Catch up here: What's In Your Marketing Tool Box? Part 1
I am going to start this series off with the Active Rain Tool Box. My Top 10 favorite tools to maximize Active Rain blogging.
The following tools are in our Active Rain tool box and should be in yours also:
Active Rain Rainmaker Blog:
The most effective $29 per month you will ever spend. If you are still on the fence on whether you should spend 29 bucks a month: equivalent to a few Starbucks each month or the price of a low cost dinner out- you just can not beat this deal. You will get many times more than this back in closed sales. Click here if you are not a member of Active Rain to give it a try . There is no obligation.
Click here if you are a member of Active Rain and you want to upgrade to be a Rainmaker. 
How much do you spend each month on marketing to get listings or buyers? If you don't have the money- take it from something else you are spending marketing dollars on. If you are not spending any money on marketing- I will be very harsh here- then running a real estate business may not be the right fit for you.
Active Blog
Start your Active Blog now. If you are still waiting around to take advantage of building an outside blog with the power of Active Rain google juice backing you up- don't wait another minute. Before you close out of AR tonight- get your Activeblog up and running.
It is simple and easy. All you have to do is add some widgets, a title, choose a domain, choose a theme and you are off and running. Why go through hours learning wordpress when you can have Active Blog with a couple of mouse clicks!
When google pulls up your keywords- your Active Rain blog will show up but also your Active Blog will also. I try to dominate page one on google. This gives me two more spaces on page one. Google only gives 2 spaces for the same content per author.
Localism Sponsor
Don't miss out on Localism. This is a powerful part of Active Rain that you need to be a part of and a contributor too. We sponsor our area and it has been very profitable to do so.
Hit Router
Hit Router will not work very well without a good IDX product or some way to get your visitors to do their home search on your site or blog. It is run like pay per click. Hit Router needs a post by itself to explain all the benefits. Make sure it is set up on your blog for sure. Here is a link to more information about Hit Router.
Firefox Browser
Use Firefox for your best Active Rain browsing experience. Active Rain works best with Firefox. It is also the safest browser. Use IE for mls and Firefox for everything else. Firefox will be listed in time management tools where I will show you some time saving applications.
Real Bird
Add Real Bird as listing widgets to your Active Rain sidebar.
Add Real Bird as a search widget right on your Active Rain blog and on Localism neighborhood posts. The last 3 contracts that our buyers agent wrote and is closing on (one already closed) are from Real Bird widget searches on our Active Rain blog! Together Active Rain and Real Bird bring you powerful buyers that are leaving their phone numbers and ready to buy. We have discovered that 100% of our Real Bird prospects are ready to buy right now to within 30 to 60 days. This is way above our website prospect time frames. Click here to check out Real Bird.
I am an affiliate of Real Bird because I love the product so much. If you click here for Real Bird I will get credit for you. Real Bird is free and they have added features for small fees.
Iclip Clip Art and Photos
The best clip art to add to your blog that is safe to use for Real Estate blogs. If you are using free or paid clip art make sure you read their terms of service also known as TOS. Most of them including Microsoft say you can only use their clip art for personal use, school and community use but NOT commercial or business use. Here is one of the posts that I wrote about Iclipart.
Of course the best images are those you take yourself with your own camera but there are a lot of post topics that a photo just won't gel with. Iclipart has over 7 Million images that you can download on your computer in many different sizes so you don't have to resize. You can get Iclipart for only $34.95 for one year! I am an affiliate of Iclipart. Click here to get the best clip art available.
Snagit
A lot of Active Rain members ask me how do I get the cool edges on my tutorial screen shots. I absolutely love Snagit which also deserves its' own tutorial. This is software for your computer and it only costs about $49. ONE TIME FEE.No renewals, no annual fee, no monthly fee. They also offer you a FREE 30 day trial! I get nothing to promote Snag-It. There is SO much more that you can use Snagit like arrows, borders of all kinds and colors, blurbs, add in text, cut out text, etc. I can not even list all the features of this product to jazz up your Active Rain blog and save time. Here is the tutorial I wrote about Snagit back in Feb. 2008. You can see some of the applications- but like I wrote- it does not even scratch the surface of what this amazing product can do.
Real Estate Shows
I was going to add this one to the marketing section, however, no Active Rain blog is complete without Real Estate Shows. I wrote a post about using Real Estate Shows here.
Flickr and Picnic
Adding your photos to Flickr you get the added benefit of more exposure for your blog. You also get the benefit of using Picnic where you can do all kinds of editing to your photos for Free from serious frames to funny faces.
Kompozer and ScribeFire
Last but not least, Kompozer is my favorite blog editing tool to have in our tool bar arsenal. I wrote a post here about Kompozer so I won't go into detail here. But if you want to add color, highlights, fonts, text sizes and a lot more, choose Kompozer. Download Kompozer to your computer for Free. It is open source. Kompozer works like a breeze on Firefox because it is developed by Mozilla, the same company that developed Firefox.
Scribefire is an add on for Firefox. To get those cool colors in comments use ScribeFire as your blog editor. You can write your whole posts in ScribeFire too which I sometimes do but then you have to add link tags and image tags in the Active Rain editor. It also does not have the highlighting effect that Kompozer has, or maybe I am just not able to find it.
I will do another post in this series on tools to add to your Active Rain side bar and some do's and don't about those tools.
So there are my top 10 favorite tools to use on our Active Rain blog.
List yours in the comment section! See you next time for part 3 where we will discuss online time management tools.
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What's In Your Active Rain Tool Box? Part 2 by Coach Katerina Gasset is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License
Nestor Gasset and Katerina Gasset- Realtors®, CIPS, ABR, SFR, GRI, REOS
Katerina, thanks for sharing this valuable advice with us! I will have to see what adjustments we can make!
Tony and Darcy- See what you can do to utilize these tools. We use them all extensively. Obviously, LOL! Katerina
Nestor and Katerina.
Thank you very much for sharing this - I really appreciate it from you folks who have achieved so much (I see your red box below your name ;-)
As I'm only 25 days old here in AR, and though I am using some of these tools - I can't wait to explore those that I have not heard of yet.
Thanks again.
Katerina:
Your posts are so great. NO wonder you are at the top of this world.
I've seen several of the previous post that you refer to here. I've implemented some but appreciate the reminder for the others.
Katerina, that is great stuff. Thank you so much. Have a great day.
Katerina - Thanks for the wide ranging post on various products to use. I've been using an ancient version of SnagIt for years but your related post shows a lot of neat new features in it.
Katerina: Great post, I actually use most of this tools. I use Google Chrome instead of Firefox, I like the speed over any other browser.
Hi Katerina, Excellent advice. Thanks for sharing.
Best - Sash
Great Series Katerina- Really appreciate all the tips and tricks you share. Already downloaded Kompozer from your last post and love it. Thanks alot!
Dixie
Great list Katerina - for those who are really pinching pennies, Fireshot is a firefox plug in that also allows you to take shots of your screen.
Tina in Virginia
(((woot)))
Excellent tutorial on what tools you use. You are not one of the top bloggers on here for no reason.
Hope new folks book mark this and add these TOOLS step by step.
Hey thanks for the great advice today. I have book marked this for sure.
Patricia Aulson/Portsmouth NH homes
Okay, I've bookmarked your blog to check out all the good websites you've provided! Thanks so much for the assistance. I love to hear what really works well for other agents.
Katerina,
Your instructive posts are beginning to dominate my bookmarks! Off to do some homework...
This is a great series ~post~ for newbies and all members! I always forget to log on firefox and I need to figure out how to use snagit! When I started reading this I was thinking my AR tool box was udd to date but it is not! Thank you for the reminder that I need to be taking full advantage of all the great things ActiveRain offers to help make my blog better and more useful.
Wow - thanks for all these tips! Some i knew about and we are using, but now I have some more to check out!
Katrina - looking forward to your series on time management tools. I use NVU, the precursor to Kompozer, and when I copy and paste my html into AR, my colors do *not* show up.
Great stuff! Thanks for the help. I have you bookmarked!
Every time I read one of your post -- I walk away with a boat load of info. I do have a question --- if you had to estimate what do you think your average/median cost is for the items that you mention in your arsenal of tools on a monthly basis? $200-?
Nestor: Thank you. I just favorited this as I plan on implemneting your suggestions. Have a wonderful day!
Questions First:)
I will try to get back to everyone else too however this post took me 4 HOURS!!!!! To put together and get all the links etc! Urgh, then I was using Nestor's laptop last night to do this post and did not have Kompozer so I used Scribefire and did not like the way the fonts turned out, then I finally said, I just have to let go and let this be the final version!!
I want to get the time management tool box out ASAP! ( Oxymoron). LOL Katerina
THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU! I'm off to play with colors, clip art, and fonts!
Hi Katerina...Thanks for Sharing, I thought I had them all until I read about Kompozer here and Scribefire...You're Sooo Cool. I love your Giving ways :O))
Cheers, put up lots of SOLD signs around Wellington this week !
I just downloaded firefox ...i'll need to sped some time playing and figuring things out. The problem is finding the time.
Lorraine and Loretta- I should have added what this costs me on a monthly and yearly basis. Good question!
ON a monthly basis:
Active Rain blog- NO CHARGE- I am grandfathered in from eons ago LOL!
Activeblog- NO CHARGE- I am an Ambassador.
Hit Router- $ 50 per month is what I cap it at right now. Usually it ends up averaging about $30 a month.
Localism Sponsor- $36 per month.
Iclip art: I have a special- this is a yearly fee not monthly- $29.95 per Year. So say $2. 50 per month.
Snagit: One Time Fee of $49.95- SO we don't count that because it would be a few pennies a month over the long run LOL!
Firefox- FREE
Kompozer and Scribefire- FREE
Real Estate Shows- It is a yearly fee of $125 so break that down to monthly would be $10.41 per month! WOW! I just realized what a value that is!
Flickr and Picnic are both Free but I have an upgraded version. We won't count that here since that is not necessary and I do that not for business but for my own preference.
Real Bird- Real Bird is Free but I pay $99 a year to get rid of all the ads on my widgets.They are not intrusive so that is a matter of personal preferance too but let's count that as $8.25 per month! WOW! That is a bargain cause our buyers agent has put 4 buyers into contract from real bird search widgets. She already closed on one of those. And I just started blogging with them in the middle of May.
So let's total this on a monthly basis:
$ 87.16
So add in a rain maker blog if you are not grandfathered in at 29.95 and you get $ 117.11
Bear in mind that the more money you spend on hit router the more money you are going to make because the more leads you will get to funnel into your sales system. But I don't have a good IDX yet.
This is a great question and I should turn this into a post!
Katerina and Nestor,
Thank you for this great information and I am going to check out Iclip Clip Art as I need to add some sparkle to my blog :)
Thank you. As a newbie this was excellent information.
Katerina - Again, this is a great post. As I read your post, I was using it like a checklist and proud to be able to read the tools and say "yep, got that", "yep, using that" and of course "wow, I need to work more on that". You always keep me on my toes!
I seem to bookmark most of your posts and this one is another I'll refer to as I work on creating more eye-catching posts. Thanks for sharing
Katerina: Another great power-pack of information with tools. Some I use some I will get. I have been using Real Bird for about one month now and so far … no leads from it. I plan to upgrade to the premium Real Bird package before the end of the month! Thank you.
Thank you for the helpful hints. I agree with Dave as a "newbie" this is very helpful.
Katerina -- I just love all this info. Did not even hear about some. I had picked up Realbird through AR and it is great. I use it for listings, widgets, and will be posting their search tool. They place pretty high in Google, too. Thanks so much for sharing!
Katerina - Awesome arsenal of tools here...I am bookmarking this to refer back to. Thanks
Katerina -
good ideas for sure. Personally, I don't use all these tools - but I use a lot of other tools that do the same things.
One comment from a sw engineer - be careful stating that firefox is a safer browser, That my friends, is getting very close to untrue, with popularity - also comes hackers who wnats to abuse. The everlasting truth is - use common sense online, don't download or look at stuff you don't trust and NEVER EVER forward chainmail.
Sorry, just had to put that little bit out there for you.
