Advanced Access Blog

Don’t you?

Well, our Support Team will be here until 6 PM Pacific Time tonight, but tomorrow we will be closed in honor of the Independence Day Holiday.

We hope you and your family, friends, and neighbors all have a safe and happy celebration.

We will have normal weekend Customer Support hours.

Happy Independence Day!

Outblaze is an email provider - mostly for small business enterprises. So for example, your company could use Outblaze as their email provider; *your* email provider and you may not know it.  So double check to be sure.

They are blocking mail from our servers - this means if you have outblaze and you use email forwarding instead of our POP3 option, you won’t get your emails.  This also means if you send IntelliCards to someone who is an Outblaze client, they will not get your email because IntelliCards are sent from our servers. This is, of course, regrettable.

Normally, if a provider blocks a company, the blocked company can contact the provider and work out a solution.  It’s usually just an automated filter that catches something and blocks you until you contact them and work it out.  “Work it out” usually means you just prove you’re a legit sender, etc.

In our situation with Outblaze, they are unwilling to even speak with us about it, and will not unblock us.  We have made every effort to resolve this, however, we are left with no options.

What we need are clients who are both AA clients and Outblaze clients to contact Outblaze and say, “hey I’m a client of yours and of theirs… what are you going to do to satisfy me as a customer?” If there is enough of a request, then perhaps they will rethink their position.

If you are confident your provider is not outblaze, you should have no worries. If you are not sure, we can help you figure out if you use Outblaze by checking the MX records for the domain at which you receive your email.

I got an email from a friend today about Placeblogger - a site for placeblogs.  What is a placeblog? From the FAQ page:

Placeblogs, however, are about something broader than news alone. They’re about the lived experience of a place. That experience may be news, or it may simply be about that part of our lives that isn’t news but creates the texture of our daily lives: our commute, where we eat, conversations with our neighbors, the irritations and delights of living in a particular place among particular people. However, when news happens in a community, placeblogs often cover those events in unique and nontraditional ways, and provide a community watercooler to discuss those events.

Sounds like a real estate blog to me! In fact, they have a real estate category. Check it out - and add your blog (scroll down on that link, looks like it formats oddly in some browsers).

This is another way to get your blog exposure, of course.  It will feed your blog into searches there based on your location.

If you search the directory for a location it will not just list blogs for that area, but actual posts, so if you have something of interest for a searcher looking in your area, they can go directly to the post on your existing blog.

It’s pretty cool.

Well, who isn’t, right?

I got a contact from Great Reunions about my 10 year High School reunion.  Some of us already had a mini-reunion (about 100 people) but now there is a major one planned for a span of 3 graduating classes, and Great Reunions is on the job.

I was looking around at what sorts of things they did and what I needed to do to get tickets, etc… and noticed they sell “Bio Books”. These are books with biographies about each graduate and what they are up to now. Then I saw that they also sell Bio Book Ads.

You can go to this page and find an ad for a school reunion near you and take out an ad in a bio book.  Very cool - these books are probably something that a lot of people will purchase at their reunion and you can advertise your real estate business (or any business) in that book.

Like most reunion services, Great Reunions seems to have a limited number of states in which they have reunions, but there are plenty of others out there.  Do a Google search for reunion services in your state [YOURSTATE Reunion Service] or other similar search. See if you can advertise in anything that will be in front of the graduates.

People going to their 10 year reunions are a great age group for advertisement of local real estate services.

Check it out, and please comment if you have any experience or success with this sort of advertising, I’d love to hear about it!

Are your competitors having great success from their website and other marketing efforts? Does it feel like everyone else has a piece of the pie and you’re going hungry for leads and business?

We all fall on hard times now and then, and the real estate market isn’t a land flowing with milk and honey right now, that’s for sure! But the rest of the movers and shakers out there aren’t just getting leads by the luck of the draw. They are in it to win it.

Are you doing everything you can to make your real estate website a success? Really?

This week on the Advanced Access Blog I have been talking about writing a whole lot. What does writing have to do with the success of your site? Everything.

If “content is king” why is it the last aspect of your site that gets attention? If you want people do take action on your site, why is the default “stock” verbiage still sitting on your website pages? Writing is the key to all that you intend to accomplish with your real estate website and your business as a whole. Words are the only way you can get someone to do what you want them to do - make contact. A picture may speak a thousand words, but even the best photo of the most amazing property in the world needs a description and information to go along with it.

What’s the reason you don’t write? Some common answers:

“I can’t write well”

That doesn’t matter. Write, even when it isn’t “good”. You talk to your clients all the time, you get business. Just type what you say and you’re good. Don’t over think it, that’s key.

“I don’t have time to write”

Yes you do. If you have time to say you have no time, you have time. I can almost guarantee you spend as much time spinning your wheels as it would take to actually write something for your site.

“I don’t want to write”

Well, that’s no problem - hire someone to write it for you. But you might want to think about the whole “give a man a fish and he eats for a day; teach a man to fish and he eats for a lifetime” thing. Sure hire someone to help (we can help) but know what’s getting created for your site; be involved, don’t leave it to fate.

“I don’t know what to write”

Whether you have writer’s block, you can’t think of an angle for a subject (or can’t think of a subject at all), you can still find something to write about. Even if you feel the subject is trivial, explore it. Don’t knock it till you try it. Write about the current market trend, a community event, a home tour, a great fixer-upper, current events… Still stumped? This Ultimate List of Content Ideas for REALTORS® is great!

Have you read all of this and still feel like you’re not getting anywhere? Don’t get frustrated or discouraged about how to get your site to work for you - we’re a phone call, email, or live chat away. We are your partner in this business investment; we can help you to realize your goals. You have the largest Support Team in the industry and we are here to help you make your site count.

Great websites aren’t born, they are made. You’ll get as much out of it as you put into it.

It isn’t luck. I promise.