Mary's Blog

Top 5 Easy and Effective Listing Posts You Can Write for Your Real Estate Blog

Hey, real estate agents should be too busy to blog. It's a fact. So, sometimes you need quick, easy and effective posts that take minimal time and brain power. So, here are examples of simple posts that will quickly become cornerstone pieces on your blog.

Please note, most of these revolve around you knowing your way around the MLS and listings. Why? Because every successful real estate blogger knows, the bread and butter of their blog are posts about listings.

Read also: The First 30 Days of Blogging

1. A monthly top 10 listings post.

This is a very simple post. Each month, you probably walk through upwards of 20 homes and view even more on the MLS with clients. So, make a list of your favorite picks for various types of buyers.

Examples:

• Top 10 Denver CO Homes for first time home buyers
• Top 10 Salt Lake City real estate investments
• Top 5 Fort Lauderdale Foreclosures

How to implement this post:

• Use MLS data like listing info, address, description, photos (if copyrights do not prohibit you) etc.
• Make your own brief analysis of what makes each home a best buy or good investment (be specific - people like specifics)

Read also:Top 5 Easy and Effective Listing Posts You Can Write for Your Real Estate Blog

2. Use a listing that has sat on the MLS for months to show what prevents a home from selling

Hey, you've been in the house or you have seen it on the MLS. You know the house. The one where the front yard hasn't been tended to or the home is never in showing condition or the MLS info plain old stinks. Or worse yet, the home is just grossly overpriced. Take an explicit example from the MLS of a home that has sat on the market for months and explain all the problems with it and why it isn't selling.

Examples:

• Why this 3 bedroom DC Condo won't sell and how you can make sure yours does
• Why great San Diego Homes like these go unsold
• Why good Portland homes can't sell and bad ones do

How to implement this post:

• Find one home that has sat on the market for a while that you can clearly identify why it has not sold. It is preferable to pick a home that you have been inside.
• Use MLS data like listing info, address, description, photos (if copyrights do not prohibit you) or take your own photos etc.
• What is preventing the home from selling and list things that the Realtor or Seller could do to help this home get sold.\

Read also: Formula for a Successful Blog Post

 

3. Compare and contrast two similar listings

Take two similar listings and compare them. Determine the features, amenities, benefits and shortcomings of each. Show why one home is a better buy over the other. This is a perfect post to put together after you have been out all day showing a buyer homes because the homes you just saw are fresh in your mind. You probably also have a good understanding of what your seller liked and disliked about each home.

Examples:

• A tale of two Long Beach Condos: comparing studio beachfront condos
• How to spot the best 2 bedroom San Mateo home for your family
• What to look for when looking at Virginia Beach 3 bedroom homes

How to implement this post:

• Find two very similar listings (preferably ones you have been in) - create a 2 column table in your blog post with one listing on the left side and the other on the right.
• Detail each listing: Use MLS data like listing info, address, description, photos (if copyrights do not prohibit you) or take your own photos etc.
• Compare the benefits on each home
• Compare the drawbacks of each home
• Below the table, make your recommendations of what makes one home a better real estate purchase than the other.

Read also: How to write cornerstone and flagship content

EXAMPLE: See Kevin's recent comparison of these two Fair Oaks homes.

4. Show why certain homes actually sold this month

By now, you probably know you need to do market reports at least once per month. In the process of building a market report for your blog you likely have looked at the sold properties. Often you can tell it was perfectly priced, it was undervalued, it had terrific upgrades, it's location was ideal, it had a great Realtor, etc. So, take one of those homes and use it to show how you get a home sold.

Examples:

• Why this Rancho Palos Verdes Home Sold in 3 Months
• How to get your Alta Loma house to sell just like this one did
• What makes a condo Clearwater Beach sell in under 90 days

How to implement this post:

• This post is best done while or shortly after you compile your monthly market report since you will be looking at sold properties. Check out recently sold homes and condos and pick one that would make a good example of good pricing, marketing, seller behavior and go to town.
• Detail each listing: Use MLS data like listing info, address, description, photos (if copyrights do not prohibit you) or take your own photos etc.

Show the specific attributes of the home, the seller, the pricing, the marketing or the Realtor that made this home sell.

