A good testimonial is a nice thing.  It strokes our ego, reminds us of a good sale that we were part of and also it helps us to show a track record to possible future clients.  I do believe that a good group of testimonials as well as a clean bill of health from the Better Business Bureau is something I look for in a few businesses I contract services from.  Much like references on a resume, many Realtors® will keep a list of references from past clients and make these references, or testimonials, available on their website for the whole world to see.  I'm fine with this, but I would like to introduce the 21st Century and Web 2.0 to the testimonial ideal to help get more visibility to the realtors online presence.

Instead of only putting the testimonial on your website, places like ActiveRain have spots that you can easily put a few good testimonials yourself.  I think that a few good bullet point testimonials can jazz up your business listings anywhere on the net.  For instance,

 I LOVE my new website, it truly is a magnet for buyers and sellers. - L Jesse Walker

Jesse has one of our PropertyMinder AccelerAgent Real Estate Websites and is doing quite well with it and is one of our many success stories.

Now if I put that in the extra areas available to me from my Google Business Listing to my Yahoo Local to my many other business and social directory listings, it is a bit nicer and shorter that a paragraph of myself saying the same thing.

There are other testimonial services and areas that your clients will have to post their testimonials for you.  This may be more difficult as your client will have to create a login and then find you and post the testimonial.  It's a lot more work than just sending you the testimonial directly, but if you can get them to go this extra step, it is much better for you.  If your client's have a yahoo email address, ask them to post their testimonial on Yahoo at your directory listing.  They already have a login and password.   You can also create a Yelp.com business listing which till recently has been mostly about restaurant reviews but has moved on to local businesses as well.  Getting your clients involved in Yelp would also be good for them because they can check out some great local restaurants and see what the patrons are saying about them after finishing putting in your testimonial.  People evangelizing you on websites other than your own will help to increase your overall internet exposure.  As the rule of SEO and SEM go, every little bit helps.

If you want much more detailed ways of getting and using 21st century testimonials as well as where you should be and what you should be doing on the internet to promote yourself, consider the PropertyMinder TECH-MAR Clinic.  Five hourly webinars walk you through details of where how and why.  Just the map that some people need to get their marketing kick started outside the box of their own websites borders.

If you are going to buy a new computer and you have been chewing your nails about the change to the Vista operating system, I may have some relief for you.  In my opinion, Vista is probably one of the most marketed releases to receive such an absolute cold shoulder from the targeted audience since the McDonalds's Arch Deluxe.  The most common complaints I read about always boiled down to change and complexity.  XP was an excellent system and many people don't have the extra time nor inclination to begin to fathom a new operating system that looks so alien in comparison to the previous one.

I found myself in the dilemma of a forced operating system upgrade when I started shopping for my new laptop.  I went with a laptop option that prepackaged some extra utilities and just the Basic Vista OS.  I did not need many of the extras that Vista offered so I started turning off utilities and removing the extra software packages.  My wife said that inbetween Friday when I brought home the new family member, to Sunday afternoon, there was a remarkable change in speed and ease of use on the new laptop.  Between shutting off most of the extras and going over to www.java.com and downloading Java along with the optional (and free) OpenOffice.org that is mostly compatible with the new MS Office I had a system with very little speed loss and it looked so similar to XP that I doubt most people would see the differences.

The idea of keeping it simple and similar is a good general guideline for upgrading a product that has a happy following of users.  Take for instance, the PropertyMinder AccelerAgent Real Estate Website.  This website has had upgrades over the last year with additional lead capture devices as well as a very customizable drip email marketing campaign integrated into it's built in client relationship management (CRM) utility.  Some of the PropertyMinder upgrades go unnoticed by our clients until email press releases and free training notices reach them.  There are obviously differences in the comparison.  PropertyMinder upgrades automatically as opposed to making older clients "buy in" to the new model.

If you find yourself with time to spare and you want to understand more about what your operating system offers you, two great guides for XP and Vista are available for free at Tweakguides.  I highly recommend them for both the novice and the advanced user.  They can help point out what all the new extras of Vista are, and how to shut off that which you decide is not necessary.

