Tag Archives: Newsletter Article Archive

What If the Well Runs Dry?

As the collection of photos and insights that you submit continues to grow, some of you may be wondering what to do for your next entries? Is everything covered? Is there anything left to say? In a word:  Yes!  Every subject can be covered again and again, just by saying something a little differently with each entry. Whether it is the amenities available in a subdivision or the features of an annual community event, write it up again with a different hook.

Don’t be concerned if another agent has written about it – you can cover the same information differently. Here’s an example:  the Country Club Plaza in Kansas City, MO, is one of the longest continuously operating shopping center in the world. Lots of history and charm there for words and photos. Agents have submitted excellent insights on Plaza shops, the annual Christmas lighting tradition, the spring Plaza Art Fair, neighboring hotels, restaurants and universities, as well as the residential opportunities. Here’s a good example by Lisa Kopp, RE/MAX Premier Realty in Prairie Village, KS:

Country Club Plaza                                                                                                            One of my all-time favorites areas in Kansas City is the Country Club Plaza. I grew up near the Plaza in grade school, and I shopped there in my teens. Today I enjoy the many excellent choices of restaurants. I also attend Unity Temple on the Plaza. This isn’t just a place to shop and eat though – there are many choices of homes surrounding The Plaza, from one bedroom condos to large stately homes. Kansas City is referred to as the “City of Fountains” and many of our most beautiful fountains are located at the Plaza.
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View of the Plaza across a bridge spanning Brush Creek
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The Plaza during the holidays
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The Fireman’s Fountain in honor of those who lost their lives as they saved others

Shooting photos is the same. Everyone will take pictures of the same subject from a different perspective, so we can run lots of photos of the same area. With every shot, we’re giving clients a better look at the neighborhoods and communities. Using the Country Club Plaza as an example again, here are three photos with widely different perspectives on the area. One is shot from the top floor of a high rise looking down at a Christmas light display, another moves the viewer’s eye across a bridge to the Plaza and the last one shows a fountain.

So, the answer to “what’s new” is everything!  And remember:  the constant flow of new submissions is what keeps Agent Insight high on the internet search engines, giving RE/MAX a stronger identity with potential clients.

 

Photos by Christine Lies, RE/MAX 1st Choice, Liberty, MO; Suzanne Steenkamp, RE/MAX Innovations, Kansas City, MO;  Ricki McIntire, RE/MAX Innovations, Kansas City.

Expand Your Areas of Expertise

All agents participating in Agent Insight have their own personal page with their bio and contact information provided for prospective clients. To the right on the page is a column titled Areas of Expertise.

Do you know how additions are made here? It’s very simple. Every time you submit a written insight or a photo for a subdivision, a city, a county or a school district, that place is added to your Areas of Expertise list. Say a little or a lot about any of them and they are on your list.

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This is a powerful feature of Agent Insight, so make the most of it. Send in an insight or photo of every community and subdivision where you want to make sales.  Choose to cover a neighborhood’s amenities or highlight a special event in the community. Give your submissions lots of variety for interest to your readers and to make it more fun for yourself while you are composing them.

Clients want to deal with an expert – show them that’s you!

If a Picture Is Worth a Thousand Words, What’s a Video Worth?

A video can be an excellent addition to your insight. It can enhance the story you are telling about a neighborhood or give further details on an upcoming community event.

To include a video in an insight, first start with a short written insight about your subject; three or more sentences giving the reader a little information.

Then, it is easy to add a video link to the insight. Simply locate the video on YouTube, copy the URL from your browser’s address bar and, paste it into the field titled Related Video YouTube Link below the insight text. Click Submit, and you’re good to go.

Videos share the same guidelines as insights and photos, and are subject to the moderation process.

So, what to post? A video is a great way to show a neighborhood. James Simmons, RE/MAX Greater Princeton, Princeton, NJ, has posted several videos of subdivisions, complete with his narration. As he drives through the neighborhood, James describes amenities, architectural styles and price ranges. Click on the video below to take a look.

