Tweeting With #Hashtags

If you use Twitter, you might be familiar with (#)hashtags. Even if you haven’t used it, you might have seen others using it pretty often while tweeting.

So what are #hashtags and why do tweeters use it?
Hashtags are used by adding a hash symbol (#) in front of any word or keyword, for example #newplans. This helps in categorizing these words so that they are easily searchable and visible on Twitter. Hashtagged words that are most commonly used become trending topic on Twitter. People can then search trending topics based on these hashtags.

Advantages of using hashtags

• You can join in on a conversation trending on Twitter and get noticed.
• You can use hashtags to pull followers to your Twitter profile.
• You can get up to date information on any topic on Twitter.

Using hashtags correctly

• You can use hashtagged word anywhere in your tweet.
• Do not overuse hashtags in your tweet. Ideal number of hashtags that can be used in a single tweet is two.
• Use relevant hashtags in tweets.
• Check Hashtags.org to check the popularity of your hashtagged words.

Hashtags when used correctly can bring about a positive change in your Twitter marketing. So use it well and use it right.

Attracting Leads To Your Business

As a business owner you might find yourself struggling with lead generation because you wouldn’t have a marketing department to support you by providing quality leads. Neither will you have a sales team at your disposal to go convert those leads into deals.

Here are some very effective tips that would help you generate quality leads yourself.

Web presence: Establish a strong web presence. As a business owner, you will not have a physical office address, as such, but that shouldn’t stop you from getting a virtual office space. We’re talking about websites here! Having a business website will lend credibility and a touch of professionalism to your home business. 

Add value: If you want to attract leads make sure you add value to them through your products, services and even the content that you have on the web. For example, if you sell baked goods from home, it’s a good idea to provide culinary tips on your website. Something like that will attract people to your site, where they will eventually find more about what you do and perhaps become a customer.

Get information: Get as much information as possible about your prospects. You could have your prospects fill up one line web forms that help you gather information about them. When someone visits your website or social media page, you should be tracking their online behavior. There are good marketing automation software programs that allow you to do so. You can later use this insight to position your business offerings in a manner that most appeals to them.

Advertisements on Facebook & Google: Facebook and Google Ads are catching up big time. These advertisements place your product/services on relevant web search results and web pages. For example, if you are selling baked goods from home, then you can choose to place advertisements of your products on sites and Facebook pages that talk about cooking or on the search results for ‘cake shops’ or ‘bakeries’ on Google.. To know how to go about AdWords or to get started, click here.

Social media: Social networking sites such as Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn etc. are fast becoming a home business owner’s best friend. Not only do these sites offer unlimited audience for your services, but are also low-cost marketing media. Along the same lines are blogs, newsletters and YouTube videos. All these avenues act as great platforms to showcase your expertise and knowledge in the domain of your business and to attract leads in the process.

Partners & referrals: It can get a little overwhelming to do it all at once—all alone. That’s when you could use a partner to help you out. You could partner with businesses that complement your start-up. For example, if you bake cakes at home, consider partnering with the local supermarket or grocery vendor. Similarly, ask every happy customer to provide you with a referral. Leads through referrals are more likely to convert than the ones you generate in random.

So, even though lead generation can seem like a challenge for business owners, it can be easily surmounted if you have the right strategies in place.

How to use Facebook to connect with potential clients

A lot has been said about leveraging Facebook for marketing. Even though there are about thousands of strategies to tap the opportunities that Facebook has to offer, it is important to understand how Facebook can be used to get more clients.

Create your Facebook account if you don’t have one. It’s always better to keep your personal account and your business account separate, though it may work for some. Your clients may not be interested to know what you did over the weekend or which party you attended. Instead, by having a business account you can focus on sharing informative content with them.

Gone are the days when you handed out cards or asked for contact details. It’s now time to find your potential clients on Facebook. So make an email list of your prospects and send them a friend request on Facebook. Avoid sending out too many friends requests in a day and send friend requests only to people you know as Facebook might consider your requests as spam and block your account for a few days to a month.

If you have a business page, invite your Facebook friends to visit your page and become a fan.  

Grab your prospects attention to your page by posting regularly. You can post your listings and informative articles alternatively.

If you have a website, add your Facebook page badge for website visitors to see your live Facebook feeds and to get immediate access to your Facebook page.

