The AgentMapIt Blog

Here is a side-by-side comparison of the Samsung Captivate Android Phone with the Apple iPhone 4.

You are probably familiar with Blackberry and iPhone smartphones but you may be completely in the dark about the up-and-coming alternative – the Android. Android is actually an operating system developed by Google and made available to phone manufacturers such as Samsung, Motorola, HTC and many others.

This review of the Samsung Captivate shows how impressive these phones can be. For business users the question is, how well does this phone perform your most critical business-related functions. We’ll address this question in future posts.

“RVing is a more economical way to live. I’d cite the lack of taxes tied to home ownership: city tax, county tax, school tax. Also there are no association fees (for condos), water bills, trash pickup bills. The caveat however is that the RV depreciates in value over years while real estate typically has appreciated.” – http://real-estate-webs.info/?p=696

- from the ebook “Retire to an RV”

We’re pleased to announce the release of AgentMapIt Gold – the newest version of AgentMapIt that includes a complete suite of tools for real estate agents. AgentMapIt Gold membership includes:

1. Your listing in the AgentMapIt Referral Directory
2. Unlimited use of Feedback – our showing manager and feedback system.
3. Unlimited use of BlogEasy – US and Canadian versions – giving you daily real estate related material for your blogs and social networking updates (Twitter, Facebook, etc.)
4. Lead Machine – coming in Sept 2010 – an easy, effective way to generate leads.

For a limited time the first month is FREE. After the first month there is only a small monthly subscription fee.

Please note: Members who sign up during this introductory period will lock in the low membership fee of $29/month for as long as they remain members.

Sign Up Here for AgentMapIt Gold.

I regularly talk to a real estate agents who publish their own blogs. Sometimes I will hear someone say: “Why should I pay for content when I can just copy stories from online news sources or other newsletters that people send me? Why should I pay for something that’s free?”

When I point out that this is actually stealing content I usually get no response. People who do this either don’t realize they are stealing other people’s writing, or they prefer not to think about it. (more…)

This is not Matt Mullenweg.

Matt Mullenweg is one of the most successful bloggers on the web. He is one of PC World’s Top 50 People on the Web, Inc.com’s 30 under 30, and Business Week’s 25 Most Influential People on the Web.

His blog is at http://ma.tt – Yes, that’s right, it is not a .com and it is very easy to remember. The blog itself has been called various things over the years – PhotoMatt, The World of Matt Mullenweg, and now (apparently) The World of Matt, and it is currently a PR8.

Matt’s analysis of his blogging activity 2002-2009 is informative. Here are some points worth noting:

1. Of his Top 10 posts for 2009, 4 were photo “galleries”. Conclusion: people like to see photos in blog posts. (Yes, I know, he’s a photography guy, so you would expect that.)

2. Number of posts for 2004-2009: 1,108, 703, 340, 360, 314, 182. Conclusion: post often, but once you’re established frequency is probably not as important.

3. Average number of words in his posts (2004-2009) – 49, 43, 65, 56, 48, 80. Matt concludes from the increase in length in 2009 (80 words) that his posts are getting “meatier”. Conclusion: At least one successful blogger writes pretty short posts. So why do the rest of us think we have to write a 500 word essay every time we make a blog post?

4. In the same time period his average number of comments/post have steadily gone up from 5 to 23.

5. He has a core of very faithful readers (including “Mom”) who he corresponds with by email every 1-3 days. As he says, “Email is my most frequently used social network.” Conclusion: Online social interaction, as well as blog readership can be greatly enhanced by regular communication with key individuals.

There’s more, but this post is already way too long.

Nicole and Amanda talking over lunch.

For those of us over 30, text messaging has kind of crept up on us. Now that so many kids have cell phones, text messaging has become second nature to young people – many as young as 9 or 10 years old.

You think you’re on the cutting edge because you use email to communicate with friends, family and clients? Think again. For younger people text messaging has basically made email obsolete. Jay Thompson, a Phoenix area real estate agent reports that in December his two teenagers sent and received about 10,000 text messages – that’s about 83 messages each per day – while his 17 year old son claims to have sent maybe 10 emails in the whole month.

In an article called The Future of Real Estate Communication Thompson suggests that agents who want to be in the loop with the next generation of home buyers had better understand the communication media they use.

Thompson is a good example himself of the communications generation gap. More technology savvy than most agents, he has more than 5,000 email messages in his inbox, while most of his own text messages have been back and forth with his children. Rarely, if ever, does he use text messaging for “serious” business purposes.

As he says, “The point is, the way we communicate is changing. According to some researchers there will be 2.3 trillion text messages sent this year. Wikipedia says that 80% of 13 to 24 year olds use text messaging (compared to 18% of 40 to 49 year olds). That’s a whole lot of texting by a whole lot of soon to be first-time home buyers.”

The other change that has already taken place over the last couple of years is the way an increasing number of people use social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter. People who would not think of using a stuffy email message to talk to each other find themselves commenting to each other back and forth through Facebook and Twitter. Not only are these becoming mature communication channels between people, but companies and entrepreneurs are finding innovative ways to interact with customers and prospects through these massively popular media.

The bottom line is that real estate agents will have to accommodate themselves to the communication media used by their clients. That means if they want to reach young people who are plugged into these non-traditional modes of communication, they themselves will have to become plugged in.

Testing, testing email

We are now accepting subscribers for BlogEasy, our new blogging “wireservice” content and publishing system.

You can sign up for a Free Trial here.

BlogEasy gives subscribers regular, unique content to publish in their blog(s). New content is added to BlogEasy on a daily basis, covering topics such as Real Estate Advice, Real Estate News, Real Estate Trends, Green Tips for Homeowners, Renovation Tips and more.

What can you do with BlogEasy?

1. You can use BlogEasy pre-written content (articles, summaries, reports) for blog posts, web pages, tweets, etc.

2. You can publish articles directly from within BlogEasy to as many as 5 different blogs.

3. You can use BlogEasy to create and publish your own blog posts to your registered blogs.

BlogEasy has spin capability which means that each article can be generated in many different versions – so each published article is unique.

BlogEasy also allows you to localize your posts. You can add as many as 3 different location variables and these will be used in the title and body of your post in specially designated places.

For example, a post about “home renovations” becomes “Toronto home renovations” or “Tampa home renovations”. A post about “first time home buyers” becomes “Orange County first time home buyers”, and so on. You just tell the system which location names you want to insert and BlogEasy does the rest.

You can sign up for a Free Trial here.

Our programming at AgentMapIt was originally written only for USA and Canada locations, so when we started getting requests for membership from other countries we had a bit of a problem.

We’ve developed a temporary workaround by creating a Regional network for Mexico, Central America, Caribbean, and South America. We know this is a big region, and we’ll eventually create smaller sub-regions, if necessary. For the time being, this allows us to accommodate members from those countries.

We will use the same approach for other countries too, as members join from those countries.

To find members from countries other than Canada and the USA, just select the appropriate regional network.