Second Self Virtual Assistance

Are you interested in creating your own personal surveys or polls to find out how your open house went, what visitors to your website or blog think or see what your clients like/don’t like about using your services for their real estate transaction?  Get valuable feedback with Zoomerang online surveys.

Zoomerang allows you to create a free account that offers limited access to their vast library of templates, graphs, charts and so much more.  With their free account, you can create a survey with up to 12 questions, you are allowed 100 responses per survey, have access to new online polls and can deploy your surveys to Facebook and Twitter simply and easily.

Zoomerang is so simple to use, as well.  Once you have signed up for your account, you have a choice of creating a survey from a template or creating it completely from scratch. If you create a survey using one of Zoomerang’s templates, you simply:

1. Log in to your account.
2. Click the ”Create Survey” button.
3. Select the template you want to use.  There are six different templates to choose from with the free account: Customer Satisfaction, Consumer Demographics Questions, Company/Organization Event Planning, Meeting Feedback Survey, Student Satisfaction Survey and Web Site Content Survey.  If you wish to preview a template before using it, simply click the “Preview” link next to it.
4. Edit the Title of the survey to whatever you wish to name it.  This is the name that will appear at the top of every page of your survey.
5. Choose the design theme’s colors from the drop down menu.
6. Add your questions (up to 12 per survey).  If you change your mind about a question, you can delete it.
7. When you are finished, click the Next arrow and you’re ready to launch it.

If you wish to create a survey from scratch, Zoomerang offers a step-by-step guide on how to do that as well.  Zoomerang even allows you to create a survey in Word or a text file and upload it to your account. With just a couple of clicks, they’ll do all the work in creating the survey for you.  Voila!

So, if you want to get valuable feedback from open houses, past clients, your website, blog or a company event, create an online survey with Zoomerang.  It’s a great source of information that you can use to create a more successful real estate business.

Pamela Cendejas, Real Estate Virtual Assistant – Second Self Virtual Assistance: When There Isn’t Enough of You to Go Around!

It seems that the way we view online information is continually evolving. Luckily, so is technology. At first, websites had lots of text. But, that got boring. Then, we added photos for a splash of color. Nicer, but still not enough. Static photos gave way to slideshows. And now, videos are all the rage. Luckily, with the evolution of websites and viewer tastes comes the evolution of technology. If you’re looking for a way to bring interest to your site, you might want to consider creating a video yourself. But you don’t have to step in front of the camera or even hire actors to do this. You can convert text to movies with XtraNormal.com.

With the free XtraNormal account, you choose your background, whether you want one or two actors in the movie, whether you want them to be both men, both women or a man and a woman and even the type of voice you wish your actors to use (American accent, British accent, Australian accent, Indian accent, boy, girl, adult, etc.). After that, you simply type in what you want each actor to say. You can control the camera angles, actions, facial expressions, insert any sounds and create pauses wherever you want with each character. If you want an even wider variety of options, you can pay for them with xtranormal points you can purchase.

What can a REALTOR(R) use this for? Create a video profile on your social networks or website, a special holiday message, highlight a community in a fun, new way, talk about recent real estate news that your visitors may enjoy, share information that you think may be helpful to buyers or sellers or even create a fun “congratulations on your new home/the sale of your home” video. This is definitely one way to catch a website visitor’s attention and help you stand out from the crowd.

Here is a quick video that one of our team members put together using the free options on XtraNormal:

It’s silly and fun, but can also be used as an inventive way to grab those potential clients’ attention. If you can type, you can create a movie. Convert your text into movies with XtraNormal.

Pamela Cendejas, Real Estate Virtual Assistant – Second Self Virtual Assistance: When There Isn’t Enough of You to Go Around!

My husband and I love the Steve Martin movie “Father of the Bride”.  Yes, the Spencer Tracy version is nice and all, but I do love Steve Martin.  In the movie, he tries to cope with the costs of a “little wedding” that turns into THE event of the century.  Trying to pare down the costs wherever possible, he decides that it is better to go with the “cheaper chicken” (which sounds like “chipper chicken” when spoken by wedding planner Franc, played by a hysterical Martin Short) than the “chic shrimp” for dinner.  So, anytime my husband and I make the more economical decision, we call it “the chipper chicken”.

