In today’s market, building a strong online reputation is increasingly important. So many people begin their search for housing, cars, services, and other products on the web now that your web presence becomes as vital to your brand as the manner in which you conduct business.

The moment you sign up for a vFlyer account, you are instantly given a live, stand-alone website called an Account Profile. This page serves as your listing inventory, displaying links to all of your published vFlyer listings in real time and making it easier to cross-sell your listings to prospective customers. For many vFlyer users, the Account Profile becomes their website, and there are several things that users can do to optimize their Account Profiles:

• adding contact information, a photo, company logo, a description of the business, and (for business subscribers) links to external sites
• applying a custom theme to it (again, only for business subscribers). This is especially effective if you have a custom branded theme such as this one.
• adding search and sort functionality, which enables prospective customers to more easily find listings that fit their criteria
• mapping a domain name to it, made easy through our Domain Plus service

Your Account Profile is, by default, also integrated into your flyers through the “More Listings” or “View Other Flyers” link, another reason to make it look sharp.

So that’s the skinny on the Account Profile. If you want a more detailed tutorial on how to set it up, here’s a new video we added a couple weeks ago:

Setting Up Your Account Profile

This week’s featured custom theme comes down to us from Hood River, Oregon, where our friend Maui Meyer and Copper West Properties are located. Copper West Properties is a company that’s very much tied to the Hood River area and that connection to the place is a big part of its company identity. They created a wonderful custom theme that not only incorporates the branding from their website but also captures the landscape of Hood River. I especially like the backgoround image of a topographical map of the area they use. It makes perfect sense for a company for which its location plays such an essential role.

Nice work, Copper West!

We’re planning to feature some themes for the summer in the next couple weeks, so if anyone has a summery custom theme they want featured, send them to us at support@vflyer.com. And if you haven’t done so, now’s the time to check out vFlyer’s branded listing tools and create your own custom theme today!

We have another great vacation rental custom theme this week, this one from Northern Shores Vacation Rentals in Traverse City, Michigan. It has an excellent header image that integrates their logo, website address, and a brief description of their business very nicely. They also make good use of one of vFlyer’s stock background images (the wavey blue page background), available to any vFlyer user. And the colors of the theme convey the light, beachy look that they’re going for. Their flyers make me nostalgic for my days in Michigan (go Wolverines!).

We’ll be returning next Friday with another custom theme of the week, so if you have a fantastic custom theme that you want the world to see, let us know by emailing support@vflyer.com and you may get your theme on our blog!

I’m excited to announce that vFlyer has integrated with Realty DataTrust’s VaultWare product. The alliance between vFlyer and VaultWare makes it even easier for property managers who use VaultWare to promote their available units on Craigslist as well as other online marketplaces where vFlyer automatically submits listings. Through this partnership, individual flyers will automatically be created for each floor plan offered by the property through a daily content feed from VaultWare. Pricing updates and other content changes made within VaultWare will automatically be applied to the flyers each time the content feed is processed. The flyers and the Craigslist-compatible HTML code generated by vFlyer will also include a link for users to check availability, reserve, and pre-qualify for apartments online via VaultWare directly from Craigslist.

If your company or apartment community is already using VaultWare, the new vFlyer-VaultWare product offers you a comprehensive content management and online marketing solution. By generating content from the data in VaultWare, vFlyer maximizes the efficiency of advertising your available units online.

Realty DataTrust Corporation, located in Scottsdale, Arizona, offers online leasing solutions for the multifamily housing industry that help consumers reserve apartments online and increase a property’s efficiency and occupancy rates. VaultWare is Realty DataTrust’s innovative service that integrates rental data into ILS systems, updates the data on the ILSs automatically, and allows prospective tenants to view available rentals in real time.

If you would like to learn more about the new vFlyer-VaultWare integration, please contact our sales team at 1-800-594-5930 or sales@vflyer.com.

I am please to announce that we are now offering free bi-weekly Webinars for our members. The vFlyer Marketing Service is chock full of features and marketing tools, many of which our users are making good use of. That said, there are probably several that you aren’t aware of. For instance, have you utilized the email flyer list tool, allowing you to send a set of up to 7 listings in one email? Or did you know that you can choose the theme for your Account Profile? We want to do everything we can to help our members optimize their marketing efforts, and our hope is that the Webinars will help achieve this.

We will hold two 30-minute Webinars per week. In general, one will be a general overview of how to use the vFlyer service and the other will focus on a specific feature of the service. The first Webinar will be on Tuesday, March 30, at 11:00 am PDT and will be a general overview. Sign-up for Webinar.

I believe that these Webinars will be informative and hopefully fun. If you have questions about the Webinar program, please let us know by contacting support@vflyer.com.

