Some things to think about when creating your landing page:

• Give the user an easy to view design… make it beautiful.  it will add credibility right off the bat.
• Don’t overwhelm the visitor.  Asking for too much info will cause the visitor to jump ship quickly.
• Don’t *Require every field in your contact form.  Simply ask for Name, Email and Phone Number.  Don’t require the phone number, it’s 2010 and users prefer email.
• Use Media.  Photo galleries are great, short videos (not over produced, million dollar agency commercials) are amazing.  People want to see the area they are investigating and seeing real people in video will help tell your story.
• Avoid putting more than 10 images in a gallery.  Don’t show interior bathroom photos unless it’s a 1,000 square foot, has solid wood floors and a gold plated potty.
• Make your contact form visible and placed near the top of the page.  It’s the reason they are visiting the site, make it easy to find and easy to submit.
• Again, don’t overwhelm the visitor-  your copy should be a paragraph or two at most.  Don’t try to over explain.  Let your photos and videos tell the story.  If they want more information they’ll see the contact button!
• Use minimal links off the page.  Don’t give the user options at the top of the page to link off your page.  If you have more information or a website that you want visited then include a link in the paragraph copy.
• Testimonials-  If you have one sentence testimonials and they can be worked into the design without overwhelming the visitior… do it.  Former clients/users can sell your real estate better than you.
• If your landing page does it’s job then some people are going to be too excited to wait on an email… give them the option and include your phone number ( not at the top and in large font but subtly near the request information form).

Those are some basics to keeping your real estate landing pages simple and easy to use.  Actually, this formula works for more than real estate it’s a great guide for any specific landing pages.  One of the most recent and very active landing pages we created was for Daniel Island, you can view it here.  We didn’t incorporate every bullet point above but that’s the point.  Each landing page will need to be custom built based on your needs.

The fun with Foursquare is that it logs points based on tasks that you do.  You get points for checking into a place for the first time or adding a place to the database… go some where a lot and you’ll become the mayor of that place.  However, if someone visits more than you then they get to be the mayor.  You can see where the competition comes into play right?!  I’m addicted for sure.

And of course it can be tied to your Twitter account so you can brag when you become the mayor of McDonalds.

Check it out and see if Foursquare is in your town yet… if not, let them know you want to get in on the action!!

Find me on on Foursquare here.

Visit the page here–>  Charleston’s Island Town

I don’t blog and participate online like I want to.  I don’t finish posts like I want.  I don’t comment on interesting stuff enough.   – Why?  Well, thankfully I have a great reason.  You guys are keeping me busy and I just don’t have the time to spend here like I’d hoped.

The good thing is that I’m busy.  The bad thing is that I’m not doing what I preach to others that they should be doing!  Ugh!

The good that comes from recognizing my own weaknesses is that it helps me relay those to my clients.  If I’m busy and can’t blog then most likely they are busy too.  How do we remedy that (Not the being busy part but the online participation part!)?    How do we find the time to focus on “new media”?

Here are some tips that help me stay connected daily.

1. Post-It Notes are awesome.  Stick it on your monitor.  Remind yourself to “Digg”, “Like”, “Comment”, “Stumble” & “Post”.  Those are just some of the activities that I participate in everyday.  Feeling adventurous?  Try being specific!  I tell myself to “Digg 5 Posts” -  “Comment on 3 blogs” – “Stumble/Share 5 sites”…
2. Start a post. Don’t delete if you don’t finish! If you use Wordpress or other blogging platforms then most likely they have a “save as draft” button.  Use it.  It’s cool to see how your mind explores the post over a week or two and many times it re-writes itself for the better.
3. Simply make time to blog. Commit to two new posts a week or whatever is comfortable for you.  Many strategist advise you to blog daily and some of the “big dogs” actually succeed at doing it.  The problem with that is that it becomes overload and like the “boy who cried wolf”.  Not everything is important.  If you put up 7-10 posts a week I’m pretty sure they aren’t all ground breaking and now I’m ignoring 98% of your noise.
4. Read. Read. Read. After #3, you may be saying.. I thought you ignore a bunch of stuff.  Nope.  I have refined what is important to my field and to my interests.  I don’t miss most things… and if I do, I eventually find out about it on Twitter!

Not a ground breaking list by any means. However, simplicity is the point.  Stay connected.  Get connected.  Be Connected.

How do you stay connected and participate with new media?

The time management tool is amazing and helps me stay on track as well as invoicing.  Give it a try and let me know what you think!

Freshbooks is here…

There’s been a lot of talk about online meeting places and online seminars (known as webinars) lately. Why did I choose DimDim. Simple. They offer a very comprehensive free plan. Since it’s free there is no reason you shouldn’t check it out.

They offer video and audio communications with ability to share your computer screen, websites, powerpoint, files and a whiteboard to draw on during those looong meetings.

Check it out and use it to impress your clients! DimDim.com

I think most won’t doubt the growth and/or use but seeing these stats remind us that the times are (have) changing.

Supporting stats found here.

Many of the respected gurus and marketing “pros” advise to follow anyone that follows you, “it grows your network”. If all I need is a larger network then I have millions of connections sitting right here in the white pages… however, because I have their contact info does not mean that I have a network or that it’s even a meaningful “connection”.

I’ve been in the process for the past month of dwindling the people I follow down. I haven’t gotten far because I want to look at each one and know if I can relate to this person or if we have a shared interest.  I’ve also been on the fence and then last week I saw that Robert Scobel dropped everyone (107,000) he was following!  I’m not that drastic but was impressed with his decision (also note that he has picked up following others again but only those he felt added to his network or interests).

Let me give you the #1 reason people don’t unfollow others… because they unfollow you and you lose followers. All of a sudden you don’t have 10,000 followers you only have 8,000– the horror!!!  Sad to say but Twitter has become an egotistical game!

And now you ask, “how do you know what’s going on if you don’t follow a lot of people…”  well simple.  Search.  I use Seesmic Desktop and the built-in, real-time search let’s me keep up with what I want not others.  Amazing concept, eh?

I’m not telling you to unfollow everyone, I’m suggesting you re-evaluate your practices.  You will be better focused and able to manage your time better by unfollowing the noise.

We’ll focus on their SEO strategies, Adword campaigns, social media diving & in general online marketing for them.

Visit their site and learn a little more about what Pixie Lily is all about (and buy your kids some cool clothes!).

Let me be the first to say that I’m a fan of Twitter.  Twitter has revolutionized the way we communicate and connect with others.  It’s an amazing tool.  However, I discovered a pretty big snag last week with Twitter, one that made me look silly for depending on a free communication tool.

Let me also say that I’m not bashing Twitter, I’m simply offering some constructive criticism to help Twitter become that dependable and even “critical” application.  Enough build up… Here are the details.

On Wed, June 23rd I wrapped up my day with a simple Tweet about the day being long or something along those lines.  The next morning I grabbed my phone to see what was happening in Twitter world.  Uh, oh.  It wouldn’t take my password.  I panicked and immediately thought my account had been hacked.  Crap.  I tried to get a password reset and that process worked but when I saw my actual account on Twitter.com it said the account had been suspended.  Not only did I think my account had been hacked but it had been hacked and someone used it to spam the Twitterati. Great I’m suspended.  Hasn’t happened since high school.

No worries.  I would email Twitter support and get this taken care of immediately.  After all, I’ve been using Twitter over a year, have a pretty healthy group of friends (followers sounds so cultish!) and was very vocal against spam and all the crappy auto direct messaging that has been going on.  Easy fix, so I thought.

I went to the help desk and submitted a request.  I was given this link and continued to read that my account could be held for 30 days for “research”.  30 days?  Not me, I use Twitter to communicate with clients and to stay on top of the happenings in my area of work!  I NEED Twitter.  This is where the problem comes in.  I needed Twitter.  I had just successfully landed a new client and was a Twitter evangelist only for them to see that I was actually a suspended evangelist.  Talk about looking silly.

Here’s where the kicker comes in.  I have never been told exactly why my account was suspended.  I was sent an automated response saying it could be one of many things.  After reading the list I’ve determined that my account was suspended because my personal blog site had been hacked.  My blog.  Not Twitter, my blog. After connecting some dots I’m pretty sure that when my blog was hacked the hacker put a piece of code on my site that linked to malware/spyware.  Twitter saw this link in my bio and thought I was distributing the malware/spyware.  Technically they were right, but I had no clue this was going on.  Thankfully it was brought to my attention and cleared up quickly.  Google had put notice on my site that is was a malware site, however I contacted and updated them and was taken off that list in less than 24 hours.

While I’m happy that Twitter is watching out for this sort of thing and keeping us all clear from the crap that floats the internet, that is NOT why I think they are not dependable.  My problem was the communication and the customer service. This is what I had to figure out on my own.

• Account suspended
• No notice of account suspension except red box on twitter.com (I use Seesmic and don’t go to Twitter.com so it makes it tough to see that)
• No explanation of suspension
• Request from help offered no information immediately
• 30 day estimated resolve time

Again, I’m glad that Twitter is taking the time to protect us from the crap that is floating the web on some sites.  I believe there is a better way to handle these issues and the contact from customer support. Some simple ideas to help Twitter out:

• Send email to address on file notifying of suspension
• Give exact reason of suspension
• Suggest ways to correct/fix the issue
• Automate the research process- It’s easy to read and see if a user is a participating asset to the Twitter community
• Setup @helpusers to assist suspended/questionable accounts
• Don’t put up that it takes 30 days to “research”.  That sends users into an immediate panic.
• Create an automated process that users can use to “protest” their suspension.  With my problem I could have easily taken off the link to my blog,  submitted a ticket to re-check my account and been back up and running in minutes.
• Listen to other users in the community.  I had multiple friends contact the Twitter help users on Twitter to see how to get help with no response.

These aren’t the answers to all of Twitter’s customer support problems but this is a start for some one who depends on and uses Twitter daily.  And just for the record my account was offline for 7 days not 30.

As Twitter moves into being a critical app for business I hope they will take the time to realize that most users are legit and want to be a part of their community.