5. Show consumers why Zillow data is not useful

OK, I know just about every Realtor out there has a bone to pick with the big 'ol Z. So, here is a kinder, gentler way to pick that bone while educating the consumer on what Zillow data really tells them and why they really need a savvy Realtor (i.e. you)

Examples:

• Is Zillow trying to undersell this 4 bedroom Palos Altos estate
• What to do if Zillow undervalues your Cape Cod home in a Zestimate
• Hey, my Lake Park home is worth more on Zillow than my Realtor is telling to sell for

(Most of these titles were actually driven from questions and answers from TruliaVoices and Yahoo Answers.)

NOTE: Do yourself a favor - take screenshots of Zillow data and post it in the blog post- do not link directly to Zillow data as it can change and more importantly, you don't want to give link love to Zillow when it is your direct competitor on the search engines.

How to implement this post:

• Find a listing that is way over or undervalued in Zillow and the corresponding entry in the MLS. It would preferable if it were your listing so you can show how you claim it to correct the situation
• Detail the listing: Use MLS data like listing info, address, description, photos (if copyrights do not prohibit you) or take your own photos etc.
• Take sceen shot of the Zillow information
• Explain what is wrong with the Zillow data for this particular listing
• Then, detail how you, as a savvy Realtor would act to improve the situation

NOTE: If you have an example of having written a post like the ones mentioned above or have other interesting ways of writing listing pieces, please let me know in the comments of this post and I would be happy to use it as an example in this post or others and will give you a high quality backlink from the RSS Pieces site (PageRank5).

REAL ESTATE AGENT AND BROKERAGE BLOGS 

• SEOs all content to guarantee fast Google placement
Proof: First Page Google placement in 2.5 months

• Calls visitors to action so you generate more leads
Proof: Generate 30 leads per day with the right tools

 

 

 

SEO tricks that can have your blog ranking better in 24 hours

Ever wonder why 70% of all RSS Pieces real estate blogs have first page search engine placement? 1. We have a great, feature rich blogging platform and 2. We advise our bloggers to use simple SEO techniques that work fast. These techniques are so simple you can begin implementing them in minutes and start seeing results within 24 hours. Don't believe me? Ask Cyndee Haydon, Mariana Wagner, Laurie Manny, Ines Garcia, Diane Aurit. Dennis Blackmore, etc. Heck, ask people we help that aren't our clients like Colleen Kulikowski. (That's right- we help people that aren't our clients- so, unlike other vendors- our HELP and advice is ALWAYS FREE and publicly available.  I, personally, host daily public webinars where I DO NOT PITCH my services.  I give you the help you need to make your website and/or blog a success. So, if you like what you find here... come and join one of the public webinars. I pormise you - you will learn something new and valuable.)

1. Update old posts to provide Google with new food on old pages.

Google actually likes to see that you update old posts. Think about it from an efficiency standpoint. If you had to index billions of pages regularly, wouldn't you start taking shortcuts if a page hadn't changed in the past 2 years- wouldn't you just say, "hey, I'll just skip that one today - or maybe not come back to re-index it for a few months since it never changes?" Those kinds of pages can start to look abandoned and cause engines to crawl them less frequently. Now, on the flip side, if you saw that new content was being added and old pages changed regularly, wouldn't you want to go back and index them often to keep your content current? You'd probably feel pretty good about doing that since you get new information and you were not wasting your time. Well, that is pretty much how Google feels. So, by updating old posts you can get more frequent crawls deep into your site and keep Google interested in those old posts. The result is that those old posts can perform very well in the SERPs for long periods of time.

What to change:

• If the post is older and has lost some relevancy, update the actual content to be more relevant and keyword rich
• Often when we first begin to blog, we forget basic copyrighting techniques like using scanable text or heading tags, make sure you re format old posts that read like walls of words.

Read also: Formula for a Successful Blog Post

• Update the anchor texts in internal links to have better keyword value. Anchor text is the actual text you click on inside of a link. So, instead of linking with RSS Pieces or Click Here, you would want to link with keyword rich text like Real Estate Agent Blog Service
• Make sure that in each post you include at least one link out to another resource site on the Net - this keeps Google and other crawlers moving through your site and out onto the web - facilitating the overall crawl of the web. If you never link out to other sites then some crawlers can get stuck in loops on your site.

