These days a blog, a Facebook page, and an active Twitter stream are pretty much de rigueur for any brokerage that’s serious about connecting with prospects.  But some brokerages are taking it a step farther by creating smartphones apps as well.

The Corcoran Group, the well-known New York-based real estate brokerage uses a free app to showcase listings, to make it easy for consumers to find open houses and neighborhood events, and to link consumers to additional information on the brokerage’s website.

The app’s interface is clean and easy to navigate.  Consumers can see interior photos, floorplans, and maps.  They can search by price and other property attributes or they can let the geolocater help them find properties that are near where they happen to be.

Consumers would no doubt complain that they can’t use Corcoran’s app to find properties listed by other brokers. But then again, those same consumers probably accept the fact that they can’t use the Starbucks app to find Dunkin’ Donuts coffee.  Branded apps are, after all, marketing tools for the companies that create them.

To get feel for what’s possible, try using the Corcoran Group’s app.

Recently we wrote about the importance of making your real estate blog easy to read from a mobile browser.  Today, we consider several tools that allow you to do this if you’re blogging with WordPress.

• Mobify is a web service that provides a quick way to optimize your site for mobile access.  The basic plan is free and offers great controls over how your site will be seen in mobile web browsers.  But because it requires some knowledge of CSS style sheet language, it’s not a solution for everyone.

• WpTouch Pro ($29 for a single-site license), is a WordPress plug-in that lets you create a separate mobile theme for your website.  When a visitor comes to your site, WPtouch automatically determines whether the visitor is using a computer or a mobile browser and displays the appropriate version of your site.  Images, captions, videos, and text are all scaled to make them easy to view on the smaller screen.

• MobilePress is a free, open source WordPress plug-in that adapts your blog for mobile viewing.  You can customize your site by creating your own mobile theme or use one of MobilePress’ pre-designed themes.  And because it’s open source, you’ll enjoy plenty of support from its community of developers and users.

Along with these “outside” resources are several traditional WordPress plug-ins:

• WPtouch iPhone Theme Plug-in. The free version of WPtouch Pro, above, WPTouch iPhone Theme Plug-in automatically transforms the mobile version of your blog into a cool iPhone-application style theme complete with iPhone-style icons and tap functionality. The iPhone-style theme works for iPhone, iPod Touch, Android, Opera Mini, Palm Pre and BlackBerry Storm users and gives them the option of easily switching to your regular blog theme if they need to.

• WordPress Mobile Pack is a comprehensive set of tools that includes mobile themes, extra widgets, and a mobile admin panel that lets you configure your site or post content from your own mobile device.  Images, text, and videos are scaled to fit the viewer’s mobile browser and viewers can from switch from the mobile theme to your regular website theme if they wish.

• WordPress Mobile Edition transforms your blog into an easy-to-read version for mobile visitors.  This is a great plug-in if you want something easy to use that you don’t have to fiddle around with.  But beware:  this plug-in has few setting to change since almost everything has been configured for you.  As a result, there’s no easy way to alter the configuration or customize the viewing experience for your mobile readers.

How does your blog look when viewed on a smartphone browser?

Given the popularity of smartphones and the reality that prospects often need real estate information while they’re away from their computers, it’s important to be sure that your website is smartphone friendly.

The best way to find out how your blog or website works on a smartphone is to try it yourself.  Navigate to your blog on your mobile phone and see how easy it is to read.  Also ask yourself these questions:

• Do I write with plenty of paragraph breaks, or is my blog one long unbroken block of text? (Paragraph breaks make blogs easier to read on a computer and are a must for reading on a smartphone.)
• Do my pictures take forever to load? If you have pictures, their file sizes need to be reduced for quicker downloading from the Internet.
• Is my blog written in a traditional journalistic style with the most important information (the who, what , when, where, and why) in the first few lines of the article?  Readers often don’t follow long blog posts all the way to the end and that goes double for readers checking your blog post from their iPhones.
• Is too much going on? If it’s a traditional website rather than a blog, be aware that flash intros and other “gimmicks” also take a long time to load and often don’t run at all on smartphones.

If your site doesn’t perform well on the small screen, it may be time for a redesign.

This article continues our series on how to keep your contacts and calendars in sync between your mobile device and your computer.   In our first installment, we considered the challenges faced by real estate professionals and others who work away from their desks when it comes to keeping their data synchronized across multiple devices.  We’ve considered how to work on the go with iPhones and a Mac.  We’ve also looked at products and services offered by Google to keep mobile workers organized.

