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Time for a workflow audit

Go find a geek. Someone who understands gmail, Outlook, Excel and other basic tools.

Pay her to sit next to you for an hour and watch you work.

Then say, "tell me five ways I can save an hour a day."

Whatever you need to pay for this service, it will pay for itself in a week.

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Posted by Seth Godin on July 08, 2011 | Permalink

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I don't appreciate Seth referring to me as "her"...

26 June 2011

It’s no longer cool to not be technology literate

Posted by Jerry Kidd  under: Rants .

As if it ever was, but these days knowing how to use technology is a requirement for real estate professionals.

Yet, in my daily travels I am constantly running into agents who tell me that they really don’t have a clue how to do even the most basic tasks.  Oh sure, they can operate email…AOL, Yahoo, Hotmail and maybe even their company’s Exchange server email via Outlook.

But ask them to get in to their email on any other computer other than their normal one and they are lost.

Ask them to right click, double click or drag and drop with a mouse and they are lost.

Ask them to open a browser window and they are lost.

And the list goes on. Why are so many agents proud of their technology ignorance?  I have no idea, unless it is a coping mechanism.

So, enough is enough.  You REALLY need to know how to do these things.  Why, you might ask?  Because the new generation of software and hardware requires it.  And even more important, the new generation of home buyers and sellers knows how to do these most simple of computer commands…and they expect that you will know it too.

You can’t hide behind the comment “my clients don’t do that” anymore because yes they do.

And while we are at it, why don’t you have a smart phone?  I don’t care if it is an Android, iPhone, Windows phone or whatever, but you need to be able to access the MLS, handle contract signings, show pictures, take pictures, take videos, calculate net sheets and on and on while on the go. Your clients don’t want to wait until you get back to the office.

If you are not able to create contracts online, create digital signings and use a transaction manager to it’s fullest you will not be able to compete in the near future.

The generation of people like you who are your clients is shrinking…and the generation of people who are fully comfortable with these most basic of technologies is growing.  If you can’t relate to this growing, technologically conversant (I’m not even claiming savvy for them, just conversant) how will you ever hope to find them let alone convince them to work with you?

I’ve collected a few links to help you get with the program.  Of course I realize that the people who need this post the most probably aren’t reading it.  So, if you have somebody in your office who could use this advice, please print this out for them!

http://www.apple.com/support/mac101/
These courses introduce you to some of your computer’s applications and how to use them. Plus, learn some basic Mac tasks, including installing and updating …

http://www.mouseprogram.com/
Practice using the mouse on your computer. Learn clicking, double clicking, moving,  and more.

http://www.mesalibrary.org/research/mouse/page01.htm
More mouse training.

http://www.internettutorials.net/
Tutorials on how to do things on the web.  Once you go through these you will know how to search the web to find more tutorials.

http://www.top-windows-tutorials.com/windows-7.html
Tutorials to help you with Windows 7

You might also like:

Top Ten Realtor® Tech Tools

IDX…worth it…or not?

Top Ten Realtor® Tech Tools – Part Two

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3 Comments so far...

Ira Serkes Says:

27 June 2011 at 6:36 pm.

Timely! I just emailed it to someone who puts a web site URL into the google search box.

Ira

Jerry Kidd  Says:

27 June 2011 at 7:52 pm.

That cracked me up Ira!

Internet Market Ready? Do you have these basic skills? | AreWeConnected.com Says:

30 June 2011 at 4:59 pm.

[...] friend Jerry Kidd wrote an excellent article “It’s no longer cool to not be technology literate” and I completely agree.  But then I started thinking (Danger Will [...]

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Have you ever wondered why someone would follow your business/brand on Facebook? Well, here is why?

[If you enjoyed this post - please Share it or Tweet it.  Thank you ~ Jimmy]

Timing Matters

Visibli reports that 50% of user engagement happens within the first 1 hour and 20 minutes of when you post.

The objective for every Realtor® is to get their status updates to appear under the Top News filter, which will result in significantly more exposure.

Having a posting strategy can significantly improve your engagement rate, and as a result increase the effectiveness of your marketing.

I gathered research from Virture, Social Bakers and Social Media Biz.

Here are the highlights

Timing within the hour

The highest level of engagement comes from post at the top of the hour, 0-15 minutes and the second highest level of engagement comes from post at the beginning of the 2nd half of the hour, 30-45.

