Right now there is a small core group looking at the feasibility of a real estate bar camp in the Atlanta area.  If we can put it together, the event will be held this fall… September or October is the likely time frame.

Here are a couple of posts on Active Rain with more info about #rebcATL (that is the ‘official’ Twitter hashtag for the event).

• Should Atlanta have a reBarCamp?

• A little more about an Atlanta rebarcamp

On the second link there is a webform asking about what you might want for a rebc.  We’d love to get your feedback in order to make a better experience for everyone.  It also give you the opportunity to volunteer…  There will be lots of opportunities for volunteers from now until the event concludes… and then I’m sure planning will need to begin for the 2011 #rebcATL.

We are also putting together a FaceBook Official Page for #rebcATL.

But I’m not happy with the site conversion.  Or maybe it is that I’m not happy with the conversion tracking.  I’m not happy with the engagement.  Or maybe it is that I’m not happy with the engagement I can see.  I know that I’m not happy with the visuals… and some of the widgets/plug-ins/features…

Mostly, what it comes down to is that I’m not happy with my overall strategy. There isn’t one.  At no point did I sit down and make a plan.  It has been patchwork… and it doesn’t seem to match.  That needs to change…

Over the last few months I have managed to build a lot of great pieces.  WordPress, Joomla, Posterous, Tumblr, Flickr, FaceBook, Twitter and other services/sites and networks are all great… individually.  I’m not saying that I like all of the pieces I’ve made… just that the pieces have a lot of performance capability.  In a couple of cases, I may tap some experts on particular platforms.

I’m interested to see where everything will go…  I haven’t made the plan yet.

And that is where the next step comes in…

MindMapping.

En Vogue | Free Your Mind

I’ll be using an open source program called FreeMind to lay out my ideas for website strategy.  I have used it to put together some presentations about various subjects.  It let’s me brainstorm ideas, and then organize them into something more cohesive.  In effect, it is a ‘radial outline’.  We all remember outlining things in school.  Outlining was a great tool for organizing content, but it was very linear.

The MindMap allows that outline to become a hub and spoke.  And then the ideas on the spokes can become new hubs.  This means that it becomes very easy to see which ideas have the most connection to others…  Unlike a linear outline, the MindMap allows ideas to connect to other ideas, rather than just be a subset of one thought.

But there is another step…

Implementation.

3run – Free Your Mind

And it always involves faith.  The faith that it can be done… that I can do it (or find the right source to do it).  The faith that it will work (or that it can be tweaked to work).  Of course, the faith will be subject to measurement (analytics) and modification…  But I will be ready to step into it… into the void of the unknown.

I am in the process of MindMapping my website strategy.  I am also analyzing tools and techniques.  As the strategy emerges, I know that there will be some pain and a learning curve… sometimes it may get pretty steep.

But this is where my business comes from.

from Lane’s Active Rain blog

REtechSouth

After every conference and seminar, there comes the real challenge… implementing all of the VERY cool things I’ve learned, while living in the real world. Setting up client searches, responding to inquiries, dealing with the family, making sure everything that should be on track is on track… they all get in the way of rolling out 3782 changes to my websites and social networks.

I have found that I need to take a little time… and then I need to dive in. Diving in comes next. I have pages of notes, some vendor material and a list of websites and ideas. I have mind-mapping software on my computer… and it needs to get used.

For the last few weeks, I have been unhappy with much of my web presence. I have a great IDX, but I am not getting the most out of it. I have good Page Rank, but I don’t have the level of conversion I feel I should have. My traffic is decent.

And I focused on the sessions at REtechSouth that I thought would help me fix that…

Plenty of sessions to focus on, too…

If you weren’t at REtechSouth, you should have been.

In addition to the incredible information that was presented, the connections that were made and the fun on the exhibit hall floor… there was also the opportunity to hang out with my friends. There are a lot of folks I have been lucky enough to meet from all over the country. And there were some that I was able to meet (in person) for the first time.

Related articles by Zemanta

• Where do we go from here? (lanebailey.info)

As mentioned last time in WordPress and Joomla and Active Rain… oh my!, dynamic websites are the direction the web is going.  In order to live in the dynamic website world, you need to produce content.