Today, we look at the BlackBerry and the options BlackBerry users have when it comes to getting synchronized.

The BlackBerry is the granddaddy of the synchronized smartphones, the first to use wireless technology to help busy people keep their handheld device in sync with their desktop computer.  But being the first doesn’t necessarily make it the easiest to work with.  In fact, depending on how you get your mail and what you’re trying to sync, you have quite a maze of possible solutions.  I’ve attempted to summarize some of them below.

BlackBerry Enterprise Server (BES). If your brokerage gives you an e-mail account, they probably offer you Microsoft Outlook through what’s known as an exchange server.  There’s probably an IT administrator and that person is responsible for setting up the software that lets you sync your BlackBerry and for making sure you have access to it.  If you’re in this situation, you have automatic, over-the-air synchronization between your BlackBerry and Outlook. In many respects, this is the best of all possible worlds:  you put out very little effort yet your e-mail, calendars and contacts all stay in sync.

BlackBerry Hosted E-mail.  Because BES provides the easiest syncing solution, you may wish you could do it that way even though your organization doesn’t provide it.  Enter the hosted e-mail solution.  Purchase a personal, hosted e-mail account and you get many of the advantages of being connected to an enterprise server, including having your e-mail pushed out to your smartphone and automatic, over-the-air syncing.  The cost is in the $10-$20 per month range.  Thinkpost Communication and Exchange My Mail are two companies that offer individual e-mail hosting plans.

BlackBerry Internet Service (BIS). If your mail isn’t coming from a server at the office (or even if it is), BlackBerry can work with your mobile phone company to push your email to you through its BlackBerry Internet Service (BIS).  BIS can accommodate up to ten e-mail addresses.  These can be Internet e-mail accounts like Yahoo or Hotmail; or they can be POP and IMAP accounts that come from your Internet service provider; or they can be accounts that come from an exchange server.  If your e-mail service allows it, BIS will automatically sync the e-mail between your phone and your desktop.  Then use your USB cable to sync your calendar and other data between your phone and your desktop.  Get more info here, or contact your Internet service provider.

Gmail. Google offers its own solutions to people who want to sync Google contacts, calendars or e-mail.  If you use Gmail, get the Gmail Mobile App.  Or better yet, download and install the Enchanced Gmail Plug-in on your BlackBerry.  Then use Google Sync to synchronize your contacts and calendar wirelessly over the air.

This is the second piece in our series on mobile computing and synchronization.  Today’s post focuses on strategies and applications that work for Mac and iPhones (and by extension iPads and the iPod Touch).

Here’s the issue.  You work on the go.  You’re often out of the office and away from your desk.  As you meet new people, you enter their contact information into your iPhone.  Later, when you’re sitting at your computer, you want to send email to people you met earlier today.  Wouldn’t it be great if you could enter their info one time on your phone and later be able to find it among your e-mail contacts on your computer?

Ditto for appointments.  You set up a client meeting by e-mail while sitting at your computer.  Or someone puts a meeting for you on a shared calendar. How does that appointment get onto your phone so you’re reminded of it while you’re out?

Below are several solutions that work with Macs and iPhones (and by extension iPads and the iPod Touch).  Each one seems to address a different aspect of the problem, so experiment to see what works best for you.

Sync with iTunes. The simplest solution is to sync with iTunes. If you use iCal to keep your calendar on your Mac and Address Book to keep your contacts, these can be synced whenever you connect your iPhone to your computer.

Simply connect your iPhone to your computer with the cable provided.  Click the “Info” tab and check off what you want to sync.  You can sync the Address Book on the Mac, your Yahoo address book, your Google contacts, the iCal calendar on the Mac, Safari bookmarks, notes, and email account settings.

It’s the simple and it’s free, but you’ve always got to use that cable to sync.

Subscribe to MobileMe. MobileMe is Apple’s subscription service that syncs your mail, contacts, and calendars across all devices over the air automatically.  Sync your Mac, your PC, and your iPhone; keep your Mac Mail, your Mac Address Book, iCal on the Mac and Microsoft Outlook all synchronized without having to push a button or connect a cable.  And all data is backed up in the cloud so it can be restored even if you lose your iPhone.

MobileMe’s biggest drawback used to be that you had to use me.com (or mac.com) e-mail address.  But now it lets you use e-mail forwarding to manage an existing e-mail address.  MobileMe has had its share of challenges over the years, so proceed with caution.  Subscription for an individual account is $99 per year with a 60-day free trial.

