Today is a big day. Today is the internet launch of my book Sociable!

Shane Gibson and I set out to write this book early last year and it is now ready for prime time. Today, January 21st is the internet launch of the book. If you are looking to get your hands on one you can buy it from Amazon.com here.

The Sociable! official launch event is with the Vancouver Board of Trade on January 28th as well as the launch party. See you there!

Think Twitter is a waste of time? Google is now indexing Twitter within their results. Below is a quick example of a search I did in Google for the term “vancouver“. Notice the Twitter results right within Google.

Ready to learn more about Twitter and/or Google? Check out our training courses.

Reachd.com’s step by step web marketing courses are coming to Victoria, British Columbia. Starting in December, you can attend Reachd’s Social Media, Blogging and Online Video courses on Vancouver Island.

Interested in attending:

Dec. 2nd 2009 – Social Media Guided Tour (register here)
Dec. 4th 2009 – Explode Your Growth with a Blog (register here)
Dec. 7th 2009 – Broadcast Your Message with Online Video (register here)

Our Victoria instructor is Tim Ayres, a Victoria real estate agent who has extensive expertise in the online marketing world. You can read more about Tim here.

Here is a quick video that I shot just after meeting with a couple of real estate agents interested in working more on their business than in their business.

I mentioned in the video that I would post some links below, but instead, here is an article that breaks down some of the tools that we use.

Interested in learning more about my new book Sociable! ? More details here http://www.sociablebook.com

The next Real Estate Technology Meetup is scheduled and the speakers confirmed. We have Gillian Shaw and Kirk LaPointe from the Vancouver Sun coming to speak to our group. Here are the details:

Presentation: Newspapers, Social Media and the Future of Reporting
Speakers: Gillian Shaw, Technology Reporter @ Vancouver Sun and Kirk LaPointe Managing Editor of Vancouver Sun
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The Vancouver Sun’s Gillian Shaw (Technology Reporter) and Kirk LaPointe (Managing Editor) will be on hand to deliver a talk on a few topics that are of great interest to real estate professionals from all over North America. In this “fire side” chat, Gillian and Kirk will discuss:

* Getting on the Media’s radar
* How the Vancouver Sun uses social media and online tools
* The future of the news/reporting business

I look forward to seeing you all there. Meetup is open to real estate professionals from all over. Be sure to RSVP here so that we know how many people to expect.

Dave deBruyn of deBruynDesign was our guest speaker at the Vancouver Real Estate Technology Meetup the other night where he spoke on niche marketing for real estate agents. Here is the presentation for those that missed it.

See you next month at the Real Estate Tech Meetup

Reachd ran a contest at the Toronto Realtor Training session that we held this past week.  Attendees were instructed to create a video, post it to the internet and pass us the link.  One lucky winner would receive 2 years FREE on the Ubertor website platform.  We had lots of videos entered into the contest, actually more than we expected.  Some were submitted using the Flip video sharing platform, some on YouTube, some via Twitter and some in our email boxes.

The winner for the contest is Linda Chartier, from RE/MAX Real Estate Centre Inc. You can see her video below.  The location is a bit loud, but we like that she went off to a location that made sense to her market, that she posted the video to YouTube and got a few opening and closing screens into the video.  Nice work Linda and congrats on winning the contest!!

Today was a big day in Reachd history. We held our biggest training event ever!

The head office of Remax Ontario invited us in and filled their training room at the Remax office in Toronto with agents ready to learn about how to grow their business by using the web.

Each of the participants received a free Flip Video camera and an Ubertor website for 6 months.

In the course we talked about SEO, Social Media, and Online Video. Below is some of the feedback that we received via Twitter, and to the left is a picture of the class.

Next city on the Reachd Tour: Edmonton and then Calgary on Sept 17th

We were just teaching a 1 day web marketing in Toronto to a group of Realtors here. This question each time I teach always comes up “I already have a full-time job and you want me to add Facebook and Twitter and Online Video to the mix – there is no way.”

Many people would answer that question by saying you need a strategy or build some objectives, goals and then start working your social media plan.

I think before you do that you need to “believe” As a business owner there needs to be some buy in from you. You must start to see web marketing as a way to build your business. Honestly, I could give you all the stats in the world and you would still not be convinced. The truth is, you need to choose to make web marketing a part of your strategy.

Here is what you should do if you are brand new to web marketing.

1. Set aside 30 minutes a day for web marketing.

2. Start a blog. It is simple to setup and doesn’t have to take a lot of time.

Why start a blog? Blogging is great for SEO and also still important for social media.

Recently Reachd co-founder Steve Jagger sat down with the Real Estate channel in Vancouver BC to talk about the three companies that Steve has co-founded. Besides founding Reachd, Steve has also started, Ubertor (a website platform for hosting real estate websites) and Outsourcing Things Done (a brand new out sourcing company in Manila)

Watch the video below for more details about how these three business compliment one another.