How are your clients and potential clients keeping up with your latest updates ? Your latest listings ? The latest market stats ? Are they subscribing to your RSS feeds ? Don’t bet on it! Not all site visitors and clients use a Google RSS Reader. They may stumble upon your site because you’ve provide relevant and pertinent information which keeps them coming back, but not all of your visitors are RSS subscribers. Sure, there is an increasing number of more tech saavy homebuyers and sellers who have sophistacted information filters but the majority of people still prefer to get a personal message delivered to them via email rather than see your information pop up in an RSS feed. So do you have to do double the work (post on a blog and create a newsletter) to reach the clients who do not subscribe to RSS feeds ?

Absolutely not! We’ve just created a new tool that allows you to take your blog posts and instantly convert them into a EBlogLetter ™ (Email Blog Newsletter)

 

So how does this work ? It’s absolutely simple.

 

1. After you’ve written a blog article that you feel should be sent directly to your clients or your newsletter mailing list,

just go to your "Write" tab in your blogsite control panel and click on "EBlogLetter"

2. The EblogLetter options panel will open allowing you to:

a. Layout your EBlogLetter

b. Address your EBlogLetter to up to 5 addresses

c. Send them to multiple recipients

3. Laying out your EBlogLetter

With our EblogLetter layout editor you can quickly layout your page and insert:

a. Your latest blog posts

b. Your featured listings

c. and most importantly your contact and branding information by adding graphics, logos, and photos

 

All of the Realivent BlogSites have been udpated with this new feature. This is only the initial release which has a limited number of email recipicients but we are working on expanding this to allow you to integrate your current newletter subscription database and also add a newletter signup to your blogsite. Future plans also include the ability to send the EBlogLetter out to thousands of subscribers at the same time making your blogsite a one-stop shop for staying in constant contact. EBlogBlaster is currently available to upgraded sites with custom domain names. Please try the new tool and we welcome feedback on how to further improve it. More updates coming…

 

Tags:Realivent Updates

Popularity: 50% [?]

All Realivent Blogsites now come with built in client testimonials functionality. Worked with a satisfied buyer or seller ? Ask them to visit your site and write you a

testimonial. Here’s a sample: Recommendation on About Me Page . Its very simple, your client doesn’t even have to register as a Realivent user to leave a recommendation.

Also, don’t worry about spam or intentional bad reviews. You make the ultimate decision whether or not the review is published.

These reviews and recommendations follow you everywhere on the Realivent Platform including upgraded sites and our community pages . If you have 20 sites with us -

(i.e. Single Property Blogsites and Agent Sites) all of these are published to each site automatically.

Tags:Realivent Updates

Popularity: 50% [?]

"Hello World!" Whoa, been doing too many Wordpress installs…We’ve been quite busy working on new features, new installations, and new marketing tools for agents

and its finally time for release week. Over the next few days we’ll be showcasing a lot of new functionalities, new tools, and new agent examples using our system.

First, we’d like to share our Featured Listings page changes. For those who have been creating Single Property Blogsites, you may have noticed our new

Quick Links Nav Bar Update

Here are the highlights:

1. Added Yelp Reviews

 

Try to find the nearest restaurants near this New York home

 

2. Added Quick Link to Virtual Tours

 

Now you can add quick links to your favorite virtual tours.

If you’ve already purchased a virtual tour somewhere, go ahead

and add your URL to your listing details:

 

3. Toggling of Zillow Comps

Agents now have Zillow toggle switches. Which will hide or show the Comps tool.

When enabled, you get lots of area analytics and sales comparables for your visitors to

learn more about the area.

4. Finally, we’ve moved it to a more accessible location (any sidebar where you put the Featured Listings Widget)

and kept all the original functionality including:

Neighborhood Demographics , Bird’s Eye View ,

Email to Friend, Schedule a Showing , Calculator , and Request for more information.

 

Start a New Single Property Blogsite Now and be up and running in 5 MINUTES!

Tags:Realivent Updates

Popularity: 50% [?]

Many times we stumble upon new applications of our blogsite platform and find
that our users are very creative when trying to maximize their blogsite potential.
One blogsite that recently caught our interest was this on. This shows a non-intrusive mortgage
form that helps him get quick information on his users to follow up
with a rate quote. What makes this simply amazing was the fact that
the form was made by the blog author himself using a fun form maker called Wufoo.

Wufoo allows you to create custom forms of any kind including polls, questionairres, application, and simple surveys and embed them
into your site all "without writing a single line of code". Now, that’s cool!

Tags:Realivent Updates

Popularity: 50% [?]

 

 

1. Blog Title - Don’t forget to give your blog a title. Even if you decide to use graphics in your title like this,

Leaving this blank will make your title not recognizable by search engines. To have the best of both worlds, do this to your blog:

#pagetitle h1{

visibility:hidden;
}

2. Blogroll - change or add your personal blogroll links immediately by going to >>Blogroll >> Manage Blogroll >> AddLink
Usually your blog install will have default links that you may want to change to maximize your visitors benefit

3. Widgets - activate and drag your widgets into your sidebars. If widgets are not installed on certain themes , your blog layout will look broken.
This will not be a problem for installs 2.3.1 or greater.

4. Permalinks - make sure you set your permalink structure to "Custom" with a similar string "/%postname%/"
This will make your blog posts easily recognized and indexed.

5. RSS Feed - submit your new blog to Feedburner or any of your other favorite feed management systems so that site visitors can start subscribing to your posts,

install the FeedButton so that visitors have more RSS options

6. SPAM K2 - stop SPAM from the very beginning by installing Dr. Dave’s SPAM Karma plugin

7. Visual Editor - uncheck the “visual rich editor” so that you can embed YouTube videos and other 3rd party code. Goto “Users” >> “Your Profile” >> and scroll down to the very bottom to uncheck the editor under “Personal Options”

8. Sidebars - if you are running themes with multiple sidebars or sidebars on the wrong places, you can add/change them as you like by going to your
"sidebar.php" pages and adding the sidebar calls in the appropriate places.

