Internet marketing, email list building and social media have become critical to the modern-day election process.

Regardless of where you stand on political issues, a lot can be learned right now from Washington when it comes to online marketing.

I was listening to one of my favorite podcasts this weekend when the topic of how BarackObama.com had designed its current home page arose.

After opening it up to check it out for myself, I must admit I was really impressed.

I wanted to share my key takeaways. I think you will find many of them valuable as your own website evolves.

7 Things You Can Learn From BarackObama.com

1. Super-clean header

Completely eliminating standard tabs like About Me, Contact Me, etc.,  in the header might seem risky. Not having any navigation categories above the fold is certainly a new approach to designing a home page. I happen to like it a lot. It forces your eyes, and more importantly your mouse, to go exactly where they want you to.

They give you three total options. Play the video, give us your email or continue to the full site. I am particularly intrigued by the “Continue to website” option, which I will discuss more below.

Take a moment and visit your website’s home page right now. How many clickable options are there? My guess is way too many.

2. One huge image

Images evoke emotion. Having one image displayed at a time that is really well done keeps the design clean and can instantly portray what your brand is all about. At the same time, it is also putting a greater emphasis on the email opt-in form.

Sites like Groupon and Living Social have recently used this approach to much success. Your website should have thousands of pictures of homes and local attractions — maybe there are just too many currently on your home page.

Here is a great example of a real estate website that has already implemented the “mega photo” approach. It looks great.

3. Clearly state what your brand stands for

Does your brand stand for something? If so, is that clearly stated on your home page for the world to see?

This area of a real estate website is often used for things like “Search for Homes” or “How’s the Market?”

Everyone offers that, so offer something else. I think it makes a lot of sense to make your core values as a company very clear on your homepage.

Krisstina Wise of The Good Life Team has done this brilliantly with the brokerage’s new site.

4. A professionally produced video

Video has become arguably the powerful medium for communicating messages online. Does your home page have a video right now? I am betting it will soon.

A team of agents in Miami recently partnered with a video production company to produce this really great team bio video. This is a trend I see gaining traction quickly.

Additionally, the placement holder for a video on the home page allows for “redoing” that element without redesigning the entire site.

Here is a great example of a Mother’s Day-centric video that an agent produced for the recent holiday. It would have been a great seasonal choice for their home page.

5. A call to action that makes you feel something

“Click Here” and “Learn More” don’t exactly elicit an emotion. “Stand Up With the President” does.

The copy that you write is really important on your home page. When it sits above your email newsletter form it becomes even more paramount.

Consider taking a look at the current “Calls to Action” on your home page and freshening them up. “Search for Homes” is certainly a step up from “Search the MLS” — both, however, lack feeling.

6. Only ask for critical information on your opt-in form

Far too many Web lead forms ask for ungodly amounts of information. Name, email, phone number and physical address is too much. The less you ask for, the more leads you will get.

I would suggest choosing the two things you need the most to convert the lead. In Obama’s case, it is email and ZIP code. For you, it might be phone number and email. Take a look at your current lead generation forms on your home page and see how many of the fields you can eliminate — then eliminate them.

7. The home page as a landing page

In reality, the home page for BarackObama.com is what many people would refer to as a landing page, not a home page.

Many sites use pop-ups, landing pages and sidebar widgets to get people to give up their email address. Few have designed their home page with an email conversion focus.

The majority of the traffic that your site gets from social media sites like Twitter and Facebook will be come in by visitors clicking on a specific article, not a link to the home page. Additionally, people browsing Google for information often times find a sub page of your site or a specific blog post, not the home page.

After reading what initially drew them in, it is common Web browsing behavior for a visitor to then click the home button to see what else the site has to offer. When they do, is your site asking for their email?

BarackObama.com, in essence, provides the benefit of a “pop up” after the second click, without the annoying “pop up” itself.

Did you learn a lesson or two from our commander in chief’s website?

I know I did!

A special thanks to Darin Persinger for inspiring this article.

I am sure there will be some traditionalists who are opposed to designing the home page of a website with such a focus on conversion.

I welcome their thoughts and yours below.

From the results of a NAR members survey: “For all Realtors in 2010, the typical brokerage specialist completed eight transaction sides or commercial deals. Eight percent did not complete a single transaction in 2010, down from 12 percent in both 2009 and 2008. Median gross income among sales agents was a mere $24,900.” However, this report was completed with fewer than 9,000 survey results.

At the end of April 2011, NAR reported it had 1.01 million members (that figure does not include all the agents who operate as non-Realtor agents and brokers). Including those could bring the figure up nearer the 2 million mark.

Perhaps this is a more realistic scenario:

NAR’s revised home sales figure for 2011 was 4.96 million. Fannie Mae’s number was 4.93 million. Both these figures were for existing homes, not new construction.

Assuming some 15 percent of sales were a combo of FSBOs (or other sales including interspousal transfers), that’s approximately 4.2 million sales among close to 2 million agents.

An average of “two and a bit” sales per agent. Hundreds of thousands of real estate agents are earning less than a Wal-Mart cashier or worse — no income at all. Not pretty, is it?

