I was on the Internet before Al Gore invented it. My focus is marketing, promotion and site traffic. Consequently, my responsibilities at The Harper-Mees Team involve online marketing and promotion for the team.

At times, I still provide consulting services for small businesses and entrepreneurs. It boggles my mind that many small business owners feel a website is something they can get around to later than sooner. A website should be right under “get a cell phone” for any small business owner or entrepreneur.

I wrote this post to demonstrate to my friend Greg, a chiropractor in Warner Robins, GA the power of a good website. I have noticed over the years, that no chiropractor that I could find is leveraging the Internet successfully – and it would be so easy for these guys! The day after I posted the article about Greg, our site came up #1 on Google if you searched on “warner robins ga chiropractor.” Heck, we are far away from Georgia and real estate is a long ways away from chiropractic. But that’s the power of the Internet, those that know how to use it can dominate Google search results.

Here are the Top 10 Must Haves for Small Business Owners & Entrepreneurs

Get A Blog – Read BusinessWeek – Blogging for Business This is a must read – The New Rules of Marketing & PR and don’t forget this one –Publish and Prosper: Blogging for Your Business

CraigsList – This site can do wonders for your business. 80% of the people using Craigslist use it ineffectivley. Craiglist is responsible for 10% to 20% of our monthly traffic (6500 unique visitors a month)

LinkedIn – a business networking site. What can I say – get linked! Once you create an account, read Jason Alba's book.

RSS – Learn about the value and power of RSS. This rss reader – Netvibes –  helps you to stay informed, track your markets, keep an eye on the competition and much more. Short videos here and here on rss.

Google

• Alerts – Keep on top of your reputation, the competition, your local communities and more.
• Base – Instantly post anything into the Google index. Use this and Craigslist to broaden your product/service exposure.

News Releases – This valuable resource is overlooked by many. Here are several sites you can use:

• I-Neswswire
• PR Leap
• Free Press Release

Send Out Cards – Create custom greeting cards for your business and send them to your clients/customers with gift cards included.

Duct Tape Marketing – Read John Jantsch, his site is a treasure trove of small business marketing gold.

PhotoScape – For those overwhelmed by Photoshop, try this free photo editor.

Digital Camera – You can still find this discontinued digital camera – Kodak EasyShare V610 6MP Digital Camera with 10x Dual-Lens Optical Zoom – This is a dual lens ultra-wide angle camera that is so easy to use. If you can get one of these – do it quick!

If you’re a small business owner or entrpreneur interested in improving your online presence and marketing – send me an email – john (at) the harperteam.com

Looking to buy a home or condo? Want to make it as easy and hassle free as possible? Want to help position yourself to be in a stronger position than other buyers?

There are two simple things people in the market to buy real estate can do to help make the whole process easier. The first is to get pre-qualified with a lender. Don't delay on this one! The lending market is undergoing dramatic changes, procrastinating can cost you the home of your dreams.

Many buyers start thinking, start looking, and when they feel that they're near to making a decision to purchase their home, then they contact a lender. This is ass-backwards - especially for first-time  buyers. Get pre-qualified first.

Pre-qualification gives the buyer the information they need about what they can afford. It takes the guess work and wishing out of the equation. In other words, it brings the whole process of purchasing a home into CPR - concrete physical reality - where it needs to be.

Getting pre-qualified, means having the ability to make a firm offer when finding the right home.

The other thing buyers can do to make finding a home a smoother ride is highlighted in this post from Elizabeth Weintraub:

How MLS Works - My neighbor, across the street, told me I did not need to send her MLS listings because she could access them online. For a moment, I wondered if maybe she was a licensed as a real estate agent or maybe as an appraiser. But no, turns out she thought she could find online listings through the Sacramento Bee.

Getting on an MLS Listing Alert service will save a buyer many hours of time, lots of confusion, and will help provide the opportunity to get there first with their offer. Listing Alerts are individual emails directly from the MLS datbase that are sent when new listings come on the market matching a buyer's criteria. Why spend hours searching through Craigslist or other sites. Each Listing Alert email has a link allowing the buyer to halt the process with a single click.

These are the two pieces of advice we constantly stress to buyers.  

That’s right you heard it here first. Craigslist, Zillow, Trulia, PropSmart and the rest of them waste the buyer’s time. 

Even the buyer isn’t aware of this. The buyer is happy as a clam running from the latest mashup site to the next, spending hour after hour mesmerized by technology. It’s the same repetitive syndrome we see time and again through the evolution of the Internet, people get caught up with the fascination effect and lose sight of effectiveness and efficiency.

The entertainment factor neutralizes the cost in terms of time and ROI.

Here is a minor point: How many Realtors® or real estate agents do you know that remove their listings from these sites when the property sells or is withdrawn from the market? How many buyers are wasting their time looking at property that is no longer available for sale?

Here’s the biggie in my opinion: The technology has been in place for years now and used successfully that allows agents to input a buyers exact criteria into the system. The buyer then receives email alerts when new properties are entered into the MLS that match their criteria.

The buyer isn’t wasting time with viewing properties that don’t match their criteria and the email notifications work to the buyer’s advantage by often giving them a head start to be the first one in line with an offer.

The big hurdle with the buyer, besides the fascination and entertainment factors, is getting them to see that this is a real benefit we as agents are trying to provide to them and that we (at least the three of us on The Harper Team) are not trying to trap them into some inescapable premature contract. We offer a Cancellation Guarantee to all of our clients through the entire process.

I was reading through Wired and Red Herring today. There were articles in each on Yahoo!’s continued slide. Something in there got me to wondering – given that there are 4 million people with real estate licenses and that over 80% of people who search online eventually use a professional real estate agent to work through the transaction process – why isn’t someone really catering to the consumer’s need.

The battle cry is FREE the Consumer!, but the average consumer doesn’t want freedom from the agent. They prove that time and again when after wasting hours searching, they pick up the phone and call an agent.

This battle cry is a savvy piece of marketing. It reminds me of The Bubble is Bursting, The Bubble is Bursting.

Why doesn’t some savvy business person put a system together that supports the client / agent relationship. From what I see here in San Ramon, Dublin and Pleasanton, the local MLSes lag about two years behind the techno curve if not more. It will be 2008, I bet, before they have a really good Google mashup going. There are several million professionals that would love to see a product that helps them help their clients in a real way.