That is the first problem.  Good, engaging content doesn’t create itself.  Readers want to see pictures and video.  They want interaction.

Image via CrunchBase

I’m AT LEAST as guilty as anyone else of not serving it up sometimes.  One one of my blogs I don’t have any access to a plug-in called Zemanta, and I have to jump through hoops to use Apture.

On my WordPress sites I have both Zemanta and apture installed, so it is easy to amp up the graphics and add video.  Now, on my Joomla sites I also have Zemanta installed.  I still have to jump through a few hoops to run Apture, but I have bookmarked a direct link to the page to build embeds.

Zemanta

Zemanta is a plug-in and site that surfs for images and links that are related to the article (post) you are writing.  Basically, it scans your content and finds related articles and images.  You also have the ability to refine the results (spelled S-E-A-R-C-H) for specific terms if the automatically returned results are getting it for you. Also, through Zemanta, users can allow content to be reblogged, similar to Active Rain’s reblog feature.  A reblog is a reprint of the post (with permission) on another blog.  It basically syndicates the content.

Apture

Apture is slightly different, but geared similarly.  It isn’t automatic, and I find it best geared towards video.  It also has a linking component.  Apture builds mini-galleries.  You can put as many as 6 videos in one embed on the site.  Here is an example in Joomla.  Here is one in WordPress.  (BTW, the first link was created using Apture and the second using WordPress’s editor)  With Apture, you have the capability of combining multiple content types into one embed.  The only thing you can’t combine are links.  Other embeds, like pictures, slide shows, videos, maps, etc CAN be combined.

Combined, there are great options to make a more engaging site, in both WordPress and Joomla, as well as some other platforms.

Back in “the day”, a website was little more than a flyer or brochure that was available on the internet, rather than mailed out.  It might have had as few as one page and as many as five or six pages.  There usually wasn’t a search capability built in, and it was only updated infrequently… if at all.

Today’s websites have all sorts of cool things to draw the consumer’s attention, and to hold it.  Search is a BIG part of that.  Blogs, updated weekly, daily or even more, are another part.  Twitter feeds for breaking news can be included, as can Flickr feeds for new pictures and YouTube feeds for videos.  There might even be links or widgets displaying other blogs or sites…  The possibilities are almost endless.

In short, they provide a new experience each time a consumer visits. Why go back to the website if it is only displaying something that you’ve previously seen or read?

Which leads us to some options…

Active Rain

This is Active Rain. And so it THIS.  Obviously the blog you are looking at is part of Active Rain.  It says so right at the top of the page.  But the link to GwinnettGarageGuy.com is also linking to an Active Rain blog.  It is referred to as an “Outside Blog” or RainMaker Blog.  It has a custom URL and only a very discreet logo in the upper left corner.

There are some tremendous advantages to Active Rain RainMaker Blogs.  To begin with, they offer built in traffic and “Google Juice” (search engine strength).  The traffic comes from the 170,000 members here in the Rain.  They provide a sense of community, as well as feedback and support.  In short, there is a LOT to learn at Active Rain, and being part of the community enriches the experience.

Another great advantage of Active Rain’s RainMaker blogs is ease…  It is SO easy to get rolling. Build a profile, type up a post and publish… you are GOING.  Of course there are plenty of things to learn after that to tweak the performance of your marketing, but you can learn that here in the Rain as well… and a lot of it is free… and of course there are RainCamps to take it to another level.

The drawbacks of the RainMaker Blogs are few…  It costs $29/month. They aren’t as customizable as the other platforms.

In the world of the web, $29 isn’t that much.  There are a lot of agents paying WAY more money for platforms that don’t deliver these results…  But, $29 is $29.

WordPress

Almost everyone has heard of WordPress. Here is a WordPress site… and another one.  Notice that they look NOTHING alike?  That is part of the beauty of WordPress.  Sites can be themed VERY differently and not look at all like “the next site”… or the agent up the street.  Full-on branding.  Every part of the site is customizable and extensible.  There are thousands of widgets and plug-ins to alter the site experience.  Almost anything you can imagine can be accomplished in WordPress.

