By Jennifer Taylor, Director of Internet Marketing, New American Mortgage
Today, our Virginia Beach, VA sales / loan officers wanted to give a huge “Thank you!” to our operations staff by giving them their first cookout!
Our Lynnhaven loan officers cooked some good grub on the grill! Check out our 2012 Cookout video:
Everything is RED HOT! 
♪ ♫
By Jennifer Taylor, Director of Internet Marketing, New American Mortgage
We’re happy to announce that as of yesterday, May 9, 2012, New American Mortgage is now the preferred lender for the owner and operated offices of ZipRealty. We’ll be opening up 23 new offices nationwide!
ZipRealty was founded in 1999. The company operates in the following 19 owner and operated markets in 12 states and the District of Columbia:
Ignacio Metcalf, Division Manager of New American Mortgage, stated, “We’re extremely excited about our new relationship with Zip Realty and getting to know all of the markets. We believe with our technology and business approach, this will be a mutually beneficial relationship.”
By Jennifer Taylor, Director of Internet Marketing, New American Mortgage
♪ ♫ Ch-ch-ch-ch-Changes ♪ ♫
By the David Bowie song, Changes, I’m sure you already know what I’m about to talk about…
Customer Magnetism wrote an article on March 13, 2012 called Facebook Timeline Layout Cheat Sheet For Band Pages. It included several new Facebook Timeline Dimensions.
Facebook Cover Photo: 851px (width) x 315px (height)
Facebook Business Profile Photo: 125px x 125px
Landing Page Width: 81px
Ad Size: 110px x 80px
On February 18, 2012, Facebook sent an email to all Facebook fan page admins. It stated, “On April 26, we will be updating the size of the profile picture on all Pages. We are letting you know about this small change in advance so that you can update your profile picture on April 26. The new profile picture will be 160 x 160 pixels and will sit at 23 pixels from the left and 210 pixels from the top of the Page.”
The new Facebook Business Profile Photo: will be 160px x 160px. We’re glad to see this change, because it has been difficult to read and identify several Facebook Business Pages’ logo. I actually helped someone yesterday re-size theirs to the current 125px x 125px. I’m looking forward to this change as well as many other people!
By Jennifer Taylor, Director of Internet Marketing, New American Mortgage
I’ve been pondering for a while now if real estate agents and loan officers should use Pinterest to market their business online. After all, it is the fastest growing social network, right? Also, according to Mashable, Pinterest is the No. 3 Social Network in the U.S. Those are some pretty outstanding statements and numbers.
I have spoken on Pinterest a couple of times throughout the U.S. to our REALTOR® partners. I only spoke on the subject, because they requested it. Before my Pinterest presentation, I told them exactly what I thought about it – “I love it, but it’s a waste of your time for business.” A lot of people had questions on what it is and/or how they would grow their business using it. After I fully explained it, they weren’t that interested in it anymore for their business (real estate wise). If you were a retailer, it’s a goldmine driving traffic back to ones’ website. It’s much different real estate/mortgage wise.
For real estate agents and loan officers, I truly believe that Pinterest is not the best use of their time. If you’ve got the time, go for it! The only way they could really utilize it is if they had a graphic designer on hand to do infographs that could virally spread, such as Customer Magnetism’s Facebook Timeline Cheat Sheet Template. I pinned that sucker in a hot second. Houses for sale could potentially virally spread, but they’d have to look fabulous like Stephen Alexander’s Homes & Neighborhoods. However, most houses on the market (let’s be honest) is not up to par to be put on Pinterest, like these ones:
They could share tips with photos in general, but that wouldn’t drive traffic back to their website, because they need to own the image and the image needs to be embedded on their blog and/or website. It’s not impossible to market your real estate or mortgage business on Pinterest, but it would be very challenging and time consuming. One would have to have the time and resources on hand, such as a graphic designer, Photoshop, etc.
I know from experience that REALTORS® and loan officers have very little time to spend on marketing in general. If they going to spend their time online, they should be spending it on core online marketing resources, such as Facebook, Google+, Twitter, YouTube, Blogging, and their website.
In 2005, Google incorporated the nofollow attribute in their algorithm to help with link spamming. Social networks, such as Twitter, was asked by Google to use the nofollow attribute. When sites add “rel=nofollow,” Google and other search engines know not to pass any link juice to the page it is linking to. Pinterest went nofollow last month (March 2012).
Nofollow explained by Google:
Now, if you’re a “Pinterest Pinner,” and you have the time to pin, it wouldn’t hurt to make a board for your real estate or mortgage business. Once you make a board, you can post your information (photos and/or videos) on it. It’s just not going to be the goldmine that you think it’s going to be.
Last note: If you’re going to make a Pinterest account for your business, don’t forget to attach a Pinterest tab to your Facebook Fan Page.
Happy Pinning!
