Shoot and upload once, share for all. Vid.ly makes video sharing easy.

Our smartphones give us just about everything we need to shoot video these days. It’s quick and easy to take a clip of a soccer game, take quick video evidence of damage for an insurance claim, or even send a nice video greeting back to a prospect.

But how do you quickly and easily share those videos through your phone? And how do you know the format you use to record the video will be visible to your audience on the other end?

Vid.ly solves the problem of encoding video into multiple formats and displaying the right one automatically for your audience. It also creates a simple, short, shareable link that you can use to instantly post on social media, text messaging, and email.

The service is completely free for up to 10 “active” Vid.ly links per month. For most people, this is plenty for sharing a handful of links as-needed with others. (If you need more than the free option, there’s a very simple price calculator on their website.)

Stuck recommending someone you don't necessarily like? Some funny options here.

Diplomacy is a fine art, especially when you find yourself asked to make recommendations for people you wouldn’t necessarily recommend. In that spirit, we’ve hunted down some subtle (and we think funny!) ways to cloak your real feelings with what sounds like a glowing recommendation.

(Disclaimer: Of course we don’t mean for you to seriously use these, but they are pretty good.)

1. To describe a person with unimpressive credentials:

“All in all, I cannot say enough good things about this candidate, or recommend him too highly.”

2. To describe someone so unproductive it would be better not to hire anyone:

“I can assure you that no person would be better for the job.”

3. To describe someone who is completely incompetent:

“I enthusiastically recommend this candidate with no qualifications whatsoever.”

4. To recommend a truly lazy candidate:

“In my opinion, you will be very fortunate to get this person to work for you.”

5. To describe an ex-coworker who had problems getting along with others:

“I am pleased to say this candidate is a former colleague of mine.”

6. To describe someone who is not worth further consideration:

“I would urge you to waste no time in making this candidate an offer.”

Common Sense Media helps you make informed media choices for kids.

Here’s something you can share with your clients to make a thoughtful connection that will also help protect their children.

Understanding which movies, apps, websites, and television shows are suitable for your kids can be a full-time job. In fact, your average parent has almost zero time between work and running a household to stay on top of the media children consume on a daily basis.

Wouldn’t it be great if parents had a resource that would review media and provide parents with a thoughtful analysis of what’s “out there”?

Well, that’s exactly what CommonSenseMedia.org does. From their mission statement:

“Common Sense Media is dedicated to improving the lives of kids and families by providing the trustworthy information, education, and independent voice they need to thrive in a world of media and technology.

We exist because our nation’s children spend more time with media and digital activities than they do with their families or in school, which profoundly impacts their social, emotional, and physical development . As a non-partisan, not-for-profit organization, we provide trustworthy information and tools, as well as an independent forum, so that families can have a choice and a voice about the media they consume.”

Share this resource with your clients and contacts and let them know that you’re concerned about how our communities are raised in the digital age. It’s a great way to show you’re thinking about them, and they’ll probably appreciate the tip.

(Feel free to copy and paste from this short article if you’d like to share it in your email to clients or on your Facebook page, etc.)

Brian Kenny, Sportscaster for ESPN at the Commencement Speech at Ohio Northern University, 2007

In this month’s brand new My Real Helper collection, we featured a website which contains some of the most inspirational commencement speeches ever given. We figured it was a good time to share the resource with our members and even write the letters they could use to connect with their contacts who knew of recent graduates.

While browsing the site myself, I came across this excellent quote and speech from Brian Kenny of ESPN. The entire speech is great, but it was item number three on his “Top Eight to Help you Enter the Rest of Your Life” which caught my eye.

