What is a QR Code?

A QR Code is a matrix code (or two-dimensional bar code) created by Japanese corporation Denso-Wave in 1994. They are currently used for a wide array of purposes including: driver’s licenses, paperless coupons, on bills and other publications. A QR code, when scanned by a smart phone (i.e.: BlackBerry, iPhone, Android) will take the scanner to a website.

QR Codes are a fantastic way to promote any kind of marketing information in a modern, non-traditional and green method. A code can contain text information, a phone number or a website url: any information that you want to share with your customer.

While used widely in Japan and other parts of the world for some time, the use of QR Codes is a fairly new concept in America.

Enter Lesley Lambert, Realtor for Park Square Realty in Westfield, MA and co-founder of TQ, Inc Social Media Consulting. Lambert prides herself on her use of technology in real estate marketing. Over the past few years she has become a blogger; including blogging for both local and national online magazines, studied search engine optimization and web site coding and has been using social media tools to grow her business.

“I learned about QR Codes at PodCamp Western MA and through a post by Lani Rosales on Agent Genius,” said Lambert. “The code was added to the event t-shirts by one of the organizers, Jaclyn Stevenson. After having the concept explained to me and then seeing it in action, I got to thinking about a QR Code campaign for my real estate marketing.”

Lambert is rolling out a marketing campaign that will include the use of QR Codes on sign riders at her listings as well as on printed materials like flyers and postcards.

Lambert explained how she sees this working. “Let’s say a potential buyer with a smart phone drives by the house and is curious. They stop to write down information and then notice my sign rider. They take a scan of the QR code and ZIP! they are delivered to a webpage dedicated to information on that property. A website that is rich in information and content like video, photos and important documents…all available instantly by scanning the code”

While Lambert knows that this isn’t a commonly used tool, yet, she feels it is the marketing wave of the future and is excited to be offering something new and innovative to the home sellers and home buyers.

“I am also trying this out as a test program that we can add to our list of services for real estate consulting,” Lambert added.

If you have a smart phone you can find a QR Reader application in your application store. Go download the free application and give the code above a try. To encourage the fun in this new gadget, Lambert is running a contest. Anyone that tries the QR code on her newest listing (seen above) will be taken to a page with instructions on how they can be entered into a contest for a $25 Starbucks gift card.

“It’s like a virtual scavenger hunt,” concluded Lambert. “I want this to be fun for people.”

Real estate may never be the same.

My daughter, aged 11, has recently become obsessed with the Vlog Brothers. One of these brothers is an author, gearing books at children about my daughter’s age, maybe a little older. In addition to the YouTube channel which these brothers run- which has incredible calls-to-action, they have a Ning social site- very popular.

We went to the book store the other day, and, in addition to looking for and begging for John Green (one of the brothers’) books, she insisted on printing and bringing along these papers to slide into books such as Harry Potter and those written by Maureen Johnson:

NerdFighters- another call to action

She then actually put the papers into the books!

What better advertising is there?

I saw an incredible post about guerrilla marketing circulating twitter today. Not all of it appears guerrilla in how I understand the term, but there is so much good advice on here that I am going to go through, write it down and work out a business plan from it.

The thing is: this is low-cost in money, and medium-cost in effort and thought. It can work with any kind of business with the correct targeting and consistency.

“Customer service is the new Lead Generation” - Matt Dollinger said that to me on twitter the other day, and it is true. What will you give to your customers today?

I thought it was strange, but it was a limited group at first, so I brushed it off. Fast forward a few hours and when I look at Facebook all I see is colors and I now have some Facebook messages inviting me to join. The messages said something like this: “Some fun is going on…. just write the color of your bra in your status. Just the color, nothing else. And send this on to ONLY women no men …. It will be neat to see if this will spread the wings of cancer awareness. It will be fun to see how long it takes before the men will wonder why all the women have a color in their status…”

WHY DIDN’T ANYONE POST PINK?

Now, the really amusing thing was that many of the color updates that I was viewing were posted by men. So much for keeping them in the dark (and good for you for being secure enough to come out with your bra wearing habits boys!).

Let me say straightaway that I am a HUGE supporter of breast cancer awareness. I had my first mammogram at age 30 because of a family history that includes both my mother and her sister. My aunt passed when she was 38 from breast cancer. I actually put my $ where my mouth is…..btw.

That being said…I am not really clear how this update business will help fuel Breast Cancer awareness. I went ahead and posted this as my Facebook status: “I am a huge supporter of breast cancer awareness, but I don’t think anyone really cares what color my bra is….or that telling you will make anyone more aware. If you are interested, just use your imagination: I am sure that will be more exciting than the reality.”

The responses came in and were plentiful. Many people were confused about what was going on and were thankful that I put it out there so they got some answers. My response to them is: Why are you too chicken to ASK? I went on Twitter and said WTF is going on with Facebook statuses being all colorful and got the answer right away.

Many people agreed with me. But one person didn’t agree, my Twitter friend Melissa Case DelGaudio (@startabuzz), and she came right out with a very valid point: “As silly as it might seem, I submit that EVERYONE is talking about this right now. So whether anyone actually cares what color anyone’s bra is, it’s got people talking about awareness, which was the whole point. :)”

My opinion on this topic isn’t swayed by her point…I still don’t see how Breast Cancer research will benefit from knowing what color my bra is (and I am still not telling you dirty lecherous beasts). I do see her point and I get that it brought this to everyone’s attention, BUT what it brought to my attention was THIS….

SOCIAL MEDIA IS FAST.

Before you get too deep into “duh Lesley”….I knew this already, you did, too, but I mean REALLY REALLY fast.