By Jennifer Taylor, Director of Internet Marketing, New American Mortgage
Today, I discovered an excellent article called, “5 Ways to Use Facebook to Grow Your Real Estate Business.” At New American Mortgage, we are constantly researching ways to help our loan officers and real estate partners how to grow their business on and offline. I not only run New American Mortgage’s online presence, but I travel all over the United States coaching our loan officers and real estate partners how to market their business online. Facebook is one of the main ways that New American Mortgage has grown its business.
The New Face of New American Mortgage and Crawford Grows Mortgage Business Via Social Media are two articles that Bank Technology News has written about New American Mortgage successfully growing its business by using social media.
In the article, 5 Ways to Use Facebook to Grow Your Real Estate Business, it points out that if one makes interesting and relevant status updates; lets their personality shine through; automates the friend process with Outlook Connector; reaches out to Facebook friends; and tags posts and photos it can help one increase their business. I almost entirely agree with the article and have been coaching our loan officers and real estate partners on almost everything in the article. The only thing that it doesn’t point out and one does have to be careful about is marketing their business on their Facebook profile page. Under Facebook terms and conditions, one is not allowed to market their business on their Facebook profile page. It can get one kicked off of Facebook fast. That’s why Facebook implemented Facebook fan pages. The National Association of REALTORS® also stated the same thing last year to all REALTORS®. I’m sure it was because they were wanting to stay in compliance with Facebook terms and conditions.
If you have been heavily marketing your business on your Facebook profile page or simply thought that a Facebook profile page is a Facebook fan page, don’t fret! Recently, Facebook has incorporated merging Facebook profile pages to Facebook fan pages. To do this, all you need to do is use their migration tool. It’s simple, fast, and easy.
If you love the information that we’ve shared with you in our blogs, then you’ll love our “New American Mortgage Newsletter.” If you would like to receive our newsletter, just click on this link https://bitly.com/NAMnews and fill out the requested information. Our goal is to provide free valuable resources to our loan officers and real estate partners to help them grow their business on and offline. If there’s anything you would like to see from us in the future, please let us know. If you do choose to sign up for our newsletter, we will be sending you one email per month. It will contain marketing highlights from the following month and marketing predictions. As always, we would personally like to thank you for your continuous support in us!
By Jennifer Taylor, Director of Internet Marketing, New American Mortgage
I know we said we were going to be silent today, but have you noticed some of your favorite websites are blacked out today in reverence of the strike against the Protect IP Act (PIPA) and the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA)?
Google has also joined in by blacking out their logo today. They stated yesterday, “So tomorrow we will be joining many other tech companies to highlight this issue on our U.S. home page.”
If you click on their blacked out Google logo or below the logo where it says, “Tell Congress: Please don’t censor the web!” today, you will land on a PIPA / SOPA petition form. To sign the petition form online, all you need to do is fill out your first name, last name, *email address, and *zip code. * denotes required fields. Please take a moment and sign the petition today. Out of respect of the strike, we will remain silent for the remainder of the day.
“Although Congress has currently shelved SOPA, it’s possible that a related version of SOPA could come back at some point down the road — though probably not this year — but for now, the push against the bill has succeeded beautifully.” via Washington Monthly.
If you’re confused on what PIPA / SOPA are, check out this quick vimeo video.
PROTECT IP / SOPA Breaks The Internet from Fight for the Future on Vimeo.
By Jennifer Taylor, Director of Internet Marketing, New American Mortgage
I just recently got back from holiday vacation. And even though I still worked about two hours each day while I was gone I did not blog on January 1st or 2nd like most people. By the way, someone that runs social media for a company can’t really take a “vacation.” Think about it. Our online presence would have been stagnate for x amount of days.
So today, I will quickly give you my suggestion of “MUST DOs For Businesses In 2012.”
1.) If you don’t have a Facebook fan page, WHY? It’s free and literally takes less than 60 seconds to make. Just got to https://www.facebook.com/pages/create. It will take you through all the steps on how to set it up. We coach our loan officers and real estate partners how to properly set it up, meaning where to add license numbers, NMLS numbers, company that you work for, applications, landing pages etc. The same thing goes for all other social networks that I’m about to mention.
2.) Twitter. For some reason there is a disinerest in Twitter for many loan officers and real estate agents and I haven’t really figured out why. Who knows? Maybe Facebook profile and fan pages have them boggled down. I personally think one can get more leads from Twitter. You can connect your Facebook fan page to twitter by going to https://www.facebook.com/twitter/ and clicking “Link to Twitter,” however, don’t ignore twitter if you do connect your Facebook fan page to Twitter. Visit http://fly.twitter.com/ for further information on Twitter.
3.) Blog. I know. It’s painful if you don’t like to write, but it’s a must! It definitely helps with search engine optimization, but that’s not all. It gives your company a voice. Don’t know where to blog? I would highly recommend WordPress.org or WordPress.com. Both are them are free, however, WordPress.org needs hosting which will cost you money. Other than that it’s free.
