Dear Friend,

This week we’re going to talk about seven things you can do this week to improve your digital footprint.

Now when I say digital footprint, what do I mean by that?  What I’m talking about are all of the things that you can do online that will improve your exposure and position you to really take advantage of all the trends that are happening right now and really be ready when the internet is completely ensconced in the real estate industry.

So let’s start with:

Number 1: Get on Facebook

You know we talk a lot about Facebook and hopefully you’re either on Facebook or you’ve heard of Facebook, you’ve been thinking about getting on Facebook, well now’s the time to get started.  Did you know that 700,000 people a day are joining Facebook right now.  All of your friends are on there right now.

When you join up, when you get your first Facebook account, you’ll be amazed at the number of people that come out of the woodwork.  You’re going to have people that you haven’t had contact with in years, people that you wouldn’t probably think of even running into, but here you are online, you’re connecting with all of these people and if you watch the, just watch what’s happening when you get on your Facebook, when you get a Facebook account, you’re going to start to see that it’s so effortless to connect with people and stay in contact with them.  So I’ve got a whole series of Facebook tutorial videos for you in the archives at Marketing Monday that will show you exactly how to use your photo stream that you get on there, how to pimp your pictures to make your pictures really look great, to use your status updates to get new business, to use video, to advertise on Facebook to attract exactly the right people that you’re looking for there.  How to set up pages and there’s something new that’s coming from Facebook this week, which is really going to be a wonderful thing for people who want to sort of separate their personal profile on Facebook and your business profile.  So now is the time to get on Facebook and just get started, get involved, observe and see what happens.

Number2: Get a YouTube channel

Now YouTube is the number one video source online and having a great channel name; a channel name is what they call an account at YouTube, so you could have YouTube.com/Dean Jackson or you could have YouTube.com/Winterhaven Homes or Atlanta Real Estate.  So you can see that just like all of the dot com domain names, there is a wonderful real estate that you can claim on YouTube.  Even if you don’t intend to do anything with your YouTube channel right now, it wouldn’t hurt to have YouTube.com/Atlanta Real Estate.  YouTube does get you business; we’ve got lots and lots of evidence that people do search for video on YouTube.  YouTube is owned by Google, so any videos that you have, any videos that you have with great keywords in them will get indexed by Google, you’ll show up and be one of the top things in Google for the keywords that you’re using.  And I’m going to show you some cool things as we go forward here that you can do with YouTube, but just for this week get your YouTube channel set up, get the real estate.  Because once Atlanta Real Estate is taken it’s taken, so once your name is taken, it’s taken.  Make sure that you claim those so that you don’t lose out.

Number 3: Learn to shoot simple videos.

You know video is here to say and it’s only getting bigger and it would be in your best interest to become more comfortable with that media.  You know get a flip video camera for $150 or you can get the HD the high definition version of that for just over $200 and they’re so easy to use, that if you can push a button with your thumb, you can record excellent high quality super video, perfect for our intentions here.  You don’t have to have the fanciest high definition camera with all the extra plug ins and all the things that make it very complicated.  Using the flip video is the very easiest way for you to get comfortable with video and for you to really use it in the best way for your business.  So I’m going to talk about some video tips for you coming up in some future Marketing Mondays.  And today this is all about getting prepared here, so these seven things that we’re talking about are things that you can do now to be prepared, even if you’re not going to do anything with them yet.  So get yourself a flip video; if you’ve got a birthday coming up put that on your wish list.  If you get wonderful things for Easter put that on your list.

Number 4: Get a Twitter.com account

Again like YouTube, like domain names, all of these things, the best thing that you can do is to get your name to start before it’s gone.  So you would have a Twitter account that would be Twitter.com/Dean Jackson.  Or Twitter.com/Your Name.  Now you know what happens is if you don’t get on there fast enough, somebody else is going to take those names for you.  So even if you don’t intend on using it right now, you might want to start thinking about it and get your account set up.  Just observe what’s going on, you know you get only 15 characters for your name, so using things like Winterhaven Real Estate is not going to work, but certainly Winterhaven Homes might work or Georgetown Homes might work, whatever is something that’s going to be applicable for your market.  And with Twitter you can have multiple accounts, so you could have Georgetown Condos, you could have Georgetown Homes, whatever you want to use as a Twitter extension you can set up a separate account for that.  So again once they’re gone, they’re gone.  If you’ve got some good names that you’d like to reserve then make sure that you get in there and do it.  And make sure that when you join Twitter just kind of observe what’s going on, see how it works, find some of your friends who are also on Twitter and follow them.

There’s a Twitter tutorial that I put in one of the future world episodes on Marketing Monday in the archives and if you want you can follow me at Twitter.com/The Dean Jackson.  Now it’s all about staking your claim right now, so just don’t wait till you’re ready, just go ahead and jump in and get set up.

Number 5: Get a blog

You know there’s a lot of great free tools that you can use to blog right now.  You can use WordPress.com, you could use Blogger.com, you can use Activerain.com.  The important thing is that you have the skill to create simple posts of you can do it for your listings or real estate news from your local community.  Just like when you’ve got information that you want to share, it’s an easy way to get it up on the web.  Now play around with a tool like this.  The biggest obstacle that people have to starting a blog is the technical part of it, so that can be overcome in one Saturday morning.  You just need to set aside the time to do it.  Don’t be afraid of it, set up a playground site, one that nobody is ever going to see just so you can play around and learn the mechanics of how to set up and make blog posts.  And do the same with your YouTube channel, you know get a YouTube channel, just learn the moves of putting the videos up there.  A lot of this is just getting comfortable with the technologies.

Number 6: Get really serious about your website

You know the internet is here to stay, it’s only going to get more and more important going forward.  Everybody is online right now, it’s becoming more and more all around us.  Everywhere we go it’s impacting us, on our cell phones, on our iPhones.  15 million people have iPhones right now.  It’s smartphones, if you add in all the Blackberrys and you add in all the Treos and all of those kind of things, the web and the web specifically modified for smartphones is really going to be a big thing.  And what you want to focus on right now is focusing on a lead getting site above all else.  A lead generating website can be the engine that fuels your entire business with a constant flow of leads.  That’s the one thing that everybody needs.  If you look at even our survey last week on Marketing Monday, the number one thing that people need is more leads.  So I can help you get a money making website on an exclusive basis for your market.  Just go to moneymakingwebsites.com and check out all the things that we offer there.  If your area is available I’d be more than happy to work with you on getting your website set up.  Now if you’ve got a website or you’ve got multiple websites, really focus on doing everything you can to generate as many high quality leads as possible.  And don’t just let it sit there doing nothing.

Number 7: Register a couple of .tv names just in case

Your name.tv or your website name.tv, everything is moving more and more to video and it’s getting higher and higher quality and ease of consuming video.  You know you’re seeing things like Apple TV right now and you’re seeing the netflicks box and you’re seeing these devices that interact with your television and allow you to watch internet enabled things on your TV and not really know the different between whether you’re watching television or whether you’re watching web video.  I’m not a big fan of any of these other extensions like .biz or .info or .us or any of those things, but I think that .tv might have some traction going forward here.  And so just like the .com, you know all those .coms that were available when we first started registering domain names, a lot of those kind of things are available right now as .tv.  So if you’ve got your website, that might be a great thing to kind of have as an extension of it, where you might want to think about getting the .tv domain name for your site.

So there you have it, those are seven things that you can do this week to improve and expand your digital footprint.  So tune in next week and we’ll talk about even more ways to get more leads, get more appointments and get more referrals.