How NOT to be one of those at the bottom of the food chain

lion image via shutterstock

You don’t necessarily have to aspire to be one of the elite 10 percent of agents who dominate the market. You just need to know what works, have a realistic plan and execute with conviction and energy!

The secret to success really isn’t a secret at all:

1. Know your niche market.

2. Know your inventory.

3. Know the comparables.

4. Say what you mean and mean what you say.

5. Always have your client’s best interests at heart.

Some of you are going to say, “Hey, the first three look too much like hard work.” Well, frankly, in the early stages it will be.

Getting up to speed is the price to be paid for long-term success. Once you have the knowledge and expertise, the energy to maintain that plateau is the easy part.

Garbage in, garbage out, and more lies, damned lies, and statistics …

In my humble opinion, median and average prices are the biggest red herrings in the business.

Median price indicates that one-half is higher and one-half lower. For instance, the median price of 31 sold homes would be the price that is lower than 15 of the prices and also higher than 15 of them.

When tracking median prices over a period of time, the figure can be badly skewed if, for instance, the luxury market collapses, as has been the case in most markets across the U.S.

The absorption rate is a much-improved indicator of market swings. It’s a formula that takes the number of weeks it takes to sell the current inventory at the present rate of sales.

To calculate Absorbsion Rate you need to know how many listings are currently on the market, plus how many listings sold last month.

You must count under-contract or pendings as listings, since they have not actually closed – not SOLD yet.

Multiply the number of homes actually solds last month by 12 (months).

Then divide by the current listings. That equals the number of units that would sell each week.

Finally divide the # of units (that should sell each week) into the number available = absorption rate.

Where is all your data?

card catalog image via shutterstock

In many areas, your local MLS will offer only one solution for MLS data and a separate one for tax data.

If your MLS participates, one relatively new source of data is the NAR-sponsored Realtors Property Resource, or RPR. This is how they describe themselves:

“Advanced reporting features will allow the Realtor to create custom reports to provide to clients and customers, keeping the Realtor in the center of the transaction, armed with tremendous information and analytics, all in one place.”

To fulfill your fiduciary duty to present your client with all the facts, you may have to do the blending yourself. How you do this could very well differentiate you from your competition.

Most MLS systems today make it easy to keep abreast of recent listing activity, with reports showing expirations, new, withdrawn, under contract, sold listings, as well as price changes. You must be watching these reports on a daily basis.

Competing for listings

A properly prepared comparative market analysis, or CMA, will allow you the opportunity to make adjustments to the properties that you are comparing your potential listing against.

Completing your CMAs will be much easier if you put the work into creating your sales and inventory wall map as recommended in one of my recent articles: Do your homework and research your market!

If you created your wall map properly, it will be easier to spot trends and to work out the difference in value between homes in a subdivision or neighborhood.

Or even between different locations in town. A similar house on the other side of town might sell for 10 percent more than your target property, for instance.

You could also more easily work out the value that buyers place on the same-floor-plan home being in a cul-de-sac rather than on a busier through road.

Or the difference in value between, say, a full-on ocean view and no view at all.

Winning over the buyers too!

Knowing these ratios is invaluable when you are in the car with that out-of-town buyer who is not sure yet if he wants you to represent him.

Who do you think they might choose if you demonstrate that you know what you are talking about as you cruise through the neighborhoods pointing out comparables and trends along the way?

Attracting clients with your knowledge

Once you have your brain stuffed with all this relative data it’s time to use it to attract new clients, and one of the best places to do that is on the Internet.

Using WordPress, you can easily create sites where you can share your knowledge. Adding a splattering of IDX listing displays and creating neighborhood, subdivision and town/city guides with information that potential buyers are seeking is not difficult if you know where to look for relevant data.

City-Data has all the demographics and statistics you can handle.

Altos Research is worth a mention for the dynamic data trend graphs that you can incorporate into your site.

A new way of showing your expertise in an attractive graphical way is a new app called Nudge that you can embed in a blog post. Find out more here.

Offering reports is another way to attract future clients

Sold statistics are always sought after by both buyers and sellers, so why not offer downloadable PDF reports in exchange for contact info?

You may also expand this offering to include the statistics gleaned from your studies of your niche market.

Follow these simple guidelines and I guarantee you will be surprised at just how quickly you can achieve success.

Why ‘The Internet of Things’ Begins at Home

“Humans are inherently inefficient creatures. We leave lights on needlessly, keep the home thermostat cranked up with the windows open, and forget to turn off our televisions when we leave the house. And despite the advances in computing power over the past few decades, our buildings aren’t doing anything to make up for our inefficiencies. ‘Most buildings are dumb,’ says EnOcean Chairman Graham Martin, ‘meaning they completely lack automation systems to manage energy use.’”

Mike Isaac: “Self-Powering, Wireless Energy Sensors Join the Internet”

In Part 1, I explored the fragile issues of global energy consumption, population growth and technology, especially as they center around discussions of the home. As we grow in number, our natural resources are dwindling as technology and the means to sustain modern lifestyles explode. Half of the energy we consume in our homes gets taken up by controlling just one element: temperature.