Resource: SEO Tips: Increase Page Rank By Revitalizing Your Old Posts

2. Put your most important posts on your home page or closer to the top of your site.

Put links to your most visited, useful or highest PageRank posts in widget boxes close to the surface of your website. This does two things, it directs readers to what you would consider your most useful content that has the greatest likelihood of converting them into leads and allows you to flow PageRank through to these pages to boost them in value and possibly in SERP. 

See how I hand selected some of my most useful, important and high PR posts from deep inside the site to publish on the home page? This helps me direct users to important posts that will be useful to them and possibly call them to action.  While also offering Google high quality pages from deep inside the site and pages I would like to improve PR on.

Resource: The best WHITEBOARD FRIDAY EVER! OK, so we are all sitting pretty on some Give It Up! Session info from SMX -but this is SEOmoz's valiant effort to keep those waiting for the secrets tied over until July when we can talk about it!

Resource: 2007 Give It Up! Secrets

 

3. Leak PageRank strategically from high PageRank posts to other important posts with lower PageRank within your own site.

This also means you can become a strategic follow blog. For example, check out the RSS Pieces comments- notice how all our clients are members and when they comment they get a link with the no follow removed. This is me strategically helping my clients. You might also notice that I place no follow tags on archive links, paginated links and links that might go to a form which would not hold much value for Google. This is me protecting the high value pages on my site and saving Google some time in indexing my site so it only gets the pages that have true value.

Resource: How PageRank works and why the original PageRank formula may be flawed

Resource: Controlling the flow of PageRank

Resource: Sculpting PageRank works pretty darned well

Just because I hate blogrolls: How a blogroll can kill your PageRank through PR leak

4. Make sure that if you are duplicating content, Google selects the original copy or copy on your personal, branded blog as the one that remains in the index when the duplicate content filter catches up with you.

This means always post on your branded personal blog first, wait a couple of days to make sure Google indexes the content, then when you repost the content on ActiveRain, Localism or other social/syndication sites make sure you include a link back to the original article on your branded blog. Why? Because Matt Cutts says so. And because Google looks at two things when determining which copy to keep in its index - creation date of the post and if one post gives authority to the other (i.e. a link back).

"My advice would be 1) to avoid over-syndicating the articles that you write, and 2) if you do syndicate content, make sure that you include a link to the original content. That will help ensure that the original content has more PageRank, which will aid in picking the best documents in our index." - Matt Cutts, Feb 1, 2008

5. Comment smart.

If you are going to go out there and comment for backlinks follow these rules:

• Use the Do Follow Blog Directory to find other blogs you can comment on where you will get a backlink.
• Verify this is true by ALWAYS running SEO for Firefox (for those of you that don't know- all no follow tagged links have a red background when running SEO for Firefox)
• ALWAYS use RankQuest or the Google Toolbar so you can see PageRank easily for each page you visit
• Don't worry if the blog is not a real estate blog. Plenty of business and technology or home décor/gardening sites would work just as well if not better. Just look for well trusted higher PageRank sites and comment on them insightfully. No "good post" crap- be real- these people are giving you a good link- treat them with respect by reading their post and commenting astutely.
• DON'T comment on the first article you see- search through the archives to find higher PageRank (PR3+) pages with few comments (under 10) and comment on those pages. That is truly what will give you the juice to boost your PR and SERP. It takes many times the number of PR1-3 sites to get to the top of the engine than it does PR4+ sites, you concentrate your efforts on higher PR pages with a site.

REAL ESTATE AGENT AND BROKERAGE BLOGS

• SEOs all content to guarantee fast Google placement
Proof: First Page Google placement in 2.5 months

• Calls visitors to action so you generate more leads
Proof: Generate 30 leads per day with the right tools

 

 

 

Landing Page Optimization is an essential component of good web design. It is the process of improving a visitor's perception of a website by optimizing its content and appearance in order to make the pages more appealing to the target audiences, as measured by target goals such as conversion rate. What does that really mean? Basically, it means you need to make individual pages on your blog or website so simple and compelling that visitors WANT to contact you. And, isn't that what we all want... people to contact you through your website?

So, how do you optimize the layout, calls to actions and content of your real estate agent blog or website to get more conversion?

