Software and Online Services for the Real Estate Business

Twitter for Real Estate Announcements and Networking
Twitter reached three years of age in March 2009, with a previous year growth in registered users of 1287%. This growth eclipsed Facebook, MySpace, and LinkedIn.

Get the Right Image With Text to Flickr & Twitter With One Cell Phone Message
You can email an image to your Flickr account, and send one from your cell phone. You can post to Twitter with a text message from your cell phone. Now do both at once.

Share Local Real Estate Market Reports Documents With Twitter
Fast sharing of a document on your hard drive is easy with TweetCube. One step, and all of your readers on Twitter can get your document.

.docx DOCX Convert Office 2007
In the way it always does, Microsoft has created difficulty for its users by creating a new format for documents in MS 2007 that many cannot open with previous versions on their XP computers. Here's where you can convert a .docx to a .doc to open it.

Are You In Complete Charge of Your Critical Prospect Management Systems?
Are you in total control of your contact/prospect management system or software? Is is accessible to you even if you don't have your personal computer with you? You should be saying "yes" to both.

Using Google Forms for Website and Blog Real Estate Lead Capture
Though many know about Google Docs, few know that one service offered there is Google Forms. You can create a form that can be embedded on a website or blog, and get your results in a Google Spreadsheet.

Get Easy and Free Blog Copyright Protection
For blog copyright protection, it's as easy as setting up a free account and providing your RSS feed address. Learn how here.

Real Estate Leads From Your Site Using Gmail Canned Responses & Filters
With Gmail, you can set up Canned Responses to deliver special reports to your site visitors quickly and automatically. Using filters and canned responses will get you leads.

Transaction Task Management With Google Calendar
I have more than 50 separate tasks for a home buyer side transaction for everything from document deliveries to inspections and after-closing items. After trying everything out there, one free solution works best for me, and it is Google Calendar for transaction management.

Using a Music Background for Real Estate Video
Music, if done properly, can be a nice background for your real estate videos. This is especially true if you are not going to be doing a voice over and the option is just silence. Learn how to do it legally.

Protecting Your Real Estate Files With an Easy Backup Solution
Are you protecting yourself against a hard drive failure, or worse, the theft of your computer? Technology has come a long way, and now there are online solutions that are inexpensive and easy for real estate files backup.

Share Images With Your Voice Comments Easily and Quickly
We take photos all the time of properties for clients who can't be there to see them. Sending the images, with today's technology isn't difficult. But, what if you want to comment on the photos as well? Or what if you want to show and comment about a web site?

Online Real Estate Customer Relationship Management - A Review
I'm reviewing an online CRM, or Customer Relationship Management system as it applies to the real estate professional. It's very powerful, with drip email, and worthy of a trial.

Embed Documents in Your Blog or Website With Docstoc
When you just want to show a document as it is in your system, or you want to give others the ability to download it as an MS Word or PDF document, DocStoc provides a free solution.

Sandy - The Free Online Real Estate Assistant
Though not specifically conceived for real estate, Sandy is a useful tool for the real estate professional. Get organized using email and Sandy for your calendar, tasks and transactions.

Intersend.com Real Estate Drip Email Online Service
Intersend.com is an independent online drip email service that will work with any website. I'll tell you about it, how it works, and how to use it to market your real estate business.

Generate Phone Calls from Email Card Marketing
If you're sending out emails to announce new listings, just solds, or for any farming activity, you might want to combine the click to call services of Jaduka.com to make the phone ring.

Go From Site Visitor to Phone Conversation With Click-to-Call
Using Google's GrandCentral.com free service, you can place a button on your web site that allows a site visitor to enter their phone number and get connected to you via phone immediately.

Using Click-to-Call Technology to Get The Web Site Visitor on the Phone
All the marketing advantages of the Internet aren't worth much if you never get a personal contact going with that illusive visitor. Click-to-Call technology can help.

Acrobat .pdf Software Clones for the Real Estate Professional
The Acrobat .pdf (portable document format) has become the worldwide standard for making documents portable across the Internet. A good real estate agent simply must have a way to make a .pdf document, not just the free reader.