Heating and cooling account for a tremendous volume of our domestic energy consumption, and by extension, across the globe. Not only is it a problem of getting the energy to our homes, as we explored last time, but it’s also what happens to it when it’s in our homes themselves. This is where ideas of smarter home automation, and transforming the “dumb” devices that surround us in order to solve the problem, come into play.

Technology can help us optimize and streamline our collective energy consumption, but the technology that ultimately feels like it’s solving the problem is also contributing to it through its own production. It takes a tremendous amount of energy and natural resources to make technology that automates the functions of a home. However, there are a growing number of solutions coming to market that place the smartphone at the center of the solution, positioning it as a remote for our home, and allowing us to place operating systems inside of our appliances in order to control them, or have them controlled for us. It marks a shift from apps in the sense of applications, to apps in the sense of appliances.

“Google Unveils Android@Home,” Google I/O Developers Conference

Couched in the familiar environments of smartphones, apps and voice commands, Google’s Android@Home platform is one recent attempt to move towards an operating system not just for your computing, but for your home. Android 5.0 (rumored to be called Jellybean) is likely to launch with some initial Android@Home features. While home automation isn’t a new idea, and there’s already a wealth of apps on the market for locking doors, opening windows and controlling lights with your phone (in many ways, it’s the same technology you have for locking your car’s doors with your key fob), Google’s proposal is the first widespread solution that significantly goes beyond just turning things on and off.

Importantly, Google has recently filed a patent to control Google TV (among other smart devices) with voice commands, again using smartphones and tablets as the preferred method of entry. In solving a problem of efficiency, the user experience for being able to control things in your home with your phone will be a familiar one to many, and one that will hopefully fuel adoption.

Essentially, the smartphone will act as a remote to control cloud-based operating systems controlling devices in your home. And while many of these solutions have been disproportionately focused upon moving entertainment and media around the home (“now you can pause in one room and watch in another” or “stream music to different rooms in your house”), Android@Home proposes going beyond media consumption and moving towards something that will allow us to live smarter, and make the devices around us work harder for us.

As a tentative first step, this level of optimization begins to wean us off of our negligent energy habits by making the decisions for us. At scale (especially in cities with large apartment buildings, or places where most of the inhabitants aren’t paying the bills, such as hospitals or hotels), the savings are potentially tremendous. And not just economic savings, savings of energy. Savings on slowing the rapid decline connected with our dependence upon oil.

“It’s downright criminal in ecological and financial terms that we still can’t easily monitor and control the power usage in our homes.”

Thomas Ricker: “Android@Home Is the Best Worst Thing to Happen to Home Automation” (Engadget)

“Toshiba, Creating a New Lifestyle: Smart Homes”

This level of thinking beyond the sharing of media and more towards the purpose of the devices and appliances we surround ourselves with at home is an important one. Most of the appliances in our homes have completely different technology in them, appliance to appliance. It’s a much bigger problem than just Mac vs. PC. It means washing machines, refrigerators, microwaves and thermostats, even bathroom mirrors, among many others. Anything with a plug is fair game, and perhaps even some that don’t.

“Learning thermostats” are beginning to appear, most notably Nest’s  beautiful re-imagination of the humble thermostat. You don’t have to program it, and it includes three thermostats, a humidity sensor, light sensor, and even a proximity sensor. The key aspect of installing such a device in your home is that it takes the decision-making of home temperature efficiencies away from you. By automatically controlling the temperature based on what else is going on in the house (including who else is in the home), it can significantly reduce heating and cooling costs, with the grander aspirations of reducing dependence upon existing energy solutions.

Android@Home proposes that this kind of technology starts to become combined with calendar events, so that you’d be able to remotely control the climate of your house. Need to turn the heating on as you’re driving home? Now you can.

“Nest Learning Thermostat”

Similarly, at this year’s Consumer Electronics Show, Samsung released the first Android refrigerator, which not only controls climate regions inside the devices via apps in the cloud, but also displays anything else you’d want on a refrigerator’s screen. Twitter, Epicurious, Google calendar, news or weather, to name a few. Perhaps the current trend for digital pinning will translate to refrigerator magnets one day after all. The Samsung refrigerator also contains a set of built-in speakers, proposed to work in tandem with streaming apps like Pandora or Spotify. The days of the radio on the kitchen counter are over.

And with more than 700,000 Android devices being activated every day, Google is making an aggressive push into owning your home’s operating system. If you already have the remote in the form of your smartphone or tablet device, which is primarily going to be Android-based, then controlling other things around you will feel like an easy transition. Dimming the lights by swiping your smartphone may seem like magic to many of us. Starting the dishwasher from your car certainly will.

“What you really want to be able to do is, as you walk into your house with your Android device, all the things that have computers in it sort of adjust as necessary.”

Eric Schmidt, Consumer Electronics Show, 2012 panel

What Schmidt is proposing is a comprehensive, integrated user experience for all devices in your home. It’s a simple idea with wide-reaching consequences, but the ability to visualize your own energy consumption, perhaps in the form of a Google spreadsheet with recommendations, allows you to optimize, something that’s almost impossible when you receive the bill at the end of the month. But it also means that whereas entertainment devices have often been portrayed as the battlegrounds of technology between manufacturers and software developers, this discussion is going to move into the kitchen and the living room in the near future as well.