Our custom theme of the week comes from Stacie Linka at Big Bear Cabins, a vacation rental company in Big Bear Lake, California. Big Bear Cabins has a stellar website and a well-defined brand that fits perfectly with the Big Bear Lake setting. Stacie’s theme nicely matches the website and works well with the excellent cabin photos she includes in her flyers.

In vacation rentals, you’re selling not just a short stay in a house but the whole idea of a place, and Big Bear Cabins’s theme helps convey the sense of the rustic comfort of Big Bear Lake. Nicely done, Stacie!

As the holidays are almost upon us, I’ll be highlighting some seasonal and holiday themed flyers in next week’s post. If you have a winter or holiday theme that you want showcased, feel free send it to us at support@vflyer.com.

After a brief hiatus of the CTOTW series, we’re back in style with a lovely custom theme from Sheldon and Rachel Hart of the Columbia River Gorge area in southern Washington. I love their header image: practically a work of art in itself, it contains a dramatic illustration and only the most important information that the authors want to convey to their potential customers, in this case, their website address. It’s beautiful in its simplicity and effectiveness. The rest of the theme, from the color scheme to the fonts they chose, are in perfect harmony with each other. And it’s just a great looking flyer, with high-resolution photos, a handsome logo, and a good amount of information; it’s thorough without being overwhelming.

For a useful introduction to creating and using custom themes, take a look at this series of short video tutorials on our website.

Through the end of this month, we’re offering a free custom branded theme to any auto dealer or service provider with an annual subscription. If you fall under one of these categories, contact support@vflyer.com to claim your free theme. If you have a monthly subscription, we can create a custom theme for you for a discount price of $59.

Again, kudos to Sheldon and Rachel for making such a nice custom theme. If you want your custom theme spotlighted or have come across a custom theme that you think is great, let us know! We love to see the fantastic themes that our users are creating.

Our friend, Ryan Hinricher from Investor Nation in Memphis recently told us that he wanted to be able to email a set of featured listings to his mailing list. We thought it was a great idea, so we introduced the feature for all vFlyer business subscribers. This means that in addition to being able to email a single Flyer through your vFlyer account, you can now create a list of up to seven listings and send the list in a single email. You can choose from four different layouts for the email and apply any standard themes or custom themes in your account to the email. Here’s an example of a featured listings email:

Pretty cool, right? You can access this new feature by clicking the Account tab, then clicking the Email Flyer List sub-tab. To create a list, simply click Create New List and choose the Flyers and/or Teasers that you want to include. Then choose the layout and theme for the email, type a subject line, enter or import the email addresses you are sending to, and send it off.  We even provide the HTML content of the email in case you want to send via another email service. 

We hope you enjoy the new Featured Flyers email option. If you have feedback on it or other feature requests, let us know by emailing support@vflyer.com.

Welcome to the future of online advertising. Don’t stay silent in the crowded online marketplace. Speak up and give voice to your advertisements with our new innovative vFlyer Voice service. vFlyer Voice allows you to easily record voice narration that will play when people view your Flyers. Adding narration to your listings elevates them from simple slide shows to all-out virtual tours.

Did I mention that vFlyer Voice is incredibly easy to use? How easy, you ask? It’s as simple as answering a phone call. To record your voice messages, simply enter your telephone number in the vFlyer Voice application and our system will call you and enable you to record your narration over the phone. It’s really that easy.

You can record voice annotations for each photo in the slideshow or record a single message for your entire Flyer slideshow. The choice is yours. See vFlyer Voice in action…

One voice recording for each photo

One voice recording for the entire slideshow

vFlyer voice is available only to vFlyer business subscribers, so if you don’t have a business subscription, upgrade today to take advantage of this groundbreaking advertising tool. Why stay quiet? Speak up and unleash the power of your listings with vFlyer Voice.

Happy Friday! Our custom theme of the week comes from Astrid Zelaya, Consultant at Rent-One. This is such a well-composed theme where each aspect – the header image, background image, theme colors, and the other design elements – works beautifully with all the others. Also, Astrid takes advantage of our Showcase layout for Craigslist (see picture below), one of 10 Craigslist layouts available to business subscribers when they use a custom theme (and my personal favorite).

This Flyer is also a good example of a commercial real estate ad created through the vFlyer application. vFlyer now offers templates for office, industrial, and retail space, commercial land, shopping centers, and multi-unit buildings. The combination of vFlyer’s branding capabilities and these new categories is great news for all you commercial brokers out there.

Fantastic custom theme, Astrid! Keep up the good work!

If you have a vFlyer account and you haven’t yet created a custom theme, give it a try this weekend. You can create a custom theme in literally 5 minutes, and it will give you access to features of the vFlyer service that you couldn’t access before. Here’s a video to get you started.

