If you were a potential buyer would you prefer to see a handful of images or a video tour of a property?

We will assume that most of you have responded that you would prefer a video tour, and that’s why we are going to let you know of the free tools (other than time & camera) that make it easy to get virtual tours up on your website/s.
Here is an example of a video tour produced by Kathleen Buckley:

First of all, you will need the raw video footage which will require you to go to the property, with a video camera, and shoot a video of the property. Don’t worry! This will not be your final production so your shoot does not need to be perfect from beginning to end.

It was mentioned above that the camera is not a free tool, but we recommend something like a
Flip because they are provide good video, are relatively inexpensive and extremely portable.

You may have noticed that Kathleen’s video pointed to the property out on the map. You could do the same thing by using Google Maps (Ideally in satellite view). Just zoom in on the property while recording your screen with Jing, an excellent & free screen recording tool.

Once you have obtained all the desired footage, you can use one of several free video editors including, but not limited to:

• Windows Movie Maker (for Windows)
• Apple iMovie (for Macs)
• JayCut (a web-based video editing applicication)

The video editors are pretty straight-forward to use, and I will not go into details. Just import the clips you want, remove the unwanted parts, add music if desired, etc.

Once your video is completed you may want to upload it to YouTube , a free video hosting web site.

YouTube will allow you to obtain the HTML necessary to embed the video anywhere you would like. So all you need to do is paste that code on your website/s and listing sites to make it available to your potential buyers!

The post Tools For Creating Video Tours appeared first on Real Estate Management Software from PropTrackr.

Another successful update last night. The PropTrackr development team has been hard at work solving issues and updating the system. Last they released another set of updates to the system. Here is a list of just a few of the updates & bug fixes that were released in last night’s update.

System Updates

• New Property Search Filter
• New Comparables Estimator – Eppraisal Estimate added
• The ability to sort and order mortgages
• Failed fax email notification
• Tracking client side property submissions
• Property notes – Notification

Bug Fixes

• HUD-1 removed from application center
• Dashboard last 5 contacts now link to contact details
• Failed fax email notification with details
• Viewing content of sent faxes
• PropMapr Data feed updated

There is a new property search filter giving our clients the ability to now search by specific fields like address, city, state, zip code and contact name.

Also included in last night’s update is a new comparable search function. You can now see an estimated price of a real estate property from Zillow and Eppraisal with the PropTrackr estimate showing up giving our clients more options to choose from.

Taking suggestions from our clients, have proven to be a huge advantage in developing our software. This next update came from one of our clients, when adding a property note to the system you can now view who received the note under the “Notified” section of property notes.

Being able to easy and efficiently track client data is huge for running a real estate business and that is why we added the feature to track customer submitted properties. When a client logs into your PropTrackr account and submits a property for sale to your real estate company, their contact name is now listed as the source. Giving you the ability to sort and organize your data by customers who submitted data.

The post Bug Fixes and Enhancements to PropTrackr appeared first on Real Estate Management Software from PropTrackr.

PropTrackr Real Estate Management Software finally released the affiliate marketing program to the public. After two months of private beta testing PropTrackr has released the affiliate program to all of our clients. If you haven’t had a chance to read up on what this program is, take a few minutes to read one of our previous blog posts explaining how the program works. We will soon have a training video on how to utilize this new system. Be sure to stop by the PropTrackr Support Center to watch the PropTrackr Affiliate Marketing Program Video. You can also read up on the program at the support center here.

We would love to hear from you about these new updates. What do you think, have we improved the system? Is the system functioning better for your company? Have you tried out the new affiliate program, is it easy to use? Take a few minutes and let us know what you think.

The post System Update & Bug Fixes – Affiliate Marketing Program Released appeared first on Real Estate Management Software from PropTrackr.

We also showed you a simple example of how to create a blog posting to advertising your real estate properties, click here to read the full article. By simply taking an hour or so to write up a blog posting to promote a real estate property can improve and help your organic search engine optimization.

We will now give you an example of what tools you can you use to promote your real estate property blog postings to the social networks. The tools we suggest are free to use and you may already be using them with in your business.

Tools to use to promote your real estate business

Here is a list of the social network sites and tools (click here) you can use to automate the process of advertising your real estate properties through your PropTrackr real estate blog. The idea behind this it to make an automated process for advertising your real estate properties. To break down the process in a nutshell, write a blog post in your PropTrackr account and the automated process posts to Facebook, Twitter and Digg allowing you to advertise on those sites without logging into them every time.

Social Networks & Tools

• Facebook Fan Page (read how to setup a fan page)
• Twitter
• Digg
• Hootsuite

The first step that needs to be accomplished is to set up your PropTrackr Account and configure your blog to show up on your PropTrackr website. Simply follow these steps here on How to setup your PropTrackr Real Estate Blog. Once your blog is setup you are now ready to link all of these social sites to your new blog postings. Linking your blog to your social networking sites will post ALL of you blog postings, if you would like to link them to categories in you PropTrackr blog you will need use the RSS feed that is specific to that category, see step four below for further details.

