Program Features: Agent Control Panel

Our controls are as easy to use as they are powerful. The welcoming main page of the panel breaks down all of the controls into groups. This way you can quickly navigate to the type of item you need to edit and find the correct editing tool right away.

If you ever manage to get lost, you can always return to the main page to start over. From here you can jump to the subsections each of which has additional details about the type of tools available in that section.

In addition to providing useful tools with plenty of on-screen directions, we have also assembled an intensely thorough Setup Guide to help you create your farming community from the very beginning.

The account editor lets you keep your agent information updated at all times. This tool will let you manage your contact information, photo and profile. There is also a tool that allows you to change your username or password anytime to keep your control panel secure.

Contact Info: Make sure you always provide plenty of ways to contact you for easy access by residents and visitors. Be sure to include your cell phone and email but also perhaps an office or fax number as well.

Photo and Profile: Posting a photograph and your personal agent profile is an important way to gain the trust of your potential clients. When someone is going to make a significant financial investment like real estate, they will want to see the person they are dealing with and see why they are the community expert.

This extremely simple tool is also one of the most important controls for your community website. From here you can name your community, enter a welcoming desciption, upload a community logo, set the web layout and choose a color scheme, upload local photos and so much more. This single tool determines the overall visual presentation of your online community ... and the best part is you will rarely ever need to make any changes here once you set it up the first time!

As you may already know, you can use localized advertising on your website to cover your operation costs! To add an advertiser, all you need is the name of the business, a few short lines of text about the business and a link to their website. The advertiser tool in the control panel makes it easy to create, preview and publish your on-site advertising.

For detailed information about how on-site advertising can help you use your online community website for free, please click here.

Every time a visitor requests access to your public MLS search on the website, you will receive an email alert with their contact information. This information is stored permanently in the IDX Leads database so that you can come back to the control panel and review it anytime. If you consistently follow up on these leads within just a few hours of your email alert you will have more than just a foot in the door with excellent new prospects!

For more about the online lead generation capabilities of our websites, please click here.

The main reason anyone is going to want to come to your website is to look at homes in your market neighborhood. By providing a large amount of information about every home in the community - you are proving exactly why you are the neighborhood specialist. Our set of tools in the property manager make it simple and the Setup Guide explains everything.

Property Import: Starting a farmed marketing community can be very time-consuming when trying to input each and every property within the neighborhood ... but it doesn't have to be! Our property import tool lets you use a disk or file full of property information from your title company and imports the entire farm at once!

Property Editor: Once you have imported all of your properties then you can show your expertise by adding more information that you have on file or personalizing the property pages with photos and descriptions.

Another great part about our system is that you are not alone when it comes to editing properties! The residents can also edit their own property information and you will receive an email alert each time this happens!

The most successful neighborhood real estate agent is the one who gets the community residents involved from the very beginning. When you create your farm and import the properties, a special login account is created for each and every home within the community so that the residents can participate in the interactive features that are available only to residents.

Once you get your online community website setup initially, the very next thing you need to do is introduce yourself and your website to the residents in the community. Get them involved in the news and events posting, get them talking to each other through the message center, and most of all let them know that you will be there whenever they need you!

For more about the tools and special features available to residents, please click here.

Part of being the neighborhood specialist is providing large amounts of information about the community itself. The community information editor in our system is setup to make that easy!

Just select a category of information, and start typing as if you were telling someone about the features and benefits of living in the community. Be specific and give examples of places, people, groups and events. The more information you provide on your website, the easier your sales presentations will become!

Becoming an authoritative resource for anything is part of being recognized as the expert. The community links are broken up into categories which not only makes them easy to find for visitors but also easy to input for you.

Make sure to include links to the local government and emergency services. Add links for all the local schools and education programs. Other categories include areas for churches, cultural groups and of course you will want to include any local businesses.

This section lets you display the type of information that draws someone into this area. Is there a theme park or museum nearby? What about shopping or entertainment hotspots? Are there tourist destinations nearby? This is the place to add all of these types of places.

You can include some items that might appear in your community information or community links as well since the Local Attractions page lets you show addresses phone numbers instead of just website links.

When you open your online community website, the first default news item will be included announcing the launch of this excellent new Internet resource. From there it is up to you how the news section is used.

Publish community bulletins, real estate news and other items of local interest. Encourage the residents in your community to participate.

Since basic community information doesn't change often, adding news items will also help your website stay fresh and help your search engine placement.

Everyone including residents and visitors want to know what is going on in a community. Is there an annual town festival coming up? When is the arts and crafts fair? What about town meetings?

Adding local events demonstrates your community knowledge and awareness. Encouraging the residents to post their own events is yet another great way to get them involved in your online community.

The message center is basically an online communication network that ties all of the residents within a farming community together. As the local real estate agent you can send out "blast emails" to let everyone in the community know about important information. Residents can also send out this type of email to all of their neighbors letting them know about an upcoming event, an important news item or something as simple as a lost dog or spontaneous block party.

The message center includes all the typical folders you will find in a normal email system - inbox, saved items, sent items and trash. It also includes a handy address book that shows contact information for every other resident in the community. So reaching out to their neighbors is as easy as a few clicks!

The ability for residents to communicate with you - their neighborhood specialist - and with each other is a huge reason for them to come back to your website over and over. This type of special feature access is exactly why they will bring you their business!

Although we may not be in our office 24 hours a day, 7 days a week - our system allows you to request assistance whenever you need it! If you have a question about any aspect of our system - including the website, resident center or control panel - just send us a support issue and we will do our best to get to you within one business day. The more information you give us about your question or situation - the more efficiently we will be able to resolve your issue.

We look forward to helping you!

We recognize that often the best ideas for new features are most likely to come from the real estate agents using the system. Our feature wishlist allows any agent within the system to suggest new features for any aspect of our program. If you have any ideas about ways to make our marketing system serve you better, please take a moment and share your ideas with us so we can continue to provide you with a complete community marketing package.