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Katonah NY Homes

Is Your “Online Reputation” Out of Control? | Katonah NY Realtor

Is Your “Online Reputation” Out of Control? image yard sign online reputationReputation Is Everything

The way you talk to others, how you dress, and your opinions on different matters, your manners, everything about you determine the picture you paint about you and your business reputation. A combination of your morals and other traits that you have, show others what kind of person you are.

It’s your way of create a yard sale sign online that speaks volumes about you. Your online reputation allows others to create their own opinion of who they think you are and in turn they may share their opinion on social media.

What does “Online Reputation” Mean?

Everything you do and say online has an impact on your reputation as a person and as a business owner. With your target customers using the internet daily, it is important that the message you communicate is positive and helpful. When someone wants to know more about you or about your business, they may search for information via a search engine like Google or other place on the internet that may host information. Learning how to manage your online reputation, can help your business grow as well as protect you in the long run.

How Important is Managing Your “Online Reputation”?

As a person and a business owner, it’s crucial to manage your online reputation. People want to know they can count on you and trust you. Creating a good presence online will enhance you and your business; it will gain you respect and recognition. That can also draw business your way when you have a positive reputation. You need to keep the good presence going to ensure your online reputation stays positive.

What Tools and Apps Can You Use To Manage Your “Online Reputation?

In creating a good presence and maintaining it, you have to manage how the internet world perceives you. All it takes is one negative post or a few negative comments to begin to ruin the positive presence you have built. There are tools and apps out there and things you can do to manage and maintain your online reputation.

  • Write good content regularly – doing so will keep the positive presence up pushing negative feedback farther down in the search engines
  • Use Deleteme Mobile App – this is designed to protect personal information from data tracking, data collecting, etc.
  • Use social media management tool to monitor presence – you can use tools such at Hootsuite, Sprout Social, or Onlywire to monitor your presence. These tools can provide statistics and information about the characteristic of your target customers.

A unique way for you to use Google search is the Google Me on The Web feature which is part of the Google Dashboard. It allows you to set up search monitoring for your name/your business, helps you remove negative content, etc. See the image below for more details or click here to visit your Google Dashboard if you have a Google account. The links below do not work in the image. To find out more about the links, visit your Google Dashboard.

Is Your “Online Reputation” Out of Control? image google me on the web

Online Resources:

Below are a few resources that may provide you additional opportunities to learn more about online reputation.

Author: Kim Beasley     Kim Beasley on the Web Kim Beasley on Facebook Kim Beasley on Twitter Kim Beasley on LinkedIn Kim Beasley RSS Feed

Kim Beasley specializes in coaching business owners to grow their visibility online using social media and their website (WordPress). Her focus is to teach owners how to raise their Engagement Factor while using such social media as Google+, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube, or Pinterest to name a few. The Engagement… View full profile

This article originally appeared on Kim Beasley and has been republished with permission.

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Man Divorces His Wife For Being Ugly – Sues Her and Wins
Man Divorces His Wife For Being Ugly – Sues Her and Wins

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Katonah Real Estate | Housing market in San Diego County heating up

SAN DIEGO – The housing market in San Diego County is heating up. The “for sale” signs you do see often disappear in days or weeks.

Supply and demand are pushing prices through the roof and real estate is on a roll.

Broker Scott Voak, who is with Voak Homes in Rancho Bernardo, says the supply is so low that he does not have any homes to market right now. The demand has created fierce bidding wars.

“It’s insane,” said Voak. “We had the only house in the market under $650,000 and we had 10 offers and sold for $55,000 over the appraisal.”

The latest numbers in San Diego County show inventory is down 40 percent from a year ago. Home prices are up 24 percent for attached homes and 16 percent for detached homes. 

Neighborhoods in the Poway Unified School District seem to be the hottest ticket.

Voak says foreign investors are buying up properties and that all those distressed properties from the collapse are dwindling in supply. It all creates a perfect storm for demand.

“That’s pushing prices up and causing a frenzy with buyers,” said Voak. “A lot of buyers are scared… it’s no fun for buyers.”

However, buyers still have a good interest rate on their side, and many are resorting to what has been coined “love letters.”

Twenty Percent of Bankers Expect Lending Standards to Loosen | Katonah Homes

Expectations among bank risk professionals for the relaxation of lending standards increased sharply in the first quarter, rising from 12.1 to 19.9 percent, according to the quarterly FICO/PRMIA) survey.

One out of five bank risk professionals now  expect the approval criteria for loans to become less stringent, the third highest level ever registered for looser lending standards in the three year history of the FICO survey.  The rising expectations for looser standards is a reversal of bankers’ views in the fourth quarter of 2012, when only 12.1 percent expected standards to become less stringent, the lowest level in survey history.

The survey, conducted for FICO by the Professional Risk Managers’ International Association (PRMIA), found lenders more bullish on the housing recovery than at any point in three years, with 71 percent of respondents saying home prices are “rising at a sustainable pace” in the context of mortgage lending risk. In addition, 39 percent of respondents are expecting mortgage delinquencies to decrease over the next six months, while another 45 percent expect delinquencies to remain flat and only 16 percent expect an increase.

