Real Estate Blog Tips - How Often Should You Blog? | Real Estate ...

Do you get stressed out just thinking about posting every day?
Do you post every day, but still aren?t seeing an increase in traffic?
Do you find it hard to come up with new post ideas?

Posting can be a little overwhelming at times, so here is some good news ? we are here to help! We understand that maintaining real estate blog websites isn?t always easy. Read on for some useful real estate blog tips that will get you organized and in a steady routine so that you can post quality content more often.

The big question many agents ask themselves is, ?Do I really need to post every day?? In the search for this answer we have discovered that posting every day may or may not help you increase traffic to your website. This is due to the phenomenon of ?quality vs. quantity.? More often than not, daily posts are written in haste and don?t have strong enough content to really grab someone?s long-term attention. After all, the overall goal is to attract new and repeat visitors, right?

So, how often should you post?
You?ll be surprised to know that it is really up to you and what you feel you are capable of (*big sigh of relief*). Keep in mind that your goal should be focused on quality posts. That said, there are good reasons to post daily, and there are good reasons to post two or three times a week ? do what works for you!

Why you might want to post daily:
1. It offers a steady routine and builds good writing habits.
2. Offers more opportunity to post topics related to your keyword phrases
2. The more quality posts you have, the more often readers will find you in search engines
4. Content is short, fresh, and to-the-point (in most cases)
5.?Offers more opportunity to post varied mixed-media content (i.e., videos, short market updates, lots of pictures, etc.)
6. It will keep your blog fresh and on the cutting edge of the industry

Why you might want to post 2 to 3 times a week:
1. Readers who follow multiple blogs will appreciate quality posts every few days
2. Avoid reader ?burn out? from too many posts too frequently
3. Posts can be more in-depth and thought out, improving SEO rankings
4. It gives readers more time to comment ? promoting good discussions between the author and readers
5. Posts with videos or lots of pictures keep things fresh and interesting (and get you to the next week without shirking your goals)
6. It will keep your blog on the cutting edge of the industry

The key here is to develop a routine that works for you. As you make posting on your blog a consistent work habit, it won?t be nearly as intimidating. Some agents like to prepare all of their posts for the week in one sitting. When they are ready to post, all they have to do is add the time-sensitive information and they are done! Take some time to focus on real estate key words you want your site to rank for and start blogging about those topics in order to help your ranking in the search engines for those terms.

Real estate agents are lucky they have a lot of topics that make great weekly posts right at their fingertips. Here are a few ideas to get you started:

• Pick one community each week and write a short ?community market update?
• Pick a ?Home of the Week? with some facts about who should be interested and why
• Do an ?Agents Top Pick of the Week? and why it was chosen
• Best Foreclosure of the Week
• Seller Tip of the Week
• Buyer Tip of the Week

For more ideas, review our ?What to Write About? blog posts.

What do you do now?

Experiment with your blogging routine and find one that works for you. If you already have followers, don?t shock them and change too abruptly, but definitely increase or decrease posts until you find the right balance. You may want to consider asking your readers if they prefer more or less posts.

As you develop a steady routine, your posting habits will become second nature and you will be able to relax and have a good time with it. Remember to advertise all of your posts on your Facebook page or Google+ account. Get people reading and sharing!

How else can we help?

A real estate blog is an opportunity to connect with clients and other professionals in the real estate field in a new way. IDXCentral.com specializes in real estate website design. Our easy-to-use tools, support, custom real estate WordPress add-ons, and frequent blog posts featuring real estate marketing tips, SEO tips, and more are designed to keep your real estate blog at the cutting edge of the industry.

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Source: http://theinsider.idxcentral.com/real-estate-blog-tips-how-often-should-you-blog/

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Good News for Clean Tech: China's Reign over Rare Earth Metals is Ending

Over the past few years, much has been made of China's grip on the rare earth metals market. The country produces 95 percent of the world's supply and in 2010 it began restricting exports of the metals which are used in electronics, hybrid cars, solar panels, wind turbines and more. It's been thought that clean technology development could be held back or stalled because China was seemingly trying to keep most of the rare earth metals for their own manufacturing needs while exporting the rest at a high price.