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There are a lot of videos available that feature your city, its culture, and its events.  For example, Michael Minervini of RE/MAX Generations in Red Bank, NJ found this video on YouTube posted by the downtown Red Bank Merchant’s Association. Though he did not shoot it, and its focus is on the businesses in the area, it conveys a clear message about life in the urban area on the northern tip of the Jersey Shore. Click on the photo below to watch the video. 

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A Few Boundaries

All videos must first be uploaded to YouTube.  You can upload a personal video or choose any other YouTube video that supports your Agent Insight Submission.

Unlike photos, videos may feature the author (even if it is you) as “film credit”.  This is a common practice with commercially produced videos.  However, for Agent Insight, videos should not include a strong advertising or promotional message, call to action, or other purely commercial pitch.

One very important thing to remember – some YouTube videos are setup to be “monetized”.  This means that a paid advertisement will appear along the bottom portion of the video, typically featuring a third party paid advertisement. Such videos are not permitted with Agent Insight, and will be rejected. If it is your video, you have the choice of disabling the monetization option. If the video was not authored by you, then you cannot change this option and should select another video for your insight post.

Find New Prospects with Agent Insight Widgets

We are excited to announce a brand new feature to share your Agent Insight information on other websites:  Agent Insight Widgets!  The widgets have several different formats, each personalized to you, the agent, and can be placed on your LeadStreet website, blog or any other site where embedding of code is supported.

Here is an example of a widget:

This is an example of our new Community Photo Carousel Widget. Log on to the Agent Insight website to view the other styles and create your own.
This is an example of our new Community Photo Carousel Widget. Log on to the Agent Insight website to view the other styles and create your own.
The widgets are handsomely designed and eye-catching, using the excellent photos and insight from our Agent Insight pages. There are several styles of widgets available:
  • Profile Widgets:  Both short and long form, these includes your picture and office name, a place for a visitor to ask you a question, as well as all your written insights, photos and areas of expertise.
  • Areas of Expertise Widget:  includes both a map and a listing of your areas of expertise.
  • Community Photo Carousel:  an attractive horizontal band showing photos of the neighborhood or community featured with buttons for the viewer to scroll through the collection of pictures of that area.
  • Community Snapshot Slide Show:  this widget shows one photo at a time from a place of interest to the visitor. The photos change about every five seconds. Visitors can click on a photo of interest to them and be taken to that page in Agent Insight.
  • AI Badge: Show off your local insight strength with the AI Badge – displays a running total of your  Agent Insight submissions in “badge” format.
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Click to watch a how-to video on Agent Insight Widgets.

The widgets are simple to create. Just log into www.agentinsight.net with your remax.net login, select a community and click the red Get Widget button near the top of the page. Or, open your profile page and click on the Get Agent Widgets button. Then follow the simple directions on the page to create your widgets.

The new widgets secure your prospects and clients. That means that anyone who visits a market site by way of your widget, will be automatically assigned to you when there is subsequent lead activity.

Questions?

You can download a Frequently Asked Questions document here. Feel free to contact [email protected] if you need any assistance.

A Nugget of Information Is Key to a Good Caption

Although the space for a photo caption is limited to about 15 to 17 words, you can still maximize your chance to say something about your subject.  For example, instead of just “Williamsburg Village Subdivision”, the caption could read “Some of the backyards in Williamsburg border many walking trails and lakes”.  Remember that the majority of customers looking at our website (or any other) are in a hurry for information and are less likely to spend time with long, multi-paragraph entries. Quickly grab them with a thoughtful caption.

Another big plus:  adding a little information to a caption actually helps improve our SEO rankings with the major search engines. Take a look at the four photos shown here. Each gives a little bit of information  instead of just a label. Notice that even a caption on a photo of an entrance monument sign can be a great opportunity to include a marketable fact about the neighborhood.