We’ll be back next Friday with another Custom Theme of the Week, so if you’ve created or seen a custom theme and think it should be spotlighted, let us know by emailing support@vflyer.com.

Beginning July 1, all California Realtors will need to include their CA DRE license number on any “solicitation materials intended to be the first point of contact with consumers,” as stated in a bill passed by the California State Senate (SB 1461). While the new amendment excludes electronic media, since vFlyer also provides print content for our users, we wanted to make sure that they had a way to include their DRE license number on their Flyers. That’s why we introduced an Additional Info field in the Account Profile, where you can enter not only your CA DRE license number but also other information, such as a mobile phone number. And given that different states have different laws regarding real estate advertising, the Additional Info field gives users more flexibility in terms of what information gets included in their Flyers and Account Profile.

You can find the Additional Info field on your Account page. Any text you enter in this field will appear in the Contact Information section of your Flyers (see images below).

Thanks to Chris Crane at Red Oak Realty, Kristine Johnson at Gallagher & Lindsey Realtors, and Jason Born of Signature Realty & Mortgage, Inc., for providing us with useful feedback on the new California law.

If you need assistance, call or email vFlyer Support.

We’re introducing a new blog feature, the “Custom Theme of the Week”. We have so many great custom themes that our members have created using the Theme Editor and their own creativity and resourcefulness, we decided we had to show them off to the rest of the world. This week’s custom theme is from Ryan Hinricher at InvestorNation. Ryan made great use of an uploaded background image and a header image that’s seamlessly integrated with the background. I especially like the upward-pointing arrow in the logo and the contrast of white and blue between the header and background; it gives me a whole new way of thinking about what’s possible with the Theme Editor. Everyone on my team is quite impressed by this custom theme. Nice work, Ryan!

vFlyer’s Theme Editor enables any user to create his or her own custom theme and any business subscriber to upload a branded header image to a theme. It’s a great way of making your Flyers stand out from the rest, and the branding capabilities for business subscribers provide a vehicle for putting your brand front and center on your Flyers. For a useful introduction to creating and using custom themes, take a look at this series of short video tutorials on our website.

We expect to post a new theme every Friday, so keep an eye out for more fantastic custom themes. And if you’ve created a custom theme and think it should be spotlighted, let us know by emailing support@vflyer.com!

The last few weeks have been busy at vFlyer and I wanted to fill you in on some of the great new features we’ve introduced in that time. There are four new features and capabilities in particular that I want to highlight:

First, we added 8 new Craigslist layouts for our vFlyer business subscribers when you publish a Flyer using a custom theme. Now you can choose how your flyers will look on Craigslist. You want bigger photos? Check. You want creative and attractive layouts? Check. See for yourself… New Craigslist Layouts. Also, visit the vFlyer Support Wiki for information on how to use these new Craigslist Layouts.

Second, we enhanced our print content for our vFlyer business subscribers. Now when you print a Flyer that uses a custom theme, you will get a whole second page full of photos. This feature was added due to the popular demand of our users. You see… we do actually listen to you. There are more print layouts on the way.

Third, we added a new narrow blog layout for our vFlyer business subscribers. The blog layout is 480 pixels wide and thus fits most major blog sites including Active Rain and Localism. When you publish a flyer with a custom theme, you can access the blog layout HTML by selecting Blog from the HTML drop-down menu. Then all you have to do is copy and paste the HTML to the blog of your choice. It’s that easy!

Last but not least, you can now share your Flyers on Twitter. When you publish a Flyer, a Share on Twitter link will appear under the More Options section on the right side of the Publish Successful page. We have even created a special shortened URL for Twitter that fits well within the 140 character limit. If you want to get the word out about your Flyer, use Twitter and you can connect with millions of others. For more information on the rapidly increasing popularity of Twitter, check out this article from TechCrunch.

We hope you enjoy these new features. As we continue to enhance our services to make vFlyer better and better, feel free to offer any suggestions you have on how we can make vFlyer work best for you. Send your feedback to support@vflyer.com. We look forward to hearing from you!

I am pleased to announced the first of many service releases to support members outside the U.S. This release focuses on the needs of Canadian members. First, we added support for Canadian addresses and currency. Second, we added support for automatic submission of Canadian listings to Backpage.com and Vast.com. We expect to add more partner sites for Canadian listings in the coming months. Third, we updated our registration process to enable Canadian users to enter their postal code and timezone so that we can provide traffic reports and display times on your listings accurately. I am certain that we will receive more suggestions from our new and existing Canadian members. Thanks in advance.

Here is an example of one of the first published flyers with the new Canadian support: