Homes.com is here to help with planning a Memorial Day bash, or any other summer party, a breeze with our Red, White and BBQ Entertaining Guide! Chock full of barbecue tips, recipes, outdoor decoration ideas, plus more.   This guide is a great resource and can be downloaded for free! Our CUSTOMIZABLE VERSION is a perfect way to brand yourself!

How to Customize in 3 Easy Steps:

1.  On the last page of the guide, select the editable text boxes
2.  Type in your contact information
3.  And print or save for emailing

It’s that easy! Download it HERE!

Ideas for Using the Entertainment Guide

• Add this free guide as a special email in one of your drip marketing campaigns! It’s a great way to keep in touch with your recent and past homebuyers. When they are ready to sell again, touches like these ensure that your name is the first in their mind when they want to list!
• Hosting an Open House? Showcase your listing’s potential outdoor entertaining space! Consider staging the deck, patio or yard with grill, picnic table and outdoor decorations, and then offer printed copies of this Entertaining Guide.
• Have a closing soon? Create a closing gift centered around outdoor entertaining with grill tools, BBQ sauces and rub. Then,  include a copy of our Entertaining Guide!
• Print some copies for distribution in your office, local stores, or other areas where you distribute your branded material.

Download your editable copy of the Red, White & BBQ Entertainment guide today! We hope you can use the guide as a tool to connect with clients and prospects and build your brand! Take a look at our other customizable consumer resources and business eBooks on our FREE Real Estate Marketing eBooks page.

Drip Email Tips:

Beware of spam filters that are integrated into email hosting sites like Google, which keep unwanted emails from overpopulating in-boxes  Although this keeps our in-boxes clean of “junk” mail, unfortunately for marketers, this “junk” frequently consists of our drip emails.  The Homes.com email marketing application is an easy way to overcome marketing nightmares like this that ultimately limit the effectiveness of your email campaigns. Here are some important features that real estate professionals can benefit from by using the Homes Connect email marketing application:

• Provide content that applies to consumers in each stage of the home buying cycle – from first-time homebuyers, investors, to empty-nesters
• Quick and easy branding technique that places your image in every email
• Access pre-existing or create new campaigns tailored to specific consumers
• Conveniently manage your campaigns right from the Homes Connect Dashboard
• Schedule messages appropriately and regularly to stay top of mind

Sign up for a live Homes.com Video Training Session and read our Email Marketing Tips for Real Estate Pros for more effective email campaigns that will get readers’ attention!  Tell us about your drip marketing strategies and other successful solutions that help you interact with consumers.  Comment below or tell us on our Facebook Page.

In the ongoing mission to assist you in providing your clients with the most accurate and reliable real estate information, Homes.com has created several new widgets for you to add to your website! Recently, we introduced our Home Values and Mortgage Calculator widgets. These new widgets, along with the others in our gallery, will help improve your website’s already existing content and retain more incoming traffic through their ease and simplicity.

The Home Values widget offers your clients a chance to search property values in surrounding areas through Homes.com. The Home Values widget displays the average home value in a neighborhood, allowing your clients an opportunity to see what a particular area might be like. This is a Homes.com widget, so you can be certain the information provided is accurate, updated, and easy for your clients to understand.

If your clients wish to see a projection of their monthly mortgage payment, they can use the Mortgage Calculator widget. The sliders on the widget allow users to adjust the form fields to quickly calculate monthly mortgage payments. The Mortgage Calculator also operates quickly and easily when placed on your site, so there’s no worrying about your website being bogged down or lagging in any way.

Just like the rest of the widgets in the Homes.com gallery, the Home Values and Mortgage Calculator are easy to place on any existing site. Simply copy and place the code provided at the bottom of the individual widget pages onto your site. It’s as easy as that. These widgets will help improve your site’s current functionality and, by doing so, help you drive even more traffic to your website!

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Many sources are suggesting that attention is beginning to fade Facebook and that users are battling “Facebook fatigue” due to numerous privacy changes and the increased prevalence of sponsored content. Since Google is the most used search engine, email host, and data sharing platform for most internet users, it only makes sense to join Google Plus?   

Here are the top 5 reasons to jump aboard the Google+ bandwagon!

1. Communities and Circles.   These features allows users to create groups based upon common interests. Unlike Facebook where you “connect with friends”, Google Plus encourages users to branch out and “meet strangers who share common interests” to add to your “circles” (Business Insider). This is important to real estate professionals because it allows you to create circles for each stage of your contacts and post content pertaining to each respective circle. While working with first time homebuyers, real estate pros can create a circle to share information that is specific to them like house hunting checklists, mortgage information, and other helpful resources that may not apply to “circles” that are in other homebuying stages.

2. Google Plus Hangouts. Host virtual meetings or property tours and connect with clients and colleagues all from your mobile device or desktop! If you have out-of-area buyers who can’t arrange to see properties in person, start a Hangout and take them on a live virtual tour of the home from your phone, tablet or laptop.  Hangouts have an advantage over Facebook’s video chat mechanism in that Hangouts allow you to interact with up to 15 people at the same time.  Further, for those who couldn’t make it to the live Hangout, you can save it your YouTube channel, which is integrated with your Google Plus page (see more below).  Users don’t expect Hangouts to be scripted or formal, so posting to your pages further authenticates, or humanizes your brand (Mashable).

3. YouTube & Google Integration. With real estate being such a visual industry, Google Plus’s picture-centric look might be more appealing to consumers especially now that video content is in high demand.   With the partnering of Google Plus and YouTube, real estate pros can host Hangouts or shoot videos to showcase virtual property tours, community videos, video blogs and other valuable content onto your Google Plus profile and YouTube channel!

4. Google Plus Local.  Become popular in your local community and on the web! Use the review feature to collect online reviews and feedback from clients and monitor your page’s activity through Google Analytics to spot trends regarding what posts your users are engaging with.

5. Google Plus Mobile.   Life on the go! Instantly upload property photos and videos, chat face to face with potential clients directly from your mobile device!  With Google Plus Mobile you can drive through a neighborhood, take video, host a Hangout and talk about that neighborhood and the local market.

Come join Homes.com in the Google Plus movement and be sure to add HomesPro  to your circles to find out what’s new in the real estate industry! For more information on how Google Plus is growing and the advantages of using Hangouts, check out these articles Suddenly, Google Plus Is Outpacing Twitter To Become The World’s Second Largest Social Network and Should Your Business Use Google Hangouts?!

So far 2013 has been shaping up to be a great year in the real estate industry, as consumer confidence rises now more than ever it is crucial for real estate professionals to connect with local consumers searching for homes in their local areas.

Visit Homes.com at booth #502 and be one of the first to learn how you can connect with buyers and sellers in your area with mobile local ads!

While you’re at the Homes.com booth, make sure you enter for a chance to WIN a VISA gift card! Also, stay up to speed on the action at MidYear by following our LIVE updates on Twitter via @HomesPro using #NARmidyear. See you there!!