Realespace

All I can say is try it…

You’re not going to find anything useful, but the concept isreally cool. Millions of blogs posts streaming to your computer screensaver as the world spins around. My laptop could not handle the screensaver. It was really jittery, but they do have a standard mode you can open from your start menu which was nice and smooth.

Source: http://twingly.se/ScreenSaver.aspx

I like the ideas of information getting spread on sources outside of normal paths. There is another screensaver that I like called Electricsheep. Electricsheep is open source and allows anyone to create animations for it.

Source: http://electricsheep.org/

You have been told over and over that blogging is the key to building your online business, and then a report like this comes out. Simply put, people trust their peers first and blogger least.

Who do people trust? (It ain’t bloggers)
I’ve been spending more and more time pouring over data, medium usage, behavioral and preference data for clients, and am learning more and more about how humans behave on the web.

So who do people trust? Three research studies indicate it’s peers, or people they know. And social clout from bloggers, or those with a lot of online friends ain’t it.
Source: The Web Strategist - Jeremiah Owyang

This hits real estate bloggers hard, and further demonstrates how real estate is all about relationships.

So, is your blog worthless? Of Course not, but you need to focus more time on getting a following, building that trust with your readers. Tested factors still set many guidelines for marketing. You are all using your blog to market, so your blog falls into the same guidelines. New visitors to your blog probably will not contact you for business. Just like people that get your postcards, or newsletters in the mail will not contact you. The last I heard, it takes eight postcards, or pieces of direct mail to get a response.

Most blogs die in just a few months, well before they get any type of following, and the sad thing it, they die because they have no following. Make sense?

So stick with it, and focus more on touching people (virtually) and you will build trust much faster then just blogging about your market stats

Blogging for Personal Branding id a slideshare show that teaching you how to blog. Trisha is an expert blogger that has taken her career to new levels. Trish Okubo is the disruptive innovator for Ebay and founded Omiru.com

Don’t be scared the 326 slides, They are very well planned and you click through them in only a couple minutes. The slides were made for the web 2.0 expo.

10 Steps overview

1. Pick a topic that is uniquely you
2. Stand for something real - If you don’t love it, don’t blog about it
3. Be newsworthy
4. Be awesome!
5. Create a stoplist
6. Build real relationships
7. Meet people in person
8. Make it easy to spread the word
9. Create community wherever you go
10. Be patient

This is really good stuff, and I see a few that I need to work on immediately.

The iGoogle team announced today that they have extended the iGoogle api and introduced some new features.

The three new features are:

1. updated navigation, similar to the Facebook app menu
2. new canvas setting so application can take up more screen real estate, similar to Facebook’s canvas page
3. friend update widget, similar to the Facebook update notifications

As you can see, iGoogle has Facebook in the crosshairs with open social as their weapon, and frankly, Facebook should be scared.

Actually, Wordpress, Six Apart, Facebook, and even smaller collaboration software vendors that have utilized Open Social should be scared. When Open Social was first announce, we installed the shindig server to integrate Open Social with all the blogs we develop. Each blog network using Wordpress Multi-user would be an Open Social container.

The idea was put on the back burner of our development because of two things, mainly the OpenSocial server (Shindig) was not very good. Open Social was announce with the intent that developers would make widgets for existing networks such as Ning, and Orkut, not making all new newtworks. Secondly, Wordpress actually has very good plugin system, that can be extended, although not a lot of developers do.

For Example,
when a developer writes a plugin, that plugin can then be extended by other developers by the use of hooks and actions. Our RateWindow™ widget is an example of this. Once a user installed the RateWindow™ application on their site, other developers can access hooks within the RateWindow™ widget. The RateWindow™ application comes with a built in e-newsletter application that can be used be the owner of the widget to brand themselves via email. We have developed a property listing widget that can be used with the RateWindow™ widget. Not only does recent blog posts get sent in the e-newsletter, but the Realtors listings, profile, and any other plugin that “Hooks up” to RateWindow.

If you not a developer, this probably makes no sense, so let’s just put it this way. All your blog plugins can communicate with each other and extend your branding. For more information contact me, I’d love to bore you with the details.

The major drawback with using Wordpress plugins as a make shift Open Social application distribution is that the Wordpress database is completely wide open because of similar naming conventions and the Wordpress database classes. Any developer can use simple code to grab anything from the database and exploit it.

I’m a big fan of Wordpress, and will continue to develop for the Wordpress platform, but today marks a big change in our thinking and development. The ideals of community building and collaboration are changing and

If it is taking you a couple hours to write blog posts, you are not doing it right. The most common reason why people give up blogging is that it takes too much time. Even the longest posts (600 words + ) should only take you 15 minutes from the time you start typing to the time you hit publish. Here are a few concepts that will speed up your posts.

The computer has a handy little button called the delete button, and sidekick backspace button. These little fellows makes your life much harder when it comes to blogging. I suggest writing as much as you can without these buttons.

Why?
Because, instead of just writing down what comes to mind then editing in large, you edit as you go and waste time. Next time you write, keep track of how many times you go hit each button. Writing down everything that comes to mind is very similar to brainstorming ideas and I’m pretty sure you were all taught this concept in elementary school. I actually write down my posts (ideas) on a piece of paper, not editing at all, just write. Set a timer for about 15 minutes and don’t stop until the timer alarms. If you get writer’s block, keep writing the same words over and over, just keep the pencil moving.

There have been cases where writer’s block has lasted for years or decades
Source: wiki - Writers block

If you have never done this writing exercise, you will be amazed how much you will have on paper in just 15 minutes. Now you have a really good place to start editing and making the post more readable. Just cross out, use arrows, circle paragraphs to edit the post while it’s on paper.

All that is left to do it type it into your blog, which is the easy part. When you are typing into your blog, don’t right click every time you see the  red squiggly underline on misspelled words… hit them all at the end, after you have finished the post.

when you write you are actually a multi-tasking mess. Writing, editing, correcting… try to do each one separately and your writing will speed up tremendously.

Try writing the post on paper in the evening and then blogging in the morning. Of course after your first cup of coffee, so your fingers are nice and loose and ready to get to work. Also, in the morning more people are reading the blog readers while they are suppose to be working so it’s good to publish while you have eyeballs on your content.

First of all I want to thanks all the guys that work on putting this conference together. IMO it was a huge success. We came away with some good relationships with vendor and I learned something from every panel. Good job!

REtechsouth website
The guys that put it all together
Brad Nix, Maxsell.net
Matt Fagioli, DiamondDwellings.com

There were actually a lot of people involved, but those two guys really did a great job and put most of the even together.

I was a speaker on “The Dreaded SEO” panel. There was some good information put out from that panel, although there were some differentiating ideas. When I was preparing for the panel, I focused on 3 concepts to achieve from the discussion. Those being, it’s all about relationships, SEO can be to much to handle, and keywords are the key.

It’s all about relationships
Every business is a lead business, whether you are a dentist, real estate agents, software developer, your business will not succeed with out leads. If you are focusing on getting all your leads from google search results you will not be in business for very long. Even on the internet you have to be pro-active and go get your business. The internet should not change your business plan, but rather enhance your lead generating plans. IMO you should focus on building relationships, just like you do in real life.

If you are just starting a blog, you should optimize it for search, but you really won’t see results for many months. In that same amount of time, if you make a friend a day on the internet from commenting on blog posts, citing other blogs, using Facebook and linkedin, etc… you will be much better off then if you spent that time focusing on SEO.

Do the math, 1 friend a day X 6 months = 180 friends, that you are interacting with, building trust and credibility. Remember your search results will improve with more and more traffic, so it will naturally improve your results.

SEO is too much to handle for most of us
The really cool thing about the internet is that information we put out there will stay for a long time, even if we (the authors) long forget about it. Again, this is for people just starting to blog, but imagine 5 years from now, how much information you will have out there. One thing to remember is that even though the information is out you should still make sure you have control of it. New standards of data portability and pushing that all sites lets you (the author) to take your work with you. So if you are blogging on a site that does not let you export and move your articles, get a new provider, FAST. I love Wordpress and I hope it will be around for a long time. I can take my posts to any other Wordpress site, or most other blogging packages, but we don’t know what will happen in the future…5 years from now who knows how we will be putting out information on the internet… you have to be ready for anything.