Using YouTube for Real Estate Website Traffic
When YouTube was acquired by Google, their traffic began to climb considerably, as videos now turn up in some searches. Besides that, your site link in area videos will bring you traffic.

Annotate a Web Page With Your Voice Using Voxci.com
Realtors are always searching for the next great opportunity in marketing themselves and their listings. See how an online service called Voxci.com will let you use your voice to annotate a web page.

Real Estate Email - Will Gmail Work for Your Real Estate Email?
Can you effectively use the free Gmail service for your real estate business email? Here's a review of its suitability for real estate agents and brokers.

Setting Up a Free Online Real Estate Office Suite
If you want to free yourself from any one computer, and manage your real estate business online, look no further. All the free tools you need, with step-by-step instructions, are here.

iGoogle® and Real Estate Online Office Solutions
I start up my browser with a dashboard display of virtually everything I need to know and do in my real estate business each day. Whether it's email, tasks, links to applications, news, or my calendar and appointments, it's all there.

Gmail for the Real Estate Professional
It was a big step for me to put away Outlook, but I've never looked back. I manage all of my real estate business online now with Gmail and associated tools, almost all free.

Google Calendar as Part of Your Online Real Estate Business Suite
The integration of Google's Calendar with Gmail makes it my choice for an online calendar for management of my events, meetings and appointments. See how to integrate it into our online real estate office suite.

Using Remember the Milk for Real Estate Task Management
The name is funny, but Remember the Milk is a great free online task management tool. The really good part is that it integrates with both Gmail and Google Calendar. Plus it takes voice input from Jott.

Using Jott.com to Post To Your Real Estate Business Management System
You're in the middle of a tutorial on building a real estate online office suite. Here you'll learn how to use Jott.com to enter tasks and meetings into your system from your voice on the cell phone.

The RSS News Reader Box for Your igoogle G-Realty Business Page
We're building a suite of office applications online with mostly Google tools, such as Gmail and Google Calendar. On our igoogle business summary home page, we want a feed reader to keep up with news.

iGoogle for a Real Estate Business Management Home Page
Once you have the free tools we recommend set up for your real estate practice, here's how you get a dashboard panel with all of your important information in front of you, updating in real time.

Using Your Voice to Jott Events to Your Gmail Calendar
Using the free Jott service, you can have Gmail calendar events posted with your voice from anywhere. The next time you set up a meeting on the fly, just call and Jott it to your calendar.

Callwave to Take Your Cell Phone Messages
This is a review of the Callwave service for voicemail to your cell phone. It takes the place of your cell provider's voicemail and provides some really great features.

YouMail for a More Personal Cell Voicemail Experience
We review the features of YouMail, a free cell phone voicemail service. Have personalized answering messages for each of your callers with YouMail. And there's more.

VoiceMail to Email and a Special Message for Special People
Getting a voicemail to your email inbox has never been easier. YouMail, a free service, offers voicemail that takes the place of your cell provider's service and some cool services.

Get Fast Detailed Video Help for Marketing with MS Outlook and Word
Video tutorials to walk you through using Outlook and Word in your contact management and marketing for real estate.

Marketing Listings with Real Estate Text Messaging
Real estate agents and brokers have been using toll-free listing information hotlines for some time now. But with a huge percentage of the population carrying cell phones, and text messaging becoming the preferred method of communication, there is a new listing marketing tool out there. Learn how to get listing information and more into the cell phone of that buyer prospect with real estate text messaging.

Cell Phone Messages - Do More With Them
Cell phone messages have become a staple in our business communication arsenal. Many have their regular phone calls forwarded to their cell when they're away from their desks. Thus, a great many important transaction-related messages are left on cell phones every day. Learn how to do more with your cell phone messages.

RealPing® for Online Voice Chat
Profile of an online voice chat service from RealPing that allows a site visitor to initiate a phone call from their computer screen. It connects the two of you and you're able to push web pages to them during and after the conversation to help with the discussion.

Instant Listing Info Text to Cell Phones
Real estate text messaging to send instant information about your listings is not only possible, it can be FREE. By using the combination of a free blog for a listing and an online open text message service, you can get info onto the cell phone display of prospects instantly when they're in front of the property. Learn how to do it here.