Widespread partnerships with multiple manufacturers will be incredibly important, and Google’s Android model is one they’ll be able to transition to effectively. Apple’s product approach, while often argued as more beautiful and enjoyable, doesn’t scale to other devices in your home in quite as smooth a way. Interestingly, because Android is open source, it facilitates an easier level of implementation for developers, such as DomoticHome, who are taking advantage of a similar open-source hardware platform Ardvino in conjunction with Android, to add sensors and microchip “shields” to devices around the home, even including windows.

For example, adding a temperature sensor to your greenhouse would allow you to automatically open the window when it gets too hot. It takes the decision-making away from the most menial of household tasks, but does so in a way that benefits our long-term dependence upon energy resources.

Griffin and Dijit are also allowing Android devices to control home theater equipment via a suite of free apps.

Home security is another area ramping up its use of smartphone and automation technology, whereby ADT customers can use their ADT Pulse App (for iPhone and Android) to control and monitor their existing security systems. Think you forgot to lock the door on your way out? Worried that the window was left open? This solves the problem. It can also control lights (perhaps for when you’re away), security cameras and thermostats. Lockitron is yet another example in a fast-expanding market. Boeing is also deploying Android systems into its latest line of 787 Dreamliners, running what it terms “airline-specific apps.” Perhaps we’ll finally see the end of the tattered Sky Mall magazine  stuffed into our seat pockets.

Writing in Engadget, Thomas Ricker describes Android@Home as “the best worst thing to happen to home automation.” A long-term advocate of using technology to inform, and even take over decision-making in the home, Ricker traces the platform’s origins back to 2009 and Google.org’s PowerMeter service, which allowed users to monitor their total energy consumption each day, remotely. And while the service didn’t progress past the initial stages (mainly due to the device-level components being missing or unavailable), it allowed Google to refine the technology required in order to ultimately build it back into Android over time, an iterative approach we see consistent with how Google likes to build out its product suite over time (such as with Google Plus).

“The potential is staggering, giving users the ability to drill all the way down from the whole-home energy view to the device and switch level without ever leaving their browser or smartphone app. That’ the future I’ve been dreaming of.”

Thomas Ricker: “Android@Home Is the Best Worst Thing to Happen to Home Automation” (Engadget)

Similarly, the Linux-based Vera system, which launched in 2008, created the “Mi Casa Verde”  (“My Green Home”) platform for automating power delivery via simple on/off commands sent via a smartphone app. What’s happening now is that developers are realizing that it has to go far beyond simply turning the lights on and off. The solutions have to be baked into a more comprehensive and integrated solution in the home, one that truly begins to answer the problem of energy efficiency.

Android@Home is beginning to make tentative moves into this space, but still frames it from an entertainment perspective. For example, one of the integrations it proposed to its development community was to integrate its new suite of smart light bulbs into more immersive video game play. This sounds amazing, but it’s not truly where the power of this technology lies. The problems for users will be wanting to adopt the technology at scale, and while gaming might be an under-the-radar conduit to adding it more widely into your home, the focus upon monitoring energy consumption is still lacking, if visible at all.

Dr. Sokwoo Rhee proposes yet another solution in “Where Is Google Going With the Android@HomeInitiative?”  whereby he suggests that the real strength of automation is when the devices begin to independently send information to each other, and work together to optimize aspects such as heating and cooling.

For example, you could know that the temperature in your living room is too hot while you’re just about to leave work for the evening — or where the refrigerator not only seasonally adjusts but also understands what kind of food it has inside it, and sends recommendations to your phone for dinner tonight based on an Epicurious profile of what it knows you like. Even simply knowing how many people are in the house at the same time offers a large number of energy-optimized solutions, and this is where this kind of technology begins to get interesting, when you factor in proximity (just as we do outside with services such as Foursquare), and when your home’s devices begin to recognize you and what you’re doing. This, Rhee suggests, is where the real optimization for a building’s energy consumption starts to happen, especially inside of large buildings with multiple units.

“People should not have to find information. Information should find people. Information should actively get to people before they realize they actually need it.”

Dr. Sokwoo Rhee: “What Will Happen When Devices Are Connected?”

What Rhee refers to as the “circle of information” approach, whereby contextually appropriate information moves with the user and informs the behavior of the devices around him, holds the promise of ubiquitous computing that many are beginning to see. The “Internet of things” begins at home. This technology already exists for soldiers and fighter pilots in the military, but is embryonic at best with smartphones (we’re talking about much more than pulling in nearby listings here). Imagine a couple of typical-use cases, again, centered around the idea of using your smartphone as the conduit into your home’s devices and their behavior.

For example, when you get up in the morning, for many of us, the glance towards the smartphone has become standardized behavior. Now, imagine if you had your smartphone with you in the bathroom as you got ready for the day — again, a regular habit for many of us. The shower would automatically turn on as you stepped into the room, optimized seasonally for just how you like it.