It looks like that reign is now ending. The price of rare earth metals has actually been falling since spiking in 2010. See the chart below by Reuter's Scott Barber that demonstrates how those prices have fallen while prices for gold and silver have remained the same.

? Scott Barber/Reuters

The reason for the turnaround is that when faced with this roadblock from China, other countries and technology companies quickly found solutions. Countries like the U.S., Brazil, India and South Africa all began ramping up mining of the metals from their own reserves, decreasing their dependence on Chinese exports. Then, more importantly, companies began recycling the metals from their products and finding manufacturing processes that used less of the metals in the first place.

In particular, Japan has aggressively reduced its imports from China. The Washington Post reports, "Meanwhile, Japan has rushed to reduce its dependence on rare earths over the past few years?especially since China has a habit of restricting exports every time the two nations get into a territorial spat. Panasonic has developed a technique to recycle neodymium from old electronic appliances. Honda is extracting rare earths from used car batteries. TDK Corp., which creates magnets for motors, now sprays dysprosium on its motors rather than mixing it in, in order to conserve. All told, reports the Asahi Shinbun, Japan?s demand for rare earths dropped from 31,000 tons in 2010 to 23,000 tons in 2011."

They say necessity is the father of invention and this was certainly the case here. China's restrictions on the export of these metals actually lead to more responsible actions by manufacturers like in-house recycling of their products. Not only did they find a way to work around a limited supply of rare earth metals, but they are now cutting down on e-waste too. As rare earth metal mining is actually not so great for the environment, recycling what we use so that we have to mine less is the best solution.

However, China is reacting to the fall in prices by increasing their export quota. We hope that doesn't discourage any of the progress that has been made.

Source: http://www.treehugger.com/clean-technology/good-news-clean-tech-chinas-reign-over-rare-earth-metals-ending.html

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Microsoft Takes The Preview Label Off Its Updated Office Web Apps, Now Available For All SkyDrive Users

After a few months of public beta testing, Microsoft is taking the preview label of its updated Office Web Apps for SkyDrive today and making these new versions of its free web-based versions of Word, Excel, OneNote and PowerPoint the standard for all SkyDrive and Outlook.com users. With this update, Microsoft is also introducing a number of new features that weren't available in the last preview release, including co-authoring for PowerPoint, as well as improved touch support for all of the Office Web Apps.

Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/ixdQScH-LLs/

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Lenovo IdeaTab A2109

The Google Nexus 7 ?and the New Apple iPad ?are our two top-rated tablets, representing the best combinations of price, performance, and features in small- and large-screen sizes. The Lenovo IdeaTab A2109, with an uncommon 9-inch display but a fair $299 (16GB) list price, falls somewhere in the middle. Its solid aluminum build and capable quad-core Nvidia Tegra 3 processor are all well and good, but a chunky form and mediocre screen hold this middle-of-the-road tablet back.

Design and Features
The IdeaTab A2109 is attractively designed, with a brushed aluminum body and distinctive concave edges. But at 9.3 by 6.5 by 0.46 inches (HWD) and 1.26 pounds, it's not exactly sleek. Along the left edge is a 3.5mm headphone jack, a tough-to-slide Orientation Lock switch, and Volume buttons. The bottom panel is bare, while the right side is home to micro USB and micro HDMI ports. Up top is a Power button, and a long plastic strip along the top of the aluminum back houses two speaker grilles and the rear-facing camera. The plastic strip is removable, revealing a microSD card slot, but the flap is very difficult to remove?so much so that it required a small flat head screwdriver to pry open. Once I accessed the slot, my 64GB SanDisk card worked fine to ratchet up the 16GB of onboard storage.?

