Ryan Orsinger Keller Williams San Antonio Techguy Technology Blog

Basic Tech Training Schedule

2008-04-10T18:05:00.003-05:00

Two Day Tech Bootcamp = first Monday and Tuesday after Career Launch from 9-11am

Website Wednesdays: last 2 Wednesdays of every month, 9:30 - 11am: Workshop website class

Tech Friday: Every Friday at 1pm in the Training Room. Topics change weekly.

Fax to Email

2008-03-15T00:18:00.002-05:00

Direct Inward Dialing (DID) numbers are fun. The funnest use is to have your very own fax number that scans to email. While www.efax.com provides this service for a fee, Keller Williams San Antonio IH-10 is happy to provide incoming fax to email service with no additional charge. To create your account. Send a request to Ryan Orsinger at techguy@kw.com with your name and your email address for your @kw.com account. For this system to work, you must have your @kw.com account created. If you need to create or forward this, go to www.kw.com then go to My Information/My Email/My Address or My Forwarding.

To ensure that all faxes get to your inbox and not bulk, go to to SPAM on your webmail andset your spam policy less aggressivly. Additionally, you can go into the Whitelist and whitelist the sender (unknownsender@twtelecom.net)

All the faxes will show up as .tiff extensions in order to show the fax as an image. For some webmail users, I have seen the extensions appear as a white box with a red "X" in it. The phone system is embedding this .tiff instead of properly attaching it. To fix this, click like you are going to forward this message. When the .tiff attaches to your forwarded message, the link goes live and then you can properly download this. Unfortunately I see this issue only with the KW webmail. Outlook opens them like a champ and other email clients including web based mail and even smartphone clients open the attachments easily.

Please note that I am looking for better solutions with our fax-to-email software in addition to staying in contact with developers at KWRI about this issue with KW webmail so we can get it resolved. My next step is to get with Toshiba and our telecom vendors to get the fax attachments to send as PDF and not TIFF for increased portability.

Internet Lead Capture and Cultivation

2008-02-12T10:33:00.002-06:00

On a great Internet lead Capture and Cultivation panel, a lot of thoughtful opinions and systems were shared by Benny Kenny, John Prescott, Christie Newman, Greg Cooper, Bruce Hardy, and Dave Therrien. The following is a quick outline:

To register or not to register... that's the big question in lead capture
There are various approches to this
- Registration or not, you've got to have systems in place to handle every lead
- If you force registration, you'd better be ready to respond to all the leads
- Realtor.com says that 80% of lead inquiries from visitors never get a response from the agent... yikes!
- skinny bait vs. fat bait: free limited info vs. more detailed listings
- Your registration requirement may drive people away, but guess what, you never had them
- You can see my listings w/o registering, but you'll have to register for MLS
...
ok!There's more here, but I have to go to another session.
Real quick: here's something badass and it should be plain but it was new to me:
The more specific and unique and hyperlocal the search terms and keywords, the further along in the buying process your visitors tend to be...
"San Antonio Duplex" is one thing..
"San Antonio medical center condo" is better...
"san antonio Terrel hills Ft. Sam Houston officer relocation"..... you see where I'm going with this.
Also: in paid adwords, more unique and specific words are cheaper!!!

KW Family Reunion Tech Mastermind

2008-02-09T19:34:00.000-06:00

KW Family Reunion 2008 is off to a fast start.
I attended the Tech Mastermind today and I'll give you a quick summary and will follow up with more details later.

Internet Lead Generation:
1) Diversification - Have different streams of leads coming to your site from many different sources.
2) Bait Properly - Give people something when they register- an agent from Virginia (I forgot her name, but I'll find her) mentioned that her team ran a $5 Starbucks card to people who registered. Bryon Ellington questioned if only thirsty people signed up or thirsty people who wanted property info.
3) Reach Upstream: Keep an eye

Internet Lead Cultivation:
1) Call back in 3 hours at most
2) Call back at the same time of the day that they registered on your site
3) Keep track of the "Wine Hour" after the kids are asleep, etc..
4) Keep calling back

Website SEO
Joel Burslem from Inman quoted Seth Godin, "Blow Up Your Homepage" because your listings page is the new landing page. Bryon Ellington suggests that for multiple neighborhoods, individual websites should be created because search engines are getting wise to 100 keywords of 100 different neighborhoods: they want specific content. Niche content is best.