However, while the platform is free, hosting it isn’t (expect to spend about $100/year).  Also, there are many free themes, but the best ones cost a little money (expect to spend between $30 and $100).  Just a note, don’t bother with WordPress.org… you’ll spend at least as much to get it up to speed as you would with Active Rain, and not have the flexibility of a self-hosted WordPress blog (sometimes called WordPress.org).

Another drawback of WordPress is all of the flexibility… there are too many choices for some people. There are thousands of themes and thousands of plug-ins and you can do almost anything with it…

Joomla

And then there is Joomla.  Only the fairly hardcore know about Joomla!. Here is a Joomla site… and another one.  There are competitors, like Drupal… but Joomla! is the one with the most support.  And much of what I just said about WordPress applies to Joomla.  It is free, but hosting isn’t.  there are free themes, but the cool ones cost money.  There are loads of extensions… and some of them cost a little bit.

But Joomla is WAY more involved and WAY WAY more powerful that WordPress. Using most good hosts, setting up either is easy.  One click in Simple Scripts and the site is live… but after theming and content creation, Joomla requires a structure be thought out in the way content is arranged.  WordPress organizes content more “on the fly”.  Joomla takes a little time to set up BEFORE content starts to flow… it can be done later, but it is much easier to start out with the structure.

Since Joomla was designed as a Content Management System, that is what it does best.  It can be a news magazine.  It can be a search portal.  It can be a blog. Honestly, being a blog for Joomla is like driving a Corvette ZR1 as a golf cart… you can do it, but that isn’t really using the power.  But incorporating a blog into Joomla is pretty easy…

In fact, using my theme provider, theming a WordPress blog and a Joomla site to look like family is pretty easy.  So, for the consumer, the experience of moving back and forth between the joomla CMS and the WordPress blog is almost seamless… even if they have different domians.  LaneBailey.com and GarageHomesUSA.com are completely different sites and different platforms.  They could even be with different hosts…

FaceBook and Posterous

There are other options as well, and the leader among those are FaceBook Fan Pages and Posterous.  Both are free options and I thik they have a place in a comprehensive web strategy.

FaceBook is becoming THE destination for millions of web surfers.  Maintaining a storefront there will become as necessary as having a website.  Your personal profile isn’t the place to do business… get a Fan Page, they are free and you can even get a vanity URL.  Mike Mueller on Active Rain is “THE Dude” when it comes to FB Fan Pages.

Posterous is a different kind of beast.  I have written about it a few times, and it is certainly worth investigating.  There are more ways to leverage Posterous than anyone could possibly imagine on thier own.  Brad and Bobby Carroll (Dakno) are “THE Dudes” when it comes to tweaking out Posterous pages.

from Lane’s Active Rain blog

Are you planning on hitting REtechSouth in Atlanta?  As usual, I have a discount code for tickets.  Brad Nix gave me the hook-up to deliver a 10% discount (affiliate link… that is where the discount comes from) on all ticket levels.  Here is how it breaks down:

• All Star Admission $134.10 + $3.35 EventBrite fee.  This is normally a $149 ticket.  It includes event access on both Thursday, Mar. 25th and Friday, Mar. 26th.  It will get you in to all of the learning sessions…  You can see folks like Jeff Turner, Amy Chorew, Brad Carroll, Ilyse Glink and Heather Elias… and WAY more.
• MVP Admission $179.10 + $4.48 EventBrite fee.  This is normally a $199 ticket.  This includes everything in the All Star package, as well as special seating, access to the MVP/Speaker’s Dinner on Thursday evening and access to the MVP Lounge.  Those that went to New Media Atlanta had a blast in the Rock Star Lounge hanging out with the speakers.
• 10 All Star Ticket bundle $891 + $9.95 EventBrite fee.  Yep, you get a discount on the discount.  This is 10 $149 tickets for just $89.10/each.  The bundle normally sells for $990.  Grab some folks from the office and get a discount.
• 25 All Star Ticket bundle $1687.50 + $9.95 EventBrite fee.  That brings the price down to just $67.50/each.  Brokers, bring the WHOLE office. Ramp up production with technology and social media marketing in the new year.

I will be there!  I can’t wait.  Brad has built REtechSouth into THE event in the Southeast for real estate technology and social media marketing.  In just a couple of years, this event has become one of the premier conferences to attend, regardless of where you live and work.  Atlanta is an amazing place in the Spring.