Simultaneously, your mirror would overlay information about headlines, weather and any other feeds you were following (this technology is already in play at The New York Times’ Research & Development lab: http://bit.ly/z1CXXi). It might even recommend certain medication for you, provide suggestions for what to wear that day, or even allow you to do some shopping, all while simultaneously getting ready for the day.

While this is going on, your kitchen knows that you’ve gotten up, and has begun to make the coffee. The seats in your car are beginning to warm up for when you leave the house shortly. And the refrigerator has already compiled the list of things you’re running low on, and has automatically ordered them to be delivered by the time you get home. Think this sounds like science fiction? It’s not:

“New York Times’ Research & Development Lab: ‘Magic Mirror’”

What these examples reflect is simply a more integrated digital experience into our current lifestyles. While we do most of our computing on smartphones, laptops and other “computing” devices, having the same level of smarter, more comprehensive and optimized experiences in the rest of our home’s electrical appliances allows us on the one hand the opportunity to untether from the phone, but more importantly, might make the experience of information consumption a little more relaxing. But with such a solution, we begin to abdicate responsibility to the devices and platforms around us. Of course, all of this is opt-in, but given our inability to control our own energy consumption, has it proven to be a choice we’re capable of?

Home automation not only allows for a more relaxed lifestyle, but more importantly, it holds the promise of solving some very serious energy consumption problems. Headed upstairs for something? Your house will dim the lights in those rooms where nobody’s sitting anymore. This culture of intelligent, connected objects is a highly viable home-centric solution, and one that has broader, more far-reaching consequences than searching deeper and deeper for alternative energy. At the very least, it lengthens the time frame in which to come up with those alternate sources.

Wired’s Mike Isaac  even goes as far as to share the concept of self-powering sensors for controlling switches, the environmental impact of which (outside of its production) is almost zero. These sensors use the Eco100 linear motion harvester, which generates enough power to control a primitive switch via an app, and emit a small, near-field Wi-Fi signal. This has particular efficiencies at scale in large buildings, where the lights are often on all the time, even if those rooms and corridors are dormant for hours at a time. But at the core of the solution is context: Who’s in the room and what are they doing? These energy needs wrap around us, instead of us wrapping around the energy needs. That’s a fundamental difference in approach, fueled by technology.

However, the dependence upon technology, even with the premise of saving us from our own chronic energy inefficiencies, comes with a price, and the growing dependence upon technology is having catastrophic effects upon how we interact, our brains and our bodies. In many ways, the technology, which will slow our dependence upon nonrenewable energy sources, is going to have to change us, and perhaps not for the best. The third and final part of this series will examine these consequences and explore how we can balance these growing problems of digital dependency.

Further reading:

Adrian Covert: “Android@Home Will Turn Your House Into a Giant, Automated Smartbox”

Adrian Covert: “Google Music: Upload and Stream All Your Tunes From the Cloud”

Matt Hickman: “Google’s Bright New Idea: Android-Controlled Light Bulbs” 

Mike Isaac: “Google’s Platform Extends Its Reach With Android@Home” 

Mike Isaac: “Self-Powering, Wireless Energy Sensors Join the Internet”

Martin LaMonica: “Android Meets LED Bulbs in Google Smart-Home Push”

Ljusarkitecktur: “Hamburg Living Place”

Andrew Nusca: “Google, Lighting Science Partner On Android-Powered LED Bulb”

Dr. Sokwoo Rhee:“What Will Happen When Devices Are Connected?”

Dr. Sokwoo Rhee: “Where Is Google Going With the Android@Home Initiative?”

Thomas Ricker: “Android@Home Is the Best Worst Thing That Could Happen to Home Automation”

Thomas Ricker: “Mi Casa Verde Vera Review: Home Automation Simplified”

Shant Shahrigian: “For High-Tech Living, There’s No Place Like the Hamburg Smart Home” 

Eric Smalley: “Warm Watts for Wireless”

Stockholm Lighting: “The Living Place, Hamburg”

Alexia Tsotsis: “Lockitron Lets You Unlock Your Door With Your Phone”

Josh Volpe: “Boeing Hitches Android to Its 787 Dreamliner Ride, Powers In-Flight Options With Google Juice”

Same hairstyle. Same clothes. Same website. Same old, same old.

But doing the same thing expecting different results is insanity!

I am really excited about a brand-new nationwide sweepstakes that HomeFinder.com is launching today on May 15. It will give five real estate agents (chosen at random) a business and style makeover during a two-day, all-inclusive trip to Chicago!

Let’s face it, these past few years in real estate have not been easy. Agents and brokers have had to work harder than ever: working longer hours, negotiating complicated transactions, and keeping up with technology.

HomeFinder.com’s goal in launching this inaugural industry program is to help offset some of the difficulties of the past few years. In addition to the recession’s effect on homeowners and sellers, U.S. real estate agents and brokers have clearly felt the severity of the housing collapse. The National Association of Realtors reports a 25 percent decrease in the number of members from 2007 to 2011.

“By providing digital marketing coaching and style makeovers, HomeFinder.com wants to give the winning agents tools to help rebuild their business and jump-start this next era for the real estate industry,” said Mark Tepper, senior vice president of sales and marketing at HomeFinder.com.