Joel says there's 3 kinds of blogs:
1) Hyperlocal: neighborhood/farm/community
2) Industry: talking about home values, interest rates, real estate news, etc..
3) Nice: Blog by property type: condos are a popular example
--

There's good news coming for KWLS and syndication: dashboard listing tracking. Stay tuned.

If you want to do Video Blogs or need someone to write a blog for you, try posting a request for proposal onto www.elance.com. Individuals can bid for your job and you can write up a contract for it! Outsource your blogging!

I have more fascinating stuff coming up very soon, but I must now go mingle!

P.S. Gary Keller's speech was phenomenal!

Your Featured Listings

2008-01-30T18:07:00.000-06:00

Your Featured Properties on your webpage come from your listings entered into KWLS. In addition to the marketing and syndication benefits from KWLS, this allows agents within our office to co-market other agent's listings through KWLS. Win-Win. The following show you how to Co-Market. Click here to download instructions on How To Create a Listing in KWLS. Also, you can Visit Here to view where KWLS Markets your listing.

Make sure you've signed up for Wolfnet as your IDX. Guess what? You're already paying for it.

Groovy. Now in Section 4.2, make very sure that you click KWLS and not MLS. Know why? Boards are stingy and crusty! KWLS is the only sure fire way to feature your listing on your webpage.

Search by First or Last name for agents whose listings you wish to co-market.

Now, accept other agent's requests and show them how to accept yours now that you have a picture diagriam!

Mouse Commands; Commandeering the mouse

2008-01-27T12:50:00.000-06:00

Yo,

I've been getting some questions about how to execute certain mouse commands like dragging and dropping, highlighting, and the use of the right click. If a few people have asked about this, I have the hunch that a others may have similar questions that they have not asked. The following links share some great exercises in mouse commands http://www.lawrencegoetz.com/programs/mousepractice/ and also http://www.instruction.greenriver.edu/Avery/activities/mouse/MouseSkills.htm. If you're up to speed with mouse commands and feel like a laugh,

Best Practices for Listings

2008-01-06T21:38:00.002-06:00

From the feedback agents share with me about marketing their listings.

Enter listing into Paragon MLS with multiple pictures.

Create a Virtual Tour of the property. Be sure to link it to your MLS listing.

Enter listing information into the Keller Williams KWLS system. (KW.com/My Info/My KWLS)

Ensure that your listing shows up as a featured property on your website.

Request co-marketing with other agents so that your listing shows up on their website as well.

Enter listing information into the KW Showcase for the Magazine. http://www.kw-showcase.com/

2008-01-06T21:38:00.001-06:00

Cutting and Pasting! Time Saving, Ryan's Way!

2008-01-06T14:58:00.000-06:00

Ever had to type the same thing over and over again?
Have you ever had to get a piece of paper, write down something verbatim off your computer screen, and then go to another program on your computer and re-type the whole big long thing? Then how about trying the Windows functions of Cutting and Pasting!

Save time with cutting and pasting! It's easy!
There are a number of ways to cut or copy text, pictures, or files.
There are also a few ways to paste that information once it's on your Clipboard.
1) Highlight the text, files, or pictures you're interested in by clicking and dragging. Then you right click them with your mouse. This will bring up a right click menu, select Copy or Cut and click with your left mouse button to execute the command.
Once you've copied/cut your material, get your cursor where you want it, then right click select paste and left click it to execute the command.
2) Instead of using mouse right click commands, youc an do everything by the keyboard. Use CTRL + C to copy, CTRL+X to cut, and CTRL + V to Paste. This works especially well when applications or websites for some reason or another disable mouse commands.
3) To highlight everything on a page or in a window, use CTRL + A. This is especially useful if you want to copy all the text of an email.
4) Finally, you can also go up to the EDIT on the toolbar in most Windows applications and select to copy, cut, or paste.

Happy Time Savings!

Copying the Hyperlink to a Listing in Paragon MLS

2007-11-29T17:27:00.001-06:00

Ever feel that programs lock you out of what you want to do? Ever feel like you're not in control?

So you want to send someone directly to your listing in Paragon. How do you find the web-address to provide that link? Bring up the listing you wish to email. Then click the "email" icon that looks like this:

Great. Then on the right side, the email option menu will pop up. Click OK.

Sweet. Now the email compose window comes up. Highlight and copy the link out of there and paste it into your favorite HTML enabled email client. (Outlook, Thunderbird, webmail, whatever)

Lead Generation Tools

2007-11-26T12:55:00.000-06:00

Allow me to make a list of the variety of lead generation tools at your fingertips. KW supplies these through your $10 eAgentC dues- you're already paying for them. This is especially useful so you can leverage your efforts! Especially when you have more time than $, take the opportunity to USE FREE STUFF!

