Craigslist flyer templates have had an overhaul to enhance and improve them in many areas:

• Colors, text colors, and text-fonts all improved to present data better
• Some text areas now have improved formatting
• Your Phone number is now prominently displayed top left, and in the contact box.
• Search more homes link is now added to foot of the craiglslist flyer page to link back to your website

For each listing site, you now have the following options:

• Choose to SHOW or HIDE any of the automatically generated PDF print flyers
• Upload your own PDF Flyer for each Listing
• Change the TITLE that describes the Flyer on your listing website

Go to EDIT your listing and click the new “Manage Flyers” menu item on the right side in the SITE OPTIONS section.

Please let us know how this works out for you!

The Council of Residential Specialists (CRS) is a group of more than 37,000 top REALTORs across the United States. As a Quality Tested and Approved Vendor, SPS has earned the top recommendation by this powerful group of Real Estate Agents.

SPS president Paul Eastwood said the recognition from the Council is validation of the work spent developing Single Property Sites as an easy-to-use listings marketing system for Real Estate professionals.

Joe Prunty, CRS Regional Vice President and Chair of the CRS Product Review Board said, “We are pleased to have awarded Single Property Sites the CRS Quality Tested Seal of Approval. Single Property Sites is a well-designed service that addresses the marketing needs of CRS members. Not only is SPS very easy to use, but it also delivers significant value to Realtors that need an easy and effective way to market their listings and differentiate their services.”

The CRS has a comprehensive review process a vendor must undergo before earning the designation of Approved Vendor. Several technical committees test the product exhaustively and real Agents test its viability and usefulness in their business. Only the select products that pass these exacting tests receive the CRS’s coveted Seal of Approval.

“The CRS only recommends the very best for their members,” Eastwood said. “The goal of SPS has always been to give every Agent, regardless of technical knowledge, access to the most powerful technologies for marketing their listings - but to do this through Wizards and intuitive screens, that are friendly and make it easy for anyone. Our biggest area of feedback from our clients is the ease-of-use of SPS. We are proud to receive the CRS Board’s stamp of approval.”

Paul Eastwood said he will work to make sure SPS earns the continued approval from the CRS.

“We’re constantly adding and augmenting features within the SPS platform to make it more simple and more powerful for Realtors,” Eastwood said. “Just in the past few months, we’ve added automated craigslist posts, Facebook flyers and more easy to use widgets, making it easier than ever for Realtors to reach as many people as possible with their listing information. We want the CRS to know we’re working to help their agents reach new markets with minimal effort.”

These include designations such as CRS, CyberStar and so on.

To do this - go to MY ACCOUNT / USER PROFILES.
One of the options for profiles is now to set “Designations”

Let us know if there are any you need.

Here are some examples!..

Not only are all your domain names a valuable asset in terms of the original cost, but also, remembering that every SOLD site stays live for FREE, its important to know that you can manage and control those assets effectively. After all, each SOLD site gives you a tremendous SEO advantage by being an actual website that is indexed by each engines, and has back-links to your main business websites. You’d be hard pressed to buy that SEO advantage for as low-a-cost as an annual domain name renewal fee!

So - we have completely re designed the SPS system that helps you easily manage your domain names.
Now you will see clear visual indicators telling you the status of your domain names and an easy way to renew, or Transfer your domain names as you wish.

Members of NTREIS will now be able to add their SPS Unbranded Tour links to the NTREIS MLS listings.

We have some exciting news to announce in this newsletter – including more ways to embed listing data in other websites and social networks, and new ways for you to work with your partners - including options to set up sponsorships and banner advert campaigns on your single property sites.

And as always, all these new benefits are included as part of your SPS subscription.

Scroll down to read all the news!

Regards
Paul Eastwood
President
Single Property Sites Inc.

Social Media Marketing:

New! Add Listing to Facebook. Its now easy to post a great looking LINK to your (live) listing - which shows a property photo and brief description. To do this, click the VIEW link on the MANAGE SITES page, then click the new ADDTHIS button shown on the right.

New! More Widget Options. We have created a new side-bar scrolling widget which is great for website side-bars (like ActiveRain - see it now!)
We have also created additional IFRAME code for widgets which means you can embed widgets in even more websites! (Widgets now have IFRAME code as well as Javascript). On MANAGE SITES - click the Widget icon for full details.

Co-Marketing With Your Partners

NEW! Sponsorship Options. If you want to have your business partners be a co-marketer of your listings or even share the cost of your SPS service, you can now set them up as a Sponsor for any listing site. Its all totally under your control.

NEW! Banner Ad Campaigns. Our new BANNER campaign system allows you to create a marketing campaign that you can then link to any Listing Sites.
Each Campaign can have from 0 to 7 banner ad positions as well a sponsor linked to it.
Presentation Enhancements

UPDATED! SlideShow. Thanks for all your feedback on the the SlideShow, this is now modified AND can you can link to it directly if you wish - please continue to tell us what you think!
Click the SlideShow (top menu) on any of your sites - remember LARGE photographs will make this a stunning presentation.

