Floor Plan Solutions for Home Sellers and Real Estate Agents

Buyers search for real estate online.  Buyers want as much information online as you can possibly give them and they don’t want to pay for it nor be required to register for it.  By offering floor plans of your listings online, you are adding ammunition to your arsenal of information for buyers.

Here are a few programs to try out and create floor plans for your property listings:

1. Floorplanner.com. With this program, you enter the dimensions and create the 2-D, 3-D and interactive floor plans yourself using the online tools.  Add your logo and print in hi-res for print marketing pieces.  The interactive floor planner offers a huge library of textures, fencing, and furniture.  Pricing starts at $29/month and you can try the service by creating your first floorplan for free.

2. Diakrit.com. Diakrit is an online tool where you upload a sketch of your floor plan and Diakrit’s designers create 2-D, 3-D, 3-D Special (with light and shadows), furnished or unfurnished renderings per your request.  Turn-around time is next business day.  Prices start at $19.95 per floor plan.

3. Sweethome3D.com. A free, open source program that you download and save to your computer.  The user then enters the dimensions of the home and can then view 2-D and 3-D versions of their floor plan.  A limited library is available for furniture placement.

4. Gliffy.com. Gliffy is a free online diagram software where you can create floor plans as well as flow charts and technical drawings.  It also features a “share” tool where you can invite friends to view your creation or blog about it.  Gliffy can also be added to your Google Apps.  Basic accounts are free for up to 5 floor plans and premium accounts start at $5/month.

5. Floorplanonline.com. This program gives you the option of self-service or full-service floor plan creation.  You can choose to sketch the floor plan and take your own pictures, or have someone come out and do it for you, or a combination of both.  You can link your creation to Realtor.com and/or other sites.  Prices start at $59 for a self-service floor plan and $179 for full-service.

Are you using any floorplan technology solutions? Which ones? Any tips?

Have you forgotten about Linked-in ?

If you are like me and a lot of others , you’ve set up a LinkedIn account, put in your basic info, connect with a few people and then haven’t looked back since.    If this is you – you are not alone! If you have been updating your LinkedIn account regularly you are ahead of the curve!

 

Here are 5 things you can do right now to get the most out of LinkedIn: from Katie Lance the Marketing Manager for Inman News

1.   Update your profile. Log into your account and make sure you have the basics in there – updated photo, work history, dates, experience and education. Sounds simple – but if you haven’t been in there in a while, it’s good to dust off that resume!

• Add your specialties. This section is key (located under the ‘Summary’ section within ‘Edit Profile’) – this is the section google is going to pull from. Think of this section as the ‘keywords’ or ‘meta tags’ for your profile. Pick 7-10 key words to describe your specialties and/or areas of expertise.
• Add 3 additional links. Under websites – select the drop down ‘other’ – this allows you to add 3 different links and name them whatever you’d like. Instead of being limited, you can add specific links within your site or blog. A few ideas here: link to a market stat page on your blog/website, link to your property search (IDX feed) page for a specific area/county, link to your Facebook page, link to community info on your website or blog.

2.    Add your public profile link to your email signature. If you are using Outlook, edit your email signature in the Edit>Options menu. If you are using Gmail or another free email service a great free service to use is WiseStamp. WiseStamp will allow you to add all your social media channels into your email signature.

4.    Write 10 testimonials. One of the biggest benefits of LinkedIn are the testimonials you can generate. How do you get people to say nice things about you? Say nice things about them! Write 10 testimonials – do 10 a day for 5 days and by the end of the week you should have at least 10 from people ‘returning the favor.’  A testimonial does not have to be an essay – simply 2 or 3 sentences of how you know this person and why you would recommend them. A great example of this is a Realtor I worked with at Empire Realty in the SF Bay Area – Sue Rubin. Sue aggressively added her contacts into LinkedIn and wrote testimonials – she now has 10 fantastic testimonials on her LinkedIn account. How is this different from the testimonials on your web site or listing materials? To the average consumer, LinkedIn testimonials are more authentic because you did not touch or alter them in any way – they are truly from a past colleague or client.