Last year I had the opportunity to attend the speaker’s dinner.  I HIGHLY recommend the MVP Admission for that reason.  Imagine yourself standing in on a conversation with Jeff Turner and the Notorious R.O.B.  At the previous REtechSouth I was able to spend some quality time talking with Pat Kitano and Tom Royce.  The luminaries of the re.net will be there…

Don’t forget, these tickets will likely sell out, especially the MVP tickets.  they are limited by the size of the dinner venue.  Don’t miss out.  Here is the link again to get the discount.

Catch #retso on FaceBook, too.

from Lane’s Active Rain blog

Most of us have learned by trial and error how to best leverage and utilize Active Rain, and some of that hard-earned knowledge is contained in the series.  It is also being expanded regularly, as I get time and new technologies and techniques make their appearance…

Check it out and enjoy.

Lane’s Active Rain Ambassador Series

If you haven’t heard the statement, it is summing up the “Ready, Aim Fire, Aim Fire, Aim” menality.  Basically, spending forever making the plan, and then never following through and actually “doing” the plan.

And then…

There is the opposite side of the coin…  “Ready, Fire, Aim”.  That doesn’t work, either.  You can’t do the plan before you make the plan…

But in the middle…

There is a balance where we analyze AND act.  And this is about the analytics.

We all have our favorites.  I personally like Clicky Analytics for my website.  I like the way the data is presented.  They have a free level, and it is a great alternative to Google Analytics.  And GA is a great option as well.  In either case, the idea is to see where traffic is coming from, what search terms are being used and tune your content accordingly.

Another great tool in the box is HitTail.  It is a site that you can use to track your searches and see what material might be good to write about in the future.  In fact, it even offers a “To Do List” for future blogs, based on the previous search volume.

And you are likely to be surprised…

I know that I am often a bit shocked at which posts gather the most attention.  On ActiveRain, and LaneBailey.com, on LilburnDwellings.com.  in each case, I see posts that I don’t expect have great traffic.  I see other posts that are never stellar… until looking at 30 days, or even 90 or more days worth of data.  I have a post that has over 10,000 views, but it is never on my most viewed list for the day… or even the week.

Other posts have to be looked at OFF the grid.  I have a post that garners a reasonable number of views, and few comments… but people call me about that post.  Obviously it speaks to them.

So…

• Plan
• Write
• Analyze
• Adjust
• Write some more
• Analyze
• Adjust
• Repeat.

And don’t worry that your plan is different than my plan, or Midori’s plan or even Mike’s plan.  We are all different people.

from GwinnettGarageGuy.com

Most of us know what it is… but few are really leveraging it to help create business or simplify our lives…

For those that don’t know, RSS is a news feed.  Basically, by subscribing to a website’s RSS feed, each time the site is updated, we will get the new material either emailed to us or in a “Feed Reader”.

I guess the easiest place to start would be the “making our lives easier” aspect.

I don’t know how many different blogs and sites I read…  I admit that I don’t read all of them every day, but I generally read about 30-40 posts on about 100 sites almost every day.  Real estate, technology, politics, local events, cars and travel are all on my reading list. 

In order to scan each of these sites each day to see if there was a post or article that I was interested in would take at least an hour… probably closer to two.  Add in the time to actually READ the material…  I wouldn’t have time to do much else.

Frankly, I enjoy the reading.  I want to be informed and up to date on what is happening in the world… and around the corner.  In a way, it isn’t much different than those that liked to scan several newspapers each morning. Except it is WAY faster (only having to look at headlines or short intros) and WAY cheaper (since the sites are free to read, unlike having several newspaper subscriptions).

So, it is making my life easier… cheaper… greener… and more time efficient.  At the same time, I can be more up to date on world and local events, as well as other information that is interesting to me. (Personally, I use FeedDemon as my reader, but you can use Google’s reader, Mozilla or even Outlook)

But what if the goal is creating business?

OK, there is the obvious that if we are keeping up with industry news and trends, we should be better able to respond to the market…  But there is something deeper…

Local expertise!