However, there is also a high degree of concern about the supply of credit that will be available to finance the recovery.  Even though the Mortgage Bankers Association forecasted a 14.5 percent increase in purchase originations in 2013 over 2012, some 42 percent said that the supply of credit for mortgages to buy homes will he either slightly or significantly short of demand.  The survey found that that 60 percent of bank risk professionals expect the supply of credit for mortgage refinancing to meet demand.

“The latest survey results, combined with data that indicates the real estate market is improving in many regions, paint a positive picture for a sector of the economy that has been slow to join the recovery,” said Dr. Andrew Jennings, chief analytics officer at FICO and head of FICO Labs. “Mortgage lenders have been understandably guarded over the past five years. The improvement in their sentiment should be welcome news, and I wouldn’t be surprised to see lenders cautiously expanding their mortgage and home equity lending businesses.”

18 Tips for Optimizing Your Pinterest Images to Improve SEO | Katonah NY Realtor

Pinterest is perfect for businesses with small marketing budgets, and you can improve SEO and drive traffic by optimizing your images.

22 Tips for Optimizing Pinterest Images to Improve SEO 18 Tips for Optimizing Your Pinterest Images to Improve SEOThe image-based social media site is an online bulletin board that lets you collect and share images by “pinning” them to virtual boards. It has been one of the fastest-growing consumer Web properties — according to comScore, it ranked 28th among U.S. Internet users in January, with about 30 million unique visitors.

Pinterest users spend more money, shop more frequently, and purchase items more often and in larger quantities than users on any other social network. If you believe that Pinterest is a viable social media marketing platform for your business and your initial attempt at using it hasn’t yielded the positive results you were looking for, it’s time to optimize your presence — starting with the images you post.

Maximize your Pinterest image optimization

Here are 18 great tips about growing your brand with Pinterest marketing through image optimization, brought to you by PinnableBusiness.com.

  • File names become your image titles, so name them accordingly. Names with lots of letters and numbers won’t rank as well.
  • Pin from a variety of different sources, not just from your own site. Re-pinning, liking, and commenting all play a role in where your image will appear.
  • Pinning gives you the best opportunity to go viral. Uploading is okay, but not as beneficial.
  • After you upload an image, you should edit your pin to add a link. Pinterest doesn’t automatically add any links to uploaded pins, so it’s important to do this to drive traffic.
  • Pinterest descriptions can be up to 500 characters, but longer ones annoy many users. Use a short caption that incorporates major keywords, and add more info in the pin’s comment section.
  • Research Pinterest to see what catches your eye and compels you to engage with an image, and try to replicate that feeling with your own images. More engagement leads to more followers, and more followers equals more power.
  • Remember that Pinterest is a social media platform, not an advertising platform. Comment, like, and repin other people’s images.
  • Create a variety of different boards and make sure the titles of the boards are keyword-rich. A board named “Stuff I Like to Do” isn’t as effective as “Birdwatching in Seattle”.
  • Add the “Follow” and “Pin It” buttons to your website. The key to social media is empowering people to share your content.
  • Be yourself and express your personality and that of your brand. Communicate your unique voice through the images you post.

Pace of Home Building Rose at Vigorous Clip in February | Katonah NY Realtor

The Commerce Department said on Tuesday that builders broke ground on houses and apartments last month at a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 917,000. That rate was 910,000 in January. February’s pace was the second-fastest since June 2008, behind December’s rate of 982,000.

Single-family home construction increased to an annual rate of 618,000, the most in four and half years. Apartment construction also ticked up, to 285,000.

The gains are likely to grow even faster in the coming months. Building permits, a sign of future construction, increased 4.6 percent to 946,000. That was also the most since June 2008, just a few months into the recession.

The figures for January and December were also revised upward. Housing starts have risen 28 percent over the last 12 months.

Separately, a private report showed that the number of Americans with equity in their homes increased last year. That suggested that one of the biggest drags from the housing crisis was easing, and it could clear the way for more people to put homes on the market.

“The road ahead for housing is still, so far, looking promising,” Jennifer Lee, an economist at BMO Capital Markets, said in a note to clients.

The housing market is recovering after stagnating for roughly five years. Steady job gains and near-record-low mortgage rates have encouraged more people to buy.

Still, the supply of available homes for sale remained low. That has helped push up home prices. They rose nearly 10 percent in January compared with 12 months earlier, according to CoreLogic, a research firm, the biggest increase in nearly seven years.

Higher prices mean more Americans have equity in their homes. Last year, about 1.7 million Americans went from owing more on their mortgages than their homes were worth to having some ownership stake, CoreLogic reported on Tuesday. Still, 10.4 million households, or 21.5 percent of those with a mortgage, remain “under water,” or owe more on their home than it is worth.