Step two – make sure you have setup your Facebook Page, Twitter account and Digg account. Having your username and passwords handy makes the linking the accounts quicker.

Step three – sign up for a FREE account with Hootsuite. Hootsuite is a 3rd party web based application that allows you to see all of your social networks in one easy to read dashboard.
HINT: if you use Google Chrome as your web browser you can create a web based application shortcut. Its a lot like a bookmark but instead of showing the webpage in a new tab or window, Google Chrome starts the web application like a normal program.

Step four – Create your first blog post within the PropTrackr system. Once you have created your first blog post you will need to locate the XML feed or RSS feed for your blog. This is easy to locate, simply navigate to your PropTrackr real estate website in your web browser and in the address bar after your address, type or copy, /feed/rss/ and place it after your websites address. For example here is PropTrackr’s rss feed for our blog http://proptrackr.com/feed/rss/. This is a complied list of all your blog postings, in every category. If you would like to locate each RSS feed for every subcategory of your blog, simply navigate to the category and place /feed/rss/ after the entire web address. For example if we would just like to pull all the blog posts from our category “Tools for Real Estate” our RSS feed would look like this ( http://proptrackr.com/category/blog/tools-for-real-estate/feed/rss/ ).

Step five – setting up your Facebook and Twitter account in Hootsuite. This is easier if you are already logged into both your Facebook and Twitter account and have them open in a web browser. Hootsuite takes advantage of the APIs that Facebook and Twitter have developed. By having both accounts active in a web browser, Hootsuite can easily make the connection to your social networks. To add a social network to Hootsuite click on the owl in the top left corner, navigate down to Settings, then to Social Networks and click on the Add Social Network button and choose the social network, Facebook Wall, Facebook Page, Twitter Account, etc.

Step six – LINKING EVERYTHING TOGETHER. This is were Hootsuite becomes very useful, allowing you to grab your PropTrackr RSS feed and posting them to Facebook and Twitter.

1. Login to your Hootsuite Account
2. Navigate to the top left corner ( the image of the owl ) and click for your settings. Click here to see a screen shot
3. Navigate down to Settings > RSS/Atom. Screen shot
4. Once you have clicked on RSS/Atom link, a window will popup (screen shot ) click on the “Add New Feed Button” located at the bottom of the popup window.
5. Copy your RSS feed from your PropTrackr website and paste it into the FEED URL box and set up how often you would like Hootsuite to review your RSS feed, How many posts would you like Hootsuite to posts on your social networks at a time and if you would like a some Prepend text before your posting. Be sure to check which social networks you would like Hootsuite to post to and click save feed. Screen shot here.

Your all set, you have now successfully added your PropTrackr Blog RSS feed to Hootsuite. Don’t worry you can always come back to Hootsuite to set up more RSS feeds or change and update the ones you already have.

Step seven – Setting up Digg to read your blog and automatically post your new advertisements on Digg. If you haven’t already set up a free account on Digg take a few minutes to do so. Just like Hootsuite, Digg takes advantage of Facebook and Twitters API login. Once you set up your Digg account and customize the features and information that is going to be displayed its time to make the connection between your PropTrackr Real Estate Blog and Digg. Navigate to the setting tab, top right corner near the search box. ( screen shot here ). Once the page loads, on the left hand side of the screen you should see some more navigation, click on the Import Feed link. ( screen shot ).
Copy your PropTrackr Blog RSS URL, explained above how to locate that url. Your url should look something like this (http://proptrackr.com/feed/rss/ ) and paste that into the Auto-Submit Content field. Choose where you would like the feed to display, here at PropTrackr we chose the Business category.

Once you clicked the “Add Feed” button you will need to verify that Digg is collecting your RSS Feed by placing a verification key in your blog post title or the body of your posting.

To place the Digg verification key in the description, login to your PropTrackr real estate management account and navigate to Posts, then navigate to your most recent blog posting. Click on the “edit” text link and make sure you are editing the body of the post in HTML format rather then the VISUAL format. Paste the Digg verification code in the body of you blog posting and click the update/publish button on the right hand side of the page.

Click back to your Digg account and verify that Digg is reading your RSS feed correctly.

You have now successfully added your blog’s RSS feed to post to your Facebook page, Twitter account and your Digg account. You can now focus on running and advertising your real estate properties and feel comfortable knowing that your blog is being submitted to your social networks.

Did this blog posting help you and your real estate business advertise your properties? Do you have more ways to connect your social networks sits together and make advertising real estate properties easier? We would love to hear about them, take a few minutes and join in on the conversation.