His advice was taken from Gertrude Stein, and I wanted to share some of it with our readers this week:

“There’s No THERE, THERE. That’s from the writer Gertrude Stein. She’s right. There’s no there. That elusive “there” with the job, the beach house, the dream, it’s not out there. There is here. It’s in you… right now. That real happiness, real contentment has to be IN you regardless of professional achievement and amount of wealth. It’s not magically appearing with a job and a paycheck. When you’re young and struggling it’s easy to think; “If I could just get that job… get that girl… get that guy… that car… that house…that salary…” “If I could just get THERE… I would have it all.” I could finally be happy.”

He goes on to describe champion boxers he’s met who always thought that success would change their life, and how “arriving” at their championship moments did not produce the life-altering shift they expected. In fact, he says:

“Achievement and wealth were not an elixir for his problems. No there. Remember that. You are THERE, now.”

I love this. You are THERE right now. Go through your day with this thought in mind, and you might find yourself in better spirits. The trophy is today.

Photo credit: Julie Rybarczyk

Click here to see the Table of Contents for the May 2012 My Real Helper collection.

If you’re looking for pre-written, original blog posts for your real estate blog or letters to connect with clients and prospects, this month’s My Real Helper collection contains brand new content to help you build better connections and earn more leads.

In this month’s collection you’ll receive:

• A letter to congratulate clients on recent wedding anniversaries
• A letter to make local introductions between your contacts
• A letter to pay a compliments to people in your community
• A letter for agents relocating to new markets
• A blog post on the emotional mistakes sellers make
• A blog post on how you can leverage your network of contacts for others
• A blog post on “graduation wisdom”
• A blog post on evaluating local schools
• We’ve also included two coaching tips to improve your productivity and grow your social network.

Ask yourself: How much time would it take you to write four original letters and four new blog posts?

Could someone pay you to do it for $9.95? Probably not. But that’s all you’ll spend if you join My Real Helper for the month of May. Each month’s collection is only $9.95, and the content is yours to use. We also allow our subscribers to request free custom letters at no additional charge.

If you’re not a member yet, and you join today, we’ll also send you a bonus collection free, doubling your first month’s content.

There’s no risk involved in subscribing. You can cancel any time, and if you join and decide the content isn’t up to your standards, we’ll gladly refund your money.

Let us help you find more clients and earn more referrals today!

Subscribe to My Real Helper and Receive Two Kits for the Price of One

“I love my daughter, and I welcome you into the family,” said the broker. “To show you how much we care for you, I’m making you a 50-50 partner in my real estate office. All you have to do is go to the office every day and learn the business.”

The son-in-law interrupted, “I hate real estate and I can’t stand agents.”

“I see,” replied the father-in-law. “Well, then you’ll work in the office and take charge of administrative duties.”

“I hate paperwork,” said the son-on-law. “I can’t stand being stuck behind a desk all day.”

“Now wait a minute,” said the father-in-law. “I just made you half-owner of my real estate office, but you don’t like real estate and won’t work in a office! What am I going to do with you?”

“Easy,” said the son-in-law, resting his feet on his father-in-law’s desk. “Buy me out.”

Photo credit: Billaday

It’s astonishing how often we overlook the wisdom of those who have been on this planet decades longer than we have. Where else can you find seventy, eighty, or ninety years’ worth of perspective?

On that note, we wanted to share a book that neatly packages up thirty life lessons that anyone can use to help them live a more fulfilling life. (It would make a great gift for anyone you know who may be graduating soon.)

A bit about the book:

30 LESSONS FOR LIVING: Tried and True Advice from the Wisest Americans
by Karl Pillemer

More than one thousand extraordinary Americans share their stories and the wisdom they have gained on living, loving, and finding happiness.

After a chance encounter with an extraordinary ninety-year-old woman, renowned gerontologist Karl Pillemer began to wonder what older people know about life that the rest of us don’t.

His quest led him to interview more than one thousand Americans over the age of sixty-five to seek their counsel on all the big issues- children, marriage, money, career, aging. Their moving stories and uncompromisingly honest answers often surprised him. And he found that he consistently heard advice that pointed to these thirty lessons for living. Here he weaves their personal recollections of difficulties overcome and lives well lived into a timeless book filled with the hard-won advice these older Americans wish someone had given them when they were young.