So, my point is, don’t fret about SEO, your website/blog will naturally get better and better search results it gets older, gets more traffic, and grows. Write interesting articles, with catchy titles, and engage the public’s interest. I know you are thinking, “But won’t SEO help it grow faster?” Yes, but in the time it is taking you to read this post, Google has probably changed their algorithms…they seem to do that a lot, and what worked yesterday is not working anymore, or worse yet will hinder your search engine status. Don’t let it stress you out, have fun blogging, it is a great outlet… Not your second job. Also, many SEO companies are expensive, and most will not guarantee results, so weigh your options for other marketing material that you can put that money towards.

Keywords are the Key
Sit down for an hour and define 20-30 keywords that you want to get search results for. Focus on your niche. Then take that list to Google Keywords Tool. this tool will show you how much those terms are searched for and how much competition there is. It will also show similar keyword phrases. Define your list even more with the Google tool, now each of yours posts should target your keywords. I’m now talking about keyword density. Pick a keyword and make sure that in your next post you use that keyword enough to dominate all other keywords in the post.

For example, if I have a 400 word post and my keywords are “San Francisco Real Estate”. I should include “San Francisco Real Estate” at least 5 times in that post. The more words, the more often to use it. There are many keyword density tools on the internet that will make it easy to count your keywords

Keyword density is important because search engines use this information to categorize a site’s theme, and to determine which terms the site is relevant to. The perfect keyword density will help achieve higher search engine positions. Keyword density needs to be balanced correctly (too low and you will not get the optimum benefit, too high and your page might get flagged for “keyword spamming”).
Source: SEOchat.com

There are many technologies that can be used to display remote content on your site.

Basic examples

• Iframe tags to create a little box and display a remote website.
• Flash can grab remote data and use it as variables
• Ajax can also grab data and use a variables
• Json with javascript can access and return variables

When you get out of the simple remote data display and want to start interacting with remote websites, you run into many security restraints. Of course, the security restraints are to protect your website, but they are not to be fully trusted.

Just like a home security system. They work well, but if someone REALLY wants to break in, they will…just depends on how much time and effort they are willing to spend. The internet is a little more complicated. A hacker can make an attack that will work on any website that has a vulnerability. Imagine if a burglar was able to break into every home that had an open window, at the same time…

websites, and the browsers you use to surf the web have implemented systems to make sure hackers are not sending remote information to your website. It is called the same origin policy and it prevents remote hosts from accessing website properties on your website. But what if you want trusted remote sites to access your properties and manipulate your website. there are really no easy to allow this.

In what some would consider a hack, we do manipulate remote website properties with our widgets. We will never create a malicious widget. We only make widgets that extend websites, provide benefits and features, and make the website better and more productive. When a company decides to take their data and make it available to millions of websites, they should be able to do so in a trusted and non-contained way.

Here is a good ZDnet post about XSS (cross site scripting attacks) using applets

Summary

• many widgets are simple little containers that only display information from a remote website
• if you want to install a widget that manipulates your website properties MAKE SURE you get that widget from a trusted source.

Talk to any business analysis or venture capitalist and they will tell you there is money in groups. Groups made of 40 million plus users, all collaborating on a single website or community, will generate millions in revenue for the website owner. Examples are of course Facebook and Myspace or any other website that can attract that many users.

If you can bring in that many people to one location you will be able to advertise to them and make money. These concepts have been around for a long time, and hold true through the different phases of online advertising.

• Phase 1 - The internet is so fresh, should we even advertise on it?
  These were questions asked by large early portals such as Yahoo and Excite. As we all know advertising did become the answer and allowed these companies to explode in growth, and revenue.
• Phase 2 - Better search results = better advertising results.
  Google and Overture revolutionized the ad market by returning relevant ads to the consumer based on search queries. Google made search better and Overture made buying keywords better…after a lawsuit and out-of-court settlement they are now one, as Google adwords.
• Phase 3 - Today and the future, distributed services that co-brand and add richness through widgets.
  There are many new advertising models coming about. The largest has to be Facebook’s Beacon, which had a huge rise and fall due to questionable data mining on the things we buy online, but the concept is really smart and inevitably will be one of the largest ad model on the web, they just have to gain the trust back from their community

  Many websites are happy getting paid, via ad revenue, to place banners on their sites and guide visitors to other sites. But what if you want to sell products from remote websites, and not lose visitors? The widget solves this problem. Not just any widget, because frankly there are a lot of widgets that are just glorified advertising banners. the widget I refer to allows products to be purchased, subscriptions to be made, and visitors becoming customers at 2 websites at the same time.