PropertyMinder offers a TECH-MAR Clinic for those of you with a real estate website that doesn't seem to be generating any business on its own.  The TECH-MAR Clinic can help you to understand marketing and advertising concepts that will increase your real estate websites traffic whether or not it is a PropertyMinder AccelerAgent Real Estate Website or not.  The PropertyMinder TECH-MAR Clinic is for the new agent or experienced Realtor® alike.  Our virtual classroom is the first step in getting comfortable with technology and mastering the world of internet marketing.

I have heard a common statement from many different Realtors® over the last few years that I wanted to share with you for consideration.  During my day I may help up to twenty people with technical issues or training on their PropertyMinder AccelerAgent Real Estate Websites.  "My computer is slow.  I'm going to buy a new one soon." is the statement I get from time to time.  When I find out that their computer is maybe a year or two old, I am sorry that they have to get rid of what is still a new computer to me.

While assisting these clients and walking them through their question, step by step, I often have to wait for their computers to catch up to mine.  I would love to say that this is because my work computer is a water cooled quad core monster running a raid system and.... well... I would love to say it, but that isn't the case.  My work computer suits my needs and is quite average.  In fact, CNET rated my computer back in 2005 as 'quite average'.  So why is mine so fast in comparison to the ones I come across in my duties?  There are a few possibilities, but the one I want to focus on are a couple of the correctable ones.  Computer software overhead, Adware/spyware and fragmentation.

When I start up my computer, a few icons will appear in the lower right hand corner by the clock.  Each of these icons is attached to a program that is in a best case scenario, passively running and taking up some of my computers speed.  Some of these icons may be worth the speed exchange though.  My virus program, instant messenger and a couple of other icons that I use throughout the day are in my tray, totaling to four.  As with golf, you want a lower number.  Find out what the icons in your lower right are doing and if it is not something that you are constantly using, then see if the icon can be disabled.  In some cases, there is a way to hide the icon.  Hiding it is not turning it off, so hiding them will not improve your speed.  Deactivation of the non-essential icons is the best solution for you.

When you visit places on the internet, you are exposing your computer to malignant programs that will attack you without you doing anything more than visiting a website.  This has been an ongoing issue that is growing.  How can you protect yourself against a site that does this?  I have two favorites I suggest.  One is the free version of AVG.  It can check sites automatically for you and verify the sites safety.  Another that will check you out and prevent you from being able to go to known bad sites is Spybot.  Both of these products are free and can help with the adware, spyware and malignant program issues that you can come across in the great online unknown.  Some people recommend McAfee or Norton Utilities.  I have no issue with either company but I like the simplicity and size of AVG.  To me, my computer feels as if it is running much faster just using AVG as opposed to when I last ran either of the other two programs.

Now let's check on your storage and fragmentation.  A computers data is held on a hard drive.  If the hard drive has at least 1/4 of its capacity left open, this is a good thing.  A computer that is a hairs breath from being full will have issues.  Dump unnecessary files.  Get a USB2 External Hard Drive or large capacity USB Flash Drive for data storage.  Clean up your space.  Once cleaned up, you can go to the properties of your LocalDisk (C:) and click on the tools tab.  There is a built in defragmentation program that you can use that will re-integrate fragmented files.  This isn't something that you need to run every week.  I run mine once every couple of months.

Do your updating now!  So many times I come across people who have not updated their operating system for years.  Open your Explorer window, go to the tools menu and click on Windows Update.  Do what it says and download your updates.  If it has been a while, then it is going to take a while.

Probably about once every year or so, for my home systems, I do a complete reformatting of my computer and reloading of the software I still use on a regular basis.  This is no small feat and usually takes several hours of a day, but my computer at home runs many times faster than my work computer.  It is set up for nothing but speed.  I don't suggest this method for anyone who has not done it before.  If you have a spare computer or if you already purchased a new computer, try doing this to the old one and see how much you can improve the speed of that system.

General tips and tricks on operating system cleanup and such are one of the covered points of the PropertyMinder TECH-MAR Clinic.  PropertyMinder has helped thousands of Real Estate Agents and Brokers quickly adjust to the post-Internet reality. The TECH-MAR Clinic is the stepping stone of many agents that are uncomfortable with technology, as well as those who are already tech savvy, but want to learn new techniques in the market.

While working for PropertyMinder, Inc. I have seen both ends of the ROI from website universe.  I've seen the very successful and driven real estate website and I've seen the website that earns zero ROI for it's Realtor®.  I thought today I would mention some of the differences between the extremes of success and the agony of business website oblivion.  I've helped to set up many AccelerAgent Real Estate Websites across the nation and done my best to assist clients with the extra tips and tools to help their websites to gather new leads for them.  PropertyMinder has an abundant amount of Realtor® success stories in this regard.

