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Chappaqua Real Estate

Tips for Preparing to Buy in 2013 | Chappaqua Real Estate

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You’ve been saving your pennies for a down payment and watching the housing market news. You see the low interest rates, are confident you’ll own a property for at least five years and know that you’ll be able to find a home that you’ll love within your budget.

You’re finally ready to buy a home in 2013!

Here are a few tips to help you get started.

Get with a lender

First up is going to a bank, direct lender, credit union or mortgage broker to get qualified for a loan. They will run the numbers to set your price range for financing. This will help you in working with a real estate sales professional to determine which areas and types of properties fit within your budget. The lender will also pull a credit report to see if you need to be aware of any credit issues. If necessary, this will give you time to start improving your credit picture to make you the most creditworthy you can be when it comes time to lock your loan rate and terms.

Find a competent real estate agent

You also should look for a real estate agent whom you feel can best represent you. Talk to friends and acquaintances for referrals, and interview at least three agents. Find out how many properties they’ve sold in the past few years, what training they have and whether they work as an agent full time and know the areas where you would like to purchase. Get some references from each one and actually take the time to call those references and see what they thought of the real estate professional’s service level and experience.

Educate, educate, educate

This will most likely be your most complicated, expensive and riskiest purchase of your life. You should talk to friends, family members and possibly a lawyer; read books, articles or take a class. In other words, do everything you can to better understand the real estate buying process and how to make the best home purchase decision.

Shop, shop, shop

Consider all the neighborhoods that fit in your price range. Drive them during the day, at night and on the weekend to get a feel for the areas. Look at the neighbors’ properties, any retail spaces nearby and check online neighborhood ratings, crime reports and school ratings. Learn all you can about where you are going to be a real estate owner.

With a price range from your lender, a good real estate sales professional on your side and a solid education on buying a home and the areas where you want to buy, you’re now better prepared to make 2013 the year of the home purchase.

Good luck!

via zillow.com

Chappaqua Realtor | Celebrate Your Marketing?!

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This guest post is by Karl Staib of Domino Connection.

Have you ever planned out your day and put marketing as the last thing on your list because you just can’t stomach another rejection?

I know I did. I have a popular blog named Work Happy Now that gets 15,000 visits a month. That’s due to backlinks, Google search, and social love. This happened because of my desire to build relationships with people. I didn’t force myself onto anyone. I connected with them via interview, guest post or Twitter. It was this kind of outreach that I enjoyed.

The marketing that I avoided was cold calling, cold emailing, and buying ads on websites. I just didn’t want to build connections with people who weren’t interesting to me.

You marketing should be a celebration instead of some stodgy task that you have to do to get a few sales. If you hate the kind of marketing you’re doing, your business won’t grow.

Think about it this way: everything you do is marketing, from a blog post to a conversation with another blogger. You are creating something. You can create something beautiful and memorable, or you can create something forgettable. It’s up to you.

In this post, I’ve put together a few concepts that you can use to delight and encourage people to talk about your blog.

Give away surprise gifts

Studies have proven when people receive an unexpected gift their dopamine levels skyrocket. Knowing this you can give someone an extra boost to your visitors. You may even want to include a little blurb about it on your blog.

I would suggest keeping track of everyone that leaves a comment on your blog for one month. The person with the most comments for that month wins a free ebook, ecourse, or something along those lines.

The idea is to keep it a surprise. I guarantee that person will keep coming back to your blog and leaving comments for a long time.

Throw an online party

Throwing an online event is a great way to get people talking about you. The technology is so good today that you can do almost any kind virtual event. You can create a webinar, tele-seminar, Twitter party, Facebook giveaway, or a contest that engages people.

The idea is to build authority and friendships with your tribe.

Throw a physical party

An online event is cool because it’s not as stressful as a real-life event, but a live event has a few benefits.

I still remember my first tweetup with Robert Scoble. I’m not really a tech guy, but I wanted to see what a tweetup was all about. Robert was visiting Austin and put together a group of people to meet at the restaurant. He was a cool enough guy, but the best part of the party was the people I met. I still keep in contact with someone I met that night over five years ago.

By creating an event for people that allows them to bond, you are creating something worth sharing. Since Robert threw that Twitter party over five years ago, he gets a link from Problogger.net. That’s priceless.

Help out a charity

My friend Colleen Wainwright created the 50 for 50 event. She promised to shave her head if she was able to raise $50,000 by her 50th birthday.

You should check out her link. She has an image of her shaved head on the page. She was able to raise over $50,000 for WriteGirl, a charity that helps young girls improve their writing skills.

Colleen gets the benefit of raising money for a super-cool charity, but also building her network. I know that’s not why she created the event, but it’s a nice bonus to have a new network of people to help you with your business.

Your story

It’s all about creating a story. If you can get people on board with your story, you are able to create an event that tugs at their hearts.

Chris Guillebeau created The Empire Building Kit to help people who wanted to create a lifestyle business that fits their needs. He wasn’t sure how to get people excited about it, so he went on a trip. His return trip stopped in Chicago and he wasn’t able to get a flight to Portland. His wife suggested that he take the train. At first he balked, but then he found out the train was called Empire Builder.

He then got a bag from Tom Ben called the Empire Builder. Chris realized that he needed to launch the Empire Building Kit while riding on the train back to Portland. He invited his friend J.D. of Get Rich Slowly and it kept building from there. He blogged about the whole trip, turning the story into his launch. A very successful launch.

