We are always looking for ways to give our members more exposure, which is why we developed a rental search directory on our service RentShout.com.  The RentShout rental directory will showcase our members’ available houses, apartment units and other rentals in featured placement positions.  The directory also pulls in other available rentals from various sources around the web.  There is a built in search feature that allows renters to easily narrow down their results, allowing them to customize their search for what they are looking for.  The region (city) pages also showcase Google maps and local area information. 

The latest and greatest version of WordPress, version 2.8 “Baker” is now available. 2.8 represents a nice fit and finish release for WordPress with improvements to themes, widgets, taxonomies, and overall speed. Following is a quick video overview of everything in the new release:

Wordpress keeps on getting better. They make it easy for just about anyone to have a web presence without having to shovel out the big bucks.
Read more about it from http://wordpress.org/development/2009/06/wordpress-28/

A conversion is generally defined as an event that results in a transaction. A “transaction” will be defined differently based on your business model and what your end goal is (ie. information, sign up, subscription, payment, etc.). Regardless of how you define your conversions and transactions, it is important to track where they are coming from.

Maybe you blog on multiple blog platforms such as Wordpress. Are you keeping track of leads you get from those platforms and in addition to how many of those leads are converting? Maybe you post videos to different video platforms or syndicate your listings to multiple directories. Maybe you use Twitter or Facebook or focus heavily on your own website. Are you tracking the leads and conversions you receive from all of these sources?

If not, you may be spending valuable time in places that are not giving you a return on your investment. Sure, maybe some of these resources are free but your time is not free; it is an investment. Maybe it’s time to take a closer look at which resources have the highest conversion.

At the bottom of this post is a spreadsheet that can help track your conversions. It includes two sheets; one for keeping track of your daily activity (DailyLog) and the other (MonthlyStats) calculates profit/loss based on your daily log. Feel free to download for your own use. Google spreadsheet is good to use because it allows you to update the spreadsheet on the fly, from the web wherever you are.

Populate this information and you will soon see “how much money” you are actually spending and which platforms have a good return on investment (ROI). If the ROI is negative month after month, you may want to consider dropping that tool and try something else or focusing more on the tools that have a better ROI. I suggest giving a resource at least three months as it is hard to truly evaluate a resource with only a couple weeks of data.

If you run a business, own a brand, write a blog, provide a service, or sell a product, then you should have some kind of marketing strategy. With web development and technology making huge strides every day, there is no shortage of tools available for developing an effective plan for promoting your business. Among the commonly mentioned “Web 2.0″ marketing methods are blogs, social networks, Twitter, podcasts, and video, which all allow you to engage your audience, develop meaningful connections with clients and other like-minded people, and promote your business to people who actually want to learn about it. SlideShare is another (free) tool to slip into that marketing belt.

If you know how to use Powerpoint, then you already have what it takes to market on SlideShare. The site allows you to upload presentations from Powerpoint, OpenOffice, or a PDF file, and share it publicly on the web. As is typical with most social sites, you can connect with other people, comment on their presentations, and develop conversations and relationships with people who are interested in what you have to say. Easily share a tutorial, embed the slideshow into a blog post (like on the Influential Marketing Blog), show off your accomplishments (like Guy Kawasaki), share about your business (like Zappos), promote a property listing (like Realtor Teri Michon), or include links to it from your blog and online marketing material. There are a hundred other ways to use the service… what ideas do you have?

SlideShare presentations are placed into categories for easy visitor searching and can include hyperlinks back to your site, YouTube videos, and voice narration. This can be a very powerful companion for your existing marketing strategy; it’s easy, effective, and free.

Do you pay attention to what’s being said about you and your brand?

It can sometimes be overwhelming and time consuming to keep up with your web presence. Do you know if others are talking about you or your company on the internet? Are you engaging in these discussions about “you”? These discussions may be not even be negative but instead may be a simple mention or even praise. If it is a negative comment or discussion are you there to defend yourself in a timely manner? If it is positive are you there to give your thanks?

Following are a couple of basic resources you can use to help monitor what’s being said about you or your company.

SETUP GOOGLE ALERTS

http://www.google.com/alerts

TWITTER SEARCH FEED

In addition, I add a Twitter search feed to my Google reader. You can get the Twitter search feed by going to http://search.twitter.com, perform a search for your name or company and then click the “Feed this query” link.

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DISCUSSIONS ABOUT YOU IN ONE PLACE

Once you have the Twitter feed, you can simply add it to your Google Reader. Now you have web, blog, news and Twitter discussions about you all in once place. This makes it much easier to respond and connect with others who are discussing “you”.