1. Identify mission critical parts of your website and their true economic value

Your only answer should be "my conversion forms." As a Realtor, your conversion forms should be one or more of the following:

• Contact form
• Search for properties registration form
• CMA/House Value form
• Market report form
• Special Offer/Newsletter form

These forms are the most important pages on your site because they are where conversion from visitor to contact takes place. Therefore, each of these forms has to be clearly identified, visible on each and every page of your real estate blog and incite people to want to click them.

Read also: Let's Talk Landing Page Optimization by SEOmoz

2. Define important visitor classes and key conversion tasks

This one is easy, real estate blogs typically have 3-4 qualified visitor types with the following conversion motivations and conversion points

Visitor Class	Conversion Task	Conversion Forms
Home buyers	Looking for a home	1. Search for homes 2. Contact 3. 3. Special offers
Home sellers	looking for Realtor to represent their home and successfully sell it	1. CMA 2. Contac 3. Special Offers 4. Market Snapshot
Investors	looking for a guide to the area's investment properties	1. Search for homes 2. Special Offers 3. Market Snapshot 4. Contact
Realtors	they are looking to refer out business or a job with your company	1. Agent Listings 2. Contact

Tip: See how the Jove Team of Rancho Cucamonga is using a content call to action to build conversion traffic for their brand new real estate site.

Read also: What Pamela Anderson can teach you about calling readers to action

Resource: Copywriting Maven's Landing Page Makeover Clinic #11

3. Gain insight on customer decision-making and make your page friction-free.

This one is simple - literally- make the page simple and the call to actions explicit. A simple design is the most important thing you can do for your real estate blog. The design should feel simple, easy to navigate with your most important tools (lead generators) towards the top of the page with explicit calls to action.

A Lesson in Simplicity from Google: Ever consider why Google owns search when Yahoo! Was the predominate search engine throughout the 90's? The reason is simplicity. When Yahoo and MSN turned themselves into portal sites, Google, did one thing... search and they did it well. As people were just learning how to navigate complex pages, Google, decided to simply answer one single question for users "How do I find what I am looking for on the Internet." Google's home page reflected that. All that you could do there was search and because of that Google WON search in less than 5 years.

Your home page needs to be "Google Simple." That means, make your call to actions explicit and identifiable. Put them at the top of EVERY page, make sure they have compelling copy and images that represent the function.

Read also: Get more real estate leads with killer call to actions on your blog and website

Read also: Steal these buttons: free real estate call to action buttons

Bonus tip: Place Lead Generators in Easy to Find Locations: Always start with a solid layout that directs visitors to your lead generators and includes the following:

• Your phone number and/or address on each page of your site
• An easy to find contact form
• An easy to find lead generating CMA and Property Search tool

Read also: Real estate blog rookie mistakes

4. Uncover problems with your page and decide which elements to test and how to test

USE TOOLS that let you graphically track clicks on your pages. One of the most important things you can ever track is where people are clicking on your homepage. It will show you if your lead generators and call to action content is working. For example, I use a tool that allows me to graphically track page clicks as seen below.

As you can see (this click traffic is from a 1 hour window) my best call to action is the win a blog icon with my second best being the join a webinar button followed by the buy a blog icon. The most import thing this traffic pattern shows me is that my calls to action work. I get plenty of clicks per hour which is exactly what I want to see.

You can track this metric by using VisiStat's Touch Mapping heat map tool which will show you what area of your site get clicked the most. VisiStat's Touch Mapping overlay report is one of the fastest, most accurate ways to see exactly what links, products and information your visitors are interested in. I recommend VisitStat because it is cheap (around $20/mo) and gives you some great tools to not only track traffic but conversion so you can use it to optimize your landing pages.

Resource: Emotional Motivators in lkanding Page Optimization

Resource:

I highly recommend purchasing the following book. It will teach you everything you need to know about how to optimize your pages for the best possible conversion rates. Since using the tips and tricks I learned in this book on the RSS Pieces site, we improved our convertable traffic by more than 720% in under 3 weeks.

Best Book on the Subject: Landing Page Optimization: The Definitive Guide to Testing and Tuning for Conversions

 

 

 

 

My rant on why everyone should have a basic understanding of what white, gray and black hat SEO can and should be used for.

