Click the image to see the electronic magazine

I’m always excited when I see real estate professionals using Internet technologies in creative ways. That’s why I love these two examples of e-magazines created using Issuu.

Rated by Time Magazine earlier this year as one of the 50 Best Websites of 2009, www.issuu.com lets users publish electronic magazines like the one above created by Prudential Becky Hamlin Realty, Inc. or the one below by the Ogeechee River Group of Keller Williams Realty-Coastal Area Partners. I particularly like the one below because it’s published not by a real estate board or a marketing company, but by a real estate team, and it appears to be made using tools most of us have on our computers. Yet it looks good and it’s efffective.

That’s one of the beauties of Issuu—it’s incredibly easy for almost anyone to create a professional-looking product. You create a magazine by uploading a document such as a Microsoft Word® file, a pdf, or a PowerPoint® presentation and Issuu transforms that document into a electronic flip book that appears on Issuu’s electronic “newsstand” and can be embedded in a blog or website. The other good part is that the basic service is free.

Click the image to see the electronic magazine

Although quite a few luxury home magazines and local property marketing publications have found their way onto the site, only a handful of agents and brokerages are using it.

That’s too bad because it’s a great tool that more real estate professionals should know about.