Good afternoon everyone! Here is another infographic tutorial covering Online Office. I thought it would be good to review the basics and give a few tips along the way.
The coolest thing you can do in Online Office is upload your pictures into the property showcase.Make sure to have at least 18 photos of your listing so they qualify for the showcase. The key to success is to have high resolution (high res) pictures. There are plenty of ways to get them. If you use a professional photographer you can ask for them. Most pros give the option of different sizes. If you’re using your own camera to take pictures make sure to have your settings at the highest size. Your camera should have instructions on how to do that.In a nutshell, high resolution refers to the number of pixels in an image. The more pixels (think of them like the dots of color that make up the image) in the image, the clearer it will show on your screen. There are many more things you can do in Online Office. Be sure to check out the video tutorials in the Tutorial tab.
There are many ways to send out eblasts to promote your listing. One way is to send it through Online Office. You get to use one of the many beautiful templates provided for you and you can easily import your contacts. The steps are very simple and you can apply the steps for importing contacts to your cbwm email account if you are more comfortable using gmail. I’ve created an infographic to break it down into easy steps. Let’s get started!
When choosing your pictures in Step 7, be sure to click “continue” so you can see them when you move on to the next picture. You’ll notice that once you’re done they will have little captions under them if you’ve labeled your pictures. If you haven’t labeled them, you can add captions in the little boxes as you go along.
Step 8 is where the fun begins. You can embed media, change the format, font, change the background color, or include a table. Try these features out. A lot of beautiful customization can come from these tools. You might want to use the media function (the little button that looks like it has music notes in it) to add a youtube video of yourself discussing the property. You can use the table function to further customize the layout of the body of the email. If you created a table with 1 column and three rows you could put your text in one box, a video in the middle, and an image in the bottom.
Want to know a secret? This is basically what you would get if you went to another service like Constant Contact, or paid a designer to build a template for you. Instead, you can do it on your own and customize it any way you like, so PUH-LEEZE have fun with this. You won’t regret it and it will make you look so unique and original. Once you’re done click “next”.
When importing your contacts, you must have your contacts saved in an excel spreadsheet. This is pretty easy to do, simply create three columns, “First Name, Last Name, and Email Address”. From there you can fill in as many contacts as you want. If you have exported your contacts from another email service, make sure they fit into that format before you import them. This will make your process a lot simpler.
Once your contacts are imported you might want to put them in a group so you don’t have to individually select each person you just uploaded. Here’s how to create a group:
Step 1: After you select the excel file with the contacts you want to import you will see a box pop up asking you if you’d like to add them to one of your contact lists. Select “New List”.
Step 2: Name your group. You’ll notice the name will auto-populate the “email” box below.
Step 3: Press “continue” and check to make sure the correct boxes are populated. Here’s where making sure your spreadsheet columns were in the right order. They should match the drop down boxes for “First Name, Last Name and Email Address”. Press “Next” to see examples of what will show in these fields. If they’re all right, continue to the next step.
Step 4: Save your new imported contact list and you’re done!
You can now use your contact list to send an email template.
How easy was that? I hope you have fun customizing eblasts through Online Office. There’s no limit on how creative you can be.
I can’t leave you without a little sunshine, so here is a video about the power of optimism. Have a great weekend everyone!
We had an email this morning about how to correct a listing in Zillow, so I thought today would be a great time to write a tutorial on it. I’m sure a lot of your clients review Zillow first when their property is listed. If anything needs to be corrected immediately, here are the tools you need to do so.
Step 1: log in to your agent page. Your user name should be your cbwm email address (if I had one it would be ahosey@cbwm.com). If you don’t remember your password, just reset it.
Step 2: click on the “Agent Hub” button (top right corner)
Step 3: click “Listings”. All of your listings should come up.
Step 4: Make any changes you like.
If when you are in the agent hub and you don’t have any listings don’t worry. It just means you need to claim your listing so you can make any changes you want.
How to Claim a Listing.
Step 1: Search for your listing.
Step 2: Click “More”.
Step 3: Click “Claim this listing”.
Step 4: Make any changes you’d like.
There are a few things you won’t be able to correct on your own. In that case the best thing to do is to contact your customer representative. You can find their contact info under your dashboard. They are there to help and have been very responsive when I’ve worked with them.
What other things would you like tutorials on? Leave a comment below and I’ll happily address it.
As always, I can’t leave you with out a video to make you smile.
Happy Thursday everyone! I hope you’re staying dry and warm on this rainy day. This post is the first in a series of posts about building and maintaining your website in Online Office. Before I came to Coldwell, I worked as a Communications Coordinator for a school. That position gave me the chance to work with a graphic designer and the Marketing Department. I developed a love for all of the behind the scenes work that goes into creating a great website. Today I want to share a few tips I’ve learned to take your site to the next level.
One of the first strategies to having a great website is having a clear sense of purpose. Are you using it to attract new clients, show off your listings, or inform your current clients? Try to keep this as simple as possible. This should be the first thing on your page so your visitors know exactly why they’re there. Why do we go to the Jimmy Johns webpage? Simply to buy sandwiches. Yet, there is a lot going on here. Let’s walk through it.