Why am I telling you this story?  To explain this story.  In the last week, I have had two real estate professionals call me to fix errors made by another Virtual Assistant who charged less money but also did a much more inferior job.  In effect, they ordered the “cheaper chicken”.  And both real estate professionals told me the exact same thing: “I should have just hired you in the first place.” Not to toot my own horn or anything, but I wholeheartedly agree.

Now, I’m not saying you should stand for highway robbery.  And the most expensive person isn’t necessarily the best either.  However, if you call around to different Virtual Assistants and find that they all charge between this amount of dollars and that amount of dollars but there’s one Virtual Assistant who is charging much less than what everyone else is charging, there may be a reason.  That reason will most likely be that they don’t know what the heck they’re doing.  I think the best way to gauge whether a Virtual Assistant can do what they promise is to check their references.  After all, who’s better at letting you know how happy/disappointed they are with a Virtual Assistant than someone who has used them before.

As for the cost, consider this: if the two agents had hired me originally to do the job rather than hire “the other guy”, it would actually have been cheaper in the long run.  It typically costs more time (read “your money”) to fix a mess than to get the job done right the first time.  So, when you need to hire a Virtual Assistant to help you with any of your website, marketing, blogging or social network needs, etc., consider checking out their references before hiring the “cheaper chicken”.  You do get what you pay for.

Pamela Cendejas, Real Estate Virtual Assistant – Second Self Virtual Assistance: When There Isn’t Enough of You to Go Around!

Recently, my virtual assistant team and I needed to find an alternative to Photo Bucket for online photo storage and sharing.  We were creating some custom ads to jazz up a client’s Craigslist marketing.  We created beautiful custom ads, full of color with great graphics and, at the end of the day, we were very happy with what we came up with.  So, we uploaded them to our client’s Photo Bucket account so that we could use the image source code on the Craigslist ad.  Imagine my surprise when Photo Bucket decided to delete four of the five custom ads we created because “This image or video violated our terms of use”.  Huh?  But the fifth one was just fine.  We were at a loss.  So, we had to do find an alternative and FAST!

Flickr, of course, came to the top of our minds.  Flickr’s great for keeping an online photo album.  As are Snapfish, 4Shared and My Photo Album.  The problem, however, came when we tried to use the direct link.  Unlike Photo Bucket, which gives you a direct link to just the image itself, none of the “direct links” were to the photo.  Each one came up in its respective photo album with accompanying background for whichever site it was loaded on.  That’s when we came across Image Shack. (more…)

With the proliferation of businesses interacting online through blogs, social media and websites, it is important to keep an eye on your online reputation.  There is now a brand new tool for real time reputation management: Yext Rep.

Yext Rep is a free tool to manage all your online accounts in one central site.  You simply enter your social media and other online accounts, which then generates a feed.  This feed is updated every time there is activity on one of your online accounts.  For example, when someone writes something that mentions your name or company online, Yext Rep will find that post, send a notification to your Yext dashboard and give you a chance to respond to what is written in real time.  Google Alerts are a good tool to keep you up to date with what is happening when someone mentions the key phrase you set up.  I use Google Alerts for not only myself but my clients.  However, it can take a full day to get an alert and the alert will send you everything that uses your specific phrase in their posts.  When you have a name like “Second Self“, that means anything that mentions both “Second” and “Self” in the same post will be grouped together and sent to you.  That can be alot of unnecessary alerts. (more…)

Last August, I wrote about how Google Wave was a new way to communicate online. Up until recently, Google Wave was trying to figure out how exactly it could work for people and was only available by invitation. Now that it has been made available to the public, how can Google Wave help your business?

While it’s not going to balance your checkbook or pay your bills for you, Google Wave does offer some interesting possibilities. It combines email, instant messaging, online document sharing, meeting memos and so much more in real-time online. So, instead of sending emails back and forth to a client, you can ride the Google Wave and converse back and forth online, even sharing documents or videos that your client may need to look over. This allows them to ask you questions while you are online with them, even if you are in different cities. (more…)

SERPs are the Search Engine Results Pages that are created after you enter your keywords in the search field of any search engine: Yahoo!, Google or Bing. How can the new SERPs drive more traffic to your website?