1) ProManage Lead Generation Tools located at http://www.kw.com/webmore/jsp/marketing/pages/promanage.jsp The ProManage suite of tools are KW designed lead generation tools built on the MREA model and designed to incorporate with Top Producer 7i. Here's the cool part, even if you don't Top Producer, you can use all of the ProManage downloads! ProManage features 116 letter, email, and flyer templates all professionally written and designed and ready for you to use to start generating your leads. This doesn't even include the professionally translated Spanish material or the pre-listing packets and buyer's guide and consultation! All you have to do is send it- everything is already written!
- 12 direct campaigns: 2 different campaigns with pre-made letters and postcards - 8 x 8 Print and email: 2 different campaigns for each of the following categories: buyers, sellers, FSBO, and expired templates in both email and print.

2) eAgentC Agent WebSites (KW.com login, go to My Information then My Website)
a) Your personal website is a great lead generation tool with the following conditions. Your website is only as good as you design it. And it's only as popular as you make it. With a simple setup, it's got your name, face, branding, and message all displayed. That's good. The useful information about schools, neighborhoods, weather, the real estate market, etc that the site makes easily added is better. Using your site to establish yourself as an expert through constantly updated content is best. Visit http://help.kw.com/pages/kwintra_newagent.shtml for the website manual and even video guidelines. Additionally, I've attached a document describing how to make your eAgentC site search engine friendly. b) Now that it's set up, you have to drive traffic to it or it will not be seen. The best way to do that is through a blend of online and offline advertising. Mention your website often and give the address. Put the address for your site on your business cards, add your web address to your email signatures, and continue to saturate in every way you can. Saturate is the key word. More is never enough. For online advertising, make a budget and a plan. Even if you're budget is $0.00, you can still have a plan and still leverage yourself through listing and network sites that only require a login. Facebook, LinkedIn, Trulia, Point2homes.com- the list goes on and on. In fact, if you want 50 good websites to start with, go to http://kwmc91.webexone.com/disc.dav/18820/Trulia_Inman_Top50_Marketing_Ideas.pdf.
c) The new KW.com website features My Listing, My Lead. That means when people search KW.com and find your listing, they will be directly pointed to your website and given your contact information. This is a radical departure for how IDXs for agency sites have commonly been used. Until now, they have always pointed right to the broker.

3) IDX solution powered by WolfNet, instructions at http://help.kw.com/pages/kwintra_wolfnet.shtml
- The most important part of your website is allowing visitors to search for homes. Enabling your IDX by WolfNet makes you the contact when people want information about any properties they find in the entire MLS. In addition, WolfNet Back Office provides your lead capture tools including sign up, conditions of signing up, search savers, and more. The information for setting up your lead capture tools with Wolfnet Back Office is contained in the email that Wolfnet sends with your IDX link.
- Here's the secret to Internet lead generation. This is what makes or breaks your efforts. Step 1 is to create a lead follow-up plan. Step 2 is to generate the leads. Glenn Sanford puts it this way, "the art of converting Internet leads is about fulfilling a series of small promises with your follow-up program by giving them the information they want."

4) eAgentC Agent Blogs
Blogs provide an easy way of publishing new content to your website without having to go in and write entirely new pages. By actively contributing to your eAgentC blog powered by Top Producer (no subscription required for this), you establish your expertise and build new content. Since blogs grow with you over time, they are a constantly compounding information investment. This is what makes your site sticky- what people come back to visit over and over even if they're not in the market... yet! The directions for using your eAgentC blogs is found at http://www.kw.com/webmore/jsp/marketing/pages/documents/TPblogflyerlowres.pdf. Blogs are also food for search engines, and this is a great way to leverage your internet presence.
5) Microsites
Microsites are websites created by KWRI for Associate lead capture purposes. For help with Microsites, visit http://help.kw.com/pages/kwintra_microsite.shtml. These sites allow Associates to capture leads from a source other than their Agent Template site. A Microsite allows Associates to establish a lead capturing tool online quickly and easily while “masking” their identity to the outside world. It turns out, a lot of people (myself and probably yourself included) don't like to be sold anything online. Most people want information and nothing but information when they submit a question online. Microsites provide this appeal while also capturing the lead. When a consumer selects any of these pages, they are directed to a form to fill in their information. That data is captured in an email and sent directly to you! The Microsite uses the following four pages to capture the consumer’s attention:
Find your Realtor® now!
Determine your home’s value
Search for a house today!
Get pre-approved - it's easy
6) The KW e-Card center http://intranet.kw.com/cgi-bin/postcards/index.pl
The KW e-Card center features 21 categories of almost 200 e-Cards that you can send and set up for drip campaigns. The categories range from back to school, to seasons and months, to congratulations, and holidays and much more, and they provide you with even more tools to put into your touch plan and also your lead generation.

