Written by Nick Lovegrove of limeyboy.com.

limeyboy.com has spent over a decade helping real estate agents get more from the web, whilst trying to insulate them from the really geeky parts. We help agents define their online brand through building real estate websites, integrated blogs and social networking strategies around them. We are dedicated to helping you find the web approachable and fun, and yet have no desire to turn you into a geek.

Website: http://www.limeyboy.com
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Twitter: @limeyboyweb

We are big fans of the big filing system in the sky. Ground based filing is sooo 2005. What I am talking about is the ever growing google docs cloud, the online office tools for the creation of documents, spreadsheets, presentations etc, and the storage of them.

Though we’ve never actually ‘lost everything’, we’ve all heard a few of those doomsday stories of computer crashing woes, and the threat nonetheless is always there.

Sure we’ve been through external hardware auto backups, automated online backups like mozy.com (which we thought were pretty good), sharing work across a network, however with the best of intentions and as geeks say in Las Vegas,  “What happens on your computer, stays on your computer”.

Stuff To The Fluff

Which is why we felt pretty early on that moving all the creation of that stuff (work) to the fluff (cloud) where it was going to be stored would be a pretty good idea.  The goodness of this idea has already been waxed lyrically here at FOREM. Yes, it’s great that teams can collaborate, etc etc

However, what I wanted to share today was about taking the next step, I mean really making a commitment to the cloud and in doing so fix its biggest annoyance for us.

You see, we’ve always not fully committed to docs. There was something that always stopped us from full adoption. That reason was having to use a gmail address as the primary email address to share this stuff with the folks down below.

Not that gmail is bad, far from it, but for anyone who is serious about their brand, online or otherwise, having a matching email address to their domain name is about as basic a first step as it gets. Having worked towards a considered online brand, sending your emails from gmail just seemed like a step in the wrong direction.

You see as well as being great and powerful, gmail is also free for everyone, which simultaneously places it in my mind with a hotmail or yahoo account.

I wanted my company to be able to get all the advantages of the cloud while retaining the branding of my emails. Is that too much to ask?

gmail – @gmail.com = great

Fortunately this can be achieved by subscribing to google Apps. For current users of google docs you are already a dab hand at this. You know it inside out at this point, because it’s essentially the same as google docs.

The big reason why we moved over to Apps, is that you can essentially place your domain, that’s right the root of your email address, under google’s wing.

When you have done that, you simply (haha) have to change your MX Record (what the what?) to point to google and then your lovely email will appear in your Apps gmail account. It’s gmail alright, but each of your lovely emails will float down the ground with your brand’s suffix, @yourbrand.com

google, has done an impressively horrible job with the explanation of how to do this, really, it made a geeks fingers tremble over the keyboard, and godaddy wasn’t much help either.

If you are thinking of doing this, perhaps use the holiday lulls to do it rather than the spring market as a little disruption of your email account could occur when you are transitioning, although ours went smoothly.

What does this cost, $50/year/account for oodles of storage.

Are you using Google Apps? How was your transition?

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Guest Blogger Stephen Pacinelli has delivered presentations to thousands of REALTORS® on the benefits of sales automation, social media, blogging and online marketing. Stephen’s strategies come first hand from some of the best Realtors around the country. Steve co-founded Tech Savvy Agent and helped build it from the ground up to provide the best technology and marketing information to REALTORS® seeking the latest strategies and tools.

Let’s face it, Google pretty much runs the Internet.  It dictates where we go and what we see.  So if I want to play nice with anybody, guess who it’s going to be….Google.

There are 4 indispensable tools that I feel everyone should be implementing in their current business.   These tools are easy to get, and free, simply by going to google.com and signing up for an account on the upper right hand side of the page.  We’re going to start with the most basic, being your profile and touch upon some more advanced tools like, the Keyword Tool, Google Alerts and Analytics.

1. Google Profile

We can’t control what appears on the first page of Google, right?  Wouldn’t it be great to at least know that a hand-typed profile and a nice looking bio created by you, would be guaranteed to appear on the first page?  Well, guess what?  We can do that by simply filling out your Google profile.

After getting your Google account, go to Google.com and click on Google Account Settings.  You will see an empty profile screen on the upper left hand side.  This is where you want to add some information, such as a short bio or other variations of your name.  The information entered onto this screen is guaranteed to show up on the first page of Google (on the bottom) when someone searches for your name.