Some of the sites that you might be able to get daily feeds from might include local newspapers, local chambers of commerce, local businesses, local groups that promote events… and if you are one of the first to know about all of these happenings that are around the corner, you can be the local expert. Starting the discussion about property tax increases, changes in garbage collection, zoning hearings, roadway improvements, new developments and business relocation means that you can rank for those terms… the terms that people in the area might use to search.  Being on top of the search engines for local terms means that locals will read your blog… and that YOUR RSS feed will be one that THEY should subscribe to.

So, you also need to make your RSS feed easy to find for site visitors.  You want to be part of THEIR regular routine. Of course there is real estate sprinkled in to your site, so your readers will see you as the expert… the “go to person” for local information.

And when someone asks them about real estate… you are already the expert.

But why worry about the RSS?

According to the stats on my site, I have approximately 8 times as many people reading me on a given day via RSS rather than directly on my site.  That is valuable traffic. The best traffic is local traffic…

Ok, so if you have been following along, you have seen that you really need both a self-hosted WordPress blog and an Active|Rain RainMaker blog.

You say, “OK there Skippy, now what?”

Well bunky, you need content… GREAT, compelling, addictive content.  And you need to present it in a great, compelling and addictive way.  Venture out from the wall of words and throw so fun at the wall and see if it sticks.

This post is actually what I call a second level post…  it is broken up into bite size chunks that are easier to chew than a straight up solid word wall, but it still lacks something.  Spice…

Where most people start is the first level post, a solid wall… not even a window.  No room for bites here, just a solid pile of words.  Now, if you happen to be Stephen King or Ayn Rand, that might be OK, but most of us aren’t.  And most of us aren’t packing 2000 pages of text into a package for our readers, either.  In fact, many readers will see the paragraph without end and they will click away so fast that they will barely make a dent on your Analytics Program (look for that tool coming up…).  They will see GIANT paragraphs of homogeneous type.  There won’t be any bold, and caps or anything else to break it up or draw interest.  And so there won’t be interest drawn.  Actually, after you write for a little while, this style starts to go away.  In fact, you might notice that it is hard for me to even write that way on purpose…  I write like I talk, and I get expressive… I take breaks (I have moments that are “aside” from the main theme of the conversation).  Writing like this is hard work.  And reading it is harder work.

Readers want…

• Bullet points…
• Lists
• Bold
• CAPS
• Variety

And there is something else they want…  They want RICH MEDIA CONTENT.  They want to see something more.  And sometimes the “something more” is graphics… or video… or photos… or even a presentation.  Embeddables.

The rest of the story is below…

Here is the After…

So, just a moment ago I posted the other half of this blog. I worked VERY hard to make it visually unappealing and kind of boring. I did that on purpose. For a purpose.

You see, there are SO many ways to add rich media to your WordPress and Active|Rain posts.

• YouTube (and dozens of other video sharing sites)
• SlideShare (and some other presentation sharing sites)
• Flickr (and the other photo sharing sites)
• MagToo (I don’t know of any other panorama sharing sites)
• Pictures
• Graphics

And most of them are free or nearly free. And they are easy to use.

you still need to have something compelling to say, but it is much more interesting (and WAY less pressure) if it is also presented in an interesting manner. Through the use of these cool tools, you will be able to better connect with your readers, and your readers will better connect with you.

Don’t let the little code snippets freak you out, they aren’t THAT hard to edit into a post. It needs to be done on the HTML side of both your WordPress and Active|Rain blogs. I would bet that there is already a tutorial on how to do this for A|R, and I know that there are scores of them for WordPress… But, one of the great things about blogging is playing and learning. And what better way to learn about code than to play in it a little…

Here is the WAY quick version (for A|R).

1. Write your blog without the embeddable media
2. Save it to draft
3. Open it back up and click on HTML
4. In another tab, open up the Embed code for the item you want to install
5. Copy the code
6. Paste it into your Active|Rain post where you want it to show up
7. Save it to Member’s Only or Public view
8. Make sure it works…

WordPress is pretty similar, except that you don’t have to save it in order to switch from WYSIWYG to HTML and back. Also, both tend to mess with the code if they are changed back and forth a few times… so, try to get the regular content right and then install the embeddable applications.

Enjoy…