The Ethical Use of Photoshop in Real Estate Marketing
Marketing or Misleading? The home buying process now starts online, which makes it critical to present your listing in the most appealing way possible. From creative word play in your property description to engaging imagery in your online tour, the intent should be to attract attention to the home, never to misguide offers. But digital manipulation is ubiquitous in online marketing, and recent advances in photo editing technology have created challenges in defining what is presenting a property in a positive light—and what is outright misleading.

Everything Your Brokerage Needs to Know about Web Image Copyrights
Picture this: The perfect real estate website, full of gorgeous shots of beautifully staged homes and design trends. There's just one issue. That website pulled its design trend images from an image search—and they weren't properly licensed. Now, the owner of that site is in copyright hot water.

[Infographic] Huddle Up with Your New Real Estate Team
Real estate is a game that can be played alone, but you can get much more impressive results when you work as a team. But before you start filling out your roster, you need to decide which players you want to recruit first and the roles they'll play in your overall real estate strategy. Find some of the most important team positions below and for more advice on starting a real estate team, check out the Teamify: When and Why to Build a Real Estate Team webinar with experts Jim Remley and James Colburn.

[Infographic] The American Dream Home: Millennials vs. Boomers
Bigger is better... if you're a Millennial. Our recent survey found that Millennials' dream homes are twice the size of Baby Boomer dream homes. Find out what else Millennials and Baby Boomers want in their dream homes. Check it out:

Vector Images: What are they and why do you need to use them?
When you build your website or are creating a billboard advertisement, designers will request vector images. But what is a vector image, and why do we want one? Designers prefer working with vector images because vectors are extremely versatile and able to be resized. In other words, vector images will allow your logo, headshots and advertisements look good no matter what size they are! But what exactly is a vector image? A vector image is a file that uses coordinates to define the size and position of points, lines, curves and shapes to create an image. This means that no matter how the image is resized (whether it’s a small logo on a business card, or a large one on a billboard), it always looks really clear and crisp. The most popular vector file formats are AI (Adobe Illustator format), EPS (Encapsulated Postscript), and SVG (Scalable Vector Graphic) which can be used on the web. This differs from a raster image (also known as a “bitmap” or “flattened” image), where each pixel has a specific defined color value. The biggest limitation of a flattened image is that it can’t be made larger than the original size. Typical raster file formats are JPG, GIF, PNG, and BMP.

Let's Get Graphic: How to Make an Infographic and MORE
Infographics are unsung marketing heroes. They can be standalone content, supplemental for an article, or used as a visual aid in a presentation. We often reference infographics because they're easy to drag to our desktop, and looking at an infographic is a lot simpler and more time efficient than reading through an article. The bottom line is that we see and use infographics all the time for both our personal and professional life. But why? Read ahead to find out why we're psychologically drawn to infographics and how to make them yourself for your business, social media, or marketing! How to make an infographic. But first... why should you? Why are people drawn to them? Infographics can serve a variety of different purposes. Whether you're cranking them out for content on a site, or trying to learn something new, infographics can be your best friend. On average, people only remember 10 percent of information they hear three days later. However, when that information is paired with an infographic, people remember 65 percent of information three days later. Needless to say, infographics are a critical part in helping you and your viewers learn, retain, and apply information in the future. If you're the viewer, infographics are an easy way to get a comprehensive summary of a topic without necessarily having to sift through a ton of words to get to the point. Especially if they're properly organized, infographics can provide an easy path to understanding a difficult concept or breaking things down in chronological order. From a business perspective, however, infographics serve a different purpose. Infographics are shared three times more than any other type of content, so they help a company gain better brand exposure. By adding tags and including "share" buttons, they help improve your SEO (check out our article on how to use SEO to boost your website traffic) and enhance your internet presence. Needless to say, infographics can benefit everyone!

Redesign Your Real Estate Business Card
Your business card is your first and last touch point with your clients. It's the first thing you hand over to new clients, and it's the last thing your clients will refer to get in touch with you. I have seen tens and thousands of business cards over the past couple of years and most have a lot in common. Your business card should be short, precise and provide a gist of who you are and what you do. Here are five key things to keep in mind while designing your business card: 1. Colors and Fonts I know, I know–this is very basic right? Well, you'd be surprised how many people get this important element completely wrong. Do not use a funky font, keep it professional. Use an appropriate font size; not too small so that people reach for their reading glasses. Try using black or a darker font color—pale colors do not stand out and might make it very hard to read. 2. Titles and Positions A business card should be exactly what it's called. Keep it formal; it could be fun but definitely not ridiculous. Your title should describe exactly what you do. Broker/Owner or VP of Marketing are titles that people understand. Real-estate extraordinaire or real estate rock star are titles that mean nothing! Always have a real, legit job title on your business card.

Large Images Are Killing Your Real Estate Website
Creating a strong "first impression emotion" in your audience is a great strategy to keep visitors on your site. But when that first impression emotion is annoyance your bounce rate will skyrocket. The current trend is to use large, full-width, high-impact images to create emotion in your visitor. But improper us of these images are killing your website. I see it everywhere. Click to visit... wait, and wait for the top of a site to load. Expect that 7 seconds is the very longest your new visitors will wait for a page to load. For repeat visitors, it is a little longer at 10 seconds. But both of these load speeds are unacceptable; you should be impressing your audience in the first 3 seconds, no excuse. Google states that it takes load speeds into account with their SERPs Ranking. Granted, there are many factors that can slow your site (server speed, coding, plugins, redirects, etc.), but as a casual website owner, it is the improper use of larger images that you can quickly overcome and avoid.

Create Great Marketing Content with Canva
In today's highly competitive real estate market, it is vital to have broad ranging skill sets. However, even some of the most seasoned and skilled real estate professionals fall short in certain areas like design. Though you may know your properties or market like the back of your hand and can talk endlessly about them, creating a professional looking marketing piece is a daunting task for many. Whether lacking the eye for creating appealing marketing designs from scratch or simply not having enough hours in the day to devote to such an undertaking, many in the market are looking for ways to address this issue. This is where Canva comes into play! As with many creative projects, the truly hardest part is getting started, but with Canva's twenty plus templates and innumerable design options you can more easily and quickly find the right design for whatever real estate project you're working on. Here are just a few pre-sized design templates that you can currently create: Facebook posts Ads Covers and posters

Vector Images For Your Real Estate Website Explained
When we work with companies to brand products and websites for them, we request vector logos - preferably in an .ai, .eps or .svg format. But what is a vector logo, and why do we want one? Designers always prefer working with vector logos. The simplest reason is that vectors are extremely versatile and give us more freedom to resize as needed, while always maintaining the best quality possible for the treatment of your logo. But what exactly is a vector logo? A vector image is a file that uses coordinates to define the size and position of points, lines, curves and shapes to create an image. This means that no matter how the image is resized (whether it's a small logo on a business card, or a large one on a billboard), it always looks really clear and crisp. The most popular vector file formats are AI (Adobe Illustator format), EPS (Encapsulated Postscript) and the up and coming SVG (Scalable Vector Graphic) which can be used on the web. This differs from a raster image (also known as a "bitmap" or "flattened" image), where each pixel is a specific defined color value. The biggest limitation of a flattened image is that it can't be made larger than the original size. Typical raster file formats are JPG, GIF, PNG, and BMP.