You may not achieve all your goals but you will always attain an outcome. You must have the big picture in mind, know what you ultimately want, and then create your strategy. Give yourself many options. When the first one doesn’t work, check it off the list and go to the next. When that one doesn’t work, move on to the next, and so on until you have achieved your outcome. As in life, 20% of your actions will yield 80% of your results. Focus on the actions that are effective.

All agents have nearly unlimited potential to be massively successful. What’s holding you back? Do you know your outcome? Do you have an effective strategy? You better.

This generation is already accustomed to consumer social networking tools that provide real-time communication, and they enjoy connecting with people.

The interesting caveat here for real estate professionals is that these up-and-coming workforce powerhouses are also the up-and-coming real estate customers. Are you prepared to communicate with them on their terms? If you aren’t, one of your competitors most definitely will be.

Real estate professionals finally rejoice!  It looks like you’ll be able to have it all in one place.

You can get notified when the release is official.

The idea behind TweetyMail is pretty simple–do everything you need to do on Twitter via email. That’s an attractive proposition for people who don’t quite want to live in Twitter but still want to have a presence there. TweetyMail also has some interesting features they’ll be offering to their paid customers (currently invitation only) like scheduled tweets and the ability to retweet from email. I have to say, one of the nicer features they’ve listed is the new follower notification, which is much cleaner and more informative than the ones Twitter is sending out currently.

TweetyMail is one to watch. I think it’s worth giving it a shot if email is your thing and Twitter is not (yet).

HT TechCrunch

Remember that just a few years ago, there were few, if any, corporate videos on YouTube and Facebook was a hang-out for college students.  This commerical development is not surprising. If there is a way for money to be made, companies will find a way to exploit it.  Capitalism at work.  So what are the implications for small businesses trying to carve a niche? Is it too crowded?  Is it too late?

No, I don’t think so. There are plenty of social media marketing opportunities for the savvy small business professional, even with the brand titans bringing their game:

Importance of Twitter. Twitter isn’t flashy.  It rewards real connection and conversation, something monolithic companies typically don’t do well.  I have a small business but have more followers than Pringles (one of 2009’s Top 10 Facebook pages). I think there’s a message there. My hypothesis: Of the major platforms, Twitter may actually favor the local small business owner.  How can you leverage this powerful tool on a local level?

This is especially true for real estate professionals. A barrage of corporate messages cannot replace real individuals interacting in meaningful ways as they do on Twitter. They also cannot hold the attention of consumers for very long, especially via tools like Twitter, where people look for important interactions – a careful balance of give and take, moderated only through the social acceptance or denial of users who contribute as least as much as they withdraw from the process.

Mastering your time and use of Twitter can radically reshape how you look at marketing. The sooner you grow your online sphere, the sooner you will understand and experience the freedom of attracting clients to you for simply being the professional you are, rather than chasing them down and trying to convince them to hire you.

For help shortening your learning curve, enroll in TechShorties two-part Twitter course for real estate professionals. You will exit the course with a fully established Twitter account and be on your way to building your online network in just 45 minutes!  Each course is just $29.95, or you can enroll in both at once for just $59.95 total:

Introduction to Twitter for Real Estate Professionals

Intermediate Twitter for Real Estate Professionals

Twitter for Real Estate Professionals: Complete Course (includes both Intro and Intermediate)

1. Playing a sound file on your site as it loads. Believe it not, Jen sent me a link to a site just this week that plays a song when the page loads. Slows down your page load time, and more than just a little annoying, especially if you weren’t expecting any sound to play automatically. If your pages uses video from your own server, this could affect load times as well.
2. Flash files that automatically play on page load, especially if it’s on an older version of Flash and hasn’t been updated in a while. This could cause an otherwise fast loading site to absolutely creep.
3. Using large image files and reducing the size for display. The images you are using for your pages should really be built for the size you want to display. All too often, people will use a large image and, instead of editing it and resizing it, they simply reduce the display size in their pages. These larger images take longer to download for a browser than they would if they were resized at design time.

Just a few things you can quickly check to make sure site load time will not negatively impact your SEO! There’s more information on this change over at Search Engine Land.

So…The goal here — Be THE source that they should go to…Be the expert. Be the leader. Be the most responsive, best educated, and MOST WILLING to help them get the information that they need when they need it.Doing that will put YOU in the forefront in that buyer’s mind. Make yourself stand out.

And don’t forget–this advice holds true not only for working leads, but also generating them!

Two of the more important points I think he makes for real estate professionals are that the role of the Influencer is going to grow and that search engine interaction is going to become more personalized. If nothing else, it’s an affirmation that at least one other person out there is looking ahead and seeing how building a reputation as a trusted influencer today is going to increase your marketing power over the next couple of years.

But if you are looking for something a little more “official”, Automattic has announced VaultPress. This service (still in beta) is promising not only backups, but also automatic installation of security fixes and monitoring for suspicious activity. Basically, it’s a lot of the stuff you get when you host your site at WordPress.com, but you get to keep the flexibility and autonomy.

Of course, this is a premium service, and there will be a price associated with it. If you are interested, head over to the site and apply to take part in the beta. It looks to be a good solution for people who don’t mind paying a little extra for piece of mind.