How powerful is this tool? How amazing that someone (and do we even know who started this bra nonsense anyways?) decided that today would be the day to post your bra color (tee hee hee) and suddenly WOOSH every woman (and many men-not that there is anything wrong with that!) were doing just that and within hours it was a huge topic of conversation.

What does that tell us?

Well, it tells me that my grandmother was right…clean underwear all the way. Cuz if I get in an accident I don’t want you all going viral with the fact I died in dirty underwear.

What it tells me (really this time, no REALLY I swear) is that social media is becoming the most powerful marketing tool in history.

People, fasten your seatbelts: this is the best ride ever!

oh and ps. Go donate to Breast Cancer Research.

Elf me, Baby!

Posterous is smart and can sense a lot of things. When “disallowed” access to media- as in these cases, I assume- it does the best it can and at this point does not circumvent the “stops” that are in place.

I had seen reference to whether or not Posterous blurs “copyright standards” even further than they are. I use Posterous often to grab an interesting article that I see, and post it. You can tell on the site itself what part is quoted and what isn’t, and after the first few times, I took only enough to lead me back to the article and show up in Posterous search.

You could even tell which was which on most of the themes that I experimented with on WordPress. Some even put big honking quotation marks around the “quoted text”- and that was fine with me. I am not out to steal someone else’s ideas- only “build off of them” and “learn.”

But the line is blurry. When my Posterous clips are “shot over” to Facebook, they are stripped of a lot of the “identifiers” th at let you know when one person’s quotes leave off and my thoughts begin. Even sometimes when I click the “share” button for ordinary events I want to pass on from other friends you can’t discern that “it really isn’t my post.” I have to go back in and make an attribution note.

Likely, if it is posted on the ‘net, someone is hoping the content goes viral. We all want to be the next Shay Carl or Robert Scoble- well, I would have to be a hell of a lot smarter to be Scoble, but you “catch my drift.” And online, that is possible.

Diane believes that she was a Zagat Guide in a past life

“Using WordPress to Build Websites Instead of Blogs

May 5th, 2008 | Posted in WordPress 28 Comments »

Announcement: Hey, check out …. –>

One of the things I like about WordPress is its versatility. WordPress isn’t just blogging software. With the right theme, you can build a website that doesn’t resemble a blog at all. Essentially, writers who become familiar with WordPress become empowered as web designers as well.

A few weeks ago, I made a website for a client who was launching a green building business (see or click the image below).

It’s a predesigned theme that I purchased from ithemes.com, customized a bit and configured. I also wrote the content. I like WordPress because you don’t have to start from scratch with the theme design. If you get a system down and are familiar with the theme you’re implementing, you can create a professional site fairly quickly.”

Gotta love WordPress. Read the rest of Tom Johnson’s post for ideas, but think: what could you add to this blog to make it more of a “website”?

There is much more than blog functionality in the design, just like there is much more than blog functionality designed into Posterous, but in a different way. You can have pages in addition to the blog part of a WordPress site, and these pages can be as simple as an “About Me” to as intricate as a contact form or an MLS property search.

Speaking of MLS searches: our MLS provides an embeddable home search function for free (well, not in addition to the MLS fee), so if you self-host you can structure yourself a decent site for next to nothing.

Posted via web from heyamaretto’s posterous

I love starting a blog with that, but it is true.  I now have solid confirmation, metrics even, that I was dead on center CORRECT.

Several years ago I started to use social media to be, well…social.  A little bit later I realized that this stuff could work for business, too.  After doing some research and LOTS of bumbling around I began to use social media and new media techniques in my real estate career.

My thought was this: I shop online ergo: others shop online.  I prefer searching for information on the web ergo: others do, too.  I use my smart phone for just about EVERYTHING ergo: others want to use theirs.

Now I know that not EVERYONE is the person I describe, but there are many people who do fit the description and THEY are the ones I wanted to work with.

I did a lot of groundwork, made some key errors and then got more and more savvy.  I asked a lot of questions, I read everything, I spent days upon end educating myself in the ways of this social media world.  I set up profiles, started blogging and using Facebook and Twitter for business purposes.  And then a wondrous thing happened: I got a lead.  A lead that called me and said “I read your blog and thought it was great.  I want to buy my house with you.”

When the angel light went away and the resounding trumpet blaring ceased I realized something….something BIG.  I was onto something that other agents in my area weren’t.  I was finding a means to speak to people who I had never met and they LIKED me.

That was followed by many other successes for me, but I am only one agent.  One agent alone does not a standard make and everyone wants to know if there is any “real” return on this social media “stuff”.  While teaching social media to real estate agents, I had general business statistics to call upon, but I wanted some hard proof in the real estate field. When I came upon this little article on realtor.org I finally had my resounding substantiative proof….

• The Internet has become an essential and indispensable tool in the home search process with 90 percent of home buyers using it to search for homes, up 30 percentage points during the past six years.
• Additionally, among buyers who reported using the Internet, 76 percent reported using it frequently, an increase of 7 percentage points from 2008.
• Furthermore, as a result of searching online, buyers frequently request additional information or find an agent.
• Around 60 percent of buyers were also likely to walk through home viewed online.”

—from realtor.org

Now I DO realize that I am not the only real estate agent that figured this out.  So, those of you that did and read this: you get to say “I was RIGHT!”, too.

If you are an agent that isn’t using new media for business growth then it is time for you to reach out to TQI Consulting and ask for a guiding hand.  We are like your best girlfriends, only geekier and we know real estate AND social media.  Join us: your clients already did!