Technology What’s in Your Tool Box?
Amy Chorew of The Tech Byte shares some of her favorite new tech tools for real estate professionals.
Gmail – Send Mail Later
One of my favorite Gmail add ons is Boomerang. It allows you to do a few things including scheduling your email to be sent later. They have a free or paid version. I have been using the free one for about a year now. It is easy to install and use within your Gmail account. When you compose or reply to a message, you’ll see a drop down box where you can schedule or have the message delivered to you again, similar to a reminder. Let’s put this into practical uses: • Schedule an email to send during business hours, although you wrote it during those crazy late-night or early-bird hours. • Commit to follow up with a client in “a week” or “on Monday” and immediately compose an email with it set to deliver as promised. • Alert yourself with a Boomerang email sent to yourself as a reminder for important deadlines. • As soon as you receive notification of a showing appointment on one of your listings, set up an email to the showing agent requesting feedback to be sent after their showing.
The Search is On
Here it comes! I’m sure you have heard by now about the new Facebook Search. If not, go to Facebook and check it out. I really want to take this opportunity to encourage you to review your privacy settings. I recommend you review your privacy settings frequently on all social sites you are active in, however, when one announces news such as this – it’s time to go now (no, don’t even pass go)!
Photopin – Free Images Online
There are a gazillion places to find free photos on the web. Just do a Google search for “Free Images” and you will find plenty of websites including sites like OpenPhoto.net and FreeRangeStock.com. As a reminder, you can’t just grab any photo you find online for your own use. Most photos have copyright protection so it is important to have a good go-to resource for free-to-use photos. If you are a blogger, Photopin is a new source of “creative commons” photos that makes it easy to search and download images. Photopin searches Flickr to find the images you need and helps make adding them to a post quick and easy. All you need to do is search for a topic using the search box, preview the image, click “get photo” and download the photo — which includes multiple sizes as well as the proper link for attribution. Below is an example of what you receive once you complete the download.
• Schedule some Facebook posts via email to be sent to your custom Facebook email address that posts to your business page Give it a try. I could never throw a Boomerang correctly, but I can use this!
Facebook Groups for Real Estate
What are your favorite Facebook Groups with a real estate focus? Here are our favorites. If you have some ones that you like, send them to us at communications@gcaar.com. • National Association of REALTORS® Official Group • Evernote for Real Estate • First Bytes 101 for Real Estate • The Tech Byte *Club Members Only* • IFTTT (If This, Then That for Real Estate) • WordPress for Real Estate To join a Facebook group, click the [JOIN GROUP] button in the upper right corner under the Facebook Cover Photo. If it is an Open Group, you’ll be a member right away. If it is a Closed Group, you’ll have to wait on an Administrator to approve you first. Amy Chorew is a national real estate trainer experienced with helping managers and agents to maximize opportunities with technology. She can be reached at amy@amychorew.com or 860-325-0101, or visit her blog at www.amychorew.com. Her technology coaching series is available at www. thetechbyte.com
Capital Area Realtor®
Serving the Business Needs of OUR Professionals
2013 January - February
9