You can find the book on Amazon here to learn more:
http://www.amazon.com/30-Lessons-Living-Advice-Americans/dp/1594630844

The book is also a part of “The Legacy Project,” which is an excellent website for sampling the wisdom of the ages, too:

http://legacyproject.human.cornell.edu/

Retyping common messages is a waste of your time. You probably have at least 3 – 10 simple messages that you send out many times a month. Perhaps these are reports, basic thank you notes, or responses to web leads. In the past we’ve talked about text expansion applications that allow you to instantly “paste” these templates with a few hotkey strokes, but did you know Gmail also has a built in app for “Canned Responses”?

Gmail allows you to save messages as templates and reuse them when the time is right. All you have to do is turn on Google Labs in Gmail and enable the Canned Responses Lab.

1. Access your Gmail settings.
2. Click the “Labs” tab.
3. Search for “Canned Responses” by developer Chad P. (Just a search for “canned responses” is enough), as shown here:

4. Click “Enable.”

Once Gmail reloads, you’ll notice a new option in your composition window… “Canned responses”:

From there, you can choose a template, customize it, and send it off.

Emails that took minutes now take seconds. And when you send as much email as agents do, that can mean a lot of time saved.

Photo credit: stephendepolo

Many Tuesday Tactics readers tell us they’d love to support Oakley, but they simply don’t need real estate signs right now. No problem, we hope to earn the business when the time comes.

Well, now we have a brand new option you can use to support Tuesday Tactics: Oakley Signs & Graphics now sells vinyl banners, too!

Have an event coming up? Party? Fundraiser? Want to congratulate a graduate? We’ve got you covered. Categories include:

• Anniversary
• Birthdays
• Business
• Fundraiser
• Graduation
• Holiday
• Military
• Political
• Property Management
• Religion
• Sales Promotion
• School
• Sports

You can design your own banner, have us design one for you, or choose from our library of stock designs.

Eric, from My Real Helper, put together a 5-minute YouTube video you can watch to see how easy it is to select, customize, and order your banner:

A Tour of the Oakley Signs & Graphics Banner Catalog Online:

We hope the next time you need a banner, you’ll consider supporting Tuesday Tactics by choosing Oakley Signs & Graphics’ banner department!

Watch the cars, not the signal.

“Advice to children crossing the street: damn the lights. Watch the cars. The lights ain’t never killed nobody.”

Jackie “Moms” Mabley (born Loretta Mary Aiken), American standup comedian

“But I had the light,” is probably one of the most common phrases spoken after a car accident. Green means go for me, red means stop for them. Before you know it, you’re on the phone with your insurance company.

Who doesn’t remember an adult reminding them to “look both ways before you cross the street”? It seems like common sense so basic we wouldn’t even need to teach it. But it’s funny how that lesson, which seems so obvious, is often lost in other areas of our lives.

Take, for instance, the raft of market data you float on every day. What’s new construction looking like? How did pre-existing sales do last month? What’s it look like in the greater metro area for condo prices? To a certain extent, these are just the traffic lights of real estate. Your value as an agent comes in your ability to look both ways before you act on those “trusted” signals.

Knowing your market doesn’t mean knowing the big numbers. It means knowing the specifics. It means knowing how to interpret market activity tailored to the needs of your client. Metaphorically, it’s your job to be a good scout and protect their interests as they “cross the market” (and that includes not getting hit by a bus-sized bad move).

Reporting always lags behind reality, though the delay may be small or large. You’re the best real-time reader of your neighborhoods and inventory, the very traffic of real estate. This is a good point to bring up with buyers and sellers who are nervous about “what they’re hearing in the news.” You don’t report the news… you’re the one making it.

Keep your eyes on the cars out there, and best of luck this week!

Photo credit: My Buffo