NEW! See Whats Near. We added a new menu link on every site so that buyers can see ‘whats near’. This is powered by the service from WALK SCORE. It can be disabled for any site in the EDIT / LINKS section.

NEW! Social Networking Integration! Each property site now shows a social network ADDTHIS icon which helps with viral marketing of your listing by allowing a site visitor to quickly add your listing to their favorites, or share with their social network such as FACEBOOK, Twitter, LinkedIN etc.

NEW! Home Page Design and Layouts. There are two new options to help you tailor the home page to your needs. First: Larger photo on home page. Second: Header layout options allow you to place YOUR details in the header.
Both options can be found in EDIT/ DESIGN-OPTIONS.

NEW! Watermark for SOLD listings. When your property status is changed to SOLD (EDIT listing - see ‘Address/Status’), a corner Watermark saying ‘SOLD’ is now displayed.

Marketing Enhancements

More Craigslist Support. We have more categories in our Craigslist auto-poster (rental, commercial etc). Are we missing any? Let us know!

Solution News

Enhanced Commercial Support Commercial properties now have specialized fields; tenant logo, rates, and rental tables.

Service Enhancements

Manage Photos. The thumbnail gallery now shows the photo dimensions.
We have also made it easier and faster to delete photos.

Domain Name management. There is a now a new / simpler system to help you manage your domain names!

Don’t Forget!

SMS TEXT Flyer - FREE for all sites Consumers can TEXT the domain and get back property details - a free service add=-on from SPS. And don’t forget that every site has its owe Mobile Website automatically generated too.

Improved Mapping now shows ALL Your Properties! We’ve improved our mapping presentation so now you can have an easy and attractive way of showing ALL your listings and locations to buyers on every site’s Google map! Now when buyers click the mapping link on any of your Single Property Sites, they’ll see the location of every property you have listed! See it now … go to 1122MainStreet.com and click the “Map It” link on the left-hand side.

Leads and Inquiries Center Keeps Track of All Your Buyers. Now, your Single Property Site keeps track of all your leads and inquiries for you. Login to your SPS Control Panel and check out the new Leads and Inquiries Center. Any time someone requests information about your Single Property Site, their contact information is saved for you in the Control Panel. You can even set up text message alerts so you’re notified anytime there’s a new inquiry.

Keep in Touch!

Connect on Facebook Join us on FACEBOOK

Join SPS on ActiveRain! See WIDGETS exaamples on ActiveRain

The other method of using TXT that’s gaining ground in the US is to use SMS TXT Short Codes as a method for requesting information of a product of service. This idea has been around since the late 1990s in Europe and is seeing more adoption now in the US.

For example…

• Text a search query to google! (e.g. “denver resteraunts”) to 466453 (GOOGLE)
• Weather report! Text your zip code or city and 2 letter State abbreviation to 42278 (4CAST)

Real Estate is of course no exception, consumers want information on a property .. so let them TEXT a property ID to a short code and voila! The latest details sent back back as a TEXT massage. Pretty obvious really!

Of course, this is a service provided by SPS - the difference for agents is that its all for free.
Take a look - TEXT 1122MAINSTRET to 368266.

It works for any of our Agents site that has a domain name!

It certainly is a great method to deliver information - all the consumer needs is a simple cellphone which can display Text.

In Europe this is a widely adopted technology - and in the US marketing with short codes is catching on.

However, this technology really is just a little too late for real estate.

My reason for arguing this this is that web-enabled cellphones are now becoming ubiquitous. The cost of the phone and the cost of the web service that goes with it is dropping like a stone.

Who wouldn’t want the web in the palm of their hand?

It is for this reason that I think interest in SMS TXT marketing for real estate will probably peak this year - but after this year, my guess it will become a side-show and probably rapidly lose importance.

Of course SMS TXT services will still be around - its great for person-to-person, and also other products and services too. But as a mainstream method for providing real estate information to consumers, I think we’ll see more emphasis on MOBILE websites that display fast on any mobile browser.

Thank goodness SPS already automatically provides mobile sites to all our clients!

Let me know what YOU think!

Whilst as professionals, we may all have copies of MICROSOFT WORD or XL, etc, it is likely that most consumers do not have these office tools on their PCs. However, most consumers are able to read PDF format documents, because PDF readers are commonly set up on most PCs.

Here’s two great free PDF creation tools that I can suggest!

Online PDF Creator (FREE)

http://www.pdfonline.com/

• Limitation: 2MB file size.
• Very good and easy to use. Converts documents to PDF and also converts PDF documents to WORD.
• To convert to PDF: choose the “Doc3PDF” option. Upload your document. It is then sent to you as an email.

Cute PDF Writer (FREE)

http://www.download.com/CutePDF-Writer/3000-6675_4-10206470.html?tag=mncol

• Limitation: None
• Very good. When you download and install this application, it will create a new ‘Printer’ in your list of printers. So, to create a PDF of any document, simply choose the ‘Cute PDF Writer’ as your printer! How easy is that!