fed up. In the back of my mind, I had always considered moving it over to Gmail but was too afraid to take the plunge because it was so different than I’m used to. Then one day, after too much frustration, I did it. And it was so much easier than I thought.

So what are the Pros for leaving Outlook for Gmail? Here are a few of the great reasons:

Easy to use! If you are used to Google and any Google apps at all, you will easily be able to find your way around Gmail.
Access to your email from anywhere. Any computer with internet, any mobile phone, Mac or PC. That means if you buy a new computer, the transition instructions are so easy: 1. Turn on computer 2. Login to Gmail.
Like I mentioned above, you can access anywhere, that means it syncs everywhere. No worrying about double entry or deleting emails you’ve already received in other locations.
If you are used to using “Folders” and rules in Outlook, then “Labels” and filters work the same way, and even better.
Your Gmail, your Docs, Calendars (which syncs everywhere too!) is accessible in one dashboard
You can pull in multiple email accounts via POP3 if you use different email addresses for different things (you are not stuck with only @gmail.com addresses). You can do up to 5 POP3 accounts for free in regular Gmail.

I’m an Android phone user which made the email switch much easier since Gmail is it’s main email app. Also, within the last few months I have switched from a PC to a MAC and it sure did make my email transition much smoother (see above).

With all this gushing about Google and how great it is, if you are so used to Outlook, Gmail can be hard to get used to at first. First, it just looks different, and the threaded conversations and overall look took some getting used to. I also had to take some extra time to set up all my filters and labels in the beginning. But once I did, it was smooth sailing from there.

* I should note that I did not move my domain’s mail hosting to Google Apps. I have a dozen or so emails associated with it, and my host is awesome so I didn’t want to rock the boat. I really wanted to keep it simple! Regular Gmail suffices for me (luckily I don’t have more than 5 POP3 accounts to pull in).

Importance of REALTOR Safety

Megan E. Barber — Tue, 01 Nov 2011 22:08:45 +0000

Being a real estate agent can definitely be a difficult job at times. From managing several buyer and seller clients at once, to tracking paperwork and juggling upcoming closings. But he thought that your real estate career can present you with some dangerous situations, hardly ever enters your mind. Some scary stuff in the news lately is driving home the fact that Realtor safety should become a priority.

Realtor safety concerns are nothing new. Several years ago, when I worked in the front office for a major real estate company, the company had decided to offer self defense classes to their agents which some thought was silly. Since the subject came up, my broker then told me this story:

She was working with these first-time buyers, showing them several properties on the weekends over a few weeks. One Saturday morning, she was setting up a few showing appointments for the day, and called one particular owner-occupied home where a pleasant gentleman answered. He said it was the requested appointment was fine and he would make sure to be out of the home.

Since this was the first appointment of the day, she decided to get to the property ahead of her clients to preview it herself, open up curtains, turn on lights, etc. When she unlocked and opened the door, about 10 feet in front of her was a man sitting in a chair with a shotgun in his lap, starting straight at her. She quickly apologized for disturbing him, backed away, closed the door, and got in her car. She had her clients meet her at the next property instead.

Now that scary situation turned out to be ok for my former boss, as she was unharmed. But it has stuck in her memory and has always taken extra safety measures ever since.

The news tell us that some agents have not been so lucky.

Last year, two Realtors were found murdered in separate incidents, one found shot in a vacant home he was showing, and one found in burning home.

Back in April, an Iowa Realtor was found murdered at an at a model home open house.

In July, a Tennessee agent was attacked and robbed during a showing appointment.

Just last month, an Oregon broker was targeted in his office and shot by a revenge seeking gunman.

A few weeks ago, northern Ohio agents were warned that a man was calling female agents for evening showing appointments, to possibly lure them into vacant homes and sexually assault them.

The sad list goes on.

Real estate can be a risky industry. Agents can often find themselves traveling alone, meeting with and showing properties to people that they don’t really know well or at all. There’s worries that violence against Realtors is on the rise. And it is not just women that are victimized. (check out his report)

What can you do to keep yourself safe? Though past violent incidents don’t always have a common thread, and there is no way to prevent every crime, agents should certainly take any step necessary to protect themselves.