Sync with Spanning Sync 3. Spanning Sync 3 lets you sync iCal on your Mac with your Google calendar, and Address Book on your Mac with your Google contacts.   Then you can use iTunes to synchronize your iPhone with your Mac.

For example, let’s say you run into an old friend at the mall and enter his contact info on your iPhone.  When you use the cable to sync your iPhone with iTunes, your friend’s contact info will be added to the Address Book on your Mac.  Then, when you synchronize your Mac with your Google account using Spanning Sync 3, your friend’s info will be added to your Google contacts.

It’s a two-step process, but it solves the problem.  Purchase Spanning Sync 3 for $25 for a year or outright for $65.

Use the SaiSuke Calendar. Keep your iPhone and your Google calendar in sync with SaiSuke, a calendar management app for the iPhone.  The SaiSuke calendar is full-featured, letting you maintain and color-code as many calendars as you wish.  View your appointments as a list, or in day, week, month and even year format. Use the memo field to add a note to any calendar item.  Sync manually or set it up for automatic wireless syncing so the calendar in your hand matches nicely with the one on your desktop.

There’s a free version that syncs only one way and only one week out, but lets you test the app before buying the full version.  The full-featured version of SaiSuke is available at the iTunes App store for $9.99.

Iphones, Blackberrys and other types of smartphones are just small, handheld computers.  In fact, many of today’s phones have computing power that far surpasses that of the earliest microcomputers.

Increasingly, we use our phones to do more than just talk to clients and read e-mail.  The newer phone applications let us store passwords, do banking transactions, manage our prescriptions and medical records, and handle other sensitive data.  As a result, our phones are a perfect target for hackers.

Cell phones are easier to hack into than our laptop or desktop computers. In addition, most of us know not to open suspicious files or e-mail when we’re using our computers.  But we’re not so vigilant with messages we get on our phones.  We’re much more likely to click on an odd-looking link or open a questionable message when it pops up on our Iphone.

The good news is, there aren’t a lot of cell phone viruses out there–at least not compared to the number of viruses aimed at our computers.  The fact that there are several different carriers and many different mobile phone operating systems makes it tough for hackers to mount a massive attack against smartphone users.  But as the number of smartphone users grows, the number of criminals writing malicious code for them will probably also grow.

Right now, there’s not one anti-virus product that will protect every phone.  Again, that’s because we’ve all got different phones from different carriers.  Check with your carrier about anti-virus software that will keep your phone running smoothly.

It would be dumb to lose your smartphone.

You’d be inconvenienced, and whoever found it might have access to a goldmine of information, including your e-mail correspondence, your address book and maybe even your documents.

Play it safe and use these steps to protect and yourself and your phone:

• Never leave it unattended, not even for a moment.  It only takes a second for someone to pick it up.
• Add password protection to your phone and to any sensitive documents.  Set your phone to require a password at start-up.  This may seem like a nuisance at first, but you’ll get used to it eventually.  It’s worth doing because if you should leave your phone somewhere, no one can get on and browse your documents, look through your contact list, read your e-mail, or access info that would allow them to steal your identity.  If your phone has any sensitive documents, set them to require a password, too.
• Never use the “remember me” option that pops the password in automatically.  This may seem like a nuisance, too.  But it’s useless to have passwords if anyone who finds your phone can breeze right by them.
• Back up your info.  Synchronize or back up data regularly so that any information that disappears with your phone can be recovered easily.
• Consider anti-theft software.  You can get software for your phone that lets you track or remotely access it if you lose it.  There are even programs that let you control the phone remotely, causing it to ring constantly even if it’s off or on silent mode.   This last item may not get your phone back, but you’ll be secure in the knowledge that it’s annoying whoever took it.
• Wipe your phone clean before discarding it.  Many people sell or give away old phones that still have data on them.  When that happens, the person getting your phone can see your contact list, can read your messages, can see who you’ve called and who’s called you.  That’s not good.  So when you get a new phone be sure you wipe the old one clean.  Your cell phone carrier can do it for you, although they may charge you.  You can also do it yourself.

What would you think if you were meeting with a client and she abruptly pulled out a book and started reading in the middle of your listing presentation?

That would seem bizarre if not outright rude, yet many agents do something similar when they take phone calls during a client meeting.  Some agents even answer e-mail while their clients sit waiting patiently.