The five winners of the 2012 Agent Makeover Sweepstakes will be flown to Chicago from Sept. 12-14, 2012, where they will stay overnight in a luxurious hotel off of Chicago’s Magnificent Mile and receive expert coaching from key local industry leaders on the best real estate-specific social media practices, SEO coaching, and online marketing techniques, including:

• How SEO is drastically changing the real estate landscape.
• How social media can make their business soar.
• Why Google is a crucial part of online marketing success.
• How agents can fully capitalize on this changing landscape.

The winners will also undergo a full makeover to include hair and makeup styling and pampering at an esteemed Chicago salon, wardrobe consultation at a leading national department store, and a professional photo session to conclude the style makeover. A networking dinner will be held on the evening of Sept. 13, 2012.

All licensed real estate agents are eligible to enter the sweepstakes, which will run from May 15, 2012, through Aug. 10, 2012.

“Our Agent Makeover Sweepstakes will give the winning agents the opportunity to improve their business in a way that is fun and engaging, and to enjoy some rejuvenating time away in our hometown,” Tepper said.

“When they return back to work, we hope they will take with them the valuable knowledge and tools to take their business to the next level.”

Contestants may enter the contest twice: once by visiting homefinder.com/agent-makeover and once through Facebook.com/homefinderdotcom. Winners will be chosen on Aug. 15, 2012, and contacted directly.

I love this contest’s ideas on two levels: First, I love that the recipients of this contest are winning something to improve themselves from the inside out. Secondly, I love that HomeFinder is embracing social media and running a really exciting social promotion that will gain it a ton of buzz online and help agents at the same time. What a great way to expand its brand!

Kudos to you, HomeFinder, and I hope everyone reading this enters the sweepstakes (can I win?!)

We saw this with e-books, which were around for years before the combination of the Kindle’s e-ink screen and the power of Amazon helped push e-readers to the top of the publishing world. We saw it with tablets, which were around for years but didn’t take off until the iPad showed us just how much beauty and power there could be in one shiny, touchable screen. Now, it’s time for television’s evolution. In the late 1990s, the television as computer got a brief push with the launch of WebTV, but it never quite took off on the level that people expected it to. Now in a world dominated by laptops and mobile devices, the television is gaining new prominence thanks to the magic of three-screen convergence — the power of having three screens that can work together to provide a singular brand experience.

We are already accustomed to our email following us everywhere, from phone to tablet to laptop. Now, increasingly, the same is true of our entertainment options. We can watch the latest episode of a favorite television show while we are commuting on the train to work or from the comfort of the living room. Our shopping experiences move with us from device to device, and while the interfaces may differ, the brand awareness and the content remain constant.

We expect our favorite brands to reach us where we are rather than the other way around.

When video began to dominate mobile devices and computers, some speculated that this might be the death of television, much as it was once speculated that television would spell doom for cinemas. But given the recent success of “The Avengers” at the box office, it’s clear that movies still have their draw and their place in our lives. The same is true of television. We still need the television in our lives, and although many people own laptops and tablets, when they want to relax, that screen at home in the living room is still the one they turn to, but with a twist. These days most tablet owners say they use their devices while watching TV. Many people also have their laptop or phone nearby while the television is on.

Some are calling it the battle for the living room, and many top technology brands are keenly aware of this war for the viewer eyeballs. Apple, Google and Microsoft have all made investments in television technologies. It is here that Microsoft has made a particularly smart move, using its video gaming systems as a way to gain valuable living room real estate. I see the Xbox 360 as a Trojan horse because it gained access to the heart of the home for games, but once there it has now proved essential to many users by offering Netflix streaming, Last FM and other services that make the device less of a gaming console and more of a complete entertainment hub. I bought an Xbox as a way to play “Dance Central” with my daughter, but find myself using the device to watch TED Talks and documentaries on Netflix more and more.

I was recently walking through a mall and I passed the Apple store. A few doors down was the Microsoft store. Although both had a similar aesthetic, the Microsoft store did a few things differently; it had a more colorful, family-friendly style. It also has another key difference; there is a model living room front and center in the store window. Walk by one of these stores on any afternoon and you might find a few patrons sitting in the faux living room playing with the Microsoft gaming systems. It’s a clever move because the Xbox is more than just a gaming system, it’s a way to bring the computer interface into your television and listen to or buy music, order TV shows and movies, and shop all through your television (much like the early promise of WebTV). The latest Xbox 360 rumor calls an Internet Explorer app that will let users surf the Internet using Kinect. Xbox users can already do limited searches on the device, but adding Internet Explorer would give the device browsing capabilities similar to a PC.

Sometimes you have to look in the most obvious places to find innovation.

We realized that the Realtor.com experience was missing from the third screen in your home, the television. The Realtor.com Channel powered by the Home Tour Network will tackle this challenge. Home shoppers will select the price range they are interested in, and when a home strikes their fancy they can instantly connect with agents for information in a couple of clicks on the remote. This comes on the heels of two innovative and well-received free apps that address mobile users’ needs and digitizing part of the offline experience at open houses.

