One of the MLS entry choices for “type” of home is “Victorian”. Choice of style is up to the listing agent’s discretion. There seems to be a pretty wide range of opinions among Memphis agents as to just what a Victorian house is. Here are some examples of Victorian houses across the USA, as well as descriptions of the various Victorian styles.
These are current Memphis real estate listings tagged as Victorian style:
(note: this is a dynamic display - re-visit this post for updated listings)
To search for your favorite home style, or any other criteria go to the local Detailed Search or contact me at joe@spake.com. I will be happy to help.
No matter how many followers we have, all of us Twitter users wonder how many people see our tweets. Are they useful? Are they appreciated, or are they silly, narcissistic or dull? Without a reply or retweet, you never know.
With the vast majority of our tweets we believe that we have 140 characters that are important enough to share with someone. To get the engagement that we all desire, it is important to offer your updates at times when they will be seen. Think of all the tweets in your stream every day. My full stream is usually updating too fast to follow. With a tweet’s life of less than 3 hours, you have a very small time window to get your message in front of your followers, and timing is important, because you want to serve that tweet to as many readers as possible. It stands to reason that if most of your followers are within a time zone of you, staying up late and tweeting at 3 AM will miss many of them, your post being buried in the stream and “expire” before most of your target audience wakes up.
There are plenty of strategies to get more eyes on your tweets. In this 2 part series I will introduce 2 tools to space and schedule your tweets, and to offer them to your followers when they are most likely to be online to read at them.
Buffer
Google dictionary defines Buffer as: A temporary memory area or queue used when transferring data between devices or programs operating at different speeds. Bufferapp.com (commonly referred to as Buffer) allows you to set up a fixed schedule of posts to 3 major social media platforms so that you can simply send an item to your “buffer” at any time to be queued for auto posting, based on the schedule you design. I have Buffer available for Facebook and LinkedIn, but mostly use it for Twitter. Autoposting to Facebook can impact the almighty edgerank, but I will address that in a future post. For now we will concentrate on Twitter. Go to http://bufferapp.com and set up your account.
Here are some screenshots of the interface:
Setup Scheduling (setup separate schedule for each platform)
When you have something to share, a thought, or a web page, you can invoke buffer with a bookmarket, or for Chrome users, with the extension Buffer for Chrome. Buffer automatically formats your post according to platform. All platforms are defaulted to ON, but you can toggle them OFF individually.
Item sent to buffer is formatted for Twitter and Facebook. You can choose either or both platforms, then Add to the Buffer.
Buffer Dashboard shows 2 tweets and 3 Facebook posts in queue. You can remove or edit anything still in the Buffer.
You can load up to 10 items into the free version of Buffer for scheduling.
Here’s a quick screen cast to show you how easy this is:
In part 2…
I will introduce you to a tool that will help you identify when your tweets are mostly likely to be seen, AND - here’s the cool part - it will automatically program your Buffer for maximum effectiveness.
Once in a while the term Luddite enters the conversation. We who presume ourselves to be on the cutting edge all things social and techie are occasionally floored by a remark or observation from a Luddite - or neo-luddite, or as I referred to them in a 2010 post, Luddite 2.0, a term coined my friend and deep thinker, Bill Wendel. I have worked hard since I wrote that post to avoid the Luddite mantle, and I can hold my own with most of the Gen-X, Y, Z or whatever Gen folks I encounter, because, as Brian Solis points out Generation-C transcends age. And that C is about being Connected.
TechCamp Memphis (5/12/2010) featured some of the area’s best minds in social media, internet marketing and strategy, and an array of developer specialties. I will admit that the developer stuff is way beyond me, but a big part of being Generation- C is having a good handle on just how much you want to be connected. One attendee told me that her co-workers are not only not “connected”, but they don’t do very well un-connected either. “Most of them don’t know how to create a folder in Windows to put their files into.” I wondered later if she was talking about electronic files or paper files. I see that type of thing in my business a lot: “No, I don’t have a scanner; I’ll just bring you the contract.” These are probably the same folks who fear the internet because someone might grab their private information; who find it easier to say NO to social media, Google, and in some cases email, rather than looking into how those things could possibly enhance their lives and make lots of things easier for them. Having adopted the use of the telephone, they still carry pagers. Luddites 2.0.
Remember studying Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs in Sociology 101? Look at how closely the upper 2 levels (and possibly 3) of the pyramid reflect what most of us are accomplishing, in a large part, online today through being connected.
[caption id=”attachment_20597” align=”aligncenter” width=”480” caption=”Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs”][/caption]
I am not saying that’s good or bad, but think about it. Once you are there can you go back? Can you give up that connection? Do you see a day when technology will evolve to the point that you will draw a line in the sand and say, “I’m a Luddite now.”?
Joe Spake is a Memphis Real Estate Broker, Consultant, Photographer, and Social Media Junkie
Contact Joe at joe@spake.com or voice or SMS at 901.214.5563