Let me know if you have any questions. KW does a great job of developing these tools, I just put them in a list so you can go through and get revved up!

KW Lead Generation Tools at Your Fingertips!

2007-11-25T23:16:00.000-06:00

ProManage Tools
12 Direct
8 x 8 Print and email
eAgentC Agent WebSites
IDX solution powered by WolfNet
eAgent C Agent Blogs
Microsites
KW E-Card Center
Press Release Marketing

Help With KW.com and the IH-10 Market Center Website (Web Office)

2007-11-23T20:03:00.000-06:00

Need to setup your KW webmail?
Ever wonder how to use the Address Book in your KW Webmail?
What about setting up the IDX on your Agent Website so folks can search properties?
How do you purchase your own domain (yourname.com) and point it to your KW Website?
I'm sure some Video Tutorials would help you get set up too....

Guess what, answers to these and many more issues can be found at KW Support located at http://help.kw.com/

Bookmark it yesterday, use it TODAY, and make your business flurish tomorrow!!!

Why Does My #%$!*# Computer Run So Slow?

2007-11-14T21:07:00.000-06:00

Ever wonder why your computer runs so slow?

Short answer, your computer is either old or overloaded.

Short fix:

1) clean out your cookies, temporary internet files, and cache. This slows stuff down more than I ever realized until my 1 month old dual core Dell w/ 2 gigs of RAM at home started moving like a turtle in molasses. I cleaned out the temporary internet files and BAM, it ran like a hare!

2) Go to Control Panel, then to Add/Remove Programs. Remove all the crap programs. You know which ones they are. They're the ones that get installed by accident or automatically. They're the toolbars and desktop assistants and modem helpers, weather bugs, and all that crap. Get yourself rid of them!

3) This is wildly unsafe, and I recommend that you never do it. In fact, if you had to do anything I mentioned in step 2, don't ever try this. But it works. Viruses only infect you if you actually download them and run them. If you're smart enough not to manually download or install a virus, then you can turn off your virus-software completely and it will vastly improve the overall performance of your machine. Now. You will still be completely open to worms, scripts, macros, and all manner of wee beasties that can make your system download malware and run it without your permission. OK. Turn that anti-virus back on and deal with a slow but safe computer.

The longer answer is more complex. There are two major sides: hardware and software.
Allow me to illustrate the hardware end:
1) Hard Drive storage space is how much space you have for library shelves.
2) Memory or RAM is how much desk space you have to open all your books at once.
3) Processor speed is how fast you can read everything spread out on the table.

Hard Drive speed means how fast you can select, retrieve, and return books to the shelves.
Memory bus speed is how fast you can arrange what's on your desk.

Processors and memory are solid state. They have no moving parts. Hard Drives are mechanical devices. They spin at least 5000 RPM while they magnetize and demagnetize to save and retreive your files. Imagine if you spun around thousands of RPM for a few years and everyone expected you to work just like new. While talking computers and auto-tuning, Randy with SD Tech shared with me his comparisson. Hard drives are just like cars. Since they are mechanical and spin, you're basically putting miles on them. You can't expect your hard drive to perform like new after a few years. It's just worn out. No amount of drive defragmentation can change that.

Worn out hard drives are often the culprit for hardware issues.

As far as software, you're probably asking too much of your system. So you're browsing the interslice with only 3 windows open. One is using some sorta virtual java machine. The other has a busload of Flash animation going on- say myspace or something with games or whatever, and you're checking your mail. You're running Yahoo toolbar, weatherbug, some sort of 3rd party registry "cleaner", yahoo instant messenger, msn messenger (whether if you have an account or not), and limewire is cranking away downloading a bunch of pirated software with embedded worms and viruses and such. Now, why is your system running so #&*@! slow? Suddenly you want to sync your blackberry or whatever and it takes forever?