The 9-inch size is uncommon, with most Android tablets using 7- or 10-inch displays?the Samsung Galaxy Tab 8.9?is one of the few tablets with a similar sized screen. With a 1,280-by-800-pixel resolution, on paper, the screen is on par with competitors using the same resolution on slightly larger displays. ?It's sharp and bright, but looks like a lower-quality display than the one found on the Asus Transformer Pad TF300, which shares the same resolution, but looks brighter with more vibrant colors.?Also, the screen has a very poor viewing angle, which makes anything off-center look washed out.

For pictures and video, you get a 3-megapixel rear-facing camera and a 1.3-megapixel front-facing camera.?While the cameras will suffice for stills in a pinch,?producing poor images that suffer from considerable noise and general lack of sharpness,?video is almost unuseable.?The rear-facing camera is capable of 1080p, but the resulting video is about as bad as I've seen on a tablet. Frame rates top out at 12 fps outdoors and drop below 10 indoors, with blurry, out of focus, and choppy video.

As far as connectivity, the IdeaTab A2109 is a?Wi-Fi-only tablet that hooks into 802.11b/g/n networks on the 2.4GHz band. There's also Bluetooth 3.0 and GPS on board, both of which worked fine in my tests.?

Performance and Software
Powering the A2109 is Nvidia's quad-core Tegra 3 processor clocked at 1.2GHz with 1GB RAM. This seems to be the new standard for mid- to high-end Android tablets, which is good, since the chip generally produces fast and responsive performance in all of the devices it powers. The A2109 scored on par with the Nexus 7 in every benchmark, and the tablet felt fast in actual use. Gaming is also solid, and unlike its Qualcomm-powered sibling, the IdeaTab S2110A, it has access to all the exclusive Nvidia gaming titles. It's also much smoother than the S2110A in general, with more polished animations and app transitions. ?

The tablet runs Android 4.0.4 "Ice Cream Sandwich" with the same modifications found on the S2110A. You get the somewhat-gimmicky 3D cube animations, but they're a lot smoother on the A2109. The home screen is populated by various Lenovo widgets, ranging from local weather to calendars and notepads. Preloaded apps include Norton Security, Evernote, Docs To Go, and some games like Cut the Rope HD. And there's a shortcut on the system bar that brings up five options for tweaking the tablet's settings.?

For video, the A2109 supports Xvid, DivX, MPEG4, H.264, and AVI videos at up to 1080p resolution. For audio, MP3, AAC, FLAC, OGG, WAV, and WMA files all played fine. The speakers, while branded with an SRS WOW HD tag, sound weak and lack any substantial bass response.

In our battery rundown test, which loops a video with the screen brightness set to maximum and Wi-Fi switched on, the A2109 lasted an underwhelming 6 hours and 46 minutes. For comparison, the 7-inch Nexus 7 lasted 10 hours, 37 minutes, while the larger screen TF300 lasted 7 hours, 53 minutes on the same test.

Conclusions
The Lenovo IdeaTab A2109 doesn't do enough to stand out. Its unconventional screen size may appeal to those torn between the 7-inch and 10-inch form factors, but the low-quality screen should be a concern. And while it's buoyed by a Tegra 3 chip, its overly thick build makes it less appealing. The $299 price point puts it between the $200 Nexus 7 and the $380 Transformer Pad TF300, both of which I'd recommend over the A2109. Both the Nexus 7 and TF300 offer better screens, thinner designs, and the newest version of Android, 4.1 "Jelly Bean." The A2109 isn't a bad choice per se, but there's really no reason to settle for mediocrity when better options abound.

More Tablet Reviews:
??? Lenovo IdeaTab A2109
??? Lenovo IdeaTab S2110A
??? Amazon Kindle Fire (2012)
??? Fuhu Nabi 2 Tablet
??? Fujitsu Stylistic M532
?? more

Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/ziffdavis/pcmag/~3/zYlzu8oa-Q4/0,2817,2411061,00.asp

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DOD: US military casualties in Afghanistan as of Oct.19, 2012

Another six US soldiers were killed in Afghanistan during the past week. The casualties continue to occur in southern Afghanistan, Kandahar and Helmand provinces or in the east, as 106 US soldiers were wounded in action (WIA).