Can you see how this story sucks you in? This is great marketing that can be a lot of fun. When you are planning on releasing something to the world, you need to have a plan that grabs people’s attention and makes them take notice of who you are and what you created. It’s a little more work than a standard launch, but very much worth your time and energy.

These are just a few ideas, but each of us has a different approach. What have you done to celebrate your marketing and turn it into a fun event?

Check out Karl Staib of Domino Connection and his free e-course “How to Create an Amazing Product Launch,” You can also check out Domino Connection on Facebook because he shares all kinds of great content and tips.

via problogger.net

4 Reasons Why your Facebook Page Sucks | Chappaqua NY Real Estate

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It has been one year since you launched your Facebook page and you still have a very low number of likes but most importantly none of your fans are talking about your brand.4 Reasons Why your Facebook Page Sucks

Before I move on, you need to understand that it takes time for your social media investment to realize any return; this is why I intentionally said, one year. Investing in social media, as in any other field, requires patience and long term thinking. Anything that is worthwhile takes time to build and growing tribes and followers on social networks and creating community takes time. One way to think of it is like building a house…”one brick at a time“. In the case of social media it is one piece of content at a time.

So, in other words, your Facebook page sucks and there are many out there that really do.

So, here are 4 reasons why your Facebook page sucks:

1. No social media strategy

What is the goal of your Facebook page? Get more likes? Increase brand awareness? Increase sales? Actually, it can consist of all these goals; however, you need to be very clear. This will help you determine the tools and tactics you need to use in order to achieve your goals. Do not just launch a Facebook page because your competitors have one. A key factor to a successful social media strategy is having the right resources available, so make sure you have everything you need to make things happen.

2. No updated content

Make no mistake here, the only reason people visit a Facebook page is because of its content. If you do not post anything, none will visit your Facebook page. We live in a very fast moving word where yesterday’s news is outdated content. Post content very often, if possible once a day. In fact 3-4 times per day is better.

There is no sort cut on this.

3. Your content is boring

When you own a restaurant, make sure you post content related to food, drinks and entertainment and not only your latest promotions. When people come to your page, they are looking for interesting and fun content:

  • They want to see what your new menu is
  • New dishes you recommend
  • Teach them how to cook one of your dishes
  • Tell them where to find other great food within your city
  • Ask for customers to leave a review
  • Show them a video on how you prepare your flag dish

In other words, the content must be relevant to your business and most importantly engaging and exciting. This does not mean that you should never post any special promotions or deals, however, do it moderately and collect feedback on what your fans really want to see.

4. You do not post any photos

The Facebook timeline is focusing entirely on visual content; hence, if you decide to keep posting long text messages, none will read them. Invest in getting high quality pictures that attract attention, it is human nature to stumble upon great visual content. There are plenty of tools available to help you edit your pictures and make them look appealing.

If you are doing any of these 4 mistakes, you need to take immediate action. Decide what you social media goals are, format a plan and execute.

Guest Author: Ilias Chelidonis blogs at Thewebcitizen.com, a few times web entrepreneur and passionate about Social Media and Online Marketing. You can follow Ilias @thewebcitizen

 

Want to Learn How to Market with Social Media to Promote Your Brand?

My book – Blogging the Smart Way “How to Create and Market a Killer Blog with Social Media” – will show you how.

It is now available to download. I show you how to create and build a blog that rocks and grow tribes, fans and followers on social networks such as Twitter and Facebook. It also includes dozens of tips to create contagious content that begs to be shared and tempts people to link to your website and blog.

I also reveal the tactics I used to grow my Twitter followers to over 120,000.

You can download and read it now.

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via jeffbullas.com

Vermont Named Healthiest State of 2012 | Chappaqua Real Estate

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vermont healthy state

The annual report, now in its 22nd year, measures problems and progress in all 50 states in the U.S. – using data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Census Bureau and American Medical Association.

While the report concludes we’re living longer (life expectancy is now 78.5 years), the flip side is that we’re living sicker. ”What worries us in particular about this year’s report is that some key risk factors that are driving up preventable chronic illness are getting worse,” Dr. Reed Tuckson told CBSNews.com.

An incredible 26% of the country (1 in 4) in physically inactive – a sedentary lifestyle that can lead to such health problems as heart disease, diabetes and certain forms of cancers. The report also found some 66 million Americans to be obese – 27.8% of the country and rising.

“There’s no way that this country can possibly afford the medical care costs and consequences of these preventable chronic illnesses,” says Tuckson. “We have two freight trains headed directly into each other unless we take action now.”

“People have to be successful at taking accountability for their own health-related decisions.”

Vermont scored the top position for the sixth year in the row due to its high rate of high school graduation, low violent crime rate, low incidence of infectious disease, low prevalence of low birthweight infants, high per capita public health funding, a low rate of uninsured population, and ready availability of primary care physicians.

Coming in second was Hawaii – followed by New Hampshire, Massachusetts and Minnesota.

For the 22nd year in a row Mississippi and Louisiana scored near the bottom – with Miss. in particular reporting more than 800,000 adults living a sedentary lifestyle, 780,000 adults that are obese and almost 280,000 adults with diabetes.

Check out the full rankings here.

Photo credit: Shutterstock.com

via ecorazzi.com