2. Google Alerts

The next important tool I would recommend is Google Alerts.  The Internet is a wide open space for anyone to say anything.  Do you know what people are saying about you?  You spend a lot of time making sure your reputation is secure off-line.  How about on-line?   Under the Google Account Settings screen, look for the small yellow bell and click on the Alerts link.  Key in your name here but be sure to put it in quotes as shown below, to lock your first name in with your last.  Otherwise, in my case I would get notified of all “Steve’s” or all “Pacinelli’s”.  Answer the next few questions and Google is now set up to send you an alert the second it finds any reference to your name on the Internet.

3. Google Analytics

Everyone has a website these days.  But it seems as if only a small amount of agents are truly harnessing the power of their on-line presence.  To do this, you need to have an understanding of your consumer and know what they liked most as well as what they didn’t like or did not find beneficial from your website.  Google Analytics to the rescue!  This tool will compile and save data about your visitors on your site including location, time spent, pages visited, their entry page and exit page as well as a myriad of other statistics that will give you better insight to cater towards their needs.  Google Analytics will work on almost any website and most reputable website providers will have a custom box to enter in the code that Google supplies.  Simply find the Google Analytics button under the same Google Account Settings screen I referenced earlier.

4. Google Keyword Tool

In this blog post, we definitely saved the best for last.  Knowing what your target audience is searching for on the internet can give you a competitive advantage in trying to meet the needs of this fickle group.  Since Google knows where everyone is going, it keeps detailed information about what people are searching for on the Internet.  This fantastic feature is the Google Keyword Tool.  Any tech savvy agent that is looking for a good domain name, has a website or enjoys blogging will find this tool invaluable.  The easiest way to take advantage of this free tool, is to Google “Google Keyword Tool”.  The first entry to pop up is what you are looking for.  Type a phrase into the space and instantly see the amount of searches completed for that phrase.   This is a component that has limitless use, since knowledge is power in understanding consumer behavior in the real estate industry.

I hope you find these four tools as useful as we all do at Tech Savvy Agent. What are some other free tools are you using in your business?

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I’m with Galen when he gives us five reasons to ditch Outlook for Google Apps. I’ve been using Gmail for a couple of years now and it has become my primary method of collecting, sorting and replying to my various email addresses. In fact, I find that I really only use my desktop email client (Apple’s Mail on my home iMac) for keeping an offline archive of all my conversations these days.

More recently, Google’s calendar app has replaced my Outlook calendar on my work PC, mainly since it allows me to access it wherever I can get an Internet connection. The only missing piece of the puzzle here is I haven’t found a simple way to sync Google Calendar with my phone (unfortunately, gCalSync doesn’t work on my phone, though it may work on yours.)

So now that Google is offfering its connectivity services to businesses, does that mean it’s time to replace your entire Office Suite for an online alternative? Google certain thinks one day you might and has recently rolled out a free online spreadsheet and aquired an online word processor to push you in that direction.

But if the thought of surrendering all your corporate computing to the Mountain View giant gets you a little nervous, there are other online Office alternatives out there.

Zoho is a company that I’ve been watching for a while and they have the most complete online office solution available right now, that rolls up a word processor, spreadsheet and presentation software into a virtual office environment that also includes email, document sharing and calendar apps.

Zoho Writer was as functional as I needed it to be, as was Zoho Sheet and I was particularly impressed with Zoho Show, Zoho’s PowerPoint clone. Though all of the packages had some difficulty importing existing documents, especially heavily formatted Word documents or PPT decks – all were more than acceptable for new document creation.

Chicago-based 37 Signals offers Writeboard as part of its critically acclaimed Basecamp project management platform, which I’ve had the opportunity to use on a number of occasions. It’s less of an Office replacement than Zoho, but it offers an amazing boost to productivity through its file sharing, scheduling and time tracking functions.

So, is it time to replace your entire Office Suite for any of these alternatives? Well, the answer is, it depends. Online office suites are still very much in the development stage. Their biggest plus is that offer an unparalleled environment for people to share, work and collaborate on projects. Large brokers would probably see little return on switching away from the Office platform, but a smaller more nimble outfit could potentially see huge prodictivity gains and substancial cost savings by switching.

Another intriguiging possibility would be to mirror some of the document sharing and editing functions found in these Office suites, and modify them for use in a more secure environment to draft, table and edit real estate contracts. The Buyer and Seller representatives could then collaborate virtually on drafting a final contract. This could save a lot of time and energy that’s currently spent standing at a fax machine.

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