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Home Staging With Barb Schwarz : the interview

We interview Barb Schwarz, the inventor of home staging. Seriously. She explains to me that it was her theater background that inspired her to stage homes for sale.Barb was a terrific interview. She told me that anyone can learn how to Stage a home. And her organization is all about teaching Realtor s how to properly stage a home.

And get this. Home staging actually helps a home sell faster and for more. She is teaching Realtors how to work with banks to get their foreclosed and short sale properties sold. Stream the interview or download it for your Ipod.

• Creator of The Staged Homes Concept and Home Staging Industry
• Creator of The Accredited Staging Professional® Course
• Creator of The ASP® and ASPM® Designations
• Best Selling Author
• Award-Winning Professional Speaker
• Professional Real Estate Broker
• Founder and CEO StagedHomes.com
• Founder and Director of The Staging University®
• Founder and Chairwoman of The International Association of Home Staging Professionals® IAHSP.com
• Founder and President of The IAHSP Charitable Foundation®
• Creator of The StagingShoppingCenter.com

How to Sell in the New Economy

Eric Lofholm

How to Sell in the New Economy

I recently interviewed Eric Lofholm who is a Master Sales Trainer who has trained tens of thousands of sales professionals nationwide. As a top-producing sales representative for 3 different sales organizations his consistent track record of regularly outperforming his fellow sales reps earned a reputation of success that follows him to this day. Eric has been trained by the top trainers of his time including: Anthony Robbins and Dr. Donald Moine Ph. D. as well as countless others.Many of America's top companies hire Eric regularly to train, motivate, and inspire their sales teams.

I asked Eric to share with you his top ideas and strategies for your success in today's selling environment. He offers a treasury of advice and resources to compete and dominate in this new economy.

Check out our related interview about called Dominate Your Market in 90 Days or Less with  Dave Lakhani

Learn SEO in a Two Minute Rap Song

Search Engine Optimization in a few minutes beat to the rhymes of Mo Serious:

Chuck back again so tell me what you thank,
new song new dance I call it the Page Rank,
so you want to get the listing,
in the top position,
if you pay attention I can show you how to get it,
start with your content, I done said it before,
250 words per page and you good to go,
add headers and titles,
cross links are vital,
make it easy to read use list items,
keyword rich is how its meant to be,
make sure you have good keyword density,
double check your navigation make sure your links function,
by order of importance I call it link sculpting,
unique meta information for all the pages,
trying to make sure you cover all the bases,
all text links should include keyphrases,
make sure you put the links in the right places,
inbound links are what you should be chasing,
great content and good link baiting,
make people link to the site you created,
to do that you gotta have great information,
I'm a tell you something else that works wonders,
Yahoo directory it cost 300
if you a dealer get links from distributors,
if you provide a service get content contributors,
it always helps to get links from manufacturers,
your links should always be adding not subtracting,
link quality is better than link quantity,
get valuable links thats a good link policy,
some people swap links I don't recommend it,
others buy links well I wouldn't spend it,
keyword stuffing is not a good practice,
if you doing that you'll get stuck like a cactus,
do it the right way and be enthusiastic,
and over time your results will be fantastic,
pay attention class,
you need to act fast,
make a mad dash to the first instead of last,
take out your competition like trash,

and watch your page rank raise higher than gas...

Thanks to http://www.moserious.com/ for a killer idea worthy of a link foh show.

Making a Case for Blogging and Social Media

I cannot sleep this morning and sooooo. I suppose it is in my morning slumber I gather these moments of clarity. Sometimes you have to just remind oneself of why you do what you do. It is in this moment of reflection that reminds us of our original intent but also re-energizes us with new distinctions. And when virtually the same words still seem new,then perhaps you really have something of value.

So this early AM I ask myself, "why blog"? If you notice I have not been very active of late. I need that juice. SO I ask, "why blog"? And then....

"Why have a website"? "Why Tweet or participate in FaceBook?"

Authority through thought leadership.I guess the more things change the more they stay  the same.

