Archive for Real Estate Blogs
This guest post written by Lake Travis waterfront homes specialist, Sam Chapman.
Need Photos?
Many real estate agents building web pages or writing blog posts use photos. Some “borrow” photos from other websites either not understanding copyright laws or just completely blowing off intellectual property rights. This is not only wrong, it is theft. So where does a real estate agent go for photos if they don’t have any of their own that will work for a web page or blog post?
One excellent resource is Wikimedia Commons . Wikimedia Commons is a site that applies Creative Commons rules that allow people to use various media files in legal ways. Creative Commons defines various licensing options ranging from full copyright to public domain. The creator of a file, whether it is an graphic image, photo, video, or a sound clip, can post the file at Wikimedia Commons and tell potential users how the file can legally be used.
Many images are from various sources like some government agencies that may not be subject to copyright laws and that may place the images in the public domain. A photographer can release all claim to a photo by declaring that it in the public domain. Aside from public domain, there are various levels of licensing and each image or file at Wikimedia Commons will have a description telling people how a file may be used.
So if you need a photo and want to make sure you are using it legally, go to Wikimedia Commons and enter a term in the search box. Click on a photo that is returned that you like and read the conditions under which it may be used. You will find a database of almost 7 million files there.
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I was on ActiveRain recently and saw Tim Maitski displayed as a featured member. He was billed as the “Video Agent Guy”, and I wondered what that meant. So, I visited his ActiveRain profile. Tim is branding himself as the Video Agent Guy for several reasons.
For one thing, he has a website called VirtualBuyersAgent.com. He sells himself as the agent who will do a video tour of any home a buyer is interested in and displays it on a web page just for that buyer.
For another thing, he has a website called VideoAgentGuy.com. That real estate website is a blog that Tim uses as a video blog. He tapes videos while he’s driving around Atlanta and posts them on this blog.
You need to remember that Tim lives in Atlanta, and given the traffic situation, I know he probably spends quite a bit of time in the car – perhaps even stuck in traffic.
Take a look at that video blog. The first thing you will notice is that each blog post contains a video and a summary of the video content. He’s doing the right thing from the perspective that the summary will be used by the search engines, and it’s also useful for people who don’t want to spend the time watching the video.
What do you think? It’s a very unique approach. To do something like this, you’d need to be very comfortable talking on camera. You’d need to find a way to rig the camera in the car. And, you’d need to be sure you could talk and drive at the same time. Tim seems to do quite well doing both.
On one hand, it does make good use out of the time you spend in the car. On the other hand, I’m not sure I wouldn’t kill myself. Would you do something like this?
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This is just a quick tip because something came up in a discussion today and I thought others might benefit.
A client was saying that he wished he could compose his blog posts in Word, but whenever he did that, the posts looked funny once he copied them to his blog.
This gets back to the rule about never copying from Word directly into any Internet vehicle. You remember that one, right? If not, here’s the scoop.
When you copy something from Word, there is underlying code that is copied with the content. You don’t see the code, but it’s there. Sometimes a blog or website platform will try to interpret that Word code by asking you to copy the content into a special window. However, I’ve found that things don’t really work out exactly the way I want it.
The bottom line is that the cleanest way to add content to a website or blog is to add just the raw content, then use the tools in the editor where the content is going to format the text.
The way you end up with just the raw content is to copy from Word to a text editor like Notepad. Then, copy from Notepad to your blog or website. Why does that work? Because a primitive text editor like Notepad doesn’t understand formatting code, so it strips the code away and you’re left with just the text.
Once you have the raw text in the editor of your website or blog, use the editor there to bold, add bullet points, etc. Your content will look just like you want it to.
If you do format in Word so you know how the content will look, you need to know about bullets and numbered lists. While the underlying code for lists is stripped away, Notepad doesn’t remove the actual bullets or numbers.
So, when I’m copying from Word, I will:
- Save the document with the Word formatting intact
- Remove any bullets or numbers
- Copy the content
- Paste the content into Notepad
- Close the document in Word without saving the changes
That way, I have raw content to copy to Notepad, but the document itself is still intact in its Word version.
Any other tips for dealing with transferring content from one medium to another??
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There’s a website called Tynt that can help you, if not stop Internet theft, at least make those thieves think about what they’re doing. And, for people who just like the information you have on your website or blog, Tynt’s service will help them keep track of where they got the information, and establish incoming links to your website, too!
I heard about Tynt from Mr. Internet, Michael Russer. If you read Michael’s post, you can watch a short video explaining how Tynt works.
I tried adding the (at-least-for-now-free) Tynt code to our main site at BuildRealEstateResults.com. Then, I copied a paragraph from one of the articles on that site to this post. You can see what happened in between the 2 lines below:
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Tynt automatically added the information starting with ”Read more” to the text I copied.
Now, this service won’t stop a determined Internet thief from stealing your content. They can very easily delete the attribution that automatically appears after the content or image that has been copied.
However, for copies made by people who aren’t trying to build a website or blog by stealing the content from other places, this could be an interesting way to get some incoming links to your website or blog.
If someone copies something from you to go in an email, the email recipients may well follow the link back to your page. If someone copies something and places in a public place such as a blog or Facebook page, that incoming link could help your SEO and bring more visitors to your site.
And, I would hope that when someone who just isn’t aware of the laws against Internet theft sees the link, they will leave it in place – or decide to write their own content!
There are some Tynt options. Here are just some examples. I chose to show the Creative Commons license which applies to my copyrighted material. You can also connect Tynt to your Twitter account – anytime someone does a copy/paste from a protected site, it will show up on your Twitter account.
Tynt will also provide activity statistics. You’ll notice that the URL referenced in the Tynt attribution has some coding after the .html for the page. That coding allows Tynt to let me know things about what is being copied.
Just as an FYI, when I copied the Tynt-attributed text to this blog post, every paragraph I entered after that copy was placed in a <div> which eliminated the white space between paragraphs. So, if I hadn’t really wanted to show that example, I might have given up on copying the information. Tynt, if you’re listening, please tell your code to stop doing that! Also, it would be nice if you could set up multiple websites in one account. Right now, it looks like you need a new account for each one.
In any event, it’s an interesting capability to play with!
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