Right now, Google allows you to refine your search even further than a generic term by giving you the option to search according to shopping, news, images, videos, maps, books, blogs, updates or discussions of the search term you entered. You’ll see your options on the left hand side of the SERP. It even gives you the chance to look at sites based on the time of entry, nearby results, related searches, sites with images and even searches based on similar terms. Real-time updates have become huge on all search engines, which is what makes social networking such an important factor in marketing your business. Yahoo has also started offering these options and Bing pioneered the idea when they began.

What does this mean for driving traffic to your site? It means that you need to think more diversely about what things you place emphasis on when doing your search engine optimization. There are five main Google search engines that you need to insert yourself into to increase your rankings in Google overall. These include:

You Tube – Pay attention to your title and tags when posting videos on You Tube.

Google Image Search – Add images to your blogs that include keywords.

Google News – They only index news articles that are three days old or less and only index it once. This one can be a little trickier than the others.

Google Maps/Local Search – Add your name, business name, contact info and areas you cover as well as keywords, when possible, to Google Maps and Google Local Search.

Google Blog Search – Blog often, with varying lengths and link to more than one source.

Since the search engines are constantly evolving, it is important that your business model is constantly evolving to keep up. The new SERPs can help drive more traffic to your website if you know how to work it. If you’re at a loss on where to begin, let your Real Estate Virtual Assistant help you out.

Pamela Cendejas, Real Estate Virtual Assistant – Second Self Virtual Assistance: When There Isn’t Enough of You to Go Around!

Do you like to take photos?  Do you understand the importance of blogging to promote yourself?  Photoblogging in seconds?  Pre-Posterous!  No, really.  It’s quite simple with Posterous.com.  Just follow these simple steps to get blogging in seconds:

1. Create an account at Posterous.com.  It’s free.  It’s easy.  To do so, simply send an email to post@posterous.com to create your very first Posterous post.  Posterous will email you back in seconds with the chance to add your password.  Voila!  You have successfully created your first post on Posterous.
2. Use your camera phone to take the photo.  If you have a Smart Phone (iPhone, Droid, Blackberry), you can email it directly from your camera phone after you have added your cell phone number to your Posterous account.
3. If you don’t have a Smart Phone, you can still click whatever photos you wish.  Just download them onto your computer and send them to Posterous via your laptop or PC’s email.   Simple!

When setting up the account at Posterous, you will be able to choose a theme, create a bio, add your own photo, find other friends that use Posterous via your Facebook, Twitter, Gmail, Yahoo or Hotmail accounts and invite friends to subscribe your Posterous site.  You can also set your Posterous blogs to automatically post to your Facebook profile and/or fan page, Twitter, LinkedIn, Flickr, You Tube and several other social networks.  You can even have it autopost to your blog.  It currently supports Blogger, Tumblr, Livejournal, Shopify, Typepad, Xanga, WordPress, MovableType and Drupal.  If you don’t use one of these blogging platforms, you can try to add it via the “Other Blog” link.  Anytime you post to Posterous, it will automatically post it wherever you tell it to.

How can you use this for your real estate needs?  While you’re out and about looking at real estate, you can take photos of your client’s property.  If your phone has video capabilities, you can do this as well.  Simply make the subject line of your email the property’s address, add a brief description and send off to Posterous’ email address.  Posterous does the rest of the work for you!  If you find a property that you know would be perfect for one of your clients, you can snap photos/take video, send them to Posterous and post them online immediately.  Simply give your client a call, tell them to go to your Posterous site and they can see what you’ve just seen right away.

If you really want to get the Google juice flowing, you may want to use your own custom domain name or even set up a subdomain using your website address.  This is a special URL that you can cater to your specific areas of expertise.  For example, if your website is “MainStreetUSARealEstate.com”, you may want to try “photoblog.MainStreetUSARealEstate.com”.  All you have to do is choose a .com, .net or .org domain name, check the availability and Posterous will do the rest.  Why should you consider a subdomain?  Because anything posted on this subdomain can be attributed to your entire website.  Since Google absolutely LOVES when content is updated often, your site will zoom up the search engine rankings in no time.

