This video brings much needed levity to the picture.

I should be a real estate agent, the shit people try to pass off as photos of a property are shameful.

Is it me or is the Social Media PR person the new Real Estate Agent type of a fad. Everyone seems to be one these days.

Waiting for my real estate agent. She’s late again.

Tracking ‘real estate agent’ on Twitter reveals chest thumping agents and disgruntled clients.

What can we learn and improve?

When I’m trying to get a group of folks together for a discussion,
Twitter gives me no satisfaction.

So, I went on a search for conferencing tools.

My requirements are straightforward:

• Simple
• Reliable
• Recording Available
• Free

Three programs I found are Basement Ventures, Talk Shoe, and Free Conference.

BASEMENT VENTURES is an affordable and convenient solution for conference calling, hosting free, on-demand conference calls with a 250-person capacity. Conference call recordings (saved as mp3) are available online within 90 minutes of your conference call and remain available for a minimum of 30 days.

TALK SHOE hosted community calls (up to 250 participants) can be discussions, conversations, talk shows and podcasts. Recorded community calls can be listened to, downloaded, or subscribed to.

FREE CONFERENCE provides fully functional recording and storage capabilities, including both telephone playback and easy to download, play, manage, and store MP3 files. Limited to 150 participants.

I’ve used TalkShoe in the past, as a moderator and as a participant. A feature I like is the ability to enter text for questions and comments during the call.

What about you? What’s your experience with conference calls and discussions. What features do you prefer a moderator offer during a teleseminar?

Photo Credit: wjklos

So, I immediately thought of them when I ran across this video-based program called the “Internet Marketing VA Training Certification”. The program is designed to equip virtual assistants with the skills necessary for today’s online businesses.

According to the VA Classroom site:

There is an emerging demand for an Internet Marketing Virtual Assistant Training Program that equips virtual assistants with the specific skills internet businesses need, today and beyond.

Businesses are frantically looking for versatile, productive, web-savvy virtual assistants, with the skills to perform an increasing variety of crucial internet marketing support services including:

• Blog management and support
• Social media marketing and submission
• Article submission
• Online competitor analysis
• Web analytic tracking and reporting
• Effective keyword research
• Press release submissions
• Internet market research strategies
• Email auto-responder management
• Online Project management
• Video editing and marketing support
• Podcast editing and submission
• Online survey set-up and management
• … and many other services!

With VAClassroom’s IMVA Certification, you’ll know exactly how to effectively perform and market all of these services and many more.

Now, my team knows a lot of this stuff. But, hey; it’s not always easy to teach what you know.

We’re gonna take the course to:

1. Learn what we don’t know, and
2. Learn how to share the information effectively.

What do you think? Are you struggling to keep up with social networking, video, and online reputation? Would you hire a virtual assistant to monitor that part of your business?

I can’t believe a new feature from Google isn’t getting more notice, because it converts already-existing links to your site into much higher quality links, for free. The Google webmaster blog just announced that you can find the pages that link to 404 pages on your site. Matt Cutts: Gadgets, Google and SEO

When someone comes to your site from a broken link, like PropertyLinesAtlanta.com/seiwi, the server generally returns the dreadful error code - 404 Page Not Found. Unless you have created a custom page, you might be driving visitors away.

Let’s talk about spiders for a second. You know, the same technology that the search engines use to index your pages. When’s the last time you ran one on your own site? Did you know that your custom “404 not found” error page could be driving them away?

You’ll want to sic a spider on your own site, before letting MSN, Google or Yahoo get at it. Why? To make sure its spiderable, that’s why! Huh??? Didn’t think about validating your linking structure, did you?

There are many page whackers available that download a whole site to your hard drive, but who knows what kind of “forgiving” spidering technology they’re using. The best one, the one that replicates the crawling spiders like Google and Yahoo the closest, is a tool like OptiSpider.