< div id="leftsidebar">
<?php if ( function_exists(’dynamic_sidebar’) && dynamic_sidebar(2) ) : else : ?>
<?php endif; ?>
< /div>

Also, make sure the number of the sidebar corresponds to your desired location.

9. Headers - to change your site’s header, just follow your "header.php" file and find the corresponding ".jpg .png or .gif file extensions" that is called to display your header"

10. Themes - install several themes to get yourself thinking about the design and layout you want, then focus on one and start customizing
There are tons of themes to get you started, install many and switch through them until you find the right one, explore lots, its free.

 

1. Wordpress Theme Viewer - This is the original source for free Wordpress themes. Choose from 1000s of themes and designs with 2, 3, 4 column designs, fluid vs fixed width, and 2 to 20 sidebars.

2. Wordpress Themes Community- Free themes from several categories including several real estate specific themes here…

3. Template Monster - 400+ premium themes from Template Monster, templates starting from $50 but designs are unique and make your blog stand out from the crowd

4. 83 Themes with Clean Designs - this has been around for a long time, but these themes can be used over and over because of their clean designs and simplicity

5. Wordpress Theme Generator - design your own theme in minutes. Change background colors, link colors, font colors, font types and sizes and then download your rockin design

6. WPDesigner - best place for premium themes including the popular Digg-like theme

7. Revolution Premium Theme - by Brian Gardner this series of themes is great for community sites and news-style blogs starting at only $79.95

8. 1Click Install - This plugin essentially reduces the time required to install any plugin or theme to 10 seconds.

9. PSDtoHTML - do you need help turning your custom designs into XHTML and CSS code , this is the resource for you

10. iThemes.com - look out for this site in 2008 as it is predicted to be one of the best premium theme resources on the net because 2 of its founders are some of the most well respected blog designers including Cory Miller who designed GeekEStateBlog.com and Brian Gardner the Revolution godfather.

 

1. Wordpress - the official Wordpress plugin repository for all of your plugin and widget needs

2. Housing Widgets from Trulia is a great place to get real estate specific widgets

3. Widgetbox - more than 30,000 widgets for your blog

4. Wordpress Plugin Database - very neatly organized directory of Wordpress plugins allows you to get right to the source and download directly

5. 300 + Tools for your Wordpress Blog - Mashable has put together a comprehensive list of 300+ great tools for any Wordpress need

6. Captcha Plugin - fight spam with this CAPTCHA plugin

7. 1Click - reduces the effort needed to install a plugin or a theme for wordpress to just one simple click (Winner of the Wordpress Plugin Competition)

8. Smashing Magazine’s Wordpress Plugins List - another great collection of Wordpress plugins, tutorials, and ideas

9. QuickOnlineTips.com - clean and well organized list of plugins and widgets

10. And of course, our own plugins page is a great place to get started on real estate specific blogs.

 

1. Branded Header - the first impression of your blog starts with your header design. You may not need a completely customized theme, but a unique masthead/banner is the easiest way to make your blog looking professional. Start by taking photos and pictures of your local area of expertise and then adding personal touches such as your favorite fonts and color overlays. Your header theme will be the anchor for your whole site and will set the tone for your overall theme and design. For example, if you sell real estate in wine country, then take photos of wineries around the area and of course the homes in your area of expertise like this. Match your theme to your offline marketing.

2. All-In-One SEO Plugin - this is an awesome plugin to install and you can see the results immediately. It helps you tag each of your pages without having to write the same keywords over and over again.

3. Featured Listing Plugin - after you’ve installed this plugin, go to your "Options" >> "Featured Listings" page and configure this page with your Realivent account.
You can choose a specific listing to display as the default upon page load or you can leave it as "Do Not Use" to show a list of all of your featured listings. You can
also choose to format your page with one sidebar or no-sidebars.

4. Zillow CMA Plugin - after installing this plugin, go to "Options" >> "CMA Request" to tune this page.
Add your email address which will direct all site inquiries directly to you. Change the page title and again
choose your page format.

5. Agent Profile Plugin - you can certainly create your own about me page, but this plugin breaks your profile down into several categories and presents it nicely on your blog.
This one is easy, all you have to do is import your profile from Realivent.com by just entering your username and choosing your page layout. That’s it.

6. Property Watch Plugin - you have a lot of options here… just go to "Options" >> "Property Watch" >> then configure.
Add your email address where the property watch form will send the inquiry to. Page title, and choose your layout.
Here you also have the option to change your introductory message and response page directly. And finally, you can change
the colors of your widget to match your blog look and feel.

7. Altos Research Widgets - Install Altos Charts - get data analysis widgets for your city with lots of trending information including median price, days on market, and inventory.

8. Google Analytics - one of the best free analytics plugins to date. Install this and check it constantly to monitor
your site traffic and sources.

9. Google Sitemaps - get the sitemap plugin here then configure it by entering in your site URL .
Then go into your WordPress administration page, click on Plugins and activate it.
After that you will have a new menu point called "Sitemap" under the "Options" menu.
You can alter the default change frequencies, filename and other options there.
Click once on "Rebuild Sitemap" to create your sitemap the first time.

10. Blog Lab - last but not least Dave Smith at the Real Estate Blog Lab has a lot of Wordpress experiments going and lots of good SEO articles and tips. Head on over to the lab for some great detailed Wordpress science.

Tags:html Marketing Advice Plugins Realivent Updates sitemaps wordpress wordpress themes zillow

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