If you’re really feeling creative, you may want to consider having your virtual assistant or web designer create a totally custom look to your Posterous photoblog to keep your branding consistent.  Otherwise, you have 13 pre-made themes to choose from.  There’s even a place to add your Google Analytics to analyze the traffic coming to your site and add a Feedburner RSS feed if you wish.

So, it really isn’t so pre-Posterous to start photoblogging in seconds.  You’ll be glad you did!

Pamela Cendejas, your Real Estate Virtual Assistant – Second Self Virtual Assistance: When There Isn’t Enough of You to Go Around!

Facebook recently announced several new social plugins for websites and blogs.  Developers at Facebook created some pretty interesting new ways to engage your page visitors by creating the following plugins that you can add to your website or blog with ease.  These social plugins include:

Facebook Announces New Social Plugins for Websites and Blogs

Like Button – Add this like button to any page and any Facebook user who happens to visit this page can share it on their Facebook profile with the click of a button.

Recommendations – Gives your visitors personalized recommendations for pages on your site that might be of interest to them.

Login with Faces – Allows your visitors to view profile pics of their friends who have already joined your site as well as a login button.

Comments – Allows anyone to leave a comment about your page, blog, blog post or whatever you attach it to and then share the comment on their Facebook wall as well as their friends’ streams.

Activity Feed – View the most recent activity on any domain you specify.  If a user is logged in to Facebook at the time they view the Activity Feed plugin, they will see content from their friends.  If they are not logged in to Facebook, they will see the feed from your site and have the option to log in to their account if they wish.

Like Box – Allows viewers to see how many people already like the page, which of their friends like it, read recent page posts and like the page without having to visit it.

Facepile – Shows profile pics of all the viewer’s friends who have signed up for your page.

Live Stream – Great plugin when running a live event: webinar, webcasts, etc.  Allows users to post comments in real time.

This is exciting news for all Realtors®!  With Facebook announcing new social plugins for website and blogs, you now have a fun way to engage your audience and share your information on an even wider scale than ever before.  If you need any help, make sure to contact your virtual assistant.  They will be able to help you implement any of these neat new plugins.

Pamela Cendejas, Real Estate Virtual Assistant – Second Self Virtual Assistance: When There Isn’t Enough of You to Go Around!

I thought I had heard it all until I read that now you can schedule appointments online.  After the initial shock, I thought “What a cool idea!”  So, I began looking for a scheduling service that would be easy-to-use and easy-on-the-budget for the busy real estate professional.

Scheuling appointment online means:

• Never lose another prospect because they couldn’t get a hold of you.
• No more phone tag or waiting for an email response.
• Your prospects set up an appointment on your website.
• You prospects can schedule an appointment with you anytime, day or night, with the click of a button.

The latest research data shows that 87% of all buyers begin their search for a home online.  Now, your prospects can enter the address of the properties they have found on the web and would like to preview along with the time and day they want to see them.

Your prospects will love the convenience of clicking a “Book Now” button to make an appointment.  Not only is it easy, but it is available any time night or day.  Prospects will be impressed with the convenience of the service that you are offering them.  Happy prospects make happy customers for life.

I found two services that offer both a basic plan which is free and paid programs with enhanced features.

• BookFresh - I love this service and use it myself (as you can see from the icon in my blog nav bar to the right).  When someone fills out the BookFresh form, it sends me an email with all the details of who is requesting an appointment, the time the appointment has been requested and all contact information so I can easily get a hold of the potential customer.  I have only been using this service for a brief time, but have already had several people use it to book appointments with me.  It’s great!
• GenBook – GenBook is another online scheduling tool that works in a similar manner to BookFresh.   Please visit their website to learn more about what they have to offer and if this is the service for you.

As a virtual assistant for busy real estate professionals such as yourselves, I know the value of being organized and staying on top of any leads.  These are a couple of great ways to do that.  Try them out and let me know what you think!

Pamela Cendejas – Second Self Virtual Assistance: When There Isn’t Enough of You to Go Around!