Technology moves pretty quickly these days; the past few years have seen many changes and there is much more to come, but one thing that hasn’t changed is that people still like to gather together for shared experiences. Families still settle in together to watch television. There may be a few more devices in hands and they might be texting rather than talking, but the living room and the television are still integral to the way we live.

In the first 12 months, Instagram acquired 12 million users. In the first two years it acquired 30 million users. And now, as of May 2012, it has 50 million users.

There are hundreds of photo apps, so why has Instagram been so successful? And the bigger question is how can it help YOU in your business?

In this recorded webinar I teach some of the core fundamentals about content creation through photos. You will learn:

• How to maximize Instagram and use this platform to build your brand.
• Inman News’ strategy and how we are using it to build our brand and engagement.
• Examples of real estate professionals who are doing a fantastic job of using Instagram and other photo tools.
• Advanced tools and strategies to take Instagram offline.

Now more than ever, photo sharing is one of the BEST ways to connect and engage with your friends, followers, clients and fans online. It’s time to think beyond the listing photo and think about all the simple opportunities you have to connect with potential buyers and sellers via photos!

Watch the complete recording here for free:

Also, a BIG thank you to our sponsor Marylhurst University. Without our sponsors, we would be unable to offer these great webinars for free!

Get on the list to find out when our next webinar is: Like our Facebook page and we’ll keep you up-to-date!

Please share this webinar recording out on Facebook, Twitter and your other social networks — we appreciate it!

None of the social networks work.

What works is you. You do the work. The networks simply provide some sort of outlet or platform to do whatever it is that you’re doing there.

So when people talk about “Hey is Facebook working for you?” or “I don’t get how Twitter works” there’s a reason. They’re talking about it because they’re still focused on the networks.

AC Bike power generator (Photo credit: mayhem)

What works is you. It’s your ability to generate meaningful relationships and community. The network is just a place for you to do that relationship building.

The networks provide simple tools, simple abstractions of social behavior we might go through in the real world. Instead of a smile and wave as we pass each other on the street we get a thumbs up button on a screen. Instead of a little chit chat at the checkout line we get a 140 characters of how your day is going. Instead of a high five we get a retweet.

Simple abstractions standing in for the little interactions we use naturally everyday in meatspace to make our lives a little more social. Simple abstractions used to gather and confer status. Simple abstractions to express encouragement, care, outrage, fear, hope. Thumbs up, yo.

The real power of social networking isn’t in social networking. The real power of social networking isn’t in collecting likes or retweets or followers or fans or mayorships. The real power of social networking isn’t in gathering up large numbers of these abstractions.

The power of social networking is real. It’s really real. As in, reality.

Abstraction (Photo credit: Ben Askew)

Your relationships in the real world are real. Your ability to use digital tools and press buttons on keyboards and tap flat pieces of glass and plastic with invisible electronic sensors embedded and connected to more copper and silicon and then transmitted through the air to towers and wending through space and time until it arrives on someone else’s piece of glass where it jumps instantaneously into their mind where your idea becomes their idea too is the real power of social networking.

Try focusing more on the last part of that chain of events and worry less about about the first part.

That statement couldn’t be truer for all of the branches of the military. One lapse of judgment or awareness, whether in battle or even training, could have disastrous effects, the least of which could result in death.

Hence the phrase, “Complacency kills.”

Fortunately, in real estate, complacency doesn’t kill, but it certainly could cost you — or even more important, your client — thousands of dollars.

Recently one of my agents approached me with a question about the due diligence deadline on a contract where he represented the seller. As I examined the contract, I became acutely aware that the buyer’s agent had used an older version of our state-approved real estate purchase contract. This older version provided deadline extensions based upon notice to the seller of concerns and response from the seller to the buyer. This provided up to 10 additional days past the due diligence deadline, which might have effected the disposition of the earnest money. Thankfully, even with the additional extensions, the buyer had gone past the new deadline and our client would have collected the earnest money.

This could have turned out very differently though. My agent, unfortunately, had been complacent, and assumed that the contract was the current version of our state’s contract. It’s easy to look at these standard forms and assume they are the current version. If we are just glancing at what’s been written in blank fields and assuming that the rest is standard approved language, we are practicing a dangerous form of complacency that could cost our clients money, us money, and potentially even put our license at risk.

A professional thoroughly reviews a contract with his client. Had my agent thoroughly reviewed this contract with his client, he would have discovered that this was the old version of the contract. Instead, by not doing this, he and his client were obligated to the terms they signed on that outdated version.

It’s easy to assume that if it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck it must be a duck. But making assumptions has no place when it comes to real estate contracts. Don’t let complacency “kill” your real estate career.

Stupeflix, a Web-based and YouTube-integrated video editing software, makes this once seemingly impossible task very doable for the masses.

Even the most technically challenged marketers can now edit video with just a few clicks.

Below, I dissect Stupeflix Pro. This is their business-level, paid option.

I recently purchased it and have now used it extensively.

Included is a breakdown of the most important features and step-by-step video tutorials.

The videos focus on the four primary functions within Stupeflix you need to learn.