Smartphones make it easy for us to stay in touch, but they also encourage us to behave in ways that many people find offensive.  Smartphones draw us in to what’s happening on the handheld device and encourage us to neglect what’s going on around us.  They give us a false sense of importance and make us forget that others are in the room. 

It’s rude to keep one client waiting while you answer a call or a message from another client.  Behavior like that communicates to the client you’re with that the other client is more important and that yourtime is more valuable.  Not only it is bad manners, but while you’re texting you could be missing something important your client is trying to tell you.  Most of us don’t multi-task nearly as well as we think we do.

Yes, it’s true that some clients will be reading their messages while you’re giving your presentation.  It’s also true that some clients will expect to be able to reach you at a moment’s notice and being slow to respond could cost you business.  That said, it’s still better to demonstrate good business etiquette regardless of what others around you are doing:

1. Put the phone on vibrate.  Silence the phone ringer when you’re meeting with a client.
2. Don’t even look at it.  Put the phone away so you’re not tempted to keep glancing at it to see what you’re missing.
3. Alert the client upfront.  If you’re expecting an important call during the meeting, tell the client in advance.  But only take one call like that;  don’t keep jumping up and taking more calls.
4. Leave the room.  If you must take a call during a meeting or a business luncheon, excuse yourself, step out of the room, and conduct your call out of earshot.  When you return, apologize for the interruption.
5. Pay attention to what’s going on around you.  When you’re hosting an open house, for example, focus on your guests.  Pick up your calls and messages afterward.
6. Put your clients first.   When you’re showing homes, give your clients your undivided attention.
7. Talk in a normal voice.  When you do take calls, modulate your voice.  People around you don’t want to hear your conversation.
8. Avoid all distractions.  Remember that texting is no different than talking live on the phone.  Both are distractions when you’re with a client and both are bad manners.

If your handheld device is your constant companion, then you know the lure of constantly checking e-mail of the thrill of getting replies back in minutes.  So here’s a question:  Should real estate negotiations be conducted via e-mail?

There are certainly some obvious benefits.  For one thing, the negotiation will proceed faster; agents using handheld devices can e-mail an entire conversation back and forth in the space of minutes.  For another, it might allow the negotiation to proceed late into the night, long past the time it would be inappropriate to call the other party on the phone.  E-mail also creates a written record, so it’s easy to go back over what’s been said or to review the offers and counter-offers made so far.

But e-mail has its drawbacks.  In an article in the New York Times, Vivian Toy references a study conducted by a Rutgers University business professor who found that people are more likely to lie in an e-mail message than on paper.  There’s also evidence to suggest that people feel they can get away with more in e-mail.  As Toy’s article points out, it’s may be easier for agents to present grossly unattractive offers by e-mail when they know they won’t have to hear their colleague’s disdainful reply. 

So, if you’re going to negotiate using e-mail, here are some things to think about. 

Be careful what you put in writing.  An e-mail offer or counter-offer is business correspondence and shouldn’t be written on the fly or without thinking. Write it, and then review it to make sure your communication is saying what you really want to say.  It might even be a good idea to hold it in your outbox for a few moments and then to review it once more time before sending it.

Be care who what you’re sending and who you’re sending it to.  Many a person has been done in by hitting the “reply” button when they meant to hit “forward” or by including someone on the distribution list who should not have seen the message.  It’s way too easy to accidentally forward the other agent a message that includes what should have been a confidential strategy discussion between you and your client.

Read every message completely before taking action.  Toy’s article tells of an agent who lost a deal because she misread her client’s instructions, countering $5,000 more when her client had actually instructed her to counter $5,000 less.  Again, maybe the rule should be to read it, set it aside for a few moments, then read it again before responding or taking action.

Don’t use e-mail to handle emotional issues.  Emotion is not conveyed well in writing so if you sense the other party is frustrated, upset or angry, pick up the phone.  And certainly do so if you’re the one feeling the emotion.  It’s far better to talk out disagreements or emotional issues than to try to work them through in writing.

CC with caution.  Think carefully about the pros and cons of cc-ing your clients when negotiating with the other side. While doing so keeps them in the loop and gives them up to the minute information, it also gives them the opportunity to respond directly to a message or offer from the other side—or to send their own messages to the other agent and the other client. You have to decide if that’s a good idea.

Don’t make it look too easy!  The sellers have hired you, in part, to negotiate a good deal on their home.  Consider how unimpressed they’ll be about paying you a fee if you manage to negotiate the sale of their home in less than 30 minutes using e-mail.