If you’re posting articles and blogs, set them up to automatically post the articles or blogs to your Facebook page.

Post links to your monthly newsletter and email campaigns to your Facebook page.

Try to create a professional yet personal relationship with your clients. It’s a good practice to ‘Like’ the posts they publish or to leave a message on their birthdays.

Acknowledge every comment that your fans post. If someone posts a comment criticizing or complaining about your services, take it in a positive way, apologize and suggest a solution instead of ignoring it.

Tag people in photos and comments whenever you can. Just don’t go overboard with tagging as some people may not like the idea of posts showing up on their wall.

Try not to use your Facebook profile to oversell and avoid exposing yourself too much by over posting.

Facebook marketing is effective and simple. The key is to keep it simple and focus on building your fan base. All you need are a few minutes and you can triumph over marketing. If you want help with Facebook, contact us at support@newplans.com and we will be glad to guide you.

How to create a property website with virtual tour in 5 simple steps

Today brokers and agents are looking for that one magic wand that can help them boost sales. Being competitive is good provided you’re armed with the best marketing tool. So let’s take a look at the one of the most important marketing weapon in real estate – property websites with virtual tour.

But why do we need a property website? The answer is simple. Time. Considering how much people struggle to get their routine things done in a day, it will be a miracle to squeeze in time for other tasks. So if they have to go look for properties in different locations, chances are they might settle for the first property they see. Secondly, as a broker/agent you definitely want to show you’re tech savvy and in tune with technology. A visual representation of a property be it commercial real estate or residential real estate, with a virtual tour effect can definitely intrigue a buyer.

How can you build a professional property website?

Step 1: Create your Newplans account. You can choose the 15-day free trial to try the platform first.

Step 2: Select a template depending upon whether your property listing is commercial or residential and enter your property details. In this step you have an option to add your Meta tags and description to up your search engine rankings with search engine optimization tools (SEO).

Step 3: Upload images and documents. In this step you can upload images that will go in to making your website interactive and also to build your listing YouTube video and image gallery.

Step 4: Use the interactive tool to add interactive elements in your property website. Walk your prospects through each rooms and floors with this easy to navigate tool.

Step 5: Publish your property websites on social media sites, Craigslist, YouTube and even download your flyer or send out an email campaign.

You can even add links to your property listings and property image gallery to showcase on your company or personal website. You also get access to website analytics report like who visited your website with their location details.

For more information on how Newplans can help you market your listings better, send an email to support@newplans.com

   

I, Me and Myself of Personal Branding

Personal branding is all about how you market yourself to the world. A personal brand is synonymous with reputation. Are you trustworthy? Are you an expert? How do people respond to your brand name? What you choose to project can influence the way people think about you and your business. A well-built personal brand can help turn prospects’ perception into sales.

Why is personal branding important?

• Helps you attain a leadership role
• Helps build prestige
• Helps attract the right people and right opportunities
• Helps add perceived value to what you are selling
• Helps earn recognition
• Increases your earning potential
• Helps differentiate yourself from the competition
• Helps ingrain your focused message in the minds of your target audience

Ways to build your brand

• Define who you are by identifying your key strengths to help build your brand.
• Leverage your experience and expertise to make your brand successful. Bring an element of ‘you’ in your branding.
• Determine what you’re going to offer. As a product or service what you offer, how your product or services will help your target audience and so on.
• Set goals for how you want people to perceive you and work on how you can present yourself publicly.
• Be visible and consistent. Integrate your brand statement in whatever you do and offer.
• Use different mediums to expose your brand. Social media marketing and personal website are some of the important tools to build your personal brand.
• Monitor and evaluate your brand performance regularly.

Transform the way you market your commercial or residential properties using Newplans – the next generation marketing tool. Newplans helps you build and manage your residential or commercial property websites, execute effective marketing campaigns and help measure your ROI. 

Our online marketing tool is here to help you create print and web marketing materials that will help promote your property listings in an effective and cost-efficient fashion. With our ready-to-use templates you can create property websites with interactive floor plans, site plans, stacking plans, print flyers, e-mail marketing campaigns, personal website for agent/broker, or YouTube videos and share them on major social networking sites like Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn and content syndication sites like Craigslist. Not just that, marketing materials generated using Newplans are all Search Engine optimized (SEO) and iPad and smartphone compatible, so that your properties get good web exposure and better search engine rankings - that means more hits and increased chances of sale.