The first thing on the page is their logo and a link to the online ordering system, which is about all a person hungry for a delicious sandwich can handle before becoming hangry. The Online Office system gives you the tools to do just that after you’ve chosen the look of your page. In the “Customize Your Settings” tab, use the title space to give visitors a short, powerful description of your page’s purpose. Peg Dilworth-Hunt makes very good use of this space. Here is also a great place to determine the tone of the content on your page. It doesn’t have to be artificial sounding or cliche. The more authentic your tone is the more visitors will trust you.
The personal photo you use for your page is another great way to convey a lot of information to your visitors without taking up a lot of space. Teri Spiro adds interest by including her dog. You can have fun with your photo and still look professional. Better yet, use your beautiful head shot for your main picture, and then add more pictures of you doing something so your page conveys to the visitor a good sense of who you are. Terri’s picture of her getting an award adds a lot of credibility to her while allowing the tone of her text to stay down to earth. Jimmy Johns page has a picture of Bill Murray and George Clooney. Not only is it just super cool, but it invites visitors to participate in their social media campaign.
One of the best ways to make your page look modern and professional is to make use of the white space. Check out Google. Their page is clean and direct. It’s so effective that visitors don’t really notice it because they’re too busy using the service. Another example of effective use of white space is Apple. They’re known for being sleek and modern. The main way they convey that is with simple, clean design. They make use of another feature that’s available to you in Online Office; the slideshow. Check out the slides. Each one features one product and a command, or two. They don’t really have to introduce themselves or their brand because of their reputation, so the text only serves to direct guests to what they want.
You can do this too. It’s very tempting to want to fill your page with a lot of text, but if the text doesn’t directly serve the purpose of the page it ends up being a distraction and it makes your page look outdated. I searched for examples of bad webpages and this is a funny example. There’s so much going on that no one thing stands out. Notice how the Jimmy Johns, Google, and Apple pages don’t require more than one or two mouse scrolls to get to the bottom. This invites readers to get to other pages to find more information. Try adding more pages to your website. Have one page be just for your profile, another for your listings and another for your blog. Use that first page to accomplish your main goal, like getting visitors to contact you. I’ve noticed how great you all are in person and on the phone so design your page to make it as easy as possible for visitors to get to you. Leave all the text to your blog posts, and only use content that achieves the purpose of the page.
I know that’s a lot to digest, so lets discuss it. What are your main needs for your websites? You don’t have to be a graphic designer or a tech wiz in order to have an effective page. I’m here to help and very happy to do so. Next week I want to go over an example of how I’ve incorporated these design tips into my own page and the tricks I’ve learned along the way.
Until then, here’s some upbeat music to groove to!
Hello friends! I hope your day is going well and your Spring is off to the right start. I’ve heard there’s a need in our office for blogging ideas and tips so I thought now would be the perfect time to dedicate a post to it. There’s no right way to blog, but there are things you can do to make it easier if you’re short on time or inspiration.
There’s this myth floating around that you have to be super creative in order to have a really good blog, and that’s one of the biggest road blocks to getting the work done. I love author Anne Lamott’s quote about writing, “Almost all good writing begins with terrible first efforts. You need to start somewhere”, because it perfectly captures the fear about writing and the way around it. Very few great blog posts start out that way, but the best way to make them happen is to simply start. Just start writing, even if you think it sounds stupid or silly, or you’re sure someone out there will disagree with it. As a real estate professional, and a human you have unique experiences that people need to hear, so just start writing.
The best ideas are ones that you are excited about. Is there something that gets on your nerves like Zillow vs Realtor.com, or home buying “reality shows” vs actual reality? Mine Facebook, Twitter, the news, other blogs or even your clients for ideas. Why should people use a realtor when they could just do a for sale by owner? What do Millennials need to know about home ownership? What fears prevent prospects from becoming clients? All of these can become very good posts.
If you’re interested in sharing an article that you love as a blog post in Online Office make sure you give a short intro, include a picture and properly link it. Facebook has made it so easy to share articles because the moment you paste a hyperlink into your status bar a nice picture and a small blurb from the text appears. Yet if you were to do that same thing in Online Office all you would see is something like this:
Not quite what you were going for right? If you’d like to include a link in your blog make sure you’ve included an interesting picture, a small introduction and then link text to the hyperlink. Here’s an example:
You should see that the title text of the blog post is highlighted. All I did was copy the hyperlink from the article I liked, select/highlight the text I wanted to use as the title with my mouse, click on the icon on my toolbar that looks like a chain and paste the hyperlink in the URL destination box. Doing it this way makes your blog look neat and professional. By the way, you should really check out that article. It’s fantastic.
My final suggestion is to set a writing schedule. When you have something you can see as a part of your day, you’re more inclined to do it. You could schedule yourself 30-60 minutes to write a blog about topics you’ve predetermined on Wednesday and set reminders for yourself. Even just seeing it might spark more ideas and help you get the task done quickly.