Outlook as an All-In-One Solution for the Real Estate Agent
Properly configured and customized, MS Outlook can do just about everything a real estate agent or broker needs in the areas of prospect management, contact management, listings and transactions management, tasking and more.

Get Real Estate Blog Posts from Us Three Different Ways
There's more than one way to keep up with new blog posts at the Real Estate site on About.com. You can subscribe to the weekly newsletter for email delivery, get rss feeds to your news reader or get the latest posts as text messages to your cell phone.

Using Outlook and Excel to Manage Real Estate Transaction Tasks
You can set up a system that will allow the fast import into Outlook of a list of tasks related to a particular transaction and closing. The sheet can even calculate the task due dates for you based on days from contract date and days before closing.

Using Outlook to Send Important Emails to Your Cell Phone as Text Messages
You can get Outlook to send your most important emails to your cell phone as a SMS text message. By using rules, certain senders or email types, such as urgent, can be automatically sent to your cell phone.

Using Outlook Rules to Archive Transaction Emails
In Federal litigation, you can be required to produce emails in pre-trial discovery. It's important that we keep all transaction related emails. You can create an Outlook transaction folder and use "Rules" to automatically file all emails related to the transaction.

How to Send an Email as a Text Message to a Cell Phone
Sending an email to a cell phone as an SMS text message is quite simple for most of the cell services. Adding the cell phone number before the @ symbol and the appropriate domain after will get the job done.

Real Estate Contact Management Customization for Outlook 2003
A step by step instructional with images that will teach a real estate agent how to customize their contact view in MS Outlook 2003. Build fields to manage both buyer and seller prospects. Fields for property types, acreage, time frame and more.

Technology Book for Outlook
This book gives examples and step-by-step instructions on how to improve your Outlook Calendar scheduling, make better use of your time, finish at a reasonable hour and never miss an appointment. On top of that, you'll learn a better way to file emails that will never get lost and task management that is more efficient than the default Outlook system.

Real Estate Virtual Assistant or Employee?
In the growth of their business, nearly every real estate professional will face the decision as to whether to hire an employee or use a real estate virtual assistant. Use these decision points and information to help you in this process.

A Real Estate Virtual Assistant for Internet Marketing?
In the area of web site design and internet marketing, there aren't as many real estate virtual assistant choices. Most are more suited to traditional marketing, and you can usually fare better with more specialized internet marketing help. However, there are virtual assistant companies out there that specialize in this area.

A Real Estate Virtual Assistant for Marketing Help
One of the most popular services of a real estate virtual assistant is in providing help with traditional marketing functions. They can design brochures, flyers and postcards, as well as design, negotiate and place print ads.

Your Real Estate Virtual Assistant Should Use Technology Efficiently
If you're considering using a real estate virtual assistant, it's imperative that they save you time and increase your efficiency. If their systems aren't set up to allow you easy document and information exchange, you could find that you're spending almost as much time as before in just getting what they need into their system.

The Real Estate Virtual Assistant Services for Transaction Management
Perhaps the single most helpful service offered by a real estate virtual assistant is in the many coordination activities involved in a closing transaction. This process is stressful for the client and can be for the real estate agent as well. A VA can bring the closing transaction, its many documents, delivery deadlines and tasks under control.

A Real Estate Virtual Assistant for Listings Management
A real estate virtual assistant can be quite effective in helping a busy real estate professional to manage all the tasks and documents associated with a listing. Though their remote location doesn't help with placing the sign or lockbox, the tasks involving document maintenance, marketing and client reporting are all excellent uses of a virtual assistant.

Cost of a Real Estate Virtual Assistant versus an Employee
The benefits of using a real estate virtual assistant are easily explained. Let's compare the cost of a VA to a full-time employee for real estate administrative duties. We're assuming an un-licensed assistant and the duties they would be allowed to perform.

SettlementRoom.com for Real Estate Transaction Management
Review of the SettlementRoom.com real estate transaction management system online. This is a system for handling real estate transaction tasks and document processing and delivery. It is totally online and accessible from any internet computer.