@terkelsorensen
I've go a lot of work to do, I feel so overwhelmed! After reading this, I will definitely need to read your post regardng online time management! Thank you so much for your generosity :)
Katerina,
This is great info - as an ActiveRain Confirmed Loan Officer I look forward to passing this info on to my real estate agents!
All great information and I intend to look into each and every one of them! You are a wealth of great information and I appreciate you sharing your experiences with all of us.
I feel like one of those little people in Gulliver's Travels. Not sure how much of this stuff I will ever understand, but am gradually working my way up. Thanks for all the research!
Katerina,
I wanted to click on the link that gives you credit for Real Bird, but it didn't work.
Thanks for all the great tips.
Sandy
Katerina - very cool information, especially Real Bird. Hadn't heard of that one! Thank you for the time you took to make such an informative post.
Kim- If you go to my tags on my blog and look up real bird in the tags, I have some tutorials and also some examples of what I do with Real Bird to make it work. You also need to know the right keywords to use for your search widgets.
Sandy- I Know, Zelton from Real Bird just told me. I am going to try to fix it right now. I am also putting it right here:
http://www.realbird.com/?refID=14544
Hi, Katerina. This is a great post! I am new to Active Rain and I'm learning SO MUCH from people like you. I just signed up for Real Bird using the link that gives you credit....since you gave me something, that's the least I could do. Looking forward to using it. THANKS!
To show my vast ignorance....what is a localism sponsor and what does it do? The only thing you didn't link to and I had to ask...sorry.
Great information Thanks
AWESOME!!! I am bookmarking this and coming back later for a slower more in depth read! You all always have the best ideas and suggestions! I mentioned you in a blog I wrote yesterday about a presentation I did at the San Antonio Board of REALTORS about blogging on AR. I told them if you just do the $29.00 per month it is the best advertising dollar you will spend!!!
Keep up the awesome work you do!!!
Jeani
Leslie! Thank you so much!
Katerina - Thank you for your generous posting of info! WOW
Katerina,
This tool box of yours has some neat items that definitely need a closer look, I'm afraid. Iclip Art, Snagit and Kompozer stand out among some familiar ones.
Thanks for the great tips. I really appreciate it when you post these
Thanks for all the good information. I'm just starting my AR blog and this will save me a lot of time researching.
Katerina - I am starting to get the picture, and have started using some of these tools already. I can't wait to learn more about the others so I can get on board. Thanks for sharing some of the tools that make your business so successful.
Wow.. This is a great list. Some I was familiar with and others I wasnt. I've bookmarked it for future reference. Thanks Katerina!
You guys are great- I have not been keeping up as of late, but I will be printing these new series you put together so I can read them later. I read a couple tonight but I have some research for a couple of buyers I picked up today.
Hi Katerina -- This post is chocked full of good stuff -- I am a HUGE fan of SnagIt, using it when it first cam out. All of these tools can make a huge difference, when used.
Of all the tools you spoke about, Jaterina, I must say that I was impressed by your endorsement of the realbird widget on our AR sidebar. I'lll have to do that finally...someone else mentioned that it drives traffic to their blog, so it can't hurt me, can it?
Oh, btw...Flkicr doesn't allow commercial use of its services...Matt Stigliano wrote something about this a few weeks back; and I'd rather have the free version of Snagit called JING - it works wonderfully for me...
Nestor & Katerina ~ My favorite Active Rainer's this week. Thanks so much about
#1 Hit Router - I used hit router in Jan 09 when I joined. I had no idea what I was doing. Anyway, I went out of town the next day for two weeks and my phones and emails were crazy. I didn't know why, I thought wow the market was picking up from the devastating winter. Now, I have not done this since. So, I need to read and thanks to you I will try this again.
# 2 Kompozer and ScribeFire - I have no web editing tools. You will notice in my blogs. I was trying to type in html and paste.. I'm sure this is much easier.
Love Snagit!
Thanks So Much!!!
Katrina-thank you again for some great information. Not only do you give it to us in an organized manner, but it's laid out for us that anyone can understand it. I downloaded Kompozer after the first time I lost a post I was writing directly in AR. Next on my agenda is IClip.
Many thanks.