Stupeflix Pro Edition: Breakdown of costs and features

• $39/month or $299/year 
• 9 predesigned themes or edit custom videos
• Mac- and PC-compatible
• Web-based (no software to download, works on any computer)
• Fully integrated into YouTube
• White-labeled videos (no Stupeflix branding)
• Commercial licensing (approved for business use)
• 720p quality
• Unlimited usage
• 130 licensed audio tracks
• Real estate-specific options added recently

Video walk-throughs:

Part One: Choose a Theme or Start from Scratch? 

This past weekend I traveled to Tucson, Ariz. Those who know me know I travel very frequently for Inman. I travel to all of our Agent Reboot events around North America, both Connect events, many association and brokerage meetings, and more. But this trip was something different altogether.

One year ago, I fulfilled something on my “bucket list”: a trip to Chicago to be a part of the “Oprah” show audience. As an audience member, my best friend and I were the lucky recipients of an all-expenses-paid trip to the world-renowned spa, Miraval Resort in Tucson.

I knew I was in need of some “time off.” Those who know me well know that I very rarely turn the “off button” off. Not only is it hard to do personally, it is also part of my job at Inman: to be the eyes and ears of our brand and the industry. Social media is not a 9-to-5 job.

But it’s more than just that.

I have to say, not only is it my job, it’s something I really love. I love Facebook and Twitter and Instagram and Foursquare. I love checking in, telling my friends what I’m doing, sharing great photos, liking, commenting. But, I was starting to notice that all that online time was starting to seep into all areas of my life.

When is the last time you tuned out, turned off, and went off the grid?

Remember when going on vacation meant turning on your “out of office” on your email and then not checking work email unless you absolutely had to? Maybe you’d sneak a peek at the complimentary hotel computer in the lobby, but for the most part you were on vacation.

So I made the conscious effort that once I got to Miraval (and checked in, of course) that I would turn it off.

I turned off all of my notifications.

No more dings telling me I had a new tweet or a new comment on my Facebook page. I posted one last update, and then that was it. I made a vow to myself and my husband I would use my phone only for calling home or texting my family. For the first time since I was on maternity leave, I enabled my vacation email settings. I almost forgot where they were in Gmail.

I thought it would be hard. Everyone joked with me that I couldn’t do it. But to be honest, it was easier than I thought.

I made the conscious decision to be in the now.

To focus on my trip, on me, on my friend. To focus on doing nothing. On being with myself and being OK just being still.

What I realized is that so often I would check my phone out of habit or because there was nothing to do. Next time you find yourself with nothing to do, watch what you do. I bet you grab for your phone. Don’t believe me? Watch people on the subway or at a restaurant who are alone; I bet you nine out of 10 times they are on their phone. Why? Because when you are on your phone, you are not alone. You are liking, commenting, tweeting and interacting.

Have you ever snuck out to the bathroom to check your email? Or Facebook page? Be honest! This trailer from the 2011 Sundance Film Festival movie “Connected“ talks about this and our need to always be connected and online.

For me, during my weekend unplugged, I found great power in the ability to be alone with myself and my thoughts.

I recently watched a TED talk by Sherry Turkle who talks about how psychologically powerful it is to be together while not being together and the cultural phenomenon happening of removing ourselves and going into our phones. It happens all the times — in meetings, at the stoplight, at the dinner table.

Sherry says, “People can’t get enough of each other, but at a distance they can control.” She goes on to talk about how real-time conversation is unedited, unscripted, and you can’t control what you want to say.

She talks about people not wanting to be alone, being anxious, fidgeting. Being alone feels like a problem that needs to be solved. In my three days in the desert I really felt that. I remember subconsciously picking up my phone and swiping my screen to check Facebook mindlessly because I was alone or had nothing to do, and then stopping myself.

Now, am I saying to ditch our devices? The heck with social media? No, not at all. I still believe very firmly in the power of social media. Some of my dearest friends I have “in real life” are people I met on Facebook or Twitter. I still believe that social media is changing the way brands communicate, homes are being sold, and the conversations happening around real estate. And most of you who know me really well know that I love social media and I love this turning point in technology and marketing that we are in right now.

But, I am also realizing the importance of developing a greater self-awareness about our devices.

Here are a few things I plan on implementing, and I invite you to join me:

1. Making room for solitude. Make the time to be alone, alone with your thoughts. This is where some of the best ideas and strategies come from. Schedule this time and treat it as important as any other meeting.

2. Create sacred spaces. Create spaces in your home — like the dining room table — that are “phone-free” zones.

3. Take time to go off the grid. I know my friend Jeff Turner religiously goes “off the grid” every Sunday to focus on his family. If you can’t take a day, take a few hours or one day a month where you are not on Facebook, Twitter, etc.

4. Be present. One of the best gifts I can give my family, friends and colleagues is the gift of being in the moment: enjoying face-to-face time and not chatting with my head down because I am texting or tweeting.

5. Limit multitasking. I find that when I flit from one thing to another like a bumblebee I am never as productive. Call on your willpower. Shut down those 25 windows and focus on one task at a time.

I invite you to join me in being more present while not giving up our devices — just making better decisions about the role they play in our lives.

I’d love to hear your thoughts and experiences about this topic. Please leave me a comment below!