Seven Cool Web Site Tools for you

Did you know at any given moment websites like yours are failing? Usually for just seconds at a time. But every so often they can go down for hours. And unless you check every so often how would you ever know? These tools can help you keep your finger on the site.

http://aremysitesup.com/ -Plan will check up to five of your sites at least 25 times per day. You get unlimited email and SMS notifications and we will do our best to tell you WHY your site was down by providing the HTML status error code.

http://watchthatpage.com/ - Checks if your page has changed. If your site goes down, your page changes.

http://uptimejuice.com/en/-A nice free tool that alerts you when your site goes down.

Mon.itor.Us - provides a fresh, novel approach to web and systems monitoring.

Web Ceo Tracks your site uptime at set intervals. This is actually a small part of a very robust-heavy duty program that gives you 12 SEO ranking tools.

Ever wonder how to get one of these cool graphics in your url? If you control your own website, you can create the graphics. These sites will help you do it. The graphic is called a favicon.

http://www.photoshopsupport.com/tutorials/jennifer/favicon.html -How to make one in Photoshop

http://tools.dynamicdrive.com/favicon/- This will take a graphic and make it for you (much easier). Follow the directions on this site on uploading the graphic to your server/website.

Track Search Engine Rankings

Web Ceo -Does the Search position tracking for you as well as a ton of other SEO functions.

http://www.kpmrs.com/ -A free  online program that will track your keywords rankings for 1 website.

http://www.seocockpit.com/ - A paid online program that tracks your rankings for many websites. Its back link tracker has never proven to work for me.

Shiller: How Not To Sell Your Home

The King of Finance cannot sell his Westchester/Larchmont NY home! The man appointed to fix the housing mess, cannot fix his own mess. "Like hiring a personal trainer who is morbidly obese". Robert Shiller chimes in on this satirical video.

www.thedailyshow.com

Social Media Impact on Consumers

According to a new analysis of BIGresearch’s Simultaneous Media Usage Survey (SIMM 14-Jun 09) of over 22,000 consumers, social media impacts consumers, which in turn directly impacts marketers, but not all options are the same. Social media users are likely to use more than one platform, some at a higher rate than others. For example, 60.2% of MySpace Users (those who regularly use the application) regularly use Facebook. On the other hand only 24% of Facebook Users utilize MySpace.

                                                     Regularly use the following social media:

USER           Use      Use      Use     Use      Text    Read    Post to
GROUPS         Facebook LinkedIn MySpace Twitter  Msg.    Blogs   Blogs  
Adults 18+     27.9%    3.3%     11.6%   4.1%     27.3%   10.9%   4.3%  
Facebook Users*----     7.7%     24.0%   10.5%    47.5%   20.2%   8.8%
LinkedIn Users 63.4%    ----     24.3%   22.1%    43.3%   29.1%   16.8%       
MySpace Users  60.2%    7.6%     ----    14.6%    53.7%   20.5%   11.1% 
Twitter Users  72.7%    18.8%    39.4%   ----     56.9%   49.3%   31.0%
Texters        48.5%    5.2%     21.5%   8.3%     ----    17.7%   7.8%
Blog Readers   51.0%    8.6%     20.5%   17.7%    44.0%   ----    34.0%   
Blog Posters** 59.0%    13.1%    28.6%   27.9%    50.8%   83.3%   ----

Source: BIGresearch, SIMM 14
*To be read as: 7.7% of Facebook Users regularly use LinkedIn, 24% use MySpace.
**Blog Posters include those who post to blogs and maintain a blog


                Social        Adults    
                Media Users*   18+
Male            42.5%         48.7%     
Female          57.5%         51.3%            
Average Age     38.2          45.1
Average Income  $68,311       $66,942  

In the next 6 months, plan to buy:
                Social        Adults    
                Media Users*   18+
Vacation        30.2%          26.3%
Furniture       17.8%          12.8%
Computer        17.3%          13.2%
TV              15.9%          12.4%
Car/truck       12.7%          10.8%

Source: BIGresearch, SIMM 14
*Social Media includes: Facebook, LinkedIn, MySpace, Twitter, Texting and Blog Users

When looking specifically at the user of each platform, Facebook users average 37 years old and MySpace users are the youngest at an average age of 33 of those profiled. LinkedIn users have the highest incomes. Social media usage for ethnic groups indexes high across most social medias.