If you need help with any blog ideas or want an extra pair of eyes to look over it, send me an email. I’d love to assist.
Have you heard of Meetup.com? It’s a very fun way for people to connect and find things around town to do. I’ve used it to find free yoga and salsa dance classes, groups of runners, book clubs and an organization that teaches web design to women. I was browsing this afternoon and I searched for “real estate” out of curiosity and look what came up! Now, this particular group sucks because they haven’t had any recent meetings, but I thought it was such a creative way to use the site. I can imagine realtors using this as a way to capture and educate clients they wouldn’t normally connect with, promote open houses and perhaps host neighborhood crawls to highlight the areas their homes are listed in. Maybe even host Q&A sessions for timid prospects. If you’re interested in learning more about how this works come see me and I’ll show you. At the very least, you might find some fun people to hang out with.
On floor:
8-11 Mickie
11-1 Everest
1-3 Kathy
3-5 Janet
5-8 Jeff
When you turn in your listings please don’t forget to let us know what streets you’d like us to send postcards to. We will send 30 out when it’s listed and 30 out when it closes. We’ve included the postcard form in the packets.
Here’s a cute video about success from the good folks over at Soulpancake.
I have another small tutorial for you all today. I got asked how to change the signature line in your email. You can do this really easily and be as creative as you want. Simply,
Open your settings menu on the top right hand corner of your G-mail account. It looks like a little watch gear.
Select “Settings”.
From there you can add a picture of yourself (or anything else you like), insert your facebook, twitter, or website url (you know it’s active when it shows up blue), or a fun quote.
Hit “save” when you’re satisfied and you’re done.
Another tip for the days you’re working in the Info Center is to make sure you start your online work in the Smart Work Space. It has the most up to date versions of the software you need, so if you need to use Adobe Reader to download and view a pdf document you can access it there with no problems. All you have to do is
Click on the CBWM Smart Work Space icon. It looks like a little computer monitor.
Wait for it to load. The computers in the Info Center don’t require you to enter a password.
Click on the blue “desktop” icon.
Do your work as usual. The Smart Work Space is set up to print to our printers, but if you ever run into any issues I’ll be happy to help.
On floor:
8-11 Amy
11-1 Jeff
1-3 Dianne
3-5 Mickie
5-8 Mary Jo
Today’s video is so sweet. I hope it warms your heart during this cold weather!
It’s so good to be back! I had a great holiday season and I’m so excited for what this new year holds. Today I wanted to bring you a small tutorial about the Smart Work Space. We were having trouble printing in black and white at the front desk. Every time we tried to print to the Cove Printer it asked for our color copy code. I called Zenacomp and they said that sometimes it looks correct on their end, but some people’s work space changes the printer preferences back to auto. Here is how you can correct that in case it happens to you.
Click your “start menu” icon, on the bottom left hand side of your screen
Click the down arrow to see the “Apps” page
Select “PC Settings”
Select “Control Panel”
Under “Hardware” select “View devices and printers”
Find the printer you want to adjust (in our case it was “Cove B&W”)
Select “Printing Preferences”
Look for the drop down menu under “Color” and change it from “auto” to “black and white”
Test your printer
This worked for me this afternoon. I’ll try to answer any questions you bring me. I have a few fun ideas for tutorials.
On floor:
8-11 Everest
11-1 Caroline
1-3 Mary Jo
3-5 Joe
5-8 Ken
Here’s one of my favorite feel good songs to get your day going:
Sending out many happy wishes to everyone celebrating Hanukkah this week. I hope it’s a great time of fun, family and reflection. I know everyone is also wishing Carole a very happy birthday tomorrow. I hope this is the best year yet for you!
The last sales meeting of the year starts at 2 pm tomorrow.
On floor:
Mark 8-11
Mary Jo 11-1
Everest 1-3
Laurie 3-5
Marni 5-8
Leslie wanted everyone to know about her Open House on Sunday December 21 at 1594 Woodgate from 1-4 pm. Marni and Caroline will be there being awesome. I’ll also put this out on our Facebook page so we can get a good crowd there.
I found a pretty cool modern Hanukkah song thanks to Elisa.
This week is sure to bring a lot of fun. Carole’s birthday, the last sales meeting of the year, the cookie pass and Hannukkah are all happening. I can’t wait to see all of your smiling faces and bring you more tips and tricks. I’m in the process of developing a floor reference manual for our new agents. You all do such a great job helping each other, so I hope this is one more piece to add to the pie to support our team.
On floor:
Eileen 8-11
Annette 11-1
Mickie 1-3
Jeff 3-5
Joe 5-8
Here is a link to the Rochester Parade. You can see Carole at the 1 hr 13 minute mark.
There are many more things you can do in Online Office. Be sure to check out the video tutorials in the Tutorial tab.
Sending out many happy wishes to everyone celebrating Hanukkah this week. I hope it’s a great time of fun, family and reflection. I know everyone is also wishing Carole a very happy birthday tomorrow. I hope this is the best year yet for you!
Rochester Coldwell Banker Weir Manuel 