  Good luck becoming the 1% of website owners that can possibly generate 40 million page views a month with their website. A distributable widget removes the need for large groups to congregate at one location. an advertising widget can get the views needed to be successful on much, much smaller websites with a fraction of the traffic.

Summary:
widgets that bring services and additional features to small websites are going to be a very large part of advertising models today and in the future. Websites will not have to send visitors away in order to get a buck. businesses will be able to co-brand their services easily amongst millions of different websites. More websites will want your advertising on their sites if it adds additional features

Recently, many companies that I talk to either have a widget concept in development or they are looking into creating a widget strategy. Unfortunately many of these companies are missing some main concepts about deploying a widget. Without the basics, your widget will not get the attention and user distribution that you are looking for.

1. Benefit all parties involved.
   If you are thinking about deploying widget, don’t just think about your company and how you want to get your information on as many websites as you possibly can. Widgets are all about adding additional features and benefits to the host site. A widget that only benefits the parent company is nothing more then a glorified banner ad. Good luck trying to get people to put a banner ad on their site to benefit your company.Your widget should add features and benefits to the host website. Provide benefits to the visitors of that host website, and in turn the widget owner will benefit from additional exposure. Put yourself third in the hierarchy of widget deployment.
2. Do not take visitors away from the host site.
   How simple can that be? Yet, the majority of all widgets do that. Web programming has come a long way. We can add full applications on host websites with only one line of code. The webmaster simply copies and pastes a line of code from the widget companies website and they have a feature rich web application on their site. If you are thinking about a widget, you really need to think about full applications running on the host site. Remember give that host site features and benefits and co-brand with the host site. The visitors will not leave the host site and all parties benefit!
3. Give the host site credit
   Everyone that puts your widget on their site should be given credit. Give them thanks by linking to them on your company website. Make a widget page that shows all stats for that widget. Another great way to give credit it to add a feature to the widget that shows random links to sites that have the widget. Be careful, of course, many people will not want to send people away, but I want to touch on a key aspect of widgets. That key concept is the viral aspect of widgets. Think of them as a snowball. Think of ways to give credit to all parties and that widget will grow and grow!

These concepts are just the tip of the iceberg, and give a very general overview. In upcoming posts, we will talk about better alternatives to widgets, how to deploy widgets, and all the components of widgets. So grab our feed if you want to stay up-to-date with widget strategies.

If you have never heard of the 80/20 rule, it’s simple. I have found a few different meaning of this rule from talking to coaches, instructors, mentors, etc…

1. Only 20% of your daily activities (work) will bring in 80% of your business. This means that out of the 100% of the work you do every day the majority (80%) is supplemental activities that help support the business, but does not bring in revenue, or more business. 20% of the work does bring in business. The problem is the 20% is hard. It is hitting the pavement, being face to face, it GETTING OUT OF YOUR COMFORT ZONE!There is a major problem with computers. They make us want to do the supplemental activities because they are so easy. It’s comfortable and safe to be behind a computer.
2. I’ve also seen this rule displayed as 20% of any business sector controls 80% of that business sector. What do the top 20% do to make them so successful? They do all the hard stuff, they are out and about, out of the comfort zone, in your face, getting business.

This rule is used by life coaches all the time. When combined with accountability it can be very powerful for your business. Take the time to look at yourself and analyze your business practices. Are you doing the hard 20% or are you doing the easy 80%. Better yet, are you telling yourself you are doing the hard 20% but really not. Hold yourself accountable and get more business.

How can you be more productive online.

1. Automate your daily routine. I consider blogging in the 80% category. It’s easy to write a blog article, but hard to get people to notice. Make sure that you automate your syndication. Make sure your messages are getting sent to all the major blog readers automatically.
2. Don’t read email first thing in the morning. Get something done… This is actually a great time to blog. The night before, get some material ready to write and then in the morning blog it. Make sure you do not spend more then 20 minutes writing…get it done and get on with your day.
3. Get a lot of stuff to write about. Most offices have business meetings once a week. They usually have printouts of the weekly news events. Take those and write about them. Also set up your home pages to automatically grab news so you have it ready to write about.