Here’s a tip, if OptiSpider can’t spider your site… neither can Google. That’s right, it’s probably just about the best reason to get and use a tool like OptiSpider, just so you can see the same stuff the spiders see.

If you manage multiple sites for clients, it’s a great weapon in your toolbox! I can’t count how many times I’ve done coaching sessions for clients who claim search engines are not finding all their pages. A few seconds later - using OptiSpider - I can tell them… dude!!! You didn’t link to the pages properly, or your custom 404 not found page is killing the search engine spiders.

No Google, Yahoo or MSN spider is going to find all your pages, when you put the crawler in an endless feedback loop. You’re lucky if the spiders ever come back.

Stop doing whatever it is (even if it’s reading this article and go look at your custom 404 page. Everyone loves to use them. Unfortunately, many people use them badly. The biggest sin of all - even I was guilty of this - is using a relative link on the 404 page. It’s so common that relative linking should be banned altogether.

Imagine the spider is several directories down in your site and encounters a missing page or broken link, up comes your custom 404 error page. Too bad sucker! You used a relative link instead of an absolute one. The spider is totally miffed at your site and resets, leaving all the rest of your pages behind… unspidered, unindexed and unfound.

Stop whatever it is you’re doing and go do it now. Put an absolute link on your 404 page, one that includes the http://www. and your full .com web address to your home page. That way, when your custom 404 error page comes up, the spider won’t choke. Instead, it finds your home page from the custom 404 page and continues spidering like normal.

If you want to make spiders happy and be sure they can crawl your entire site, then use a spidering tool like OptiSpider to test your internal linking structure. Just don’t be surprised if you end up getting a whole lot more pages indexed by the search engines. What’s on your 404 page?

by Michael Campbell

Did you like this article? Get more just like it when you subscribe to Michael Campbell’s free Internet Marketing Secrets Newsletter.

Most people only use WordPress to create a blog or two and fail to realize the sheer power and flexibility and what it can really do for your bottom line.

WordPress is incredibly flexible, quick to install, and easy to change the look of your site. In fact, I’d say it was almost effortless to use!

And it is FREE! Every penny you make from your WordPress site is pure profit!

For many folks, WordPress can be confusing and overwhelming. There are over 2,700 different plugins available and thousands of themes.

You can sit there and wonder…

Or, learn from our weeks of combing forums, installing plugins, tweaking settings and working out the best possible way of setting up WordPress and squeaking out those neat little functions that makes a blog look incredible.

Introducing WordPress video tutorial series

The comprehensive WordPress video tutorial series will guide you through, step by step, everything you need to know in order to set up a successful and profitable WordPress site.

Video 1 - Installation Of WordPress (8 minutes 16 seconds)

• Look over our shoulder as we show you how to install WordPress
• Discover how you can install WordPress with a click of a button

In this episode Alex Blumberg and NPR’s Adam Davidson explain what happened leading to the bailout, including what regulators could have done to prevent this financial crisis from happening in the first place.

Listen to Another Frightening Show About the Economy - This American Life now!

Then, come back and tell me what you learned about the bailout, sub-prime mortgages, the housing market, and the stock injection plan.

Photo by nattu

The images used in posts capture the reader. And, we all want to capture reader attention, right?

So, where do you find great photo images to use freely?

In this post I’ll tell you how to find the best free images on Flickr to use in your blog posts, eBooks, brochures or anything else.

Flickr hosts millions of photos taken by professional and amateur photographers. The best images are richly detailed, vibrant, and inspirational. Images on Flickr fall under a traditional copyright or a Creative Commons license.

Find images on Flickr to freely use

You are not allowed to use copyrighted images without express permission. Who has time for that? If you are like me, the need for a perfect image to use in a post is when I’m writing the post. So, let me tell you about the Creative Commons license to freely use Flickr images.

Non-copyright images on Flickr are available under a different kind of license called Creative Commons. Each image is available under one of six different licenses. For our purposes, we’ll focus on one license.