The post Using Technology to Your Advantage to Promote your Real Estate Properties appeared first on Real Estate Management Software from PropTrackr.

Along with the new filtering system the Contact Rolodex has a new look and functionality. The new look allows our customers to see a list of contacts on the left and the contacts details on the right. With the new functionality of the contact we have listened to your suggestions and you can now add your custom contact type. Simply navigate to the admin configuration section and there will be a new tab for contact types. Organize and sort your contact list the way you want!
Below is a list of the updates from last nights release.

SYSTEM UPDATES & NEW FEATURES

• New filtering ability on property list.
• Ability to create custom contact types.
• Print details to include latest property information.
• Updated the contact listings

BUG FIXES

• Print Note Details updated to be consistent with look of property detail print
• User Interface updates to action plans.
• Update to note requirement field.
• Client side document upload.
• Bug fix on latest 5 property leads.
• Update to client side mortgage features.
• WordPress Post Scheduling broken.
• Bug with SSL on “Properties” link

UPCOMING SYSTEM UPDATES

• Action plan logging.
• Continued work on soon to be released import properties.

Do you have some suggestions for us? Stop by the support center and let us know, we would love to hear from you on what you would like to see improved with the PropTrackr Real Estate Management Software. Let us know what you think about these new updates and fixes are they working for you? Contact us and we would be more than happy to take some time out and help you better understand the system.

The post System Update & Bug Fixes appeared first on Real Estate Management Software from PropTrackr.

We are working extremely hard at improving the PropTrackr system. Our newest update is on our training videos about the system. Learn step by step on how to improve the look and feel of your website, adding property details, learn how to create a faxing package and more. Stop by our support center training video section and learn how PropTrackr can improve your daily productivity. We are also very close to releasing our Affiliate Marketing program to the public, earn extra money by simply advertising on your networks. Learn more here.

If your not already a customer of PropTrackr, what are you waiting for? Sign up today and get 14 Days free to test drive the system and find out how PropTrackr can help improve your real estate business. See our Plans & Pricing here.

The post New Training Videos appeared first on Real Estate Management Software from PropTrackr.

To give you an idea of what this new update will do and how you can get it to work for your real estate company, we will explain a little bit here and at our support center.

Here at PropTrackr we designed the Affiliate Program to help expand our network of real estate professionals while giving back to our current clients. The PropTrackr affiliate program is so simple to use it almost makes money on auto pilot. By simply signing up for the PropTrackr software you gain access to the affiliate program and immediately start earning a 25% commission on every new paying client you get to sign up to the PropTrackr real estate management software.

How does the Affiliate Program work?

When you signup for a PropTrackr account or if you already have a PropTrackr account you are automatically eligible to participate in the affiliate marketing program. Once you have created a campaign you will place a tiny snippet of code on any website, within that tiny piece of code PropTrackr has generated a unique ID specific to your campaign. Once you have placed the banner advertisement you are on your way to making some extra money. The PropTrackr Affiliate program will track clicks, free trial sign ups and paid accounts that are driven by your affiliate program banner.

How much can I earn?

The PropTrackr affiliate program allows you to collect 25% of every paying customer you sign up. So if you signup 2 client who pay their first month, you will receive 25% of each monthly cost. The more you get to signup the more you can make.

How do I get paid?

PropTrackr will send you a check once you have accumulated $250 dollars worth of monthly clients.

Can I roll that money directly into my PropTrackr account?

Unfortunately no, not at this time.

How do I setup a campaign?

The PropTrackr affiliate program is simple to use and understand. You can set up a new campaign with just a few clicks of your mouse. The way it works is you decide on where you would like to place the affiliate banner or text, on your own website, a website like Activerain or RealTown, blog comments, just about anywhere. Once you have decided that you simply login to your PropTrackr account, navigate to the affiliate section and create a new campaign. Title the campaign anything you would like and your done, your first PropTrackr affiliate campaign is running and you are ready to start earning extra income.

Alright I have a campaign, Now what?

Simply click the view details by right clicking on the campaign and PropTrackr has provided you with the auto generated snippet of code for you to place where you would like. Choose from five preloaded banners, ranging in size from 728x90px to 250x300px all the way up to sky scraper banners at 160x600px.

Where can I place these banners?

Any website you would like. There is no restriction on where these can go.

How many campaigns can I have running?

Unlimited, we suggest that you a few campaigns running with detailed titles so you can track them easily and you can place them anyplace you would like. Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Activerain, RealTown, Your Blog or anyplace you would like.

Do I have to use the PropTrackr banners?

No you do NOT have to use the banner we give you. If you can create your own banners or text banners you can use any banner you would like. The only thing you can NOT change is the unique URL identifier.

Can I use a text link instead of a banner?

Yes you can, by simply changing the HTML code you can add your own banner or text.

If you would like to learn a little more about the PropTrackr Affiliate program visit our support center or contact us.

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