So, every once in a while I get a comment or a cluster of comments (suspiciously from the same IP yet registered to different emails and domains, hmmm... how diabolical of you) where I get told I don't know what I am talking about or I am a black hat SEO and give black hat (I guess this is the code for "bad") advice. Let's set the record straight here. I am an active member of a number of black hat forums. I practice and experiment with all forms of SEO which includes black hat techniques. Why? Because in order to speak with any authority on the overall subject of SEO, shouldn't I know how to practice and apply each discipline within the study? You don't go to medical school and say "I will read the books but not cut the cadaver" or "I know this is about the whole body but I'm not interested in learning about the anus - I just don't feel right about it."

OK, back to the topic at hand. So, yeah, I know some black hat stuff. Could I make a living at it? Probably not, but I understand and can effectively use the principles to get a site to the top of the engines very quickly for valuable terms. Does that make me a "black hat?" In some people's eyes it may. Do I take offense to it? No. I consider it a compliment. When I get a comment asserting that I am a black hat, it indicates that the commenter recognized I had a knowledge base of more than just white hat SEO. So, while, the commenter more often than not cannot correctly identify black hat tactics, I still consider it a great compliment that they felt my knowledge base extended to things he is too "ethical" to study.

So, for you to understand what the various disciplines within the study of SEO are here is my explanation:

SEO techniques are classified by some into three broad categories:

White Hat:

Definition:

Search engine placement that results from completely natural built backlinks and optimized HTML. This is the Google approved version of SEO where you optimize your on page content and code then naturally and virally build backlinks.

Time line to results:

Depending on the competitiveness of your keyword, White Hat SEO can be a slow and laborious process. However if you want a site to stick around in the engines, you need to use these tactics.

Consequences:

WILL NOT GET YOU PENALIZED OR BANNED IN SEARCH RESULTS BUT CAN TAKE A LONG TIME TO SEE RESULTS

What types of sites to use this tactic on:

Sites that need to rank and stay ranked for long periods of time

Strategies:

Exact match domains, title tag optimization, meta data optimization, content richness, keyword density, HTML optimization, consistent, natural and viral backlink building, etc.

 

Gray Hat:

Definition:

That which is mostly white hat but may push the limits and is designed to aggressively seek backlinks - this mostly applies to off page SEO and the acquisition of backlinks - meaning, you are actively commenting for backlinks with keyword rich text, buying directory listings, reciprocating links with others, duplicating/syndicating content, etc. These tactics generally will not get you banned, but when used too aggressively can get you penalized, meaning they can cause some results dampening.

Time line to results:

Rankings can improve very quickly

Consequences:

MIGHT GET YOU PENALIZED OR BANNED IN SEARCH RESULTS IF USED TOO AGGRESSIVELY

What types of sites to use this tactic on:

There is always a fine line between white and gray hat and most "white" sites do use some gray strategies like link exchanging or blogrolling, so the same types of sites that would use white hat would also use gray hat.

Strategies:

keyword richness (bordering on spammy), moderate use of mirror sites or doorway pages, duplicate content, link purchases, aggressive link building, reciprocal link exchanges, etc.

Black Hat:

Definition:

Black Hat SEO (so often considered bad) has its place and purpose. Just because it's place and purpose might not be within the real estate sphere does not make it evil. So, let's explain it. Black Hat SEO works. It can get you to the top of the engines quickly for valuable keywords. You can make a lot of money using it and a lot of people do. The key to making this strategy work is to using the right tools, implementing the principles strategically and using them in moderation.

Time line to results:

Depending on the competitiveness of a keyword you can see results very very quickly. Sometimes within a day - for more competitive terms you can see placement within a few weeks.

Strategies: Computer generated content, blog farming, spamdexing, link buys, link exchanges, doorway pages, mirror sites, duplicated content, link dumping, trackback/comment spamming, etc.

Consequences:

MORE THAN LIKELY WILL EVENTUALLY GET YOU PENALIZED OR BANNED IN SEARCH RESULTS AND CAN CAUSE FULL SITE DEINDEXING

What types of sites to use this tactic on:

Not every product, business or website requires indefinite positioning on a search engine. For example, subscription based and time sensitive sites might not need to have indefinite placement.

Subscription Based Service Application

Let's say you want to build a subscription based service with a volume of repeat clients. So, you go after one of the most coveted terms on earth "Buy Viagra." To make money on this term you need to get to the top of the engines fast, stay there for a few months, build your clientele and just sit back and collect on the monthly recurring from your cache of repeat customers. It's not necessary for you to be on top forever- just long enough to build critical mass.