The report concluded, that during a workday most meetings are scheduled for 30 minute or 1 hour intervals – therefore people are most likely to be checking Facebook during the times mentioned above because they just finished a meeting.

How many meetings begin or end at the 15 minute or 45 minute mark – not many.

What time during the day

Virture reports the 3 optimal times to post are 11am , 3pm, 8pm EST.

Virtue reports the 3pm EST results in the highest level of engagement.

It’s common knowledge that the amount of online rich media consumption is increasing exponentially on an annual basis. But how much video traffic is projected over the next five years? And what does this growth really mean for global residential, business, and mobile subscribers and the service providers that support them? Well, to begin, we need to expand our traffic terminology. Today we live in a world of petabytes and exabytes but according to the latest findings from the Cisco Visual Networking Index (VNI), we’ll need to add the term “zettabyte” to our vocabulary by 2015.

So, how much exactly is a zettabyte?

A zettabyte is roughly 1000 exabytes. To place that amount of volume in more practical terms, an exabyte alone has the capacity to hold over 36,000 years worth of HD quality video…or stream the entire Netflix catalog more than 3,000 times.  A zettabyte is equivalent to about 250 billion DVDs.

By 2015, the majority of global Internet traffic (61 percent) will be in some form of video—Internet video-to-PC, Internet video-to-TV, mobile video, et al.The “dawn of the Zettabyte era” will be an unprecedented online milestone that will occur in our lifetime.

To better understand the significance of a zettabyte, we have put together an in-depth infographic to provide a visual snapshot of our online future. The way the world uses the web is changing and this infographic provides a quick Cisco perspective of what’s to come.

Are you ready for the zettabyte era? Check out the infographic here.

Tags: data, infographic, zettabyte

By Roger ⋅ June 21, 2011 ⋅ Email this post ⋅ Print this post ⋅ Post a comment

CE Week NY starting Wednesday includes the launch of wearable QR Codes or Socialprints™ from Skanz, a new social networking platform (video below). Users can create a mobile site with all their contact information including Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, favorite photos, blog, music and more. To facilitate the exchange of contact information at CE attendees and exhibitors will be wearing silicone wrist bands or Skanz bands featuring a QR Code resolving to their Socialprint mobile site. Skanz website is live from tomorrow.

FTC-Approved Company Will Save Dirt from Your Facebook Profile for 7 Years

By Leslie Horn

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We've all heard it a thousand times: be careful what you post on Facebook; it could come back to haunt you. Now Social Intelligence Corp., a startup that does background checks for companies via social media, has been given the go-ahead by the Federal Trade Commission (FTC), which last week concluded that the year-old company operates within the boundaries of the Fair Credit Reporting Act.

So about that old bleary-eyed picture of you doing a keg stand flipping your middle finger to the camera that your college roommate posted? Maybe you begged him to delete it. Maybe the potentially damning photo was removed from Facebook. Maybe you've forgotten about it. But as Forbes reports, Social Intelligence Corp.'s memory isn't exactly short term. If the company sees some dirt on you pop up on Facebook or Twitter or Tumblr or in the personals section of Craigslist, the company stores it in your file, where it will remain, ready to ruin potential job prospects for seven years. It will continue to build that file, too.

"We store records for up to seven years as long as those records haven't been disputed," Social Intelligence's chief operating officer Geoffrey Andrews told Forbes. "If a record is disputed and changed then we delete the disputed record and store the new record when appropriate."

Applicants have to sign a form that grants Social Intelligence permission to run background checks, and the company must inform an applicant if it has found a tidbit that has prevented the person from landing a job.

Forbes got its hands on a few reports Social Intelligence has made for reporters. One job applicant was indicated to be a racist for joining a Facebook group called "I shouldn't have to press 1 for English. We are in the United States. Learn the language." In another case, an applicant had a photo on a social media profile featuring "multiple guns and a sword." Of course the job-seeker could simply delete the photo or leave the group, but considering Social Intelligence keeps the information for seven years, it might not make a difference.

For the top stories in tech, follow us on Twitter at @PCMag.

PARENTS: This might be a great conversation starter with your kids of all ages (well, online ages)! Everybody is looking and now they can do it for 7 years!