To sum it all up, from Lead Generation tools to sophisticated Marketing Material tools to Personal Brand Management tools to Social Media Networking tools to SEO tools, Newplans takes care of all your marketing needs in just a few clicks. 

For more information visit us at www.newplans.com or call us at 412-567-0010 x 217.

YouTube video for commercial real estate and residential real estate

Let’s look at some YouTube statistics before we discuss why it is important for your property marketing.

• Over 800 million unique users visit YouTube each month
• Over 4 billion hours of video are watched each month on YouTube
• 72 hours of video are uploaded to YouTube every minute
•  YouTube is localized in 43 countries and across 60 languages
•  In 2011, YouTube had more than 1 trillion views
• Millions of subscriptions happen each day.
• 500 years of YouTube video are watched every day on Facebook, and over 700 YouTube videos are shared on Twitter each minute
• 100 million people take a social action on YouTube (likes, shares, comments, etc) every week
• YouTube is available on 350 million devices

(Source: http://www.youtube.com/t/press_statistics)

The above statistics makes it evident why YouTube is one of the most important marketing medium for marketers today. With search engines favoring content on the web coming through reliable sources, it is but obvious that your listing when listed on YouTube will bring the much required attention from potential buyers.

Here is how you can upload your listing videos on YouTube

Step 1: Create your Newplans account. You can choose the 15-day free trial to try the platform first.

Step 2: Upload your listing images in your property website template.

Step 3: As soon as your property website is ready, your listing video is ready to be published on YouTube.

The process is very simple and hassle free. You don’t have to worry creating a video and uploading it with Newplans automation software.

Go visible with Search Engine Optimization

Nearly 90% of online population use search engine to find products, services and information. And if your website or content is not visible in the first 30 search results, chances are that your website will never be found and you miss out on an incredible opportunity. Keywords rich content, META tags and descriptions, regular site submission to search engine indexes and directories are some of the key elements that prepare your marketing materials for better search engine rankings. However, SEO is mostly neglected due to lack of understanding.

What is SEO?

SEO is the process of improving your website in order for your website to be ranked well and search engines thereby increasing its chances of being found in search results. This process includes SEO rule compliance with regards to the design of your website to the content written to the links given to the way the website codes is written and the pages structured. 

Why you need SEO?

When people look for something on the web, they type a word popularly known as keyword or phrases known as Long Tail keywords. As soon as they type in the word and hit search, many results shows up simultaneously. The results that shows up are the sites the search engine pushes for been SEO complaint. And as a business and brand you definitely want to be in that list of results. This is where SEO can help you.

How to get started with SEO?

• Pages of your website should have relevant information about your business.
• Add META tags and make them keyword-rich.
• Make sure your website content and marketing material content are solid and fresh.
• Create internal links. Hyperlink key phrases pointing them to various pages within the website.
• Use keywords that you think your visitors will most likely use while looking for something online.
• Use alt tags on all the images that you use
• The keywords should match the content of your website page
• Use keywords in your HI and H2 heading tags
• Incorporate your company and site description into your page URL.
• Use external links to link to an external partner site and have them link it back to your site.
• Submit your site to various search engines periodically
• Try to change the content of your website regularly as search engine spiders keeps looking for new content
• Try not to overstuff your webpages with keywords
• Give links to your social media profiles
• Analyze the activity on your website regularly. Know where an action is taking place.

Every business or personal websites need SEO to maintain their position on search engines. The key is to keep it simple and fresh without overdoing anything. So if you want your website as the front runner on Google, start your SEO efforts today.

From Lead Tracking to creating sophisticated Marketing Materials to Social Media Exposure to better Search Engine Rankings, Newplans takes care of all your marketing needs in just 5 simple steps. With ready-to-use templates you can create Property Websites and  Listing Websites with Virtual Tours, Interactive Presentations, Flyers, E-mails Campaigns, e-Book or Videos and share them on major social networking sites. Not just that, marketing materials generated using Newplans is automatically optimized for search engines so that your marketing material get good web exposure and better search engine rankings.

For more information visit us at www.newplans.com or call us at 412-567-0010 x 217.