Attribution License

The images I use come under the Attribution License. You are free to modify the images — crop or caption, for example — as long as you credit the original source with a link back to their Flickr profile.

Find best images on Flickr to freely use

The starting point to find the best free photo images on Flickr is the Attibution License page. Clicking the Flickr Attribution License link navigates to a new window or tab depending on your browser settings.

1. Search the keyword appropriate to your needs. To test, search the keyword ‘orange’. Flickr will search the image tags and return the 27,500+ ‘most relevant’ images. But, don’t stop here.
2. Look for the ‘most interesting’ link below the displayed number of images. Click ‘most interesting’ to change the display. Most often you will see images of a much higher quality.
3. Right click the image to copy or save.
4. Copy the link location to credit the original source profile.
5. Within seconds you have a targeted image to use in your blog post — or whatever suits your needs.

UPDATE: Be sure to check out the Multicolr Search Lab Flickr Set. Using visual similarity technology you can search Flickr images by color (colour).

Photo by Kyle May

This guide will introduce many of the features of Twitter, and help you get started.

What is Twitter?

In the words of Remarkablogger, Michael Martine, “Twitter is like sex… If you’ve never had it, you simply have no idea what it’s like.”

Twitter is designed to work on the web, on your desktop, and with your phone. All Twitter messages are limited to 140 characters, so you can’t say much. And yet, you can write a short story.

Messages on Twitter can be private, so only friends you have authorized can read them. You’ll have more fun if messages are made public, which means anyone who “follows” you can read and subscribe to them.

Why use Twitter?

1. It’s simple.
2. It’s social.
3. It’s mobile.
4. It’s free.

Even basic updates are meaningful to family, friends, or colleagues - especially when they are timely. Once you become familiar with the platform, Twitter can be a more effective tool by determining what you want to achieve.

How to Get Started

Go to Twitter.com and click Get Started - Join! Enter a username, password, and email address to create your account. It’s a simple as that.

The green control panel displays a default image next to your screen name - a pair of eyes on a brown background. Click the default and upload an image to use as an avatar. This image will appear next to your updates (tweets).

From the Control Panel, click Add Device and add your mobile number. Once you’ve registered your device, you’re set to update Twitter from your phone. Simply text your tweet to 40404.

Sending Tweets

Login to your Twitter account (http://twitter.com/username) to update from your computer.

Use the text box to enter your message, and click update. Your tweet will appear in the public timeline.

Setting up the account and learning the basics is simple. You’ll be tweeting in less than 5 minutes.

Keep reading to learn about the social use of Twitter. Learn how to

• personalize your profile
• find friends and colleagues to follow
• send direct (private) messages
• check for replies
• expanding your network.

Follow Me

Increase Your Blog Traffic

If you just started a blog and want a little increase in blog traffic, here’s what you do:

1. Leave a comment at the bottom of this post with your blog’s URL in the website field and describe your blog in a short paragraph.
2. Subscribe to my RSS feed (it’s all I ask in return for helping you boost your traffic).
3. Make sure you also subscribe to the comments on this post so that you get alerted on every new comment.
4. Every time a new comment is added, go and visit that blog! This is simply the golden rule at work: do for others as you would have them do for you. You want traffic? Give traffic.
5. But here’s where it really gets good: Subscribe to the other blogs’ RSS feeds.
6. Stumble a post or two from the other blogs.
7. Write a post on your own blog, link to this post so others can participate and write about the new blogs you have found. Link to them.

That’s it!

You Have to Share to Succeed

If you plan to swoop in with a quick comment, and wait for the flood of traffic… Ain’t gonna happen.

Read the blogs of others. Meet new people. Have a conversation.

Last night I met a Minneapolis ex-Realtor with family in Marietta — never would have happened if I wasn’t subscribed to Remarkablogger.

Play Ball!

The more you give, the more you get.

So, I want all 5 of my readers looking for more traffic to leave a comment now. Subscribe to the comments to round the bases and score more blog traffic.

Photo Credit: william c hutton jr