Take a self defense or martial arts class.
Google new prospects prior to initial meetings to sniff out anything fishy if you can.
Meet them for the first time in a public place, such as your office during business hours.
Call or text someone to let them know where you’ll be and who you’ll be with showing properties.
Use a tool such as Moby, which is a mobile app for your smartphone that can alert chosen contacts with a need for assistance and also tracks your location. And it’s FREE!

Do what you can to increase your awareness and fine tune your gut instincts. Please stay safe out there!

11 Weeks Left in 2011? Let’s Get Ready for 2012 NOW!

Megan E. Barber — Wed, 19 Oct 2011 22:05:32 +0000

Believe it or not, there are only 11 weeks left in 2011! We are firmly in the 4th quarter and have you examined your progress on your 2011 business plan? Are you flying blind without one? Well whatever your answer, there is no time to waste. The time to implement is now if you want 2012 to get off to a great start.

Some say that if you start your business January 1st 2012, you are already behind. Real estate is a lag industry and things can take 60-90 days of implementation to see any results. So if you don’t start until January, you may not see any results for several months (especially in this slow economy).

The best marketing advice I’ve ever received is to ramp up your marketing efforts and activities in the 4th quarter so you can see your results once the new year hits and get it off to a fabulous start. If you wait too long, you may find it harder to reach your business or revenue goals because you were waiting for leads to convert and get those marketing results to appear. Market for next year starting NOW!

Starting now, there are probably a few things you can be doing differently, or at least get started on, that can get your 2012 started off right. For example, you can:

Start a blog or dust off that blog you have been neglecting and post regularly (at least 2-3 times a week to start)
Give your website a makeover and make sure the focus is on the consumer, and not what a great REALTOR you are.
Create or find deliverables that your prospects would actually want to sign up for and get those leads starting to come into your pipeline
Increase your visibility on Facebook and make a business pages focusing on the neighborhoods and communities you serve.
Start up on Twitter and be visible, engage, and share with your followers.
Start using video! Promote your properties, your expertise, and your market area
Be sure to keep your social media activities ongoing and never let anything get stale or make people wonder if you are still in business.

It is the perfect time to examine your current business plan (if you have one) refine it, in start implementing NOW so you can have a fabulous 2012. So take some action! I want you to start it off with a bang!

Have some marketing ideas you can implement now to get next year off to a great start? I would love to hear them! Please leave me a comment below!

When Technology Lets You Down

Megan E. Barber — Tue, 21 Jun 2011 12:33:22 +0000

What have we been up to lately at the BVAS office? Things have been buzzing along here while running my real estate virtual assistant team and marketing projects galore. Then around the first of the month, an all out techno meltdown happened. My poor 3 year old laptop had been limping along lately, but I knew it was not long for this world. It finally overheated and went kaput.

Let us hold a moment of silence for the good old HP dv6700 laptop…

There was just a minor slowdown while waiting for my new computer to arrive, but thanks to my husband’s a backup laptop and Dropbox I was able to keep things going close to “business as usual”. Dropbox especially was a lifesaver as I was able to store the files I needed in the cloud to get them whenever the project called for it.

Now, I am a proud new owner of a MacBook Pro. I will spare you all the details on how I came to the decision to ditch PCs and go for the Mac, but I am super happy with my choice and I won’t be looking back. While I have a bit of a learning curve since I am a total Mac virgin, it helps that I have been able to keep my lifeline to Windows (via VM Ware Fusion). Because of that, I didn’t have to buy new software for absolutely everything and can still access all my same Windows based files for clients.

Having the right backup systems in place really saves a lot of stress and anxiety, and a computer crash or transition to a new machine is always a great reminder of that. I always stress that you MUST backup your computers files often because a PC crash or virus can happen at any time . Here at the BVAS office, we backup our computers to a external hard drive here, and also via the web with Carbonite. You can never have too many backup systems in place.

In other BVAS news, sew systems and service packages are in the works, so stay tuned for some upcoming announcements. As always, please join the conversation on our Facebook page, and feel free to leave a comment with your questions and request for upcoming how-to’s.

Monday Motivation {6.20.11}

Megan E. Barber — Mon, 20 Jun 2011 21:15:35 +0000

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Today’s Monday Motivation post will be short but important…

“Duty makes us do things well, but love makes us do them beautifully.”
– Zig Ziglar

Go forth and do the things that you love!