             Facebook   LinkedIn  MySpace   Twitter  Texters   Blog     Blog
             Users      Users     Users     Users              Readers  Posters*
Male         40.2%      62.0%     48.4%     50.8%     38.3%    43.8%    47.5%
Female       59.8%      38.0%     51.6%     49.2%     61.7%    56.2%    52.5%
Avg. Age     37.1       40.6      33.0      35.5      36.2     38.3     36.0
Avg. Income  $68,523    $96,937   $51,489   $68,740   $69,595  $67,941 $63,131
Hispanic     15.8%      14.9%     26.9%     19.1%     18.0%    17.7%    21.6%
Black        12.1%      11.7%     13.6%     17.0%     15.7%    13.0%    12.9%
Asian        2.9%       4.8%      1.7%      5.4%      2.2%     3.5%     4.4%
White        75.7%      75.3%     64.9%     64.4%     70.2%    71.5%    69.0%

source: http://info.bigresearch.com/ 

Social Media Search Screams for Google

The social media scene has become a disjointed, fractured world of information and disinformation that is a mess to track.

Paul Chaney points out the similarities of search features on Twitter, Blog Talk Radio, You Tube and Google. Google of course being the king of minimalism.

Paul points out that the search feature is taking more a center stage in these portals.

Search has become much more of a focal point in these sites than heretofore. Twitter calls itself a real-time search engine. Blog Talk Radio's interface never put as much emphasis on search as it does now. The same holds true for YouTube.

The point is that a new concept has been invented. Real time search. But much like social media, real time search is not necessarily new. Google and other major engines worth their salt have always spidered active sites.

Now how well they show up on the engines is a whole different thing. Nevertheless, these sites have a search problem. Even though as Paul points out they are making search more out and front. However, onboard website search algos usually do not necessarily do a very good job of search.

For example, You Tube (with Google as its owner and backing), can only search text. Text that is not available in a video obviously. So they are relegated to other ranking criteria that have been proven to be easily manipulated and poor for relevance years ago. Think Alta Vista.We teach video ranking at http://www.realestateguerilla.com

So how good is Twitter at search? Well let's just say it isn't Google. And you can hashtag( #)all day long to help out the conversation, but going through those searches can be a real drag and not very relevant.

And that brings me to the larger point. 

Search Engine Marketing is Dead?

Well first off let me ask an elusively obvious question. Are Twitter conversations or Videos really that important to rehash and find? Or do they spread more virally than through typical means of marketing

Social media and 2.0 technology have made for a much more efficient way to interact. It is not new. Just more public and robust. Making for a more pleasant and richer social experience than say a Forum or chat room.

This efficiency has created a mashup of noise and who more capable of figuring out how to efficiently index that noise than Google?

And may I ask do we really need to search that noise? Time will tell.

Twitter, Obama, and Tribes Or Five Reasons To Love Twitter

In this post I will say why I love Twitter. This is the Follow Up to Eight Reasons To Hate Twitter.  Generally I love it because it allows the user to build a tribe. Without having to go buy a book, that means followers.

You know, folks who enjoy what you have to say.

But therein is the challenge. Most people do not have much to say.

In order to build a tribe you must segregate or polarize an audience. Meaning the more people that dislike you, the more people that like you.  Think Republican and Democrats. They cannot exist without each other.   Twitter and other social media allows you to gain new followers and perhaps email addresses. It expands your reach.

But it isn't the way you might think, or the way it is being taught. It means you must reach out to folks. But guess what? The folks can give two hoots about you and your real estate. All they care about is fly fishin',the latest IPhone, finding classmates, scrapbookin', or charitable info.

So you will need to interact with these folks and add value to their community in order to get anywhere. It is definitely good to be a people person. Some common networks to tap into are:

• hobbies
• clubs
• sports
• charities/causes to name a few.

But contrary to what you might be told. Social networks are far from new. Many think that the dating sites were the first to emerge as true social networks. However, online forums, and List Servs that merged into sites like Google Groups,  have been around since the beginning of the web. And before that we had BBS's.

Today forums and groups like at Google are more popular than ever. The only difference is that the newer sites like Twitter and Face Book are more robust.

The Obama Myth

Let me also dispel any myths that Obama won the Presidency because of social media. He already had the tribe. They used social media to communicate to grow their tribe. So yes social media had a part in his win. But it certainly is not in any large way the cause.