First off, get a website address (URL) that you own and control.  This is so easy to do, yet a good percentage of the real estate websites I check out are at temporary domains or sub domains.  Stop that and get a web address now.  They are cheap and if you use one like GoDaddy, you can even have great phone support to walk you through difficulties.  Others that I have checked are indeed good domain names but they are owned by whoever the client had done the purchase with and not by the client directly.  This can lead to trouble in the future when you try to make changes to what real estate website you are using.

Once you have a domain name, don't try to remember it because there is no try.  Remember it by putting the domain name EVERYWHERE.  Then you can't help but remember it.   Put it on your business cards, signage, Voicemail, email signature and any printed material you send out there should always be a complete web address.

If your website has several lead capture tools, get the web addresses to these pages and add links to your online advertising.  This way people who find your advertisement have an easy way to get to your website and you have a chance to convert them to customers.

Do your own online advertising on Craigslist, Oodle, Backpage, Google Base, Kudzu Zillow, Trulia and other places.  Make sure that in all cases you tie this advertising back to yourself in any way you can.  I know there are a lot of easier ways to allow others to do this advertising for you, but the biggest difference in lead production I have seen comes when you control all of your own avenues of lead generation and you know what the returns of each one are.

Make time in the week for your website and online marketing efforts.  Set aside a couple of hours a week to update all your online postings and to be sure to register yourselves on all the different places that you can.  So many of these are at no cost to you and allow you to put in your web address to link back to your site.  Google Business Center, Yahoo Local, Merchant Circle and many places like this can help you to 'exist' online.

In short, website success is out there, but it is usually wearing a disguise.  It is disguised as a little bit of work.  There are good ways to do it and of course there are great ways.  For those people looking for a written out plan of what to do with some step by step walkthroughs should look into the PropertyMinder TECH-MAR Clinic.  The TECH-MAR Clinic will give you a well thought out plan of attack on getting your name out there and beginning the return of investment on your real estate website.

Last weekend, while driving around different areas of the Silicon Valley of California, I saw multiple open home fold out signs on corners sporting a picture and name of a Realtor® and pointing the way to the open home.  This is nothing new and I've seen these same signs week after week.  This time I decided to check on what other marketing these Realtors® had done.  I found most of the Open Homes in the MLS service, three of them on Craigslist, and only one of them on most other online related open home posting services like Google Base or Backpage.  I followed up with one home I hadn't seen in the MLS and also the one that I found everywhere.  My first caller reported that he had put it in the MLS, even though I couldn't find it, and that he had four people in a four hour period.  The second agent whose open home was posted everywhere had a large flow of traffic that specifically said Craigslist or other online classifieds was where they had found the open house information.  A respectable amount had come with MLS printouts and even agents.

Why an agent would spend time on a weekend to do an open house and not take advantage of every means of getting the most out of their time still amazes me.  Most of the online services that I looked into were free to use and fairly easy to operate.  If an agent doesn't have the time, there are virtual assistants available online that can be hired to help with online marketing like this.  Also, some real estate websites may have tools that can be used to increase your open house traffic.  The PropertyMinder AccelerAgent Real Estate Website has a great tool for just such an endeavor.  The Buyer Match tool on the AccelerAgent Real Estate Website can be used to market an open house to your own current active property searches.  By entering in the general information of the open house, the Buyer Match will find all active searches on your AccelerAgent Website that match it.  Buyer Match will also provide you with a letter that you can send off to these people to let them know of the open house and send them a personal invitation to attend.  This exact same tool can be used to market to other members of the Agent Alliance who have active property searches to allow them to send personal invitations to their own active property searches.  In this way, everyone has a chance of turning an online looker into a real world acquaintance and then on to client.

Helping Realtors® to understand and implement programs to assist them in real estate lead generation from different forms of internet marketing is one of the many goals of the PropertyMinder TECH-MAR Clinic.  With marketing programs in place, you will have leads in your websites Client Relationship Management (CRM) database that will be exercising ongoing MLS property searches looking for that perfect home.  One method of converting them from just an email address and a name is to meet these leads in person.  An open house provides an excellent opportunity to bring these web searchers into the real world.