You write great posts, but this one is really, really great. Thanks. Tere
Katerina - I hope everyone saves this post and takes the time to review every single one of the tools you've recommended. Everyone of them is top notch! I've got 9 out of 10 thanks to you!! :)
William- Thanks William! I am not using Flickr for commercial purposes as defined in Flickr's TOS. The reason he got his account deleted was because he was linking with sale copy. I sure Flickr for networking and sharing my photos and editing my photos etc, to work on groups and in groups. I could write a whole post about it. A person that you can study is Ines- her blog is Miamisms. She uses Flickr a lot and has some great groups. The way that she uses it is an example on how to do it right.
I know that Jing is free but Snagit does so much more that I need it for. Snagit is such a complete editing product that I don't need photoshop!
Thanks for your contribution! Katerina
Thanks for the great information. I have bookmarked this page and am checking out RealBird right now.
Jeani- Thank you for mentioning me in your post on your blog and recommending agents to follow us. It is the best 29.95 per month you can ever spend on advertising. Where else do you get bill board advertising for this great price?
All terrific tools that can make a difference in ones business. Nice work explaining how you integrate these into your business.
Katerina:
Damon just asked a question about being a Localism sponsor. I think I have an understanding of it, but, it seems as though all my towns have been taken (could that be right?)
I am working on Hit Router and that looks like it will be useful. I 'm glad to hear Monique's success story with it.
Thanks very much for this information.
When I speak to new members, their tone of voice tells me, "Another phone call to ask me to spend $30/month"... I only wish I could tell them it comes back to you more than $30/month.
If all you have is $30/month, I'll do the Rainmaker account. No questions asked.
Ironic thing is that people who are grandfathered in are also the one who would gladly pay $30/month. Where can I leave my debit card number with you???
Great stuff Katerina - as usual.
I dont use SnagIt but Fastone Capture for my screen capture. It may not be as cool as SnagIt, but for a $20 lifetime purchase, I could live with that.
I also use Fastone for my scroll (whole page) screen shot capture. Otherwise, ATL + Print Scrn works perfectly fine.
I think everyone agrees, AR is the best bang for your buck!
Billie Hillier
PRACTICAL REAL ESTATE MARKETING
Damon- Sorry I took so long to get to answer your question. It is one of our sons' birthdays, he just turned 7.
Localism sponsor: you pay a monthly fee to become a sponsor of different communities. Then that gives you the place at the right on Localism that says that this community is sponsored by Damon. I will write more about it if you want to learn more. Let me know. I will do a tutorial.
OMG - this is awesome - thanks for spelling it out so clearly. I am going to check out the RainBird thingy... and I'll click on YOUR link.
Oops - I mean RealBird - I want to look into this a little deeper.
Hi Katerina-What a wonderful blog of useful info. Great post. :-)
Nestor and katerina, I would appreciate that. I tried finding out about localism on AR but it simply wanted me to pick a community and give my credit card information. It gave me no information as to cost, benefits or responsibilities.
While snooping around I did find that Roanoke (which is the City, and County that I work is already taken. But, while Roanoke (which would be about the only area searched in a web search) is taken, there are some small communities in Roanoke City that are open (but nobody from outside of this immediate area would ever know or search those keywords).
I would like to know how it works and the benefits to my business.
Thanks for any help.
Damon
Katerina --- outstanding post full of fantastic information. I have bookmarked it so that I can refer back as needed. Thank you.
Katerina-WOW-you outdid yourself-lots of great info and links. Thanks!
Katerina,
What a wealth of information and exactly what I have been looking for to begin blogging. Thank you so much for the time you spent to write this... It is absolutely appreciated by me and I am sure, many others!
Katerina,
Thanks for providing this info. I'm trying out Real Bird and Kompozer. I've been looking for something to jazz up my blog posts. Now I have no excuse for not doing them on a regular basis.
I have used Real Estate shows and am very happy with the service and the price. I am also using the IDX Hit Router. The jury is still out on the Hit Router.
I'm using some of the tools you mentioned. Now I have some homework looking in to some of the others.
Great info
Thank you for sharing all your stuff........ It is incredible! Love all these cool tools!!