Indian Creek Trail is just one of the many biking/walking trails in Overland Park
Blue Heron Lake, one of five fabulous lakes stocked with large mouth bass
The main entrance to Wellington Greens, a townhouse community with a private par 3 golf course
A beautiful home in Nutley, NJ, a bedroom community located 14 miles from midtown Manhattan

Write with Intent to Impress

With just a little thought, your caption can tell something significant and not just be a photo label. The captions for each of these four featured photos could easily have had  simple tag lines for captions:  Indian Creek Trail, Blue Heron Lake, Wellington Greens and Nutley, NJ. Instead, the agents added an attractive amenity to each of them. Nice work!

Photos submitted by (clockwise from upper left):   Vinnie Alonzo, RE/MAX Advantage South, Birmingham, AL; Carla Boyd, RE/MAX State Line, Leawood, KS;  Colin Emmons, RE/MAX Real Estate Concepts, Lincoln, NE; and Steve Michalek, RE/MAX Park Square, Nutley, NJ.

 

So, Would You Like To Be Mayor?

Two things are vital to the success of Agent Insight in your market – having unique information on as many communities as possible, and keeping it fresh. As an Agent Insight contributor, when you help us with those goals, you will be rewarded by being featured as the local expert (or “mayor”) of the neighborhoods and communities where you share your insight.

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If you have recently submitted an insight on an area, your branding will appear at the top of that community’s page.

A Featured Local Expert tile is displayed near the top of most community pages. The agent featured there is one of the three (chosen at random), who most recently submitted an insight about that community.

Not only is this valuable marketing for you, it gives you added exposure to Google and the other search engines – which can result in you personally ranking higher in searches.

How To Run For Mayor

Becoming  Mayor of a community is simple – periodically share your insight on that area. And be sure to refresh it from time to time – otherwise you might fall out of the top three and no longer be featured.

And if you’re the first and only to submit on an area? Then you can claim that position exclusively!

For example, for many months, Frank and Miriel Brown, a married couple who team together at RE/MAX Realty Suburban in Shawnee Mission, KS, have been the only contributors about Lake Quivera KS, an attractive rural community within the Kansas City metropolitan area. Anyone searching for properties or community information in Lake Quivera won’t be able to miss Frank and Miriel as the Featured Local Experts.

Make it a habit to occasionally review the “areas of expertise” list on your Agent Insight Profile to insure you are still featured. Also – browse throught the areas where you live and do business, and share your insight, so that you become Mayor of those areas as well!

Agent Insight Is Now Mobile

As you may have discovered, a mobile view of your local market site is now presented to any site visitor who is using a smartphone, including iPhone, Android or Windows. Mobile visitors will enjoy all the great content you have been posting to the site, but in a way that is friendly to their small screens.

Everything is included – your phonebranding as a local expert, property search, schools – everything. Notice that you can search from almost any page and share almost page with your social networks.

The site automatically detects when a visitor is using a mobile device and adjusts the presentation accordingly. Check it out – just visit your market site with your smartphone. Experiment with it so you can share with your friends, colleagues and clients. Also, you should add a shortcut to the site on your home screen, to have handy access to the site.

Note that tablets (like iPad, Nexus, Kindle and many others) have a large enough screen to show the whole site, so they present it in the same format as your laptop or desktop.

Submit Insights on the Go

Most importantly, as an Agent Insight contributor, you can use your mobile capability to post photos and insights on the go. It couldn’t be easier!

The steps are simple:

  1. Go to www.AgentInsight.net on your smartphone.
  2. Tap the blue Login button and enter your remax.net credentials. Your mobile profile page should appear.
  3. Tap the red Submit an Insight button near the top of your profile.
  4. Choose a place for your insight (search or pick from the list).
  5. On the chosen place, scroll down to see the pair of red submit buttons. Choose one.
  6. Complete the submit insight form just as your would with your laptop or iPad.
  7. For photos, tap the green Choose Photo button. Next, you have the option to take a photo, right on the sport, or pick a photo you previously took with that device. Let the upload complete, then add a caption and tap the Submit button.