According to casualties.org 359 NATO troops have been killed so far this year. Afghanistan continues to be a hostile environment and the main cause of death is insurgent attacks, roadside bombs and suicide bombers.

With the impending withdrawal deadline, the TalibanTaliban and al-Qaida have intensified their attacks on the civilian population, especially in the south. There are also the increasing attacks, characterized as "green-on-blue" attacks, where Afghans in police or military uniforms have attacked NATO troops that are either mentoring or training them. The combined training was suspended for almost a week, before it was resumed. Last night another six Afghan police officers were killed in a "green-on-blue" attack.

Decentralized cells of al-Qaida have spread throughout North Africa, the Arab world, Afghanistan and Pakistan. While the killing of Osama bin Laden diminished al-Qaida's central operations, the terror group has changed its method of operating. This shift has been ongoing for some time. The Taliban and al-Qaida realized long ago that they could not confront a larger NATO force and be successful. The decentralized attacks, however, have changed the battle.

The general public in the US and NATO nations is war-weary. More than a decade of a war, which doesn't appear to have yielded any positive results, has been a costly venture in both monetary and lives. In 2011 alone there were over 3,000 civilian casualties and just slightly more wounded. These estimates, according to Wikepedia, which provides a detailed report on civilians by year, are likely underestimated.

More than 40 percent of casualties are attributed to IEDs so far this year, according to iCasualties. How long will this go on and to what end? Politicians and senior military officials have not been able to answer this questions. There have been assertions that the Afghan strategy is working and that Afghan Security Forces are increasingly taking over the responsibility for their own security. This flies in the face of the reality on the ground and recent comments by Hamid Karzai. Talks with the Taliban have broken down and their attacks have become increasingly violent and cruel.

There is no doubt that the war will end in 2014. NATO capitals and the US administration have made that clear. Without tangible progress in the war-torn nation, the faith has been put into Afghans to manage their own country, including security. Economically that is impossible and militarily it appears to be a pipe dream.

Afghanistan and victory will never be uttered in the same sentence. The US and NATO should cut their losses and get out of Afghanistan sooner rather than later.

As the toll of American soldiers in both deaths and wounded warriors continues to climb, there are also thousands with mental scars. As a society we have an obligation to support the survivors of this war and their families. Both the Canadian and American government have not done enough in this regard. Lest We Forget.

Roll of Casualties

Below are this week?s updated DoD casualty figures:

Op Enduring Freedom Total Deaths KIA Non Hostile WIA

Afghanistan Only------------2012--------1679-----329-----17790

Other Locations----------------118-----------12-----107

DoD Civ Casualties--------------3-------- ----1--------2

Worldwide Total-------------2133-------- 1691------438----17790

Accumulated 2012 Casualties:

KIA Non Combat Deaths WIA

219------------86---------------2005

Source: http://www.allvoices.com/contributed-news/13226236-0-inshare-linkedin-pin-it-stumbleupon-2-dod-us-military-casualties-in-afghanistan-as-of-oct19-2012

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Saturday video break: 20 years of ?Smells Like Nirvana? (Offthekuff)

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Asset Protection Planning: How effective is ... - MS Estate Planning

In short, offshore asset protection is very effective. ?Done properly, an offshore asset trust can frustrate and defeat collection efforts of the most powerful creditors in the U.S., including the Internal Revenue Service. ?Again, the planning must be done at a time when the client is not under financial duress. ?Also, this type of planning has been effective in divorce proceedings, as a state court divorce judge has no jurisdiction over a foreign trustee.

Excerpt from The Complete Guide to Estate and Financial Planning in Turbulent Times (Collaborative Press, 2011) - Walt Dallas, Contributing Author

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Source: http://blog.estateplanning123.com/2012/10/asset-protection-planning-how-effective-is-offshore-asset-protection-planning.html

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