 

Bonus: If you are on Twitter make sure you add your Twitter handle and note that you can link your LinkedIn status updates to Twitter

See the rest of the tips here on the Inman News Blog “The Future of Real Estate Marketing” one of the most informative sites on the net…

Do you have any Linked-in tips to share ?

Google Tips for Online Business Success

The majority of home buyers use the Internet to research properties. Google makes it easier for real estate professionals to connect with home buyers and renters at every stage – while they’re looking for properties, checking out locations and selecting their agent. It’s how you reach more sellers, attract more buyers and sell more homes

See the list here

Facebook Tips For Real Estate Agents

5 Things Every Realtor Must do to Be Successful on Facebook:

1.    Post good content daily. This is the #1 one thing that I see agents NOT doing. They spend time calling or emailing clients, but they drop the ball on their Facebook page. You should be posting 2-3 times a day. A good formula for Realtors on Facebook is: 2 parts personal and 1 part business. Corcoran does a great job of this – they post interesting real estate and market data but also sprinkle in really cool and unique links to New York city, little known facts, places to eat, etc.

2.    Have a plan and stick to it. Make a list of the top 10 sites you like to visit – include news sites (i.e. Inman News, NY Times, etc), recreational sites (gardening, travel, etc), and of course your website or blog. Visit this list daily. This makes it very easy for you to link to interesting stories and post good and relevant content daily.

3.    Do it yourself. As a Realtor you can’t hire out someone to manage your Facebook account for you. You have to make time – every morning and every evening to manage your account. You can however hire someone to enhance your page and make custom tabs with HTML. Mike Mueller is a great resource for this.

4.    Comment on what others post. This is KEY! It is not all about YOU!    Take 5 minutes out of your Facebook time each day to comment on what some of your friends or fans have said.

5.    Be engaging. Ask questions, post photos, be a part of the conversation. Remember Facebook is like the ultimate dinner party. At a dinner party you wouldn’t sit in the corner and not talk to anyone right? Nor would you JUST talk about real estate.

Here are some great examples of Realtors doing many of the right things on Facebook:
Sue Adler
The GoodLife Team
Julie Ziemelis

Do you have a great Facebook page you’d like to share? Leave me a comment here!

How to capture a full web page

 

When you are having your Website built, it is often necessary to communicate changes you’d like to see to your designer.  Now there is a free online service that lets you take an instant snapshot of any Web page and then mark it up so your designer know exactly what you want done.  You can also use this to mark up listing pages to send to prospects.

The site is called Aviary and so far its Web page capture tool only seems to work with FireFox.  To capture a Web page is simplicity itself.  Just go to http://aviary.com/launch/talon and enter in the URL of the page you want to capture.  In just a few seconds it will capture the full page (even the part that needs to scroll down to be viewed) and then launch the Aviary online image editor.  This image editor (also free) allows you to mark up and leave comments anywhere on the image and save it to your desktop.  A more powerful version of the Web page capture is a free FireFox extension that puts a button on your browser tool bar that will cause any page you are looking at (or portion of it if you want) to be captured instantly.

Aviary also provides a rather impressive array of other online image manipulation tools that rival some of the capabilities you would only find in high-end software like PhotoShop or Illustrator.  Keep in mind that all the Aviary tools are a work in progress (i.e. currently in Beta) so expect some glitches here and there.  The price is right and the fact that you can do this from any computer with a high-speed connection and FireFox browser makes it extremely convenient.  This is just another example of how powerful software capabilities that you could only get by installing expensive software is now as close as your Web browser!

Send large email files for free. Up to 2gb

There are lots of services (some free, some not) that help you send big files over the Net.  This is the only drop-dead easy service I know of that lets you send files up to 2GBs for free.

WeTransfer is a big file transfer service that doesn’t require you or your recipients to register, log in or anything.  Just upload the file you want to send (up to 2GBs) and then enter the email addresses for up to 20 recipients and click the “Transfer” button.  It’s as simple as that!

Apparently the way they make money is by displaying background branding images for companies who want to advertise on WeTransfer.  Not sure how well that will work out for them, but until it no longer does it’s a great deal for all of us.