Turner's Perspective

After staring at Linda Slocum's face for a year on the Santa Clarita profiles page, I decided it was time we met.

Of course, I didn't decide this until after I saw her again over at Naymz. How wrong is that? Luckily Linda agreed and we decided to have lunch together today.

As has been the case with every person I've ever met through ActiveRain, I really enjoyed our time together. Linda shared some great insights into her blogging strategies and talked about how her internet presence has reshaped her Santa Clarita real estate career. Near the end of our conversation, I asked her, "If I were a brand new real estate agent, what would you tell me to do first." This was her answer.

Google Just Launched Two New Features For Their Online Maps: Terrain Maps and Collaborative Maps.

The terrain maps will certainly be of benefit in showing the lay of the land, but the collaborative maps feature may prove to be an even more useful tool. The ability to create your own custom maps has been available for a while, but collaboration may result in greater benefits. It can create conversation. Invite your readers to share their favorite restaurants, places to hike, etc, and give anyone who stumbles on your map the right to add their favorites. And be sure to get specific with the map, as they do in the example in the Google announcement linked above. Or, you could decide to simply collaborate with others in your office to control the content and show off your local knowledge.

The map below was created to test the collaboration tools. I've shared collaboration rights with two cousins and an uncle, and they can invite others to collaborate as well. The map is embedded here and interactive, so click on the icons and see how it all works.

Grafton, WV: Places To See, Things To Do

View Larger Map

I know y'all are going to have a lot of ideas about how to use these new collaborative features. So let the sharing begin.

Tip: If you want to embed a map like this here on AR, you MUST NOT switch back to the WYSIWYG editor, even if you save. AR will remove the iframe tags and the map will not show up. So, add the map code in last and save from the html tab. Also, if you want your map to scroll, like this one does, you will need to change the code to scrolling="yes"

The Best Test Is A Live Test In Real World Settings.

As Teresa Boardman so kindly pointed out at The Real Estate Weenie, I jumped back on Twitter last night.

I had decided to stop using Twitter and last night someone I would not have expected to be using Twitter decided to "follow me" there. I couldn't resist. I had to see what they were tweeting about. And that was all it took. It appears the RE.net on Twitter has expanded... and I'm easy.

The next thing you know I'm following a link here and a link there and I was enjoying myself. And learning. That's a powerful combination in my book. Before I knew it, I'm telling Dustin Luther that I'd Twitter the NAR Convention with him.

So, this morning I get up and visit Twitter and what do I find? I find a simple comment from NRVLiving to Daniel Rothamel at Real Estate Zebra... "REZebra: how are you liking Utterz?"

What The Heck Is Utterz?

What I found was quite unique. It's a social networking site (with what appears to be less than 500 members) that allows you to create "posts" via your cell phone, then email photos, text and video to marry them into one "Utterance" or "utterz." I couldn't resist giving Utterz it a try. I have to admit, I was surprised by how much I liked it. They provide post widgets, like the one below, or sidebar widgets, like the one now in my sidebar. And they also provide automated posting to Tumblr, Wordpress.com or .org, Twitter, Blogger, LiveJournal and TypePad. This can be done universally (post to all) or selectively, allowing you to decide which of your utterz goes where.

Since the first tests went so well, I'm going to give it a thorough workout... at the 2007 REALTORS® Conference & Expo in Las Vegas. So, I'll be posting about the people, the booths, the conference sessions and the parties I attend. I think the ability to marry the sites and sounds will be very interesting. If you want to follow along, you will be able to see the updates in the sidebar on this blog, directly at the ResPres Utterz account, via my twitter feed, or at a new Wordpress.com blog I set up just for this test NAR Updates at http://narupdates.wordpress.com. If it goes well, I'll do the same at Inman's Real Estate Connect NYC 2008 in January.

So, this is a test. But it should be a fun test, so follow along.

Why are self aggrandizing auto-reply emails so prevalent?

When email updates are sent to our clients, we receive thousands of automated replies in return.

Most of them are used to indicate they've received the email or are on vacation. Some of them (way too many), tell us the real estate agent is doing something like "helping someone achieve the dream of homeownership," or "busy with another client." This is true even when we've sent the email in the middle of the night. These are hard workers.

Did someone give a seminar somewhere that said consumers appreciate these chest-thumping automated messages? The numbers tell me that too many people believe this is a good business practice. I don't agree.

I wouldn't normally write about something like this, but the following automatic response really got my attention today.

Greetings Friends and Esteemed Colleagues,

Due to high workload, I am currently checking and responding to e-mail twice daily at 11:00 AM ET and 3:00 PM ET.

If you require urgent assistance (please insure that it is urgent) that cannot wait until either 11:00 AM or 3:00 PM, please contact me via cell phone at xxx-xxx-xxxx.

Thank you for understanding this move to more efficiency and effectiveness. It helps me accomplish more to serve you better.

Sincerely,

Sincerely? "Please insure that it is urgent?" I know they meant "ensure" and I'm reasonably certain they had good intentions. But if I were a potential client, I'd be asking some tough questions. Is this supposed to make me feel good? Is this supposed to make me feel like my business is important to you? Or is it supposed to make me feel like YOU are important? Either way, it fails.

My opinion

Unless you're on vacation, turn off the autoresponder. In today's world of mobile devices, getting to your email in a timely fashion should be a priority. If I'm already your client and emailing you often, the auto-responder is going to drive me nuts. And those who are contacting you for the first time don't count your auto-responder as a real response. They're smarter than that. Answer their question quickly and they'll respect that.

Also, leaving it on all the time opens you up to the potential for increasing amounts of spam. If a spammer gets an auto reply from your email address, it will verify that your E-mail address is a valid and working address and you will be more likely get more spam in the future. Lots of people who would never knowingly respond to a spam message are doing so blindly via their unfiltered auto-reply messages.

If you are going leave it on all of the time, be sure to set it up with the proper filters to NOT respond to spam and don't try to sell the consumer on how important and busy you are. They don't care. Instead, simply and quickly let the client know that their email made it to you and didn't wind up in your spam folder. Something like: "Thank you for your email. I am away from my computer right now, but will get back to you as quickly as possible. If your needs are urgent, please feel free to call me at xxx-xxx-xxxx." That let's me know my email didn't end up in your spam box and doesn't require me to "insure" that my need is urgent.

What's your opinion?