Time Sensitive Application

Not every website can wait to get that positioning - for example, if you had an event in one month and you started a website today - this site needs to rank for reasonably competitive terms very quickly in order for you to promote the event effectively online, what would you do? To get the word out online you need to get to the top of the engines fast and once the event is over- there is no reason to stay on top of the engines, so if the site gets penalized later, there is no real downside for you.

Could black hatting be used in real estate?

Possibly. One application that may work in real estate would be a single property site. In the current market, I wouldn't imagine this would be effective as homes sit on the market for a while, but in a seller's market, black hatting a SPS to the top might actually be beneficial. I would love to hear if anyone has ever tried this.

Strategies:

Reputation management, blog farming, computer generated content, doorway pages, mirror sites, excessive duplicate content, excessive link buying/trading, link farming campaigns, etc.

*Note: I have listed some of the strategies used within the various disciplines - there are plenty of others, but for the sake a time, I listed the most common. I specifically left out many black hat techniques related to competitive warfare and reputation management. Since these tactics can be used maliciously to sabotage a site, I do not recommend or use then in this industry and will not discuss them if asked, so don't bother emailing me about the topic. If you truly want to learn, join a forum. You can, however, email me for a list of favorite forums for this.

As you can see, white, gray, black hat SEO all have their purpose and applications - that does not mean any one of these is "evil." It just means that you need to know what each strategy can accomplish, what the consequences are and weigh that against the goal for the site.

Disclaimer:

Yes, I am fully aware some spaz will pick up this post and tell everyone I admitted to being a black hat. If you feel like this statement speaks to you, please, scurry back to your computer in your Mamma's basement and write your thesis/compendium/manifesto/third grade spelling test on How Mary McKnight has crippled the industry/given you, the ethically ignorant SEO a bad name/made that butterfly flap it's wings and caused the tsunami that gave 5 babies feline leukemia. Don't rush, take your time, think it out. I wait for crazy.

Alright, I get asked all the time, how much traffic you can expect from a search engine to your real estate blog for any one keyword. Why? It's pretty simple- you want to knwo what keywords to target and exactly how valuable they will be to you in terms of traffic and eventual conversion.  I write a lot about SEO, but what I don't write about a lot are the results people get by using simple search engine optimization techniques.  ROI on SEO is very easy to measure.  You measure it in terms of positioning in Google for your prime terms and on the increase in traffic.  And, by virtue of those two simple things you WILL see more leads and if you are a good Realtor you will be able to convert those leads into dollars.

The key factor in determining how much traffic to expect for any given term is to first determine which terms you want to target!

Read also: how to determine which keywords you should rank for in Google.

Read also: Things Losers Say: SEO doesn't matter: Fact: Ranking #1 in Google can improve your real estate leads by 600%

 

 

 

How do you determine how valuable your keyword is?

Use a tool like KeywordDiscovery or SEOBook's Keyword Tool and you can very easily find out if the term you are targeting in the search engines will result in large volumes of traffic.  To use theses tools, simply register for a free account and you can enter in the term you are targeting and it will return the number of searches performed for that term.

Tool: Find the keywords you already rank for in Google

The next number that is important to you is how much traffic you can actually generate from landing on that first page of Google in any one of those top 10 positions.

How many clicks will you get when your site hits the first page of Google?

• Number 1 receives 42.1%
• Number 2 receives 11.9%
• Number 3 receives 8.5%
• Number 4 receives 6.1%
• Number 5 receives 4.9%
• Number 6 receives 4.1%
• Number 7 receives 3.4%
• Number 8 receives 3.0%
• Number 9 receives 2.8%
• Number 10 receives 3.0%

Now, do some simple math:

Traffic per day X percentage of clicks you will get for that position = actual traffic numbers.

Example:

Term: Long Beach Real Estate

KeywordDiscovery Traffic Value: 489 clicks/visitors

Percentage of traffic for that term for position 1 in Google: 42.1%

Total expected traffic for that term to site:  206 clicks/visitors

Viola!  It is that simple... see, even a monkey can do it.

REAL ESTATE AGENT AND BROKERAGE BLOGS

• SEOs all content to guarantee fast Google placement
Proof: First Page Google placement in 2.5 months

• Calls visitors to action so you generate more leads
Proof: Generate 30 leads per day with the right tools