And this is a huge deception to understand. Most of the success stories we read about with Social media are coming from entities with pre-existing tribes. Starbucks already has a fan base online.So when they Tweet, they are simply meeting their peeps where they are. Celebrities like Ashton Kutcher could tell people to jump off a cliff and some would.

Until you or I got that kind of pull, it is time to get to work.

We must build a tribe.  And there in is the biggest misconception and hyped up information about social media.

To be successful one must find those people who need your services and then find a way to help them. So instead of thinking of just jumping on Twitter and that is the be all to end all. Become a data-miner of people that share similar interests as you. Search for real estate buying or selling posts of course.

Where might these folks be hiding?

Besides the obvious places here are some spots to help get you started:

• http://losangeles.craigslist.org/reo/
• A search in in your favorite search engine for various home forum searches can be a good source. For example this Google Search yielded a few promising sites. 
• Trulia Voices

Just search and look and you will find places where groups hang out online. And they may or may not be on Twitter.

So what are the Five Reasons I love Twitter?

1. Easy following
2. Massive hype also means massive support from outside vendors
3. Easily identified tribes or groups
4. Easy broadcast and syndication capabilities

5. You do not have to write a novel to make your point

Eight Reasons To Hate Twitter

First off let's be clear. This post is directed towards Realtors and Mortgage Pros. They are not shoe sellers or wine dealers that happen to be first into a market. They are collectively perceived as commodities by the public. There are however many other markets that this series of posts will apply.

1. I just recently was able to finally change my password to stop the idiotic ad ons that I had signed up.
2. After 4 months, three emails to support and three kind auto responses back. I just recently got access back to change my color schemes, and add followers. It still thinks my email address doesn't work.(It does. If I could sign in right now I would show you screen shots)
3. It is not a social network. It has become a broadcast network.
4. Spam. If you have a twitter account, nuff said.
5. It is over hyped.
6. The next generation ain't using it and won't.
7. Searchers are not searching for you. They are searching for their interests. Which isn't usually real estate.
8. It's free so any semblance of service or accountability is out the door.

 Ok let's insert some common sense into a discussion that has been mostly led by Koolaid drinking enthusiasts.

A.Go to Twitter (or Facebook for that matter). Search for your zip code. Search for your city. Search for anything that would remotely indicate an interest in what you do. Who did you find? If you are in a no geek zone*, then you will find O-T-H-E-R  R-E-A-L-T-O-R-S (and Mortgage Pros)!  Maybe that should have been number 9

And some of these "Realtors" will have something to sell you because of this compromised economy.

B. Now if you do happen to find someone. Start a conversation that is useful. Beyond what amounts to "good one". Most have a very hard doing that so that it leads to anything worthwhile.

Twitter at best usually amounts to the depth of conversation experienced in Blog comments. So it is more like micro blog commenting, than micro blogging.Without the space.

As a vendor I suppose it is cool because I know where you all are. So it is another way to interact beyond email. But at Spider Juice Technologies I have always run a hype free and no BS zone for my clients and prospects. Social media has its purpose, but it is very way off of the way it is being pushed.

Stay tuned for the next installment and I will give you the 5 Things I love about Twitter.

*no geek zones are areas where babys do not come into this world with IPhones or Blackberry's. Example of geek zones are often where you find our big software giants such as Microsoft in Seattle. Or Google in the Silicon Valley. In no Geek Zones, adults do not find it neccesary to be connected all the time. They like networking with people with their voice and body. It's kind of old fashioned but these hill billy folk are like that. They actually find it rude to hear a connected one's conversation in line at the market, or waiting for one to finish texting or Tweeting while in a lunch meeting.

.......

Oh, can I add one more? I cannot sign into my twitter account......again. Another denial of service attack? Who Knows...But the Koolaiders tell us to build our brands here. OK Chucky you first!

I know you Koolaiders reading this might say, "you just don't get it Tim". Oh, believe me I get it.  And I would rather get that green paper than the blue whale (Twitter outages are so common that they place a blue whale drawing when it is down.)

 I would think that is the purpose of a business.

I just got on (5PM) and took this snap shot. The blacked out email is the email that I have had for years.