Zeek Interactive has created plugin that makes it easy to import your Active Rain posts into your wordpress blog.

Check out the video and then below the video is the link to the plugin.

Download here -> Active Rain Wordpress Import Plugin

I still get asked this question quite often so I figured I would post this here. Most of the readers know the answer, but if you find someone asking, forward this to them.

What is the difference between a Real Estate Blog and a Real Estate Website?

The short answer:
There isn’t a difference. At least from how your browser displays it to you.

A blog IS a website and a Website can be a blog.

Further explanation:

At it’s core a blog is just a piece of software to manage the content on your website. Simple as that.

Should I build a new website with this software or build a second site?

A good question.

If you currently have a website that isn’t doing any good for you now I would suggest you scrap the current site and then build a new site using “blogging” software. You will end up with a better performing site and may possibly increase the traffic to your site.

If you have a custom built standard built website I would maybe keep it and build a blogsite to accompany it and help drive traffic back to your main website where hopefully you have a quality mapping IDX home search solution with lead capture.

Have questions? Leave a comment.

Are you a Data Geek and you’re using Altos Research Real Estate Data? Now they have a new tool to make publishing your charts and keeping you clients up to date with the best Real Estate data.

Announcing Four WordPress Plugins for Altos Research Real Estate Data. Here they are in order of coolness:

Market Data Post – With just a few clicks and create an entire Real Estate Market Data blog post. Sometimes, when you have to get a post done and just don’t have the time, that’s where this plugin comes in.

WYSIWYG Toolbar AltosCharts – Often though, you’re writing your regular blog post, you want pictures or other media, different formatting, and you want to add an AltosChart to comment on the market conditions. This plugin adds four buttons to your toolbar so you can instantly add a local market data AltosChart, regional/county-wide AltosChart, AltosStats table, or cool new AltosCharts Flash into any blog post you’re writing. No cutting and pasting! Works just like adding an image to your blog post. I used this plugin to add the charts to this National Report post last week.

AltosCharts and AltosStats Sidebar – so even when you’re blogging about everything else, your visitors still see that you have market data. Set your click through links to your market data detail pages if you like.

AltosConnect Sidebar – Easy to include the AltosConnect lead conversion and auto-drip forms. No more cutting and pasting.

These four new plugins make using your Altos Research Data much easier for your Wordpress Blog. You can download the plugins from your Altos Dashboard.

For more information about the Plugins visit the Altos Blog announcing their availability.

If you need help with Plugin Installs then give me a call and I can help you out.

If you want to see a crappy blog post then visit my previous post.

How to write a crappy post:

1. Be working late at night and get an idea to write a post just because you haven’t written one in a while.
2. Write the short post about an important subject and don’t check for grammar or spelling errors
3. Write a stupid call to action at the end

Please do not ask for anymore advice on crappy post writing.

This past week another vulnerability for Wordpress came out with a vengeance and broke a lot of blogs. If you blog is hacked it can be a royal P-I-A for you to be able to recover from it.

Update your blog regularly. Now that Wordpress has a built in upgrade mechanism there is not as much to worry about anymore.

Read over at Sellsius about an agent who had her blog hacked and then had to recover.
OMG! My Site has been Hacked.

If you still are uncomfortable with backing up your site and then upgrading it. Give me a call and I can help.

May 1st is RSS Awareness Day. Many of our customers ask,
“What is RSS and why should I use it?”

I will answer the why first.

Do you like to read multiple newspapers or magazines? If so do you go out driving all around town to find the magazines and newspapers you want to read? Of course not. You subscribe to all your favorite periodicals and have them delivered to your house.

RSS is the technology behind Subscribing to websites. So instead of having to visit each website to see if there is anything new you can subscribe using the RSS feed published on almost any website. Just look for this symbol (colors may vary).

If you subscribe to all the sites you want to read then you do not have to spend time visiting each site you want to read.

What program do you use to read your RSS feeds? You use a feed reader. The best reader to start with for the beginner is Google Reader and you can start here -> http://reader.google.com

Here is a video from Common Craft explaining RSS

Will you start using RSS yet?

Loren Nason
Real Estate Technology Coach

I did this quick little screen capture for a customer who wanted to know how to attach a document to a blog post.

Sorry for the fuzziness but I am still learning the software. Or maybe it’s YouTube’s compression that degraded the video.

Loren Nason
Tech Coach
Future of Real Estate Technology

I would like everyone to join with me and welcome Mark Flavin who will be joining The Future of Real Estate Technology as a contributor.

Mark Flavin is the Director of Information Technology for the Bay East Association of REALTORS®. He is responsible for managing the Association’s technology resources, business continuity planning, statistical reporting and analysis of MLS data. Mark also holds the following designations MCP, MCTS, MCSA, MCSE + Security
Prior to this role Mark worked for three years as the lead support technician for the Association and is the developer of the Autofix© support utility. Before working for Bay East, Mark served in the Marine Corps and worked on their Total Force Management System.

In the civilian, non-profit sector, Mark managed and migrated local systems for the National Multiple Sclerosis Society, and in 2004 he became one of the founding members of the Alliance of Security Professionals, a non-profit group which works to ensure that people have free access to skilled technical support for dealing with Spyware and Malware issues.

Mark holds a Bachelor of Science Degree in Business Management from the University of Phoenix, and is currently working towards his Masters of Business Administration.

Mark also has his own blog called Tales from the Techside filled with great information.

Welcome Mark and we look forward to your perspective on Real Estate Technology.

Loren Nason
Real Estate Technology Coach

Mark Wielgus of 45n5.com a Make Money Online blog posted this EXCELLENT video all about SEO.

The main point is how are people going to find you online. Many will say that SEO is the ticket, but that is not the answer. When your first starting out the best thing to do is to get the word out about your blog. Doing SEO work will not let the world know about your blog at first. Participating with other bloggers WILL get the word out about your blog. Worry about SEO later.

Loren Nason
Future of Real Estate Technology

I would venture to guess that most RE blog “experts” would tend to agree with me that putting your listings on your blog is a no-no.

I think the main point of this argument is to not make your blog solely your listings only. People will find your blog because you should have good relevant content and you also keep updating with relevant content.

So since you don’t want to make your blog only about your listings but you want to provide a way for your visitors to see your listings what do you do?

There are many widgets and other ways out there, but I am going to focus on creating a lightbox link on your blog using whats called Thickbox for Wordpress (which is a mod of lightbox).

I learned about doing this while setting up a site for a friend. She built a Google Map Mashhup for locating great spots to Make Out (no she’s not a teenager and the site is Safe for Work). The site is Make Out Spots and on the Main page you will see a flashing link to add you favorite spot. Watch what happens when click the link.

To do this on your blog is very simple.

First you will need this plugin -> Thickbox for Wordpress
Instructions -> http://jquery.com/demo/thickbox/

Then you need to create a link like this (leave out the //\\ at the beginning and end)

//\\<a href=“http://www.yahoo.com?TB_iframe=true&height=400&width=600″ title=“add a caption to title attribute / or leave blank” class=“thickbox”>Open Yahoo.com in a ThickBox</a>//\\

The important part is — class=”thickbox” — this part makes the link open the way it does.

If you need help just ask.

This still can be considered overkill but it looked like fun so I tried it.

Loren Nason
Future of Real Estate Technology