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We are thrilled to announce our latest advancement in connecting to the real estate blogging community: Tomato Radio Tomato Radio is an hour-long, live show on the 15th of every month.* We will begin each show at 3pm PST (6pm EST). Every show will be hosted by Jim Cronin, joined by a special guest (or two). Our format will be to speak on a pre-determined agenda for the first 30 minutes, followed by audience participation for the remaining 30 minutes. For example, we may discuss Blogging SEO with Justin Smith of Searching Solutions, or Real Estate Statistics with Mike Simonsen of Altos Research in loose interview style, to be followed by questions and input from the audience. We ask that all participation be limited to the topic at hand. Suggestions for Show Topics? Please email us. We are here to have a conversation with you, and for you. *If the...

Director of Technology, here at the Real Estate Tomato, Jason Benesch will be speaking at RETechSouth this month, and we’ve asked him to tell us a little bit about his presentation. Take it away, Jason: With the changing market, how are you now positioning yourself to put your business in front of future prospective buyers? Over the last 5 years, I have built a career and business around consulting real estate agents on how to better market themselves online. In this short time, I have witnessed arguably, real estate’s greatest shift in marketing. Radical technological advancements, brand new business models, and the ubiquitous use of the internet by home-buyers have forced today’s agent to reconsider everything they have been taught about generating leads. That’s the bad news. The good news: I can promise you that it has never been easier or more affordable to produce leads, cultivate your sphere of...

1. We support the democratization of local governments through the use of digg-style lawmaking. 2. We believe social media websites represent the future of participatory governing. 3. We believe traditional voting processes should be augmented with secure web-based voting systems. 4. We want to see open source software, formats and philosophies replace proprietary products such as the ruling Microsoft monopoly in public agencies. 5. We demand that all politicians keep regularly updated blogs, with open comment systems, to maintain contact with their constituents. (That one is my favorite!) 6. We want to see wiki-style collaborative writing of proposed laws and bills. 7. We demand that all governing bodies publish Youtube-style video of all public meetings and votes. 8. We support a total reform of patent, copyright and intellectual property law to reflect free and open Creative Commons-style licensing. 9. We are against the implementation of Draconian DRM systems. 10. We...

Jason Benesch presented me with the following article and I felt it was so timely that not only did I have to post it, but I decided to contribute some editorial as a 'second half' to the piece. Blogger Idol, Where's Simon Cowell When You Need Him? By Jason Benesch I have to come clean. I have watched every episode of American Idol this season. It's still extremely hard for those words to roll off my tongue, but I believe the first step to recovery is admitting that you have a problem (so I've heard). I have never before watched a full season of American Idol. Matter of fact, I have never even seen one episode. Before the girlfriend, I was never so compelled, but I have since learned that with relationships, certain TV watching habits must change. But even before the dedication to watching every minute of this season,...

Jason Benesch, our resident twenty-something, distracted by something he stumbled across online, looks to paint the picture for what Realtors’ future clients are bound to ‘look’ like. The message is clear, this maturing generation of First Time Home Buyer’s is not enticed by the “Old School.” Beam Me Up, Jimmy By Jason Benesch As I watched this video on Web 2.0 and the shifts occurring online, it made me wonder what it was like before the telephone was invented. You mean I had to write someone a letter; with a pen (or was it a quill?)?!?! Once the video had ended, I quickly switched windows (control + tab) over to my iChat with my head still beating to the rhythm of the hypnotic techno that was playing over the screen cast. I wanted to show Jim the video that had just inspired me with a million Web 3.0 ideas. After...

Commenting is the lifeblood of a blog. The author feels a sense of recognition and acceptance when their audience makes the effort to participate by leaving their two cents. The potential exchange that can take place in the comments serves many benefits: 1. Increases content depth for the article: Search Engines will eat this up too. 2. Helps audience recognize the humanness behind the blog. 3. Develops sense of community through participation and encouragement. 4. Hones article's message to a collaborative "truth". Here are the Tomato, we love to see people leave comments on our articles. It let's us know that people are not only reading, but finding value in our content. We also love following up on comments that have been left by other members of this community, letting them know we are here to engage. However, there is a challenge. How can our audience stay informed of updates...

The goal of these 3 articles authored by Jason Benesch is to give you an understanding of how search engines work and how you can drastically improve your search engine lead generation without wasting another dime on SEO Snake Oil. Last week Jason helped us looked at how to organize the meta-data and keyword density of our websites to ensure that we're are being 'read' by the search engines most effectively. This week, in his final SEO offering, he will be examining the proper approach to building your link popularity. Thanks again Jason! In this third installment of this Search Engine Tutorial we examine link popularity; why links work, how to acquire links, what and how many links you should have. Links, coupled with unique and growing content define the most important factors to increase your search engine visibility. It should make perfect sense as to why search engines would...

The goal of these 3 articles authored by Jason Benesch is to give you an understanding of how search engines work and how you can drastically improve your search engine lead generation without wasting another dime on SEO Snake Oil. Last week, we determined how to select keywords and search phrases with which we will optimize our website. The next step is giving ourselves a proper platform from which to take off. First one must realize that search engines don't see your website the same way we do. Your website is written in what's called, hyper-text markup language (a.k.a. HTML). We have browsers on our computer (Internet Explorer, Firefox, Safari etc.) that translate the HTML into graphics and readable text. Search engine spiders (or webcrawlers) 'read' the HTML of your site. Javascript and Flash animation are not productive for search engine optimization because spiders can't read it; they can only...

So you've all gotten that call: a search engine optimization (SEO) company promising to place your site at the top of the search engines. Many Realtors, seeing the potential opportunity for online leads, have already wasted a lot of money on one (or more) of these services and will never see the results they were expecting or promised. There are a variety of companies with many different strategies, promising to position your site competitively and the majority are illegitimate. The goal of this article is to give you an understanding of how search engines work and how you can drastically improve your search engine lead generation without wasting another dime. Jason Benesch is a Personal Marketing Coach for Z57 Inc. Working one-on-one with dozens of website toting Realtors is his daily grind. I asked him to contribute to the Tomato this week with an article based on his experience with...

So you bought the website, you have the lead generation forms, you got the traffic, and now you have a a bunch of names and email addresses with no clue of what to do next. Jason Benesch is a Personal Marketing Coach for Z57 Inc. Working one-on-one with dozens of website toting Realtors is his daily grind. I asked him to contribute to the Tomato this week with an article based on his experience with a common stigma among novice online Realtors: Email Marketing. "Internet leads are useless, I have no idea who's coming by, what they're looking for, and they never respond to my efforts to contact them." "I have called every number in my lead database, and those with whom I spoken weren't exactly serious about buying a home." "I have emailed everyone in my lead database and most have not responded." "I just assumed they would contact...