Cut out the crap. Search toolbars are bullcorn. Weatherbug things are data miners. Your registry "cleaners" are going to end up selling your credit card information. Stay slim. Keep it tidy and you should be OK.

---
Long story short- replace your hard-drive. Don't worry, it takes a couple of minutes with a screw driver. You won't break it unless you run across the carpet with socks on to build up a static charge.
Then go to CONTROL PANEL, and remove all the crap that's on your system. No weather bugs, no yahoo/google toolbars.. get rid of the crap.

Problems with Visual Tour?

2007-11-13T13:52:00.000-06:00

Once you click "Send To Virtual Tour" in Visual Tour Studio, it brings up your default browser automatically and starts an upload to your visual tour account. You must login at this period and proceed to enter your listing info. If you are putting too much strain on your system, have too many windows open, or if your Internet connection hiccups for any reason, then you may experience a problem with uploading your tour. The best fix for this is to re-send your tour to Visual Tours. This problem does not show up often, but as many of us multi-task and run a lot of stuff on our systems, this can come up enough to mention it.

For other issues and general questions, the fine folks at Visual Tours have created a forum for addressing additional issues and also for posting a WISH LIST!

http://forums.visualtour.com/

Cheers,

Ryan Orsinger

Visual Tours

2007-11-12T12:49:00.000-06:00

Visual Tours are a great way to share an inside view of your listing with your leads. How much time do you save by highlighting the virtual tour instead of showing the home to window shoppers? How much does it cost to make your virtual tours with VisualTours software? You are already paying for it!

Basically, Visual Tours comes down to 3 steps.

1) Click here to download the Visual Tour Studio software onto your computer OR use any computer in the IH-10 office - they all have Visual Tour Studio installed.

2) Shoot me an email with your contact info and a VT sized photo and I'll make your account
3) Create your tours and upload them!

The following links will take you directly to the relevent information on the KW IH-10 Market Center website. You must log in to access this info.

Visit here for a step by step HOW-TO Make a Visual Tour from your Realtor for life Gonzalo Quezada III. You can also visit his website at http://www.sarealestate.net/

Click here to view how to link your Visual Tour to Paragon MLS.

And also, Visual Tour provides automatic linking to other websites, click here to view where!

Emailing Everybody in the Market Center

2007-11-12T12:05:00.000-06:00

To email all members of the Market Center, log on to the KW IH-10 Market Center Web Office which is found at
http://www.kw-sa91.com/.
Once you log in, click the "Send Email" button on the top menu bar.

In the email compose message window, enter the following information:
Now make sure the select boxes on the bottom of the page look exactly like this, then hit SEND.

The window disappears after you send your message and you're good to go. You've now emailed almost 600 people. I hope you made your message compelling enough for them to read it!

All the low hanging fruit is taken

2007-10-31T18:35:00.000-05:00

It was brought to my attention today that insurance agents, for whatever reason, lack a serious and personal web-presence. This contrasts interestingly with real estate agents for whom web site services are in tight competition. Website Wednesday class went great. We covered all the general bits from IDX to site names and the like to adding documents and managing autoresponders.... The easy stuff is done by others because it's easy to do. The trick is to go a step further to get the fruit out of reach. The low hanging fruit is already taken.

I had to call plumbers today. Tator Mason from First Call Plumbing at www.firstcallplumbingsa.com provided top notch service and friendly help. Rates were on par with competition for emergency service, but the response took less than an hour and the fix went smoothly too.

This hit me that exceptional customer service is the way to go a step further.

Process Documentation, Living Documents, and Blogs

2007-10-30T13:10:00.001-05:00

Over the past few months as Technology Director for Keller Williams San Antonio IH-10, I have been documenting the process by which I resolve common desktop support issues. Michael Ford aptly enough calls this creating a living document, a notion he presented at the first Technology Committee meeting I attended. The notion occurred to me that living documents and process documentation in my IT situation here can be smoothly implemented through a blog so that agents can access it in my absence and also by hard copy for when I'm in the office.
My economics buddy and realtor Tyler Willmann asked me if I kept a blog today and I mentioned that I had begun about 3 of them but never kept with them. So I challenged him to a blog off. You can find his blog, Living in Downtown San Antonio, at http://livedowntownsa.blogspot.com/. I like his attitude. He said just go with it.
So all blogs have a starting story and they weave a good yarn just like a storyteller by the fire (or the radiation from a CRT monitor in our case), and this is how it's started. Stay tuned for more technology oriented process documentation soon.