There’s always something to howl about.

Working with engenu; a painless geek tool even an ‘I’ can love!

I am not a geek!

I like geeks. I get along with geeks, but I ain’t one. Let’s just get that out of the way up front and now you know where I coming from.

I’m a lucky girl; I’ve been playing with engenu. I’ve been on board with the idea of engenu since I first heard about it. It’s very exciting for a lot of reasons, some have been discussed here, but I’m sure there are other uses for engenu that we will discover the more we use it.

You really need to understand that I’m not a geek. On the DISC profile, I’m an ‘I’ with a healthy dose of ‘D’. ‘C’ barely registers. I cannot explain how engenu works so if that is something that is important to you then I shall direct you here. One other thing I want to make clear- Greg didn’t ask me to write about this. I’m writing this because I’m assuming that there is someone else sitting out there reading Bloodhound because you are hungry for something different, something that can differentiate you and the way you do business, and something that gives you control over your marketing. You might be looking at engenu saying to yourself, “easy for you to say Mr. Swann, but what about me?” Me too. All that php and html and whatever else is something I should learn, and should know, and some day I probably will- through osmosis if nothing else- but today I simply want to know what’s in it for me and my clients, and I want it to be easy to use or I’m going to bail.

Well, I’m happy to report that I have been using engenu to help some first time buyers relocating from Florida. They are not looking for suburban starters, they want to get their hands dirty and rehab a historic home. Not too much rehabbing, but they are looking for the charm, the character of older homes and they want to share that love with their neighbors. We talked about the pros and cons of several areas, and they’ve settled on South Park. No, not Park”>that South Park, Historic South Park in Dayton. As an aside, even though they are determined to look at historic homes in the city of Dayton, they found me through my blog, “TheBrickRanch.com; Exploring Huber Heights, brick by brick”. That title didn’t scare them off? Here’s a quote from one of their emails: “I believe open communication rules the world.” Nope, a low maintenance affordable brick ranch is not what they are looking for, but a Dayton Ohio real estate agent who believes in the power of communicating, is.

These clients need to know the details of what is available. They don’t know the area, they don’t know the streets. They need to know if the people next door to the house that looks so lovely on R.com, are growing a spare car part garden in their backyard. They can’t see that what’s behind door #2 is a non-working and completely destroyed bathroom. They also can’t see that the home that they overlooked because of it’s plain exterior has all new windows and has a sealed and clean and dry 130 year old basement, and sits on a boulevard. I could tell them all that, but isn’t it better to show them? Like Greg says, we talk in pictures.

I’m not a geek! New technology doesn’t thrill me unless I can make it productive somehow and even then, it better be easy to use. I’ve understood the power of engenu but was very concerned that it would be too complicated for me to use. But, since I have a very good reason to use engenu, I jumped tiptoed in.

Lo and behold! engenu is easy to use. In fact, the toughest part for me was figuring out how to FTP my photos- if in fact, that’s what I’m doing to my photos, I’m not really clear about that. The beauty part is this: It doesn’t matter if I know what all this is called, I can create something for my clients. I can talk in pictures! I have made one site with four separate slide shows for them so far- very similar to what Greg has shown you here. But last night I whipped up a little engenu page for my own amusement. What took time is choosing the photos, editing them, and writing captions. The “engenu” part takes seconds- Oh thank god! If you’ll indulge me a comparison, if you use Real Estate Shows, it’s very similar to working with that. The difference, and it’s an important difference if you are farming an area or a particular style of home, is that you can use keywords in the titles and descriptions (note to self: Use keywords in your titles!), which will forever link your website to those words. Hooray! Another round of Google juice for everyone! Personally, I think using both tools would be a really powerful and beneficial weapon to have in your arsenal.

You wanna see my little slide show? This .5 hr effort on my part will probably take you 10 minutes tops. Have no fear- geeky tools for ‘I’s are here! Without further delay: Historic Charm (note to self: gotta use those keywords…)