4.) Google+. I know… you’re JUST now getting adjusted to Facebook Timeline. Google+, let’s just say, is Google’s version of Facebook. They have a regular page for yourself and one for businesses, just like Facebook. To get started with a regular profile page, go to https://plus.google.com. To setup a Google+ page for your business, go to https://www.google.com/+/business.
5.) Pinterest. What the heck is Pinterest? It’s a virtual pinboard. Pinterest lets you organize and share things you find on the web. Trust me on this one. I have something up my sleeve to help loan officers and real estate agents market their business using this social network. I will explain how to do that in another blog post another day. For now, sign up, figure it out, and have fun!
By Jennifer Taylor, Director of Internet Marketing, New American Mortgage
Recently, eMarketer predicted that by the end of 2011, “38% of US mobile users will have a smartphone and 41% will use the mobile internet at least once each month.” That’s huge from where it was a few years ago, even last year. I remember being at a convention several years ago and one of the speakers mentioned that smartphones will soon be taking over the way we search and do business. I didn’t even have a smartphone back then and I honestly didn’t think the number of people surfing the web on a smartphone would escalate so fast. Now, I can’t imaging anyone not having a smartphone. People in their eighties have smartphones. You know it’s a different world when older people sitting next to you whip out their smartphone and start posting status updates on social networks. o.O
One of the most vital parts of your 2012 marketing plan should include your website being mobile. We’re currently having our website totally redone. It won’t be ready until several months from now, so I took New American Mortgage’s website and used it as an example today to show you the importance of a mobile website and how fast and easy it is to make one if you’re on a budget. I know several companies and people that make mobile websites and they are fantastic. They build them from the ground up. What I’m about to show you is completely different. It’s called DudaMobile. I discovered it about a month ago in Inc. Magazine. So, today I finally had some time to test it out. Well, I literally made our website mobile for free in less than 60 seconds. Yes, FREE. You know how much I love the freebies! And I know how much you love them too!
This is how our website currently looked on an iPhone earlier today. You have to enlarge the screen with your fingers just to navigate around the website. Yuck! No one wants to do that. So, you know what that means? It’s time to fix it FAST!
When I entered our website URL into DudaMobile’s website where it said, “Enter your site URL,” their magical frog went to work! He’s a hard and fast little worker. He examined our website; extracted navigation, colors, and content; built HTML and CSS; and then tested our mobile site in less than 60 seconds. Whoa! That’s one FAST frog!
When he was finished our website looked like this:
You can change the colors and the design of it all, which as I have stated before, color is extremely important in marketing. However, I actually liked the way DudaMobile first presented the mobile website to me. It looked business and professional like, so I ended up leaving it the way it was. I did play around with different colors and designs for it bit, which is extremely easy to switch out.
The free version does have an ad that will appear at the top of the mobile site, unless you upgrade to the premium mobile site, which is only $9 a month.
Once your mobile website is made, all you have to do is copy and paste the html code that it gives you into your regular website’s homepage. Once you do that, it will automatically redirect mobile visitors to your new mobile website!
And with all that said… Happy Holidays and Happy Browsing!
From your favorite blogger, 
Jennifer Taylor
By Jennifer Taylor, Director of Internet Marketing, New American Mortgage
We would like to take a minute and wish the entire New American Mortgage team, their families, and our fans a VERY Merry Christmas! It’s been such an amazing year for us and we couldn’t be more proud of our team and what we all have to look forward to.
The owners of New American Mortgage, Toby Harris and Casey Crawford, have a very important message they would like to share with you all.
Please Take A Moment To Watch.
Let’s all take some time with our families and really appreciate what we have.
From the bottom of our hearts, Merry Christmas!
By Jennifer Taylor, Director of Internet Marketing, New American Mortgage
What’s better than giving back to others during the holiday seasons?
We continued our charitable “Hope Initiative“ by giving back to our surrounding communities this holiday season. For Thanksgiving, New American Mortgage and Wave City Care teamed up to help the families in need that are located in the Hampton Roads area of Virginia. We gathered 60 boxes full of food donated by our employees. The owners also donated $1,000 to Wave City Care.
We also continued our ”Hope Initiative” this Christmas by giving toys to unfortunate children. We’ve donated to Z104′s Stuff The Buss – Toys For Tots since 2009. Since we’ve grown, so has our contribution. The first year we donated to Z104′s Stuff The Buss – Toys For Tots, our employees raised enough money to purchase 3 bicycles. This year, our employees raised $2,000 and the owners matched the employees’ donation. With the $4,000 we raised, we were able to almost fill an entire bus full of toys that we purchased at Toys”R”Us®.
We would love to hear what you and/or your company are doing to give back this holiday season. Let us know in this blog post’s comments section